The Baby Arrangement. Tara Taylor Quinn

bed the night before, in the middle of preparing her spiel, to do that particular research. For him. She really wanted him to be okay with her choice.

      He was still sipping beer. Watching her.

      “I’m going to do this, whether you approve or not,” she told him. “I’d love your support. It means a lot to me.” She paused, sipped her wine and hoped dinner didn’t come for a while because her stomach was in knots. “It means a whole lot to me,” she added. “But my decision is made.”

      Because she’d had to be certain that she was doing the right thing for her life. She hadn’t even told Tamara yet. But she was fairly certain her friend from grief counseling would approve. Though Braden hardly knew the woman who’d lost four babies—three to early term miscarriages and one a viable birth but too premature to sustain life—Mallory felt as though she and the other woman were soul mates in a lot of ways.

      His expression gave away very little. He was studying her.

      Was he trying to figure out how to diffuse this emotionally wracked tangent she was on?

      She watched him back, knowing her last thought wasn’t fair. Not to either of them. Braden had always shown her the utmost respect when it came to her life choices. And he had often times sought her advice when it came to his own matters. Still did.

      Their waitress stopped to say their dinners were almost ready and asked if he’d like another beer. He nodded. Her wine glass was still more than half full.

      “Say something,” she told him when the waitress walked away.

      “There’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen in...well, too long.”

      She smiled. “I’ve found my future,” she told him softly.

      Then he shook his head. And she braced herself. She wanted his support, so she had to listen to his concerns. It wasn’t like there weren’t any. She had them, too. She readied her answers as their waitress delivered his beer.

      “Being a single parent, Mal, having to work and take care of a child all on your own... We were exhausted when there were two of us.”

      Meeting his gaze, she took him on.

      “I grew up with a single mom who not only worked and tended to me but regularly opened our home to other children, as well. Troubled children.”

      He knew her history, starting with the high-end prostitute mother who’d tried to keep her but who’d eventually realized what her life was going to do to her daughter and had given her up. Mallory had been almost three then. She didn’t remember the woman who’d later died of AIDS, contracted after Mallory’s birth. She remembered having to be tested, though, just to make certain she wasn’t carrying the HIV virus.

      By the time Mallory went in the system she’d been too old to be immediately grabbed up like a newborn. There’d been a couple who’d wanted her, though. And after almost a year in the courts while living in their home as their foster child, they’d gotten pregnant on their own and changed their mind about the adoption.

      She remembered them.

      And then Sally had come into her life. A social worker in another county, who had her own professional caseload of children, Sally was also a licensed foster parent in the county where Mallory had been living. She’d taken Mallory in and kept her until she’d gone off to college. There’d been children in and out of their home during the entire time she’d been growing up, but she’d been the only permanent foster Sally had had. The other kids had been like a shared project between them, with the two of them doing what they could to love the foster children during the time they were in their home.

      Mallory had always loved caring for kids. Nurturing came naturally to her. She was meant to be a mother.

      “Have you talked to Sally about this?” Braden asked. He’d met the woman a couple of times, but she’d retired, moved to Florida, met a man and married—her first marriage, late in life. He had a big family that she’d taken on as readily as she’d taken in all those children over the years.

      “Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let her know at some point. You know she’s going to tell me to adopt, rather than birth, and while you’d think, in my position, having grown up as I did, that I’d be looking in that direction, I just want a biological family of my own.”

      “So find a man to share it with you.”

      Her heart lurched. And quieted. She shook her head.

      “You’ve hardly dated, Mal. I’d hoped that guy at Thanksgiving—that dad—was someone you were getting interested in.”

      “I have dated,” she told him. And she listed four men in three years. He nodded as each name rolled off her tongue. She’d told him about every one of them. “There’s been no spark.” She could have left it there, but for some reason, didn’t.

      “You know as well as I do, Bray. The magic is so great in the beginning, but there’s no guarantee it will last. Look at us. Tragedy happened. You changed, I changed, or we found different parts of ourselves that hadn’t had reason to present before.” She shook her head. “I just don’t trust the whole magic, in love thing. Besides, you said yourself many times that I changed even before tragedy hit. I loved motherhood more than I loved being a wife.”

      His words, not hers, but she wasn’t sure they were wrong. She’d loved being his wife more than she could ever put into words. And yet, being a mother...it was like an empty cavern inside of her had suddenly been filled to the brim.

      “The Bouncing Ball takes up twelve hours a day of your time.”

      She was proud of her daycare. It had a waiting list now, since she’d made the news the previous summer when a couple come to her for help in finding their kidnapped child. She was even, at Braden’s suggestion, raising her rates for new clients. She’d put her foot down when it came to charging her current clients more.

      “I spend my days taking care of children, Bray,” she said now. “And I have a fully trained and certified staff who also specialize in child development.”

      Yes, she spent twelve hours a day at the center, doing what a mother does. Now, instead of just doing it for other people’s children, she’d be doing it for her own, as well. And then getting to spend the remaining twelve hours a day doing the same.

      “There’ll be no more empty hours,” she said aloud.

      Braden seemed to be searching for words, and for the first time in a while she hated what they’d become. Hated the friendship that kept so much inside, erecting an invisible and completely safe barrier between them.

      “Tell me what you’re really thinking.” She blurted the words.

      And, of course, their waitress chose right then to deliver their dinner.

      * * *

      She could hardly eat. But because he was devouring his steak, she forced herself to go through the motions.

      Was she being way too insensitive here? Telling her ex-husband that she was having a baby when the loss of their own child was what had driven them apart?

      Telling him she was having a baby when she knew he blamed himself for their loss?

      “You wanted me to move on,” she said, putting down her fork when she couldn’t pretend to eat anymore. “More and more I can feel your tension, Bray. You need me to get a life.”

      “I never said that.”

      “You didn’t have to.”

      He didn’t deny her accusation.

      “I’m right, aren’t I? You feel responsible for my unhappiness, which means you can’t move forward until I do.”

      Putting a forkful of meat in his mouth he chewed. His lack of response infuriated her. And yet, not as much as it might have done six months ago. Just because Braden didn’t