First Comes Baby

“I’ve decided to have a baby.”

Caleb swore, and Laurel saw that he’d poured wine on the counter.

“You didn’t just tell me you’re pregnant.”

“No. I told you I’m going to get pregnant.”

His eyes narrowed. “That usually requires a woman and a man.”

“You know I can’t… I don’t want…”

What she thought was anger faded from his face. “I know. So you’re—what?—planning to find a donor?”

“I already have.” She busied herself dumping noodles into the now boiling water. “You know Matt Baker?”

Caleb’s tone was careful, controlled. “Why him?”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask. “He’s a friend. And smart. He’s nice. Healthy…”

“Did you consider asking me?”

From somewhere she found the courage to whisper, “What would you have said if I had asked?”

Dear Reader,

Let’s say your best friend is a guy. You want to have a baby. He’s smart, nice, has good genes. Why would asking him to father your baby change your relationship at all? I mean, hey—you’ve been friends forever.

Done laughing? After all, having a baby changed your relationship with your husband, right? But in my heroine’s defense, she turns to her best friend because of a whole lot of complicated fears and needs. He feels safe to her. Of course, he isn’t at all.

First Comes Baby drew together several themes that seem to preoccupy me as a writer: the aftereffects of traumatic life events, the powerful need to have a child and the emotional vulnerability pregnancy brings. Best of all, I finally had a chance to write about the transformation of friendship into passionate love, a process that proved easy— Caleb is one of my all-time-favorite heroes.

I hope you fall in love with him, too!

Best,

Janice

First Comes Baby

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janice Kay Johnson is the author of nearly sixty books for adults and children. She has been a finalist for the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award for four of her Harlequin Superromance novels. A former librarian, she lives north of Seattle, Washington, and is an active volunteer at and board member of Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter. When not fostering kittens or writing, she gardens, quilts, reads and e-mails her two daughters, who are both in Southern California.

Dedicated with love to Mom,

my best friend and constant support

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

LAUREL WOODALL had been sure that asking a man to father her baby—without any sexual privileges—had to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

But no. That conversation paled in comparison to this one.

Asking said man’s wife whether it was okay with her was definitely worse.

The two sat across their dining room table from Laurel, their chairs placed so close together that their shoulders touched. After dinner, they’d sent the kids to do homework, take baths and get ready for bed. Sheila and Laurel had cleared the dirty dishes and loaded the dishwasher, chatting in the way of two people determined to pretend they didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with each other, even though that was a flat-out lie on both their parts. Then they’d poured coffee and returned to the table.

Laurel took a deep breath, clasped her hands in her lap and said, “Well, I assume Matt told you what I wanted to talk about.”

Sheila, a freckle-faced redhead, nodded.

“Um…how do you feel about it?”

It. Great word. It could sum up anything from a brightly wrapped package to a great big favor. Like the donation of sperm, the fathering of a baby. But it, little tiny word that it was, implied the request was nothing special.

Beside his wife, Matt all but quivered like a tuning fork. He must know what she thought, but not necessarily what she’d say.

“I have a few questions.”

“Of course.” Laurel smiled as if they were talking about vacation plans, not something so desperately vital to her.

“Would your child know Matt was his father?”

“That would be entirely up to you. I was hoping that he—or she—would.” Secretly, she wanted a girl. “That we could be pretty matter-of-fact. I could say, ‘I wasn’t married and I wanted a child, so I asked one of my best friends if he would be your daddy.’ There are plenty of other alternative families around.”

“That means our children would have to know, too.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But you could explain the circumstances to them the same way.”

“Are you expecting Matt to take any real role as father?”

“Again, that would be up to him, and to you, of course. If he was around, a friendly uncle kind of figure, that would be great. Am I expecting him to want joint custody or every other weekend? No.”

“Wow.” Sheila looked into her coffee cup as if for answers.

Wrong beverage. No tea leaves there.

Laurel leaned forward. “What if I were sitting here tonight telling you I’m pregnant? Wouldn’t you gather my baby into your family, the way you always have me? If I were asking you to be godparents…”

“I wouldn’t hesitate,” Sheila admitted. “But…this is different.”

“I asked Matt because I know him. I’m comfortable with him. And…well, honestly, because your kids are so fantastic.”

It was the right thing to say. Sheila’s face softened.

Matt puffed out his chest. “I’m a proven stud.”

His wife elbowed him. “They are fantastic, aren’t they? Although I’m inclined to think I’m more responsible than he is.”

They grinned at each other, as in love, Laurel suspected, as they’d been on their wedding day. That was another reason she’d asked them. Their marriage was solid, their relationship trusting. Sheila wouldn’t wonder even for a second if there was anything funny going on between her husband and Laurel.

