The Baby Arrangement

A baby drove them apart.

Can a baby bring them together?

Divorced after a heartbreaking tragedy, Mallory Harris is determined to have a family. Even as a single mother by choice with a baby conceived through artificial insemination. When her ex-husband, Braden, learns of her plan, he offers to be the donor. Mallory is touched...and reluctant. She needs to move on from Braden. But how can she say no to the only man she has ever loved?

Having written over eighty-five novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

Also by Tara Taylor Quinn

Her Lost and Found Baby

An Unexpected Christmas Baby

Fortune’s Christmas Baby

A Family for Christmas

Falling for the Brother

For Love or Money

Her Soldier’s Baby

The Cowboy’s Twins

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

The Baby Arrangement

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09082-7

THE BABY ARRANGEMENT

© 2019 TTQ Books LLC

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For Finley Joseph.

May you always be aware how very much

you were wanted.

You’ve filled holes in many hearts, Little Man.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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 Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

She didn’t want dinner. She wanted his support of her plan to buy herself some sperm.

Excited in a way she hadn’t been in far too long, Mallory Harris calmed herself as she waited for Braden to join her at the upscale, quiet restaurant he’d chosen for the meeting he’d called. Staring out the wall of windows toward the harbor, watching people walking along the decks of a cruise ship that had docked, she turned her attention to the pink skies beyond, the miraculous beauty of the sun’s final rays gracing the Pacific before it would drop beyond the horizon for another day.

Wishing she’d ordered a glass of wine, she changed her mind and did so. A glass of her favorite California-grown Sauvignon Blanc. Braden would be expecting her to have one and she didn’t want any raised eyebrows until she was ready to deliver her spiel.

A little liquid courage didn’t hurt, either, though she wasn’t normally one to seek sustenance from anyplace except inside herself. And somewhat from Braden. She and her ex-husband might not be simpatico, but she still trusted his judgment on most things. Things that didn’t deal with actual emotions.

He’d had a reason for the upcoming dinner. Though they ate out together on a fairly regular basis, it was never just to eat. There was always something to talk about requiring them to come together.

Speculating about the reason for the meeting was wasted energy, she’d decided long ago. After three years of being post-divorce friends, she and Braden had found a groove with which they were both relatively comfortable. At least she thought so.

One was never quite sure how Braden felt—probably not even him. If ever a man was disconnected from his emotional side, it was Braden.

All water under the bridge. Not her problem anymore.

He was probably going to tell her he was seeing someone. Why he felt the need to confess to her every time he saw a woman more than once was beyond her. They were divorced. Technically, she no longer had a right to know.

Or even a desire to know.

Her wine arrived and she took a sip. Okay, maybe a little piece of her, way deep inside, liked that he told her about his relationships. Like she was in one step deeper than the women he told her about. Shaking her head, she pushed the thought away—as far as she could get it.

Wanting to be inside Braden’s deep places wasn’t healthy. She’d very purposely and specifically chosen, through much personal work and counseling, to get herself outside of him. To stay outside of him. Lest she waste her life in a vortex of void and unfulfilled need. Or feel like she had to hide every time she had a tear to shed. Being ashamed of her grief was something she’d worked long and hard to get past.

Braden had never meant her to feel shame, she knew that. But when someone got uptight every time you cried, or, worse, walked out when you cried, you ended up with learned reactions that weren’t necessarily accurate. Humiliation. Mortification. Guilt. And a host of other words she’d heard bandied about during her group grief sessions.

So yeah, wine was good. If he thought her idea was nuts, she wasn’t going to cry. Or even be embarrassed. She was going to remind herself that they were divorced and that she had every right to pursue single parenthood. That, for some women, it was not only the best choice, but the only real workable choice.

When the waitress came by again, she ordered a beer for Braden. She’d purposely arrived early enough to not risk walking in with him—looking or feeling like a couple. When they were meeting others, it didn’t bother her to travel together, but when it was just the two of them, she had her rules. Her boundaries.

They never spoke of them, but he respected them just the same. She always got there at least fifteen minutes early. He’d arrive exactly five minutes before the designated time.

