She’d always enjoyed watching him eat. The man burned so many calories during the season that he literally could not eat enough to maintain his weight. Cooking for him had always been gratifying. He’d try anything, and he loved exotic flavors. “You love food so much,” she’d remarked once as he was tucking into a spicy paella she’d made. “I’m surprised you never learned to cook something more than pancakes or steak.”
“I love food, but I’m a specialist,” he’d quipped once. “I only eat.”
Yikes. And here she was, falling into a memory. She snapped the takeout container closed. “I’d better get back to it,” she said, grabbing a roll to go with her salad.
“Enjoy your working lunch,” he said under his breath. “But feel free to wear your blue dress to dinner tonight.”
“That was a one-time thing,” she reminded him. “A special occasion.”
He shrugged. “Okay. Then don’t wear it. You look sexy in your cute little suits, girlfriend. I can still see those legs.” He grabbed a roll and shoved half of it into his mouth, smiling as he chewed.
She rolled her eyes, and realized they were having an almost normal conversation. See? This is possible, she noted. We can be friends and it’s only sort of weird.
“Good luck out there tonight,” she said. “I’ll be pulling for you.” She would, too.
His face became more serious. “Thanks, Lo. That means a lot.”
“You’re welcome.” Maybe most ex-couples didn’t even out their differences with a long night of sex. Then again, they weren’t like most ex-couples. And she was ready to put their differences behind her, and to breathe more easily when he was in the room.
This was nice. It was almost healthy.
He gave her a full-powered smile, and it only made her knees feel a little squishy. “See you on the other side.” Whistling he carried his loaded plate off to a table full of players.
Lauren carried her lunch out of the room and headed for the elevators. She probably could have spared twenty minutes. Nate wasn’t expecting her yet. But if she and Mike were going to be friends, she had to get used to the idea, first.
Their night together was still too raw. She kept flashing back to their hours in bed, and the feel of his lips against her own. Those sensations were bound to fade, though. And the second round of play-offs left very little time for mooning about. The players had been sequestered with the coaching staff since the moment they’d touched down. Lauren was holed up in yet another hotel suite and went to work.
She let herself back into the suite and dropped her lunch on the desk beside her laptop. She’d fibbed to Mike about how soon Nate was expecting her. But she was busy.
In fact, she’d promised herself that while she ate lunch she would make a very important decision.
Lauren flipped open the file folder of sperm donors and spread four sheets of paper out so that she could see them all. These were the last candidates—she’d narrowed it down to four. It was time to pick one and order the vials of—gulp—sperm to be delivered to her doctor’s office.
She’d gotten her period this morning. That meant it was almost time to start taking the pills in her carry-on bag. And five days after that she’d ovulate, and it would be time for the intrauterine insemination.
She could be pregnant by one of the dudes described in front of her two weeks from now. It was time to choose between them.
An engineer. Two law students. And a conservator of antiquities. Choosing the father of your baby as if you were perusing the J. Crew catalog was the strangest kind of shopping in the world. All their baby pictures were adorable, of course. And their long lists of achievements and positive qualities were breathtaking.
There was no way to know whose genes would make the healthiest, happiest baby. She ought to just flip a couple of coins and allow fate to narrow down the final four to a single winner.
She scanned the pictures one more time. Three of the little boys had glossy dark hair. Now that she thought about it, three of them looked a hell of a lot like Mike Beacon.
Damn it all.
Thanks a ton, subconscious.
Lauren picked up the fourth page—the one with the fairer-haired child pictured on it. Donor 5683RE had grown up to be a promising law student who wanted to work on Internet privacy issues. He was a good cook and played soccer on the weekends.
He was nothing at all like Mike Beacon.
Well then. If all went according to plan, donor 5683RE was going to be the father of her child.
She opened her laptop and navigated to the cryobank’s website. She ordered two vials of Mr. 5683RE, filling in the FedEx information for her fertility clinic back in Manhattan. The transaction set her back $1,200 and took five minutes, tops. But this was big—a decision made. A plan put into action.
A secret.
Lauren cracked open her salad and unwrapped a plastic fork. A month from now, she might be pregnant. Two months from now she might have morning sickness. She placed a hand on her very flat belly and imagined a baby growing in there.
Sitting all alone in her suite, she began to smile. It didn’t matter that her parents would freak out about this decision when she eventually got around to telling them. This was her journey, and she was ready to embark. In fact . . .
She lifted her hand off her belly and propped her chin in it. She’d never expected to be single at thirty-one. And she sure hadn’t expected to be dumped by the love of her life. But now that the shock and anger were finally wearing off, she could acknowledge that the experience had made her into a more confident single person. Sometime during these past two years she’d stopped waiting around for her happily-ever-after and started crafting it herself.
Take that, Mike.
She ate her salad and then went to work on Nate’s rather overburdened calendar. Now that the play-offs were sure to drag on, there was planning to do. She cast an eye on Nate’s calendar all the way out to June and tried to figure out where all the landmines lay. There was a trip to China on his docket over Memorial Day.
That was almost exactly the moment that the Stanley Cup finals would be played. But there was no way of knowing which day, though, as the league didn’t schedule each new set of games until the participants were decided.
Her own graduation ceremony would occur during the play-offs, too. If the Bruisers kept winning, she might have to inform Nate that she would miss a couple of days of team travel to don a cap and gown.
Nate wouldn’t make her miss her own graduation. He wasn’t an ogre. “Just don’t take your shiny degree and defect to the competition,” he’d said more than once.