The Baby Bargain

Commanding himself to rise above the distraction, he refocused on the monitor, but admitted that the blonde’s presence amplified the anticipation rushing through his veins.

On-screen, a woman twirled a toddler in a dandelion-carpeted field. Carefully filtered lighting softened all harsh lines and strong colors. A soothing voice-over scored the shot:

“The Children’s Connection of Portland. Helping singles become families.” Music swelled. The mother pulled her toddler close, and they both tumbled, laughing, into the grass. “Pursue your dream.”

LJ nodded imperceptibly. After the commercial the video continued with statistics, demographics. LJ knew, though, that he’d hooked his audience already. No parent with a soul could fail to be moved. Hell, even he felt a little teary, and he was about as paternal as Scrooge.

Without question, single women eager to have babies would consider the Children’s Connection again as their first choice in fertility clinics. Though the commercial they’d just viewed was a mock-up, once it was shot at budget and aired repeatedly, it would seep into viewers’ hearts like honey into warm bread. LJ had to force himself not to turn toward the blonde to savor her reaction along with the others’. He written this spot himself.

There were times, like now, when he knew exactly what he was doing with his life.

Gag. Me.

That was Eden Carter’s first reaction as she stood in the back of the meeting room and tried not to laugh out loud.

Only a man could possibly have come up with the pablum they’d just watched. More specifically, the man would have to be childless or someone who had never asked his wife a single purposeful question about her mothering experience.

The Barbie doll in the commercial looked as if she’d never missed a night’s sleep, for crying out loud. Her face was gorgeous, her figure toned and perfect, her hair an überstylist’s work of art.

Come to the Children’s Connection, Eden thought, we’ll help you have a baby who hardly ever cries and will never bite your boob while he’s nursing.

Okay, so maybe she was cranky, but she’d missed lots of sleep lately. Whoever had written the syrupy commercial should have asked her—or any of the single mothers who had been helped by the Children’s Connection—what parenting an infant or toddler on one’s own really looked like.

Shifting the arm that held the plate of cookies she’d brought to the meeting, she surreptitiously pressed her forearm against her right breast with its poor aching nipple.

Her beautiful baby boy, Liam, was currently adding a new tooth to the three he already had. He’d clamped down on her right nipple so hard this morning that she’d let out a shriek before she could stop herself. Her poor little guy had opened his blue eyes wide then started to squall. It had been a rough finish to a morning that had started late because she’d been up half the night applying a homeopathic teething gel to his swollen gums.

Liam wasn’t the only one who depended on her availability day and night. As a doula, she was responsible for her patients anytime they needed her.

If she tried to twirl in a field like the gal in the commercial, she’d collapse from exhaustion.

Women who wanted to become parents, especially single parents, needed the kind of support and compassion that came from shared experience, and truth, not something so…so…

Silly!

When several people whipped around in their chairs to face her, she realized she’d spoken aloud.

“Do you want to comment, Eden?” Terrence Logan asked her with interest.

In her teens and early twenties, she’d had a bothersome tendency to speak first and think later. A committed yoga and meditation practice had soothed her jangled spirit and given her the discipline to insert a little lag time between her thoughts and her words.

Evidently she was suffering a relapse.

“No, thank you. Very sorry,” she said since she’d clearly spoken out of turn.

Her coworkers here knew her as the centered, hard-to-ruffle woman she’d become. She’d even Hypno-Birthed her way through an eighteen-hour delivery, thank you very much.

No one here was familiar with the Eden Carter who’d struggled through each painful day of her youth like a salmon slogging upstream. Back then her burdens had seemed to weigh more than she did, and sometimes she’d release her frustration by picking fights that weren’t even hers.

Involuntarily her gaze met the speaker’s. What was his name? He was one of the Logans, but belonged to a branch of the family that didn’t have much to do with the Children’s Connection, as far as she knew.

His articulate brows had hiked to express surprise then lowered quickly to a frown. At first glance he appeared almost confused, but as Eden watched he gathered his wits and smiled tightly, gearing up for a fight if necessary.

