Dad By Choice. Marie Ferrarella

was when her mother had waylaid her.

      Abby had always had difficulty saying no to her mother, not out of a sense of obligation but one of pure affection. It was hard to say no to a woman who had gone out of her way all her life to make sure that her children were happy and well cared for. Today was no different.

      Abby supposed that the request to stand by her mother’s side as Megan Kelly Maitland met the press this morning shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Abby had been born into this a goldfish-bowl existence, where almost every detail of her life, and of her family’s, was periodically dissected for newsworthiness. Especially if the media was having a slow week.

      These days, with tabloid journalism running rampant on almost every cable channel and lurid headlines leaping out from every supermarket checkout counter, “newsworthy” was usually synonymous with scandalous.

      But not in their case, thank God. The Maitlands, with their penchant for charitable donations and the clinic her mother and late father had cofounded all those years ago, were the press’s vanilla ice cream. Comforting, ever-present—but uneventful. The closest they had to a ribbon of contrasting chocolate was her younger brother, Jake, with his mysterious comings and goings and secret life-style.

      Lucky Jake, Abby thought as she followed her mother and two of her siblings to the rear entrance. He wasn’t here to go through this with them.

      But wealth, Abby knew, brought certain obligations, and she was far too much her mother’s daughter to turn her back on that. Although there were days when she would have loved to be given the opportunity, just to see what it felt like.

      Today, for one.

      Abby glanced at her watch for the third time in as many minutes. With a bit of luck, this wouldn’t take too long. She absolutely hated being late.

      “I don’t see why you need all of us, Mother,” she heard herself murmuring, despite her good intentions.

      Megan Maitland smiled as she gently pushed back a strand of Abby’s dark hair that had fallen wantonly into her eyes. The same lock she had been pushing back ever since Abby had had enough hair on her head to run a brush through. A wave of nostalgia whispered through Megan. Her children had gotten so big, so independent.

      Her sharp, dark blue eyes swept over her son R.J. and daughter Ellie standing beside her. R.J. was the oldest of the seven, and Ellie and her twin, Beth, were the youngest, with Abby in the middle. Megan wished all her children could be here today when she made the announcement. It was just a silly little press conference, she knew, and they had all promised to come to the party that was being given in honor of the clinic once the plans were finalized. But she missed her children when they weren’t around. Missed the sound of their laughter, their voices.

      She was as proud of them as she could be, but there were times when she longed for the old days, when they were young and she could keep them all within the reach of an embrace.

      Megan blinked, silently forbidding a tear to emerge. She was becoming a foolish old woman before her time. What would William say if he could have seen her? He would have teased her out of it, she knew, while secretly agreeing with her.

      She missed him most of all.

      Her smile, soft and gentle, widened as she answered Abby’s question. “For moral support, darling. I need you for moral support.”

      R.J. shrugged. Megan knew this was eating into his precious time as president of Maitland Maternity Clinic, but he would never say no to her. Her love for him had been reciprocated from the day she and William had adopted him and his younger sister Anna after their father had deserted them. Although rightfully they could have called her Aunt Megan, she had never felt anything but maternal love for William’s niece and nephew.

      “Don’t see why moral support should have to enter into it, Mother,” R.J. muttered, looking more somber than usual. “We’re just announcing that there’s going to be a party celebrating the clinic’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Not much moral support required for that.”

      A tinge of pity stirred within Megan. R.J. didn’t smile nearly enough. In this last year he seemed to have become even more work-oriented than ever.

      Ellie, her youngest, whom Megan had appointed hospital administrator despite her tender age of twenty-five, grinned at her serious oldest brother.

      “Oh, I don’t know,” she cheerfully disagreed. “I think facing the press requires a great deal of moral support.” She exchanged glances with Abby, a bit of her childhood adoration for her older sister still evident. “I always get the feeling they’re waiting for something juicy to bite into.”

      “That’s because they are.” Abby could see the trucks from the various cable channels in and around Austin, Texas, through the window that faced the rear of the clinic. “Though I am surprised that so many of them have turned out. After all, this is just a human-interest story to be buried on page twelve.”

      R.J. tucked his tie neatly beneath his vest. A glint of humor crossed his lips. “Page twelve? If I have to stand on the back steps of the clinic and grin at those hyenas, it better get us lines on at least page four.”

      Abby patted his arm affectionately. “Don’t grin too hard, R.J. Your face might crack.”

      Though Abby had always known that R.J. and Anna were really her cousins, there had never been a dividing line between any of the Maitland children. They had all been raised with the same amount of affection, shouldering the same amount of responsibility and parental expectation. As a sister, Abby loved R.J., and as a doctor she worried about him at times.

      He pretended to shrug off her arm. “Let’s get this over with.”

      Abby cocked her head. The noise outside the back doors had grown from a dull din to something of a roar. “Is it my imagination, or are the natives getting more restless?”

      Ellie frowned. “They do sound louder than usual.” She looked at her older sister with a silent question.

      Abby in turn glanced at her mother. Whatever it was, they’d find out soon enough. “Ready?”

      The tall, regal woman beside Abby squared her shoulders. Wearing a navy-blue suit with white trim at the collar and cuffs, her soft white hair drawn into a French twist, Megan Maitland looked more like their older sister than a woman in her sixty-second year.

      “As I’ll ever be,” Megan acknowledged.

      “Then let’s get this show on the road,” Abby declared.

      R.J. pushed open the doors before Abby had a chance to do so. But instead of the forward thrust of raised mikes, invasive cameras and intrusive reporters, they found themselves staring at the backs of heads. To a person, the reporters and camera crews were focusing their attention on something off to the side of the clinic’s rear entrance.

      Abby glanced at her brother, who seemed as much in the dark as any of them. “What the—?”

      She edged forward. Had someone decided to stage a publicity stunt and dramatically go into labor on the clinic’s back steps instead of coming inside? Maitland Maternity, established by her parents so that no woman would be forced to have her child without medical help, had somehow turned into the darling of the rich and famous as well as that of the emotionally and financially needy. And among those celebrities were some who had what Abby could only term as a bizarre sense of humor.

      Because it wasn’t in her nature to hang back where either her family or her professional life was concerned, Abby didn’t wait for her brother to take charge. Instead, she pushed her way farther through the tight throng, determined to find out what had so firmly captured the media’s attention.

      The next moment, Abby knew. And it was all she could do to keep her mouth from dropping open.

      There was a baby on the back steps. A baby, covered with a blanket and lying in a wicker basket. Looking closer, she saw that there was actually a piece of paper pinned to the blanket.

      Abby