My Secret Wife. Cathy Thacker Gillen

stunned by his impetuous offer as Maggie looked. Finally, she pulled herself together, shoved a hand through her wavy hair and regaled him with the fiery Irish temperament she had inherited from her dad. “Look, Gabe, I think it’s great that you are the Good Samaritan of Charleston, South Carolina, always volunteering to help women out, but this is just too much!”

      Gabe drank in the husky vehemence of her voice and the bloom of new color in her fair cheeks, as a car pulled up outside. “So you won’t even consider it?” He was stunned by the intensity of his disappointment. Since when had he considered fatherhood? he wondered in shocked amazement. Never mind with a woman who generally speaking wouldn’t give him the time of day! And yet, the thought of Maggie having a baby with someone else—anyone else—even someone anonymous who meant nothing at all to her was even worse. Gabe couldn’t say why he felt the way he did, he just knew he didn’t want Maggie Callaway to be having anyone’s baby but his. End of story.

      “For you to be the sperm donor of my baby?” Maggie gaped at Gabe, as a younger woman got out of the car and made her way toward the house. “I hardly think so!” she said vehemently.

      “I have to tell you,” Daisy Templeton said, as she strolled casually in to join them. “But I have to go with Maggie there. Having a baby via artificial insemination is not the way to go.”

      Not the opinion Gabe would’ve expected from Charleston society’s wild child and most sought after new photographer. The twenty-three-year-old heiress had been kicked out of seven colleges in five years. Now, Daisy was telling everyone she had no intention of ever going back, and was instead going to devote herself to becoming a professional photographer. Fortunately for the spirited and beautiful young heiress, she had the talent, if perhaps not the discipline, to make her boast a reality, Gabe thought.

      “As it happens,” Maggie said stiffly, turning to face Daisy, “in my opinion, artificial insemination of donor sperm is exactly the way to go.”

      Daisy raised her pale blond brows in inquiry, looked at Gabe, then Maggie. “Are you planning to tell the baby who his or her father is?” she asked Maggie carefully.

      Maggie shrugged and looked, Gabe noted, even more defensive in light of Daisy’s disapproval. “Probably not,” Maggie said.

      Daisy popped her gum and got her camera out of the case. “Big mistake,” Daisy said, shooting Maggie a sober glance. “And I mean gargantuan. I should know because I’m adopted.”

      That stopped Maggie in her tracks, Gabe noted.

      “You have no idea who your parents are?” Maggie asked.

      Daisy shrugged as she set up to take the Before pictures for Chase’s magazine, Modern Man. “No, I don’t,” Daisy admitted with a troubled look, as she loaded film into her camera, “although I’m working on finding that out.”

      “It was a problem for you?” Maggie asked.

      “More than that,” Daisy admitted as she got down on one knee to photograph the burned-out shell of the kitchen. “It was a never-ending source of shame and mystery, frustration and unhappiness.”

      This surprised Gabe.

      “Why?” Gabe asked, brow furrowing as he struggled to understand. Daisy had been adopted by one of Charleston’s wealthiest families and had grown up in a privileged home.

      Daisy bit her lower lip and looked even more distressed as she related, “Because there had to be some reason for my parents to give me up. And I wondered why my parents abandoned me. My birth mother obviously wanted to carry me to term, but what about my birth father? Why did he walk out on my birth mother or even allow my birth mother to give me up for adoption? I’ve always wondered why my father didn’t love me. And just who the heck is he, anyway? Was he some terrible person or just plain selfish? Did he even know about me? Did my birth mother tell him she was pregnant or did she have me and give me up in secret?”

      Good questions, Gabe thought. And ones he had no answers for.

      “She must have loved you if she gave you up for adoption,” Maggie said gently, doing her best to comfort Daisy.

      “I’ve always told myself that was the case,” Daisy said sadly, as she got slowly to her feet and walked to the opposite side of the room, to shoot photos from another angle. “But deep down I wonder if it’s true,” Daisy continued sadly, “if my birth mother ever really cared about me at all. The bottom line here is that it’s a terrible thing for a child to have to grow up knowing that there’s something weird or different or secret about the circumstances of his or her birth. And if you have a choice, as you two clearly do now, you shouldn’t do anything to bring a child into the world that you wouldn’t want the child eventually to know about.”

      “I HAD NO IDEA Daisy was that deep,” Gabe mused, after Daisy Templeton had finished taking her photos and driven off once again.

      “I didn’t either,” Maggie said. She sat down on the steps looking out over the ocean and glumly plucked at the stone-washed fabric of her jeans. “As much as I hate to admit it, she had a point. I mean, how is my baby going to feel when he’s old enough to learn his birth father is just a stranger from a sperm bank?”

      Gabe sighed as he walked over and settled beside her on the steps. “Probably not very good,” he said, trying hard not to think about the way her yellow shirt molded the soft, sexy curves of her breasts.

      She brought her legs up and wrapped her arms around her bent legs. Resting her head on her knees, she turned her face to look at him and said in a low voice laced with remorse, “I’m not sure that it would be any better to accept a sperm donation from you as a friend, either, though.”

      Gabe was silent. Thinking Maggie needed more comfort than she realized, he curved his arm around her shoulders and returned, just as soberly, “I’d hate it if our kid were embarrassed at how he or she had come into this world, or at me or you for our parts in it.”

      Maggie drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. “And now that I think about it, I can’t see a child who was old enough to understand the clinical procedure involved in artificial insemination thinking of our decision to procreate with anything but embarrassment and loathing,” Maggie said.

      Gabe nodded and admitted just as freely, “The last thing a kid wants is to be different from everybody else. It’s one thing when there’s no helping it. But when you can help it….” He stopped, shook his head at the emotion welling up inside him. “Daisy’s right,” he concurred in a low, choked voice as he looked deep into Maggie’s light-green eyes. “It isn’t fair.”

      “So what am I going to do?” Maggie asked unhappily, burying her face in her hands.

      Gabe, in an attempt to comfort her, rubbed some of the tension from her slender shoulders. “You could always go the conventional route and get married,” he said as he massaged his way down her spine.

      Maggie bounded to her feet and dashed the rest of the way down the steps. She shoved both hands in the pockets of her jeans and stared at the constantly shifting ocean. Her lips set in a stubborn pout. “I can’t marry someone just because he lusts after me.” She turned and shot him an angry look over her shoulder. “I almost did that with your brother Chase and look what happened.”

      Without warning, jealousy stabbed his heart. Gabe swallowed, stood, and followed her down to the bottom of the steps. “Was that what was between the two of you?” he asked, squaring off with her and finding he really needed—wanted—to know. “Lust?”

      At his bluntness, Maggie’s cheeks flooded with embarrassed color. She turned her eyes away evasively, kicked at the sand with the toe of her work boot. “Let’s just say your older brother knows how to court a woman aggressively,” she said gruffly. “And there isn’t a woman on this earth who doesn’t want to be hotly pursued.”

      Was that where he’d made his big mistake? Not pursuing Maggie aggressively enough?

      Suddenly, Gabe knew he couldn’t let Maggie