An answering thrill of anticipation shot through her, catching her off guard. She willed the feeling to pass and to leave in its stead a healing serenity.

“I’m sure we’re all interested in what you have to say, Ms….?”

Oh, geez. Move on, buddy. Please, move on. “Carter,” she muttered.

“Ms. Carter.” Silencing the monitor that had gone to blue screen, he flicked on the overhead lights and turned toward her again. “I realize you weren’t here for the entire presentation, but you’ve obviously had a strong reaction to what you did see.”

Eden’s eyes narrowed to mirror his. The gauntlet had been tossed. Challenge vibrated beneath the committed politeness of his words. He’d invited her comments and undermined them in a single breath.

“There’s a seat at the head of the table.” He gestured with an innocence that would melt butter, but she understood that his intention was to put her on the spot. “Of course, you’re welcome to stand if you prefer.” He stepped to the side, indicating he was just as pleased as could be to give her the floor.

Eden smiled, as innocently as he. You don’t scare me, bub. I went through back labor.

Adopting her smoothest gliding walk, she approached the front of the room, plate of cookies and water bottle in hand, and never broke eye contact with him.

As she drew near, she saw that his eyes were blue and that he was older than he’d seemed from across the room. On a bet, she’d risk good money that he was mid-to late thirties, at least. Her initial impression had been that he was the born-with-a-silver-spoon type, but the closer she got the less untouched by life he seemed.

She stood no more than a foot away when she noted the tension around his eyes, eyes that were almost as blue as hers and her son’s. He shared her son’s dark hair, too, though his was a smidge darker.

“Thank you,” she said when he held out a chair. He waited until she was comfortably seated before assuming the seat next to her.

He smelled good. Cleaner and subtler than cologne, more delicious than plain soap. Seemed as though she rarely had an occasion to smell anything more interesting than baby powder lately, so his scent hit her twice as hard.

Buck up, Eden, she told herself. You probably smell like baby spit up, which is why you have a point to make.

With a big smile, she plopped her plate of cookies atop the cleaned-for-company conference table and whipped off the crinkled foil cover.

“Chocolate chocolate chip and oatmeal butterscotch,” she announced. “Help yourselves. Three points each if you’re doing Weight Watchers.”

Her coworkers gazed hungrily at her homemade treats. She saw Jillian Logan glance at Dianna March, who was on the board of directors. Ordinarily the board and the staff rarely attended the same meetings. When the staff alone gathered in the afternoon, juice and coffee flowed and there was no shortage of snacks, making the furniture before them look like a picnic table.

Formality and professionalism seemed to be the order of this afternoon, however.

The meeting room appeared more official, less warm and friendly. A carafe of water and a coffee urn sat atop a sideboard, with a small container of sugar and packets of artificial sweetener as the only nod to the afternoon energy slump. Her cookies, which normally would have been half-gone in the time it took for her to notice the difference in the room, sat untouched as everyone waited to see what the board members were going to do.

That’s the problem, she thought. We can’t stop being ourselves just because we’re in trouble. That’s what this place was about: family first. Real life first. That was one reason she loved it so: you didn’t have to fake it to make it at the Children’s Connection.

Contrarily, the commercial she’d just watched looked like a trailer for The Sound of Music.

“Afternoon, everyone.” She raised a hand companionably. “I apologize for walking in late. I hope the cookies’ll make up for it. I stopped by the baby center to check on Liam. He’s been teething, and you know how that goes. Sleepless nights, cranky days and a nose like a lazy river—nothing ever comes of it, but it doesn’t stop running. You just can’t pay a child-care provider enough to deal with that, can you?”

Understanding smiles popped up around the room as heads bobbed. There, that was better. Dianna and fellow board member Wayne Thorpe looked almost human again. No matter what trouble they’d suffered recently, the Children’s Connection wasn’t all about business. That was one reason she’d moved clear from Kentucky to Oregon to take this job. She hoped to heaven this place would hang on to its unique character in the face of its struggles. It was so easy to forget who you were when you were scared.

Eden turned toward the man beside her. “Do you have children, Mr….”