The Baby Arrangement. Tara Taylor Quinn

on the hoodie she’d brought aboard and settled in her lounger. When the sun was fully above them, she’d be hot, and she’d take off the hoodie and get some color on her skin.

      And at some point, Braden was going to want to talk. Apparently to make certain that she knew she was doing the right thing and to tell her he was seeing someone again, she supposed.

      Which was fine.

      She’d listen, as she always did, and support him in his endeavors, as she always did.

      Until then, she was going to relax into the bliss.

      * * *

      “Can you come up here?”

      Drifting off to sleep, the rising sun’s warmth cozy in the cool San Diego spring air, Mallory heard Braden. Not in the mood to hear about his new girlfriend, she took a second to decide whether or not to acknowledge that she’d heard.

      The engine had stopped. She’d heard him moving around, getting his rod and casting his line. He’d be sitting up on the bow, watching the boats on the horizon as much as anything. She’d always said he did more relaxing than fishing when he went out, but hadn’t seen that as a bad thing.

      Thinking he had to carry the whole world on his shoulders as he did, Braden didn’t relax enough.

      And then she quit picturing it. Braden on the bow of the boat, wind in his air, was just...hot. A part of them that had to be dead to her now.

      “Mal?”

      “Yeah, I’m coming,” she said, repositioning her sunglasses as she opened her eyes. They’d only been out half an hour. So much for her bliss.

      But, hey, by the following night she might be pregnant. Braden could get remarried and it wouldn’t be enough to snap her out of her good mood.

      Joining him on the bow and sitting with her back propped on the small rail, she faced him, her feet in front of her with knees bent. His jeans and tennis shoes were new since they’d been divorced. The forest green T-shirt she’d washed before. A breeze blew his hair and he didn’t seem to notice.

      It made him look free. And just a touch wild.

      The impressive breadth of his shoulders...that was the same as it had always been.

      “You said you wanted my support in this venture of yours.”

      She wouldn’t call having a baby a “venture” but understood that he would. And that what he called it didn’t have to matter to her anymore. She nodded.

      “Then I have some concerns I’d like to address.”

      He wasn’t going to spoil her good mood. Not that he’d ever want to. Or intend to. He was trying to help. She got that.

      “What are they?”

      Throwing up one hand, he glanced at the line hanging placidly over the front of the boat.

      “Most of them—” He stopped and shook his head. “There’s one major one, but I have a plan that can tend to it.”

      Did Braden just have a hitch in his voice? Heart beating faster, she studied her ex-husband. This mattered to him.

      A lot.

      Which warmed her. A lot.

      “What’s your plan?”

      He frowned. “I’d like to present the concern before I move forward to the solution.”

      Had they been married, she’d have felt rebuked. She smiled, instead, finding his predictability, his need to keep things in order and under wraps, kind of endearing. “Of course.”

      “I’m concerned about the Y component,” he told her, catching her completely off guard. She’d been expecting something more along the lines of her being a single parent. Taking on a two-person job all alone. Concerned that if she had a son, the boy would have no father figure.

      Or anyone to take him fishing.

      “You won’t know family history,” he continued, when she decided silence was the best answer until she could figure out where he was going with the conversation. “According to the National Human Genome Research Institute there are forty-eight known and listed genetic disorders that could be passed on to your child. That doesn’t include the ones that occur when certain genes meet with inhospitable partner genes. If that were to happen, your likelihood of miscarriage would increase greatly, but I’m not even there yet.”

      It sounded like he was right there. Some more of her bliss faded. She wouldn’t let go, though.

      She was going to do this.

      “Women have been having healthy donor babies for decades.”

      “And they’ve been having children with disabilities, too.”

      “So have married couples.” So could they have had.

      “But at least when you know the Y component, you have more of a chance to prevent something or to catch it in its earliest stages.”

      She didn’t have an immediate answer to that. Except what she’d already said.

      “You’ve been through so much, Mal. I applaud what you’re doing here. I’m elated to see you taking up the reins of your life again. Moving on. Creating a future where you’ll be happy.”

      Elated and Braden weren’t words she’d put together. At least, not since Tucker died. Before that she’d seen some elation. More than he’d probably realized. But not as much as after she’d found out she was pregnant.

      Was the pregnancy what had changed him? At least somewhat? Was there more to their divorce than just their dichotomous ways of dealing with life’s tragedies, which ultimately blew their emotional trust in each other?

      “I’m concerned, Mal,” he said after a lengthy silence had fallen. “Really concerned. All weekend, the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. To the point that I’m not sure I can give you my support. Not with such a huge unknown.”

      So she’d do it alone. She’d already made that decision. And she’d known from the beginning that she might not win his buy-in.

      Still, she could feel the weight of sadness come back, trickling into the outer recesses of her heart.

      “I’m worried about what you’d do if you lost a second child.” The depth of compassion in his tone was something she hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

      “There are never guarantees, Braden. He or she could be hit by a car or a bolt of lightning. The point is, I’m not going to let the past rob me of my future.”

      Which was exactly what she’d told Tamara she shouldn’t do.

      Exactly when the words had become her mantra, she didn’t know. She just knew that she felt the truth on a soul level.

      “But why play with fate when you have a choice?”

      Again, she had no ready answer so she thought about what he was saying, instead. She’d asked for his input. Having his support meant more than him just agreeing with everything she said and did.

      She valued his opinion and she wanted him to care enough to speak up.

      “You need a full family medical history,” he said. “Or as complete of one as you can get. Way more than the general things the sperm bank provides. You need to know if his grandfather was prone to anxiety attacks or his entire family were unmotivated sloths.”

      “Right, so what do you suggest I do, Bray? Put an ad in the paper for sperm that comes with that kind of extensive history?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Then what?”

      It was only when she asked the question that she remembered he’d said he had a solution to her problem. A plan that would tend to his concern.