Unless he texted to say he was going to be late.

Or she did.

They had the friendship down to a science.

Now if only she could be certain that he was going to be friendly about the new direction her life was about to take. With all of the preliminary testing and physical exams done, the paperwork filled out and money paid, all that was left before the actual procedure was letting him know. She could do it without him. Would do it without him.

But life was still better with Braden in it.

* * *

She’d changed after work. It wasn’t a big deal for her to have done so. Her house was only a couple of miles from the daycare—and from the harbor restaurant he’d chosen for dinner. Braden just noticed, as he was walking across the room to meet her, that she looked phenomenal in black leggings and that tight-fitting cream-colored shirt. He’d been expecting jeans and a Bouncing Ball polo shirt. After all, she didn’t know that this meeting was major, as opposed to the more general passing of news for which they normally came together.

She didn’t need to know that the sight of her still turned him on.

Working in the same high-rise executive office building as they did, albeit with his property management and real estate business taking up the top floor and her daycare housed in a double suite on the ground, they could chat there any day they chose. They just, by some unspoken agreement, didn’t choose to.

No point in having people who shared their professional days gossiping any more than necessary about the couple who’d divorced after their five-month-old baby died.

The pity, even after all this time, was hard to take. He had no desire to feed the trough.

He was hungry, though, and ready, as he slid into the booth across from his ex-wife, to order a big juicy steak. She’d have some kind of meal-sized salad.

He’d never been a salad kind of guy.

Taking a long sip of the beer she’d ordered for him, he smiled at her, liking the warm gaze she sent back in his direction. Maybe he was making a mistake, transferring himself a little further out of her life, but he had to do something or they were both going to stagnate and die.

By the end of their smile, the waitress was standing there, tablet in hand ready to take their order. Without looking at the menu, they both told her what they wanted. She thanked them, took their menus, turned around and he all but pushed her away from the table.

He had to get this over with. Plans for his move to L.A. were moving rapidly. He needed Mallory to know.

And to fully understand, from the outset, that he wasn’t selling the building in San Diego or in any way changing their business arrangement. It had been in effect before they were married and would remain for as long as she wanted The Bouncing Ball, her highly successful daycare, to be housed in the executive office building that used to be his only commercial holding but was now one of many.

He raised his beer to her glass of wine and sipped it, words spilling in his head, unable to utter them. Not at all like he’d decided this would go.

He knew he just had to say what he’d come to say. That he was acquiring land north of L.A. to build a professional complex similar to the one they now shared in San Diego, and he would be moving there for the foreseeable future.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Good thing his beer was close to the table. When it slipped out of his hand, it didn’t break. And barely spilled.

Mouth hanging open, he sat there, too dumbfounded to say anything.

“I just wanted you to know.”

He stared. White noise from the room around them faded.

“I’d kind of hoped you’d be supportive, but if you’d rather not know about it, hear about it, I completely understand.”

He didn’t move.

She did. Standing, she touched his arm. “I’m so sorry, Bray. I had no idea the news would upset you so much. I guess... I mean, in light of the fact that the last time we did it together... I mean...with losing Tucker... I should have been more sensitive. I just... I’m the one who’s been dragging us both down with my inability to move on and I’m really excited about this. I just...couldn’t wait to let you know that I...”

Her fingers on his arm were nice. Familiar. Tender and light.

“Sit.” He got the word out, then followed it with, “Please.”

He took a full breath when she quickly slid back into her seat.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d broken an understood rule—one was never to make the other unduly uncomfortable or bring an overabundance of emotion into their joint atmosphere.

He could blame it on her for laying something like that on him, but they were allowed to tell each other anything they wanted to share. That had actually been a spoken agreement. Reiterated more than once, by both of them, in the early days of their post-divorce relationship.

Hell, for all he remembered they’d said it to each other like a vow during the actual divorce proceedings. They’d said several things meant for their ears only when they’d sat before the judge that day, holding hands.

He shook his head and sipped his beer.

