women found the procedures stressful and mentally exhausting.
Tossing the book onto the coffee table, Elaine pressed a pillow against her stomach, rolled onto her side and thought. So far she’d told two people—Gordon and Mitch Ryder—about her plans. Their enthusiasm had been less than overwhelming.
She’d spent half her life supporting other people’s dreams and ideals. For once she expected no less for herself. But from what corner would the support come?
Her brother, Sam, had already given their parents grandchildren. Elaine suspected her mother and father had given up on her a few years ago. She truly didn’t know how they would react to her decision to pursue A.I.
Hugging the pillow tighter, she pondered. According to Every Woman’s Guide, she didn’t have a lot of time to futz around. At thirty-seven her ovaries were shrinking by the minute. For the first time, Elaine began to wonder whether she was fertile at all and what she would do if she wasn’t.
Would she be willing to undergo the invasive medical interventions mentioned in the book? Would she be willing to do it all alone?
The closer she inched—no, jogged, really—toward forty, the more aware she became that everything was changing, both in her body and in the way others perceived her. Younger women no longer gave her that telltale once-over to see if she was competition. At the supermarket when young men offered to help carry her groceries to the car, they really meant, Can I help carry your groceries to the car?
It didn’t matter how progressive or self-actualized she was: a thirty-seven-year-old divorcée was forced to find a new way to define herself.
Rising, pillow in hand, Elaine padded to the mirror above the sideboard in her dining room and looked at herself, searching for the balance between kindness and objectivity. At five-four, she was petite and still thin enough—despite Ben & Jerry’s best full-fat efforts—to buy size eight jeans. Thick reddish-brown hair that swung gently between her jaw and shoulders further contributed to her youthful appearance…until she looked into the mirror straight-on, and then…
Oy vey. When she examined herself head-on, her fair, translucent skin—a plus at age twenty—became a potential liability. Lines had formed.
Pursing her lips, Elaine pulled her shirt out from her waistband, unbuttoned the top button and tucked the pillow into her shorts. She felt only a little foolish, and once the pillow was in place, the effect it had on her was almost electric.
As if by magic, suddenly she had more than a worn sofa pillow under her shirt; she had an internal sense of purpose. Smoothing her T-shirt over her now expanded belly, she turned to view herself from the side, and of course it was silly, but for the first time in ages, she felt like she had an identity again. Like trying on a uniform before starting a new job and discovering the fit is just right.
And then for the teeniest, tiniest second she allowed herself to picture more than the belly; she pictured the whole kit ’n caboodle—one child by the hand, one on the way and the man, smiling that private, sexy, me-man you-woman smile that said, “Look what we did.”
The image was so darned appealing that the tiny second she’d meant to spend on it extended into another and another and then just one more, until finally Elaine sank into the fantasy like it was a tub of hot water, letting the image grow clearer and more detailed until it became obvious the man smiling at her was Mitch Ryder.
Damn it.
Reaching under her shirt, she yanked out the pillow.
A woman could get pretty disgusted with herself over this sort of thing.
Granted, he was the only eligible male she’d spent any time with in ages, and granted, he was attractive…in a straight-backed, bordering-on-pompous way.
But he listened. And he seemed to care, for some reason, what happened to her. And that was hard to ignore.
Elaine scrunched the pillow between her hands. In the end, she knew exactly why she’d pictured him. It was that night. The memory—or lack thereof—of that night hung over her like a rain cloud ready to burst, and the worst thing was Mitch’s silence. He knew what had happened, and yet he never mentioned it, never even alluded to it. He was an overprotective, overbearing, buttinsky, and yet every time she saw him there were a few seconds—usually right before he opened his mouth and ticked her off—when she felt…dare she admit it?…a surge of desire. A fleeting—and, really, it was fleeting—sense of the absolute rightness of being with him.
“Rrrrrggghhhh!” She smooshed the pillow as hard as she could to release some of her aggravation, then sent it sailing like a Frisbee back into the living room. She checked her watch—four-fifteen. A run along the river—that’s what she needed. When she set her feet to the pavement, her mind cleared. Seratonin rose; sanity returned. She hadn’t run in ages, but knew where her shoes and running shorts were without having to think about it and was ready to go fifteen minutes later.
Wrapping a scrunchie around her ponytail, she grabbed the remainder of a bag of French bread to feed to the ducks (according to Fertility Nutrition, white flour upset insulin balance and wreaked havoc on the hormones) and took an organic apple for herself. She felt virtuous before she was halfway out the door. She was being proactive. Not a whiner. She wasn’t staying home to worry or to obsess about a man; she was doing something good for herself and her baby-to-be.
Locking the front door, Elaine dropped her keys in her pocket and prepared to head out. As she turned toward the porch steps, however, she stopped short. A tall, slim woman dressed in pleated, straight-leg trousers and a man-tailored shirt that looked like it was pressed to within an inch of its life peered in the window of the apartment next door. She had thick dark hair cut in one of those choppy, supershort cuts Elaine so admired, but which made her look like a little girl whose brother had played “barber” on her head.
The other woman, however, looked just right in the charming cap of hair. Her bone structure was strong and classic. Her entire appearance telegraphed confidence, a woman who could be counted on to lead the crowd rather than follow. With a tanned, ringless hand, she rapped on the window, obviously frustrated when there was no immediate response.
Elaine stepped forward. “May I help you?” The stranger turned toward her with penetrating brown eyes. “I live next door,” Elaine explained, hoping to appear helpful rather than nosy. She gestured. “The apartment you’re looking at is vacant. Are you hunting?”
Taller than Elaine had first thought, the woman looked first at her then at the duplex as if the question didn’t quite compute.
“Hunting?” Then she burst out, “You mean apartment hunting? Here? God, no!” She surveyed the old wooden eaves, the broad concrete porch with its hairline fractures and actually shuddered. “I’m looking for Mitch Ryder. He left this address on my answering machine.”
Elaine took another, longer look at the brunette, who appeared to be in her early thirties, and glanced at her watch. “Ah, he was here, about…hmm…an hour ago? Maybe?”
The other woman frowned, and Elaine knew she should wash her own mouth out with soap. Could she be a bigger fake? She knew darn well Mitch had been in the apartment as recently as fifty-two minutes, forty-five seconds ago, because her watch had a sweep second hand and that was when the hammering had stopped. But she wasn’t going to parade her interest in front of a woman whose long neck and lithe body could make Audrey Hepburn look stumpy.
“Do you know when he’s coming back?”
“No.” At least that was the truth. “No idea. Sorry.”
“Thirty-six years of impeccable reliability, and he has to screw it up now—” peeking through the window again, Mitch’s visitor appeared to be speaking mostly to herself “—when I am absolutely, freakishly starving.”
“Would you like an apple?” Elaine held it up, