My Babies and Me

“You never told me that.” Michael pulled at a string coming loose from the button at the bottom of his shirt.

“I know.” She smiled sadly. “You’d just have told me you wouldn’t let that happen, that you wouldn’t take away who I was or needed to be.”

“Because it’s true.”

“But sometimes these things happen to people without their even noticing it.” She took his hand, held it in her lap. “You wouldn’t knowingly or purposely have distracted me from my goals, Michael. Just my loving you, wanting to make you happy might have done that.” She paused, then began again, her voice low. “Once you start...subjugating yourself, you don’t even know anymore whose interests you’re really protecting. And then you’re fifty or sixty years old and resenting everyone because you haven’t done what you needed to do in life and it’s too late. Look what happened to my mother. Because of our family.”

And suddenly Michael began to understand. He’d been the one to pick up the pieces of Susan’s tortured heart after Rose Carmichael died. They hadn’t been married yet, but he’d helped her come to grips with that last, painful conversation. Helped her work through the regrets, the recriminations.

“I wrote out a life plan that weekend in Kentucky, Michael. My goals, my dreams. And target dates by which I either had to decide they no longer mattered—or I had to fulfill them.”

Michael started to feel a little sick. “Having a baby was on that list.”

Susan nodded.

“And it still matters.”

“Yes.”

The last thing in the world he wanted was a baby. He had his own reasons. And, like Susan’s, they came from examples set by his parents. To Michael, having a child meant his life was over.

He’d felt that even before the meeting with Coppel.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

“Just Seth.”

“And?”

She was silent. Her eyes fell for a moment and then returned to his. “Seth’s hardly one to understand.”

Based on her brother’s bachelor life-style, he supposed not. But Seth had always championed his big sister, had walked in her footsteps as long as Michael had known him. Michael had even begun to wonder if maybe Seth was still alone, married to his career, because he was following Susan’s example.

“He thinks you’re crazy?”

Susan shrugged, shocking Michael when her eyes filled with tears. “He doesn’t think I’m mother material.”

Seth’s lack of confidence had shaken her. “He’s nuts.” Michael heard the words before he’d even realized he’d had the thought.

“Really?” Her beautiful eyes glowed with uncertainty in the dusky room.

“Just look at Seth if you need evidence,” Michael said. “You practically raised him.” Which was one of the reasons Michael had thought she’d never want children. With three younger brothers, she’d had more than her share of babysitting and housework and driving her brothers to practices and games. Her mother had needed her at home, so her high-school years had been rife with missed opportunities.

Somehow she was back in his arms and Michael soaked up her warmth, her soft feminine scent. The evening washed over him—the good and the bad. Was her need to have this child so great that she’d be willing to give up her job? Move to Chicago?

The thought wasn’t as displeasing as it might have been. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d wished he’d never had to divorce her in the first place. The number of sleepless nights he’d spent lying beside her, trying to convince himself that a long-distance relationship could work. Instead, he’d been tortured with visions of needing his wife at some important function and her not being there, or vice versa. He’d imagined them wearing themselves out trying to be together every weekend out of obligation to each other. And he’d thought of what marriage meant, of the expectations it brought, of two people being one unit—and just couldn’t picture the link between him and Susan stretched across two states. Visions haunted him of the damage they’d eventually do to each other by trying to hang on when they kept disappointing each other, when expectations couldn’t possibly be met. He’d tried to imagine himself being a good husband to Susan from Chicago and knew that he’d had no choice but to let her go. He’d finally had to face the fact that they couldn’t possibly be true to themselves, to their own needs and desires, and to each other, as well. There wasn’t room in either of their lives for anyone else’s expectations.

But that was before he’d known she wanted to have a baby.

“You want us to get married again,” he summed up.

She didn’t say anything right away. “Nothing’s changed for us, has it Michael?” she finally asked, frowning.

“How do you mean?”

“Our reason for divorcing. Your career needing you one place, mine needing me another.”

So, she wasn’t planning to move to Chicago? “Not for me, it hasn’t.”

“Then why would we get married again?”

“So you can have your baby.”

“This is almost the new millennium, Michael.” Her voice was a little arrogant as she settled back against him. Hard. “You don’t have to be married to have a baby.”

He was apparently too damn tired to think straight. “Do you mind telling me then, what exactly you do want from me?”

“Your sperm.” Susan grinned up at him. And he saw in her eyes, in the cocky tilt to her mouth, the woman he’d fallen in love with so many years before. The one who always made everything sound so easy.

ALMOST FOUR DAYS LATER, Susan couldn’t believe how relieved she was to have asked the question. She knew there was a good chance Michael was going to say no. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that he hadn’t already done so. And couldn’t help but hope that he wouldn’t.

She’d spent the rest of the weekend in Chicago, and it had been just like old times. He’d taken both days off in deference to her birthday and they’d played to their hearts’ content. In bed and out of it

They’d done the city, gone to the zoo, walked along the skydeck of the Sears Tower, taken a walking tour through downtown Chicago to view the skyscrapers. They’d been sidetracked before they’d actually seen many skyscrapers, however. The cold and their hunger had driven them inside. After an hour and a half spent stuffing themselves at Michael’s favorite restaurant down by the lake, Michael had driven her through the Lake Shore Drive Apartments—glass houses he called them—and out to the Widow Clarke House, the oldest surviving building in Chicago.

And not once, throughout the entire weekend, did they mention Susan’s baby—or anything else remotely serious.

But she knew Michael. He was thinking about the baby. And he’d let her know when he’d made a decision. She just hoped it was sometime before her fortieth birthday.

In any case, she was feeling better Monday morning than she had in a long while. She’d asked him. She could afford to wait. At least for a week or two.

In the meantime, she had another little problem to attend to. A problem named Tricia Halliday. Tricia’s office—it was still hard for Susan to think of it that way—occupied the whole floor above Susan’s. Formerly belonging to Tricia’s husband, Ed, the room was a sportsman’s dream. It had a half basketball court at one end, basketball being Ed’s favorite sport, a putting green running along one wall, and a ceramic tile floor underneath the furniture to accommodate Ed’s best friend, Annie. And it was all wrong for Ed’s widow, Tricia.

Susan had gone to work for Ed right out of college. Having grown up with five brothers, she fit right in with the sports talk, understood the needs of athletes. She could even hold her own on the basketball court if she had to. And she’d adored Ed. She’d been devastated when he’d died of a heart attack last year, playing tennis at his club one Sunday afternoon.

He’d reminded her of her dad with his patience, his ability to see what was done well rather than focusing on what hadn’t been done, his insistence on looking at the bright side, the right side. The major difference between the two men, as evidenced by Susan’s position in the company, was Ed’s lack of chauvinism. He hadn’t thought, as Susan’s father did, that men and women had to be pigeonholed into particular roles.

Unfortunately, Ed’s character hadn’t rubbed off on his widow. Tricia was honest and hardworking, but her only interest was in the bottom line. Her pocketbook. And as Halliday Headgear was a privately held company, there wasn’t a lot anybody could do once the CEO made up her mind about something. Except live with it. Or quit.

Dressed in her red power suit, Susan faced Tricia across Ed’s desk, determined not to leave without some sort of compromise in the McArthur case.

“Are you telling me you can’t win this suit?” the older woman asked, her brows almost touching with the force of her frown.

“No. I’m not telling you that.”

“It was my understanding that my ten-year-old nephew could win this one for us.”

“Probably.”