She sighed then. “I’m sure most of my hesitation is based on some kind of atavistic response. You know. He’s my man, and I don’t want to share his genes. But another part of me knows that’s silly. He wants to do this for you, and it’s not as if I don’t love you, too, so… Sure. Okay.”

Breath catching, Laurel sat up straighter. “Really? You mean it?”

Sheila smiled. “I said yes, didn’t I?”

“Oh, bless you!” Laurel’s chair rocked as she jumped to her feet and raced around the table to hug first Sheila, then Matt. “This is so amazing! It’s really going to happen. Wow. I’m in shock.”

“You’re crying,” Matt said in alarm.

“What? Oh.” She swiped at tears. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this. Knowing that soon, she’d be a mother.

Eventually she stopped smiling and wiped away the tears enough so that she could tell them what she knew about the procedure.

“You could go in with Matt,” she said to Sheila. “Help him, um, you know.”

“Produce the little guys?” Sheila said just a little sardonically.

The big, brawny, bearded guy blushed, Laurel would have sworn he did.

“Yeah. That.” She didn’t actually want to think about that part of the “procedure.” It was too close to sex, something else she never, ever thought about. Not when she could help it. “If you were there, it would be as if…oh, as if his, uh, contribution came from both of you.”

“I don’t know. That seems weird. Well, all of it does. But I’ll think about it. Okay?”

Laurel nodded.

“Now, how about some dessert? I made a coffee cake today.”

Stomach knotted with the aftermath of nerves and maybe a new case of them—she was going to have a baby!—Laurel still smiled and said, “Sounds great.”

This had been the hardest part, she reminded herself—and kept reminding herself, even after she’d said goodbye to Sheila and Matt’s brood, hugged both of them again and gotten behind the wheel of the car.

She’d had alternatives in mind, but Matt had been first on her list. They’d been friends since she’d taken her first job after the rape in a legal aid office. He was great: smart, good-looking in a teddy-bearish way, gentle, kind and healthy. She knew his parents were still alive and going strong in their seventies—tonight Sheila had mentioned they were on a cruise in the Caribbean—and that his grandmother had lived into her nineties. She knew him. The essence of him.

Of course, she’d considered going the sperm bank route. Had even called a couple of places. She’d almost convinced herself that she balked because she could never know how much in each donor’s profile was true and how much false. Graduate student in astrophysics. Sure. But maybe he worked at the local Brown Bear car wash. I.Q. of 154. Uh-huh. And how did he measure it? An online pop quiz?

But that wasn’t really it. Some of those donors probably were graduate students who needed some bucks to supplement their fellowships. No, what mattered was that they were strangers.

Strange men.

However clinical the procedure—there was that word again—she would still be taking a part of him inside her. Her skin crawled at the idea.

But a friend… A friend for whom she had no sexual feelings. That was different. She could hug Matt, and his sperm she could accept.

And he’d said yes. They’d said yes. Tears burned behind her eyelids when she let herself into her small house in Lake City.

LAUREL DIDN’T TELL anyone what she planned. Not her father, not her younger sister. Once it was a done deal and she was pregnant would be soon enough. They couldn’t try to talk her out of it then.

And they would. Even Matt had, in his gentle way.

He’d cleared his throat apologetically. “I know you don’t see a sexual relationship in your near future. But you’re still young, Laurel. It’s not as if your childbearing years are passing. You’ve done a lot of healing. You’ll do more. Becoming a parent with someone you love…”

She’d shaken her head. “No. It’s not going to happen, Matt. And…I need someone to love. Someone I can love.”

She guessed the certainty in her voice had swayed him. Or the plea, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was, she didn’t want to argue with anyone else. Explain. Justify.

Nope, she would just announce, “I’m pregnant,” and have faith they’d be happy for her.

Caleb was different. She wouldn’t tell him when he called or she responded to his e-mails, but in person, it would be hard not to. Fortunately, he was out of the country, as he often was, so she hadn’t had to make an excuse to avoid seeing him.

She didn’t know what he’d say, whether he’d understand or would try to talk her out of a decision she’d already made. He was less predictable than her dad or her sister.

Part of her wanted to tell him. He’d been the most amazing friend she’d ever had, and had been since the second week of their freshman year of college.

Laurel still remembered the first time she’d seen him. Their dorm at Pacific Lutheran University had a rec room in the basement, complete with a Ping-Pong table and a dozen sagging sofas and chairs too grungy even for the local thrift store. She had wandered down, feeling shy but acting on faith that, since nobody here knew her, if she forced herself to pretend to be outgoing she might actually be popular. A bunch of kids were draped on the sofas, one reading and nodding in time to music that played through her headphones, some arguing about whether any curriculum should be required—how funny that she remembered that—and two boys played Ping-Pong.

