Daddy To Be Determined

603—MOMMY ON BOARD* (#litres_trial_promo)

606—MAKE WAY FOR MOMMY* (#litres_trial_promo)

610—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MOMMY!* (#litres_trial_promo)

654—THE COMEBACK MOM

669—THE PRINCE, THE LADY & THE TOWER

688—KIDS & CO.* (#litres_trial_promo)

705—CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY

737—DADDY BY DEFAULT** (#litres_trial_promo)

742—DADDY BY DESIGN** (#litres_trial_promo)

746—DADDY BY DESTINY** (#litres_trial_promo)

756—GIFT-WRAPPED DAD

770—THE HUNK & THE VIRGIN

798—COUNTDOWN TO BABY

813—FOUR REASONS FOR FATHERHOOD

850—FATHER FEVER** (#litres_trial_promo)

858—FATHER FORMULA** (#litres_trial_promo)

866—FATHER FOUND** (#litres_trial_promo)

882—DADDY TO BE DETERMINED** (#litres_trial_promo)

Contents

Prologue (#ueda39244-723d-5f82-b3f5-1b02595d101c)

Chapter One (#uf0c03387-b79d-514a-b4a7-4577e30b7c46)

Chapter Two (#u0059d2fc-c662-530b-9020-a0298d0ec11b)

Chapter Three (#ucde1a5c3-7ba3-558d-965e-eb7f475ff185)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

Natalie Browning sat in the middle of her darkened living room and watched the nightly news, a pillow pulled up to her face just below her eyes. Delia Jones, her former assistant at KRTV and now a weekend anchor for KXAV, had called twenty minutes ago to warn her about Karen Kaufman’s lead story.

The beautiful redhead with the face of a Mucha model and the heart of a viper smiled benevolently at the camera.

“Welcome to Channel 4 News. I’m Karen Kaufman,” she said in a flawlessly clear voice. “The final chapter of the Moss Laboratories story played out today in court when Donald Parker was indicted on seventeen counts of fraud, thanks to the tireless efforts of Philadelphia’s KRTV newswoman, Natalie Browning, who was herself a victim of the sperm bank’s deceptions.

“Her investigation uncovered Parker’s practice of creating false donor profiles and filling orders with his own sperm. The ruse was uncovered when Browning’s fertility specialist requested a second delivery of sperm from the laboratory, after the first attempt at impregnation proved unsuccessful.”

Natty felt pain and humiliation splash over her like a cold shower. She clutched the pillow more tightly.

“When that also failed,” Karen continued with what appeared to be genuine concern, “Browning’s doctor had the sperm sample analyzed, thinking he might discover that it hadn’t been handled properly in the transfer from the laboratory. What he discovered instead was that the sperm was indeed motile, but that both samples had precisely the same DNA pattern—and therefore the same donor.”

“And that the impregnation problem,” Natalie said to the television, her voice thick because she had a head cold, “lies with Browning and not with the sperm. Thank you, Karen. Kind of you to point that out.”

“Investigation of other samples proved that Parker had been perpetrating his scam for some time,” the redhead continued relentlessly. “The laboratory has been closed pending the outcome of the trial.”

She could have lived through that, Natty thought, pressing a tissue to her sniffly nose, but the last segment was a feature called “Celebrity Dish”—a sort of gossip roundup dispensed by Jolie Ramirez, a perky brunette who loved uncovering the most embarrassing details about the most notable people.

Tonight it seemed that a male vocalist was in rehab, an actress on Broadway beat her baseball-playing husband’s Jaguar with his own bat, and “Natalie Browning, the darling of the nightly news on Philadelphia’s Channel 6, apparently is no one’s darling at home, considering her story about Moss Laboratories, the now-infamous sperm bank. It was a story she stumbled upon while availing herself of the lab’s services.

“‘She appears beautiful and sexy,’” according to an old boyfriend who preferred to remain anonymous, “‘but she has the cold heart of an old maid. No wonder she had to go to a sperm bank.’”

Natalie stared at the screen, aghast, then threw her pillow at it, barely suppressing a scream. That action brought on a coughing fit.

She knew the anonymous former boyfriend was Artie Webb, producer of the Channel 4 nightly news, whose advances she’d spurned at a weekend news conference in Boston three years earlier. He’d been married at the time—to Karen Kaufman—but his ego had never forgiven Natalie. Jolie Ramirez, unfortunately, was just doing her job.

Natalie clicked off the television, called the airport and made a reservation to fly out to Portland, Oregon, on the red-eye. Then she went into her bedroom to pack.

Tomorrow morning she’d probably be front page news and the subject of every radio talk show on the Atlantic seaboard. She didn’t want to be around for that, and she still had four weeks left of the three-month leave she’d taken to get pregnant.