The Pregnancy Plan

He had nothing to say that would comfort her. He looked helplessly at Felicity, who looked back equally helplessly at him.

Lacey paced the sitting room. She crossed to the window, looked out in the pitch-dark night. Jordan had been very late getting home, but she couldn’t settle until she’d had it out with him, had vented all the resentment she felt toward Dermid McTaggart.

Impatient, she whirled around now. “I still can’t forgive him for not including me in his decision-making. I know he thinks I’m an airhead—”

“If he does,” Jordan said, “you have only yourself to blame. You’ve deliberately led him to believe you’re a bit spacey—”

“Only because from the moment we met, he made it clear that he thought anyone who made a living the way I did must have the IQ of a gnat!”

“Let’s not get sidetracked, Lace.” Her brother’s expression had become somber. “No matter how smart you are, what could you have contributed to our conversation? After all, the matter was simple. Dermid had already made his decision, and what he wanted from me, as Alice’s brother, was my support…and that was all there was to it.”

“No, I won’t accept that!” Lacey’s silver bracelets flashed in the light as she stuck her fists on her hips. “Three heads are better than two—and if you’d included me in your furtive little get-together, I might have come up with some other option.”

“It wasn’t furtive. It was private. Besides, what other option could you have come up with? All you could have suggested was that he delay the inevitable. The man’s been having nightmares, Lace, for months! Leaving the situation the way it is, is not an option.”

“So what’s his next step?” Felicity asked.

“He’s going to Toronto on Friday, to talk with the people at the clinic, tell them not to preserve the embryo any longer.”

Felicity tsked. “Won’t that be terribly hard on him—going back there, where he and Alice…?”

“Yeah, it’ll be hard. But Dermid feels it’s something he can’t do by phone. He wants to do it in person—”

“There is another option.” Lacey’s voice had been quiet, but it stopped Jordan in his tracks.

He looked warily at her. “There is?”

“Yes.” Excitement welled up inside her. “Dermid can hire a surrogate mother—she’d be a gestational carrier, actually, since she wouldn’t have any genetic link to the child—to bear the baby for him!”

“I already suggested that to Dermid,” Jordan said. “This morning.”

“And?” Lacey demanded. “What did he say?”

“Emphatically ‘No!’. He won’t even consider it.”

“Is it the money issue?” Felicity asked. “He wouldn’t feel comfortable paying someone to act as a host uterus?”

“It’s nothing to do with money. I don’t remember his exact words, but the gist of it was that making a baby was a family affair, and not something an outsider should ever be part of.” Jordan shrugged. “It is not an option.”

“He’s a stubborn man, is the McTaggart.” Lacey’s excitement died. ‘Well, that’s that, then.” She sat on the arm of her brother’s chair. “You were right, Jordan. I couldn’t have contributed anything useful to your conversation. And now that the decision is made, sad as it is, we’ll all just have to accept it.”

“It’s particularly sad for Dermid,” Felicity said. “He won’t ever be able to have another child, should he decide to remarry.”

There remained nothing more to say on the matter, and soon after, Lacey got up to leave.

“Are you going to be home for a while?” Jordan asked as he and Felicity walked her out to her car. “Or are you off on a shoot somewhere?”

“I’m going to be around for the next while, taking a bit of a break. But after that, I’m heavily committed for the next several months. And my agent’s been making overtures to GloryB. They’re going to be looking for a replacement for Kinga Koff—their GloryB girl—because she’s getting married in the Fall and she’s planning to retire.”

“For their cosmetic line, then,” Felicity said. “Oh, how thrilling!”

“Fingers crossed,” Lacey said. “It’s always been my dream, to be the face of GloryB!”

She smiled as she stood by her silver convertible and looked out over the dark waters of the inlet. “If it all works out, I may be asking you to find a house for me, Jordan. Something really deluxe, up here on the hill.”

But as she drove away a few moments later, her smile faded and she was left with her thoughts. Desolate thoughts about Alice, and the baby who would never be born.

Alice had done so much for her after their mother died, and had made many huge sacrifices. Lacey had thanked her many times, but mere thanks had never seemed adequate.

If only, she reflected, with a sense of grief and great loss, she had ever been able to do something to repay her beloved sister, but the occasion had never arisen.

“Aunt Lacey, this is Jack speaking…”

Lacey stood in her kitchen, making coffee as she listened to her nephew’s voice on her answering machine. She’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard the phone ring, but now, on this gray Thursday morning, with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, she gave his message her attention.

“Aunt Lacey, nobody knows I’m phoning—I’m in Uncle Jordan’s study, he’s at work and Aunt Felicity’s busy with the baby. Here’s why I’m calling. Can you come and drive me home? I’m just itchin’ to get back. So…will you call me if you can come? Please? Love, Jack.”

Lacey gave a wry smile. Who could have resisted that earnest “Love, Jack”?

She phoned Deerhaven and when Felicity answered, she asked to talk to Jack. When he came on the line, she said, “I got your message, and I’d be happy to take you home. Can you be ready to leave in about an hour?”

“Sure! And thanks, Aunt Lacey!”

“Now talk to your aunt. Come clean, tell her you’re homesick, she’ll understand. And I’ll pick you up at ten.”

Jack was ready when she arrived at Deerhaven, and they drove straight out to Horseshoe Bay. The morning was still overcast, and by the time they boarded the ferry, rain was drizzling down.

But it cleared up after a while, and by the time they reached Nanaimo, sunshine and blue skies greeted them.

Jack had chattered happily on the ferry trip, but on the drive to the ranch, he lapsed into silence. Slumping back in his seat, he stared glumly out of the window.

“Is something wrong?” Lacey asked as they turned off the highway and onto the side road leading to the ranch. “I thought you’d be so excited to be home, but—”

“I am.”

“You don’t sound very excited!” She glanced at him and saw his little face was drawn down in lugubrious lines. “I know you wanted to surprise your dad, but maybe we should have called and told him you were coming back early—are you afraid he’ll be away somewhere?”

Jack shook his head. “If he wasn’t here, Arthur would be around. It’s just…well, I’m glad to be back, but…”

“But what?”

“They’re lucky,” he muttered. “Mandy and Andrew and Todd and the baby. All these kids to play with, they’d never be lonely. I just wish I had a brother—or a sister—but I’m never going to have one. My dad was sick a long time ago and now he can’t have any more kids. It sucks.”

“I know,” she said gently, “that it must be hard, being an only child. But at least you have cousins, and you get to see them quite often.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

But it was obvious he felt they were a poor second-best to actually having a brother or sister of his own.