“You’re pregnant.” He got the words out and he wasn’t cut as sharply by the sound as he’d expected. Who in the hell had gotten his ex-wife pregnant?

The unwelcome words kept repeating, like an annoyingly bad rhythm, in his mind. He wouldn’t speak them. They weren’t cool.

“Not yet.” From the crease in her brow, the way she leaned toward him slightly, the hint of an upward curve on those beautiful lips, he knew she was placating him. Dammit.

And yet...she wasn’t pregnant?

Holy damn. Relief eased the sweat that had popped up all over his suited body.

“But you’ve met someone.”

The truth still loomed. She was going to have another man’s baby. Start a family separate and apart from him.

The implication he was to draw from that followed almost immediately.

She was moving on.

This was good news.

Very good news.

Exactly-what-he-wanted news.

But he wasn’t smiling anymore.

Mallory had someone else to watch her back now. She was finally over the past enough to start anew.

He was free.

Chapter Two

Braden was going to give himself a crick in the neck if he didn’t quit the exaggerated nodding.

Prior to that, he’d sipped his beer a couple of times and some expressions had flitted across his face. She wasn’t going to put herself back into near suicidal mode by trying to decipher them. Or make more of the hint of despair than was meant to be there.

Braden didn’t allow himself to acknowledge despair, nor was he all that comfortable around those who did. For all she knew, he honestly didn’t get the feeling. Not like she did.

He’d gotten the love, though, hadn’t he? Back before Tucker died. No one could deny, seeing him with their son, that he’d adored that boy.

Tears stung her eyes while welling emotion clogged her throat. She took a sip of wine, forcing her muscles to relax. She was not going to do this. She would not fall prey to feelings of inadequacy around her ex-husband—which meant she couldn’t cry in front of him.

It had been an unspoken rule between them since they’d decided to stay friends after the divorce.

And the best way to not burst into tears was to think happy thoughts.

He was wearing one of her favorite Braden ensembles. Dark grey suit with just a hint of lighter threading, the striped shirt in grey, black and white with the maroon tie. At six-two, with that lush, thick, dark hair and those baby blue eyes, Braden could easily have been voted sexiest man alive.

“No, I haven’t met someone,” she said after the silence between them had stretched a bit too long. “I’d have told you if I had. You know that.”

There were some things they counted on from each other. Telling him if she was moving on was one of them.

Which was probably why he was always informing her when he was seeing someone. He hadn’t ever seemed to get to the point of seriously moving on, though. He dated, he fizzled, he dated, he fizzled.

His frown brought back a wave of tension. “I don’t understand, then.”

“I’m going to be artificially inseminated,” she told him. And then, before he could voice an opinion of any kind, she barged full force ahead with the spiel she’d practiced in bed the night before and in the car on the way over, too.

“With the advance in research and technology, and with changing lifestyles, more women than ever are using sperm banks to have children. There’s even an acronym for us, SMC, Single Moms by Choice,” she said—not at all what she’d practiced. “I’ve already had all of the exams and testing done. I’m using a facility in Marie Cove, forty-five minutes south of LA. They’re fertility specialists, not a sperm bank. I met with the owner when I was looking at places and I just really like her. I got a good feeling when I was there.

“It could take up to six tries, and I’m prepared for that, financially and emotionally,” she continued, speaking to the man she knew him to be—one who dealt with facts, with reality, and shied away from the emotional aspects of being alive.

She didn’t blame him. She’d met his mother and his sister many times. She had sat next to him through countless phone calls where they’d tried to get him to side with them against whoever they felt had slighted them, from something as menial as someone using a hurtful tone of voice against one or the other of them, or their claim that someone had been deliberately manipulative or demeaning. As the only male influence in their home growing up, he’d spent his youth learning how to bypass the drama to get to the truth of whatever might need attention.

“Way back in the ’80s, more than 30,000 children were born as a result of donors,” she told him. “There hasn’t been any numerical research collated since then as there’s no one body of collation, no database. But judging by the sheer volume of clinics today and the number of clients they have, you can logically guesstimate that the number of births has risen well into the hundreds of thousands.”

She’d gotten out of 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.”