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“I still don’t like the idea of you using an anonymous donor.”
“Why not?” At his firm insistence, it was all Maggie could do not to clench her teeth.
“Because I think you should know your baby’s father.”
So did Maggie, if the truth be known. But that wasn’t possible, either, she thought. Furthermore, Gabe should know it, too, instead of pretending otherwise. She shook her head and asked wryly, “And what guy would say yes to a request like that?”
Gabe angled a thumb at his chest. “Me.”
FOR A MOMENT, both of them were silent, Gabe every bit as speechless and 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 get away again. Not when her biological clock was ticking, and she wanted a baby. “Look, this doesn’t have to be this complicated,” he said urgently, wishing like heck she weren’t behaving in a way that made her vulnerable. And whether Maggie realized it or not, her actions were putting her in a place where she was very much at risk of being hurt or taken advantage of. Now, later, it didn’t really matter. All he knew was that he was determined not to see that happen.
Maggie lifted her brow. “It doesn’t?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Gabe said firmly, as the solution to her problem quickly became evident to him. “Because I’ll marry you and give you the baby you want via artificial insemination.” In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he knew it was the right path to take.
Maggie blinked at him in surprise. “Why would you do that?” she demanded hoarsely, as all the color drained from her face.
“Because Daisy’s right.” Afraid she was going to bolt if he didn’t hang on to her, Gabe took both her hands in his. Wanting her to know how serious he was, he looked deep into her eyes. “If you are going to do this, you should go about it the right and proper way. And I want to help you.” More than he had ever wanted to help anyone in his life!
“But we don’t love each other,” Maggie protested, twin spots of delicate pink color staining her cheeks.
Gabe shrugged off her worries. “That doesn’t really matter, given the way you’re going to get pregnant,” he said, finding the idea of her having artificial insemination was not nearly as repugnant to him if it was with his sperm. “What will matter,” Gabe emphasized bluntly now that he had her full attention, “is that we will be officially married when you are getting pregnant and having the baby.”
Maggie took a half step back but then gripped his hands all the tighter. “And then what?” she demanded in a soft, wary voice that sent shivers across his skin.
“When the time is right, later,” Gabe soothed, knowing it was the only practical solution as well as what Maggie wanted to hear, “we’ll divorce.”
Maggie looked even more amazed. “And you think it’s a workable plan?”
Gabe nodded confidently. “The most workable one so far.” He leaned toward her urgently, not stopping until he was close enough to inhale the intoxicating hyacinth fragrance of her skin. “Think about it, Maggie. This way our baby will know who both his or her parents are. I only have one stipulation.”
“And that is—?” The hesitation in her eyes was back.
“That I be allowed to be the baby’s father while he or she is growing up and that the baby be brought up as a Deveraux as well as a Callaway,” Gabe said firmly, knowing he was right about this. “Because every baby deserves both a father and a mother and if possible a loving extended family.”
Maggie swallowed. “Well, I can’t give my baby that on my own, so…all right,” she conceded eventually. “I’ll do this your way.”
Silence fell between them once again. Maggie furrowed her brow.
“What?” Gabe prodded.
Maggie frowned, stepped back, let go of his hands. “I can’t help but think that your family is not likely to approve of this plan of ours,” she said worriedly. “Nor are those close to me.”
Wishing he could just forget the clinical approach and make love to her, and impregnate her with his seed that way, Gabe shrugged off her concerns. He knew they could work out whatever problems came up. The important thing was that Maggie not go off half-cocked and have some stranger’s baby, and then spend the rest of her life—and her baby’s, too—regretting it. “They don’t even have to know the details,” Gabe argued resolutely. “We’ll tell them that you’re pregnant later, after we’ve already been secretly married for a few months. That way,” he reasoned, “we’ll likely get a lot less grief, since people are less inclined to weigh in about a fait accompli.”
“All right,” Maggie said tremulously. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in deeply and then released an enormous sigh of relief. “I agree.” She shot him a stern, warning glance. “But with my ovulation window ready to hit by the end of the week, we don’t have much time.”
Chapter Three
“You may kiss the bride,” the Sunset Beach justice of the peace said, as soon as Gabe and Maggie had finished their vows.
Gabe turned to Maggie. She was wearing a simple white cotton dress that left her shoulders bare and ended just above her knees, and made her look both surprisingly fragile and very beautiful. At the insistence of the couple presiding over their wedding vows, she had tucked a white rose into her wavy honey-blond hair in lieu of a veil or hat. The overall affect was simple and understated—she made a very lovely bride.
They had decided to get married out on the beach, next to the ocean, rather than inside, in the intimate little chapel, but Gabe wasn’t sure this was much better. He still felt as if they were married as he leaned forward, looked into her light-green eyes, and delivered a light, gentle kiss to her cheek, even though he knew that in spirit they definitely were not. That this was just a formality done for propriety and their child’s sake.
Maggie smiled, stepped back and, looking as eager to end the event as he, thanked the young couple for fitting them in on such short notice. Still clutching the bouquet of silk flowers that had come with the Basic Wedding Package she headed with Gabe to the car.
“Want to have dinner on the way home?” Gabe asked, as they trudged through the sandy dunes and blowing sea grass that separated the ocean from the wedding chapel parking lot.
Maggie’s forehead creased as she glanced at her watch. “Maybe we just could hit a drive-through on the way and grab some sandwiches,” she suggested instead, “since we have a two-hour drive ahead of us back to Charleston.”
