Pregnant With Her Best Friend's Baby. Alison Roberts

staffroom of the Aratika Rescue Base.

      ‘I haven’t finished the paperwork for the post-cardiac arrest case yet, let alone for the birth,’ Maggie sighed.

      ‘It won’t take too long,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll do the cardiac one.’

      ‘Because it’s half-done already?’

      ‘No. Because you’re the one who wants a baby. This way, you get to enjoy the case all over again.’

      ‘Hmm...’ Maggie shook her head. ‘It could have turned out to be not very enjoyable at all. I was so relieved the moment I felt that shoulder start to move.’

      ‘I’ll bet.’ Joe pulled the folder of paperwork towards him and took a pen from the pocket of his overalls. ‘Keep it in mind when you choose the father of your baby. You’re so short, it might be wise not to marry a solid, over six foot tall farmer like Kathy did.’

      ‘Five foot four is not short. I’m average,’ Maggie countered. ‘And I don’t even know any farmers. Or any potential baby daddies at all, in fact.’

      ‘They’re out there. In droves. You just haven’t been looking.’

      ‘That’s because I got fed up with relationships that were going nowhere fast.’

      Including the one she’d been in with Richard, years ago, when Maggie had first started working at the rescue base. One that had had a promising start but had ebbed into being nothing more than flatmates. Friends. And it hadn’t been enough for either of them.

      ‘Maybe that’s because you go into them expecting them to be going somewhere. That can scare guys off, you know. It would scare the hell out of me, that’s for sure. In fact, it’s precisely why I’m currently single again.’

      Maggie snorted. ‘It’s a baby I want. A partner would be a bonus, of course, but I’m running out of time to jump through all those hoops.’ She was only half joking. It really did feel like she was running out of time, given how many dead ends she had already come up against in the search to find someone to share her life with. ‘And who says you have to marry someone to have a baby, anyway? You might marry someone and end up being a single mother anyway—like Laura.’ Her flatmate had escaped what she suspected might have been an abusive relationship years ago when her son, Harrison, was only a tiny baby.

      ‘So you’re going to do the independent professional woman thing and go to a sperm bank or something?’

      Maggie blinked. ‘D’you know, I hadn’t actually thought of that.’

      ‘Why not? You read about people doing it all the time. Especially older, professional women who choose not to get married or realise they’re running out of time. People just like you. And it seems like a great way to get a designer baby. You could practically choose its hair colour and how smart it’ll be.’ But Joe was frowning now. ‘Of course, you’re going to provide the other half of the genes so it might just come out with blonde hair and blue eyes and to be not very...’ His lips twitched.

      Maggie threw her pen at him. ‘Are you trying to tell me that I’m not very smart?’

      Joe had already caught the pen. ‘I was only going to say you’re not very tall.’

      Maggie narrowed her eyes. ‘Not sure I believe that. And what did you mean by “something”?’

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘You said a sperm bank “or something”.’

      ‘Oh...’ Joe picked up his coffee cup and took a swallow. ‘You could just pick someone you liked the look of, I guess, lay on the charm and lure them home and hope that he’s not too careful about birth control.’

      ‘Joe... How irresponsible would that be?’

      ‘Irresponsible on the part of the guy, that’s true.’ Joe shook his head. ‘I’d never relinquish that responsibility.’

      ‘I couldn’t get pregnant and not tell someone that they were going to be a father. That’s just not right.’

      ‘I guess.’ Joe was focussing on the paperwork in front of him now. ‘Do what I read about a gay couple doing recently, then. The women asked one of their good friends and he agreed to be the donor. He said he wanted them to have their family and he was happy to be a kind of uncle but never wanted to be a father.’

      They both concentrated on the paperwork for a while but, even as Maggie filled in the precise details relating to the obstetric case that was clearly going to be the last job for their shift today, another line of thought was ticking along somewhere in the background of her brain.

      Thoughts about sperm banks. How easy was it to get accepted for treatment and how expensive it might be. And how it worked. Did you have a wish list of things to tick off, like physical characteristics of height and hair colour or evidence of intelligence such as a university qualification? What about more important attributes like whether someone could make you laugh or how kind he was?

      Thoughts about the other things Joe had suggested circled in her mind, too. Randomly picking some guy with the intention of seducing him and possibly lying about being on birth control was not an acceptable option but...but the idea of using a co-operative friend, now that was interesting...

      * * *

      So interesting that it was the only thing Maggie was thinking about as she kicked her bike into life and threaded her way through the city traffic not long after her conversation with Joe.

      By the time she was getting into bed that night, it had started to feel like it was her own idea.

      And, out of all the men she knew, there was only one that stood out as a perfect possibility.

      Joe Wallace.

      The thought of broaching the subject was a bit nerve-racking. Enough so to keep Maggie awake for quite some time. On the positive side, he’d had a half-smile on his face when he’d said ‘rather you than me’ when she’d been holding Kathy’s baby, and had said she wanted one as well, so maybe he was on the same page as that co-operative friend he’d told her about—who didn’t want to become a father but was happy to be a kind of uncle.

      On the other side of that coin, however, was the fact that she’d be stepping into a realm that had never been there with Joe and that was why their friendship was so solid. They’d both been in long-term relationships when they’d first met as colleagues. By the time they were single, they were already good friends and Maggie had learned the hard way that friendship was not enough to base a long-term relationship on. Joe was off limits and he clearly felt exactly the same way and that had never been a problem. But baby-making, no matter how you ended up actually doing it, had everything to do with sex and even the thought of opening that conversation with Joe was enough to make Maggie blush.

      But it wasn’t enough to make her dismiss what seemed to be a perfect plan. As she drifted off to sleep Maggie’s thoughts were tumbling, interwoven with memories that went back so far they were no more than misty glimpses. She’d had an old-fashioned child-sized pram when she was very little and she would cram every doll and teddy bear she owned into that pram and wheel it everywhere.

      My babies, she would tell everyone.

      When she was older she had her fashion dolls that gave her a mother and father figure and she would add smaller dolls as their children. Lots and lots of children because that was what made a ‘real’ family. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been happy and loved as an only child, it was just that she knew it was a case of the more the merrier. Her parents had desperately wanted more children and had been sad that it hadn’t happened but it hadn’t dented the rock-solid love they shared. They would be the best grandparents ever.

      That was something else that Maggie wanted, of course. A relationship that was as perfect a match as her parents’ one was. The ‘love at first sight’ whirlwind romance like the one they’d told her about so many times and starting a life together that would get better and