One of those two was in her intro to psych class. They’d sat next to each other and exchanged a few words, so she felt comfortable pausing to watch the game. Until the second boy aced his serve and taunted the guy she knew, then grinned at her. She looked at him, he looked at her and… It wasn’t true love at first sight, even though the girlfriends she made in the weeks to come believed through all four years that she had a crush on Caleb Manes. What they’d done was fall into like. There was a connection. They were instant friends, this tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and electric-blue eyes and former high school nerd Laurel Woodall, in those days carrying an extra twenty-five pounds.

She could talk to Caleb; he really listened. And he talked to her, telling her stuff no guy ever had before. They advised each other through girlfriends and boyfriends, first kisses and breakups. He’d slipped a note into her hand when all the seniors in their graduation robes milled like sheep impervious to attempts to herd them into order. She had waved and smiled at her dad, snapping pictures, then peeked at the note.

Friends forever, it said.

She’d felt a tiny glow of warmth and relief at his reassurance that somehow they would stay connected even though they were going in different directions. Caleb had signed up for the Peace Corps and was going to bum around Europe with a buddy until he had to report for training. She had a summer job lined up and was heading to law school at the University of Washington come fall.

But…friends forever. Of course they would be.

They almost hadn’t been. The irony was, she’d been the one who tried to shut him out, along with all her other friends. But Caleb hadn’t let her, a fact that to this day still filled her with misgiving and relief and probably a dozen other emotions mixed into a brew as murky as folk cures for hangovers: weird looking, vile tasting, not so easy on the stomach, but in the end, settling in there.

They’d never been quite as close as when they could drop by each other’s dorm rooms and later apartments at PLU. But that would have happened anyway. By the time he came back from Ecuador, she hadn’t seen him in two years. They were adults, embarked on careers, or at least—in her case—a job. He’d become engaged once, although the wedding had kept getting postponed and never did happen. Once his import business took off, Caleb had bought a house on Vashon Island, a twenty-minute ferry ride plus a half-hour drive from her north Seattle neighborhood. She saw him maybe once a month. Sometimes less.

They were casual friends, Laurel concluded, refusing to listen to any dissenting voices. She had no obligation to tell him anything.

It had taken her so long to work up the courage to ask Matt to donate sperm, her most fertile time of the month had come and gone. So now she had a month to second-guess herself, suffer daily panic attacks and pray that he and Sheila didn’t change their minds. Laurel didn’t think they would, but that fear had to be part of those panic attacks that hit her unpredictably.

She’d be sitting on the Metro bus she took every morning to work at the downtown law firm, hip to hip with some old lady gripping her purse and shooting glares at everyone who walked down the aisle, or some guy in cornrows blasting rap from headphones and bobbing in time. She’d be minding her own business, looking out the window and seeing the cross streets pass, wishing she’d had time for a second cup of coffee. She’d vowed to save her money and not stop every day at the Tully’s on the corner where she got off, but maybe today…

And it would hit her, a tsunami of doubt and fear, heralded by no warning. The cold constricted her breathing, raised goose bumps that traveled down her arms and then her legs. She would be paralyzed in place, gripped by the shock and the power of the current, aware of light above, but unable to swim to it.

Laurel knew panic, had once recognized the trigger. But she’d gotten better, so much better, until now. This time, she didn’t understand.

She wanted a baby. She wasn’t afraid of having one, of being able to cope as a single mother. She had complete faith she could do it.

Matt and Sheila might back out. But if they did, she still had her list. Or she would pick a donor from one of those trumped-up profiles and buy sperm. There were other ways.

Was Matt the wrong choice? At the question, her anxiety ratcheted up a notch, but she couldn’t think why. Like a mantra, she repeated to herself: he’s smart, good-looking, nice, healthy. Everything she wanted her child’s father to be.

Was she afraid of problems down the line? Her child being hurt because Matt wasn’t really interested in being a father? Or worse, Matt deciding to contest Laurel for custody? Claiming her to be unfit?

In her calmer moments, she knew he’d never do anything like that. He was a friend. That’s why she’d asked him. Anyway, Sheila wouldn’t want to raise his child with another woman as her own. She’d been worried already that Laurel would seek too much involvement from Matt in the baby’s life.

Was she scared about the procedure? Laurel did hate annual exams, but she liked the woman doctor she saw at the Women’s Health Clinic. She trusted her to be gentle and as unobtrusive as possible. While it was happening, veiled from the doctor by the white sheet, she would close her eyes and think, A baby. Soon, soon, I’ll feel movement inside, and my belly will swell and you’ll hear my voice. She wasn’t afraid.

But she was, of something. She just didn’t know what.

If she stayed very still, the wave would slowly ebb away, leaving her sitting on the bus, her stop still to come, her seatmate unaware of the terror that had swept over her. She would sag the slightest bit in relief, perhaps lean her head against the thick glass of the window, the cool smooth surface more comforting than a hug.

Soon, soon. Then I won’t be afraid.

She hated being afraid, feeling vulnerable, and refused to surrender to these panic attacks in any way.