“Okay,” Gabe did his best to curtail his disappointment as he held her door and watched her settle gracefully into the passenger seat of his sports car.
He supposed that was what he got for having agreed to get married in North Carolina, instead of the state in which they lived. But given the fact that South Carolina had a twenty-four-hour waiting period—and North Carolina had none—and they didn’t want anyone besides themselves to know about their hasty wedding just yet, there had really been no alternative. To get married before her monthly ovulation window opened, and/or one of them changed their mind, they’d had to drive north to the quaint little coastal community, apply for a wedding license before the county records office closed for the day and then find a chapel to fit them in before they drove back.
Now, the deed done, the plain gold wedding bands on their fingers, they were officially man and wife.
MARRIED, Maggie thought, as she took off the plain gold band and dropped it into the zipper compartment in her purse. She was married to Gabe Deveraux.
In name only, of course.
But still, she thought as she rubbed the place on her finger where the wedding band had been, she was no longer the free woman she had been just a few hours ago.
Nor was she really his wife.
They were just…friends.
Casual friends, she reminded herself fiercely, who were going to have a baby together as soon as they could get her pregnant the newfangled way. All that would involve would be plastic cups and syringes and hospital gowns and feet in stirrups.
There would be no champagne, no roses, no romantic dinners for two. So why, she wondered, as Gabe turned his car into a fast-food restaurant with a drive-through lane, were her palms all sweaty and her heart in an uproar? It wasn’t as if the vows they had just said meant anything. Noticing she had taken her ring off, Gabe removed his wedding band, too, and shoved it in the pocket of his starched white dress shirt.
Abruptly looking as if he felt as uncomfortable and ill at ease as she did sitting side by side in his small sports car, Gabe held the wheel with one hand and loosened his navy and khaki tie and undid the top button on his shirt with his other. He braked as they reached the microphone, then turned to her, a bit impatiently. “What would you like?”
Maggie scanned the menu and tried not to think how awkward this all was. Neither of them had been nearly this tense on the way to get married. “I’ll have a chicken sandwich, fries and a lemonade,” she said quietly.
Gabe ordered that for her, and a burger meal for himself.
As he drove around to the first window, Maggie reached for her purse.
Gabe held up a hand before she could get out her wallet. “I’ve got it,” he stated firmly as he pulled cash out of the pocket of his khaki trousers. Two minutes later he turned back onto Route 17. “Open mine for me, would you, please?” he said.
Grateful for something to do besides look at Gabe and notice how handsome he was, Maggie flipped open the box, then looked at the thickness of the sandwich inside. Two patties, two slices of cheese, lettuce, pickles, onions and catsup.
Gabe caught her frown and glanced down. “Probably not the smartest thing to be eating while I’m driving, is it?” he observed with a beleaguered sigh.
Maggie shrugged, knowing it didn’t have to be a problem if they didn’t want it to be. “We could stop,” she suggested.
“No.” Gabe’s jaw was set. “I can do it. Just hand it to me, would you?”
Maggie knew a man with his mind made up when she saw one. Her father had often had that very look on his face when he’d made a bad decision and decided to soldier through and stick to it nevertheless. “Okay,” she said, just as agreeably. She picked the sandwich out of its little brown box.
“Just squish it together some so it’s a little flatter,” Gabe directed.
Maggie kept her skepticism to herself and did as directed. “I don’t know about this,” she hedged. The sandwich looked and smelled delicious, but the eating of it threatened to be awfully messy.
“It’ll be fine,” Gabe said, taking the sandwich.
One bite later, the first glob of catsup hit his thigh.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gabe said stubbornly, as he continued to eat and drive.
“Okay,” Maggie said, wondering what it was about men in general that made them have to do things their way, even if it was clearly the wrong way. “It’s your clothing. But at least let me put a napkin or two underneath.”
She opened one up all the way and, being very careful not to touch his thigh, laid it across the leg of his tailored khaki dress slacks. The napkin slid to the floor the next time he braked, along with the two bits of lettuce he had dropped.
Maggie put down her own sandwich long enough to add another napkin, but this one she tried to angle around his well-muscled thigh so it wouldn’t slide off. Unfortunately, that had her touching him, ever so slightly, for about two milliseconds. If one discounted the slight tensing of his facial muscles, he didn’t seem to mind.
In a rather moody silence, he finished his sandwich. She finished hers—a lot more neatly since she was able to use both hands. As they worked on their drinks and fries the silence continued to stretch out between them, and Maggie wished she had taken him up on his offer to have a quiet dinner together somewhere on the way back to Charleston, but it was too late for that. And meantime, it looked like that one glob of catsup was really sinking into the fabric of his trousers, despite Gabe’s half-hearted effort to dab it off with a crumpled napkin.
“You need some water on that stain,” Maggie said.
“Don’t have any,” Gabe said. Keeping his eyes firmly on the road, he pulled his tie even looser and unfastened another button on his shirt.
“I think I do.” Maggie rummaged in her purse and came up with a small bottle of water. She took an unused napkin, wet it, and was about to hand it over when Gabe frowned all the more.
“I really don’t want to mess with that, Maggie.”
Maggie eyed the spreading orange stain and warned right back. “If you don’t get it off before it dries, you could ruin those slacks.” She saw no reason to let his male pride be the cause of that.
“Then you do it,” he ordered with a disgruntled frown. “Otherwise, just let it be, and I’ll take it to the dry cleaners when I get home.”
And forever remember their wedding night as the night he also ruined a perfectly good pair of dress pants? Maggie didn’t think so.
