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.
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