Her period came on time, to the day when she’d expected it. Her last in a year or more, she hoped. She intended to breast-feed, and she knew that often delayed the resumption of menstruation, sometimes for six months or more after delivery.

Of course, she might not get pregnant the first month. There were no guarantees. She wouldn’t get discouraged. She could afford the additional procedures.

But she wasn’t sure she could bear the panic attacks, day after day, for another month. Or one after that.

They didn’t come when she was home alone, thank goodness. She didn’t like it when the wind scratched the branches of the maple against her bedroom window at night, or when the house settled and creaked. When she heard a cough outside, late, or the clatter of a garbage can as if someone had brushed it. She was a woman who lived alone in a city that was safer than many, but still a city, so of course she had those anxieties. The important part was, they no longer paralyzed her.

It was the idea of getting pregnant that did. Something about her plan wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was only the unconventional way, the impersonality. Not how a young woman dreamed of conceiving her first child.

Once it was done, Laurel was convinced, she’d be okay.

Just today, she’d talked to Matt. She hadn’t seen him or Sheila in the two weeks since she’d had dinner at their house and asked them for the ultimate favor. But she called legal aid, where Matt still worked and said, “Just wanted to say hi.”

“Hey.” He sounded distracted. “Got a doozy today. Landlord from hell. Mildewed, sagging ceiling collapsed and badly hurt a toddler. A few rats fell with the ceiling. Sounds Third World, doesn’t it?”

“At the very least. Will the child be okay?”

“Doctor thinks so. But I’m going to nail the landlord’s hide to the wall.”

“You go get ’em.” Laurel felt a momentary pang for the days when she’d imagined that someday she, too, would be a crusading attorney.

“We still on?”

There was something in his voice. Lack of enthusiasm? Hope that they weren’t still on? Or was her paranoia reading shades of gray into a casual question?

“Yep. Two more weeks.”

She heard a muffled voice.

“Listen. Got to go. We’ll talk again?”

“Next week,” Laurel promised.

Disquiet made her chest feel hollow. Had she ruined a friendship she valued by asking this of Matt? Or would everything be fine, once it was done?

She turned back to her computer and made herself concentrate on the will she was writing. She worked as a paralegal for a firm of attorneys, but most often with Malcolm Hern, whose scrawled notes about the clients’ wishes she peered at frequently.

Nonetheless, she was relieved when five o’clock came and she could shut down her computer, don her raincoat, grab her purse and join the other flunkies leaving. This was one of the few times a day she was glad not to have her law degree. If she was working here as an attorney, there’d be no five o’clock departures for her. Nope, she’d be putting in sixty- or seventy-hour workweeks. She couldn’t be a single parent.

The elevator moved slowly, even after it was full, stopping at nearly every floor between the thirty-fifth, where her firm was located, and the ground floor. She hated being pressed against strangers this way, and always chose a corner if she could get into one. Even so, the man behind her had nearly full-body contact with her and his breath stirred the hair at her nape. Her relief when the light flashed on L and the elevator dinged and the doors slid open was profound. Still, she had to wait for others to exit ahead of her, had to suffer more jostling.

Laurel joined the exodus into the marble lobby, heading for the rotating glass doors. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a man fell into step with her.

“Can I offer the lady a ride home?”

“Caleb!” she exclaimed in delight. “You’re back in town.”

He wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze even as they kept walking. “Yep. Good trip. How are you?”

Oh, planning to get myself impregnated two weeks from tomorrow. Having daily panic attacks.

“I’m good. Can I offer you dinner?”

“I was planning to take you out.”

“I have beef stroganoff simmering in my Crock-Pot as we speak.”

“Deal.”

His smile was as amazing as ever although the effect was somewhat different now that he was a man rather than a boy. Most of his travels took him to Central and South America, which meant he was perpetually tanned, paler laugh lines fanning out from his blue, blue eyes. But the dimple still deepened in one cheek whenever he offered his beguiling, lopsided grin.

Caleb wore his hair longer than did most of the attorneys and businessmen in the lobby, not ponytail length, just a little shaggy, the curls making it constantly disheveled. He’d filled out a little in the years since college, but was still lean, and at a couple of inches over six feet he towered over her five foot four or so. Laurel was always aware of women’s heads turning when she was with him, not just because he was handsome, although he was. He had that indefinable quality that in an actor or public speaker would be labeled charisma. He exuded some kind of life force, perhaps a belief in himself that drew the stares.

And she was in trouble, she realized suddenly. Was she going to try to get through the evening without telling him what she was up to?

If she kept silent, he’d be hurt later, and for good reason. They’d always told each other everything important.

Everything but what she’d thought and felt when she’d been brutally raped during her first and only year of law school. That single subject was taboo. Only in her rape support group could she talk about that day, because every woman there understood in a way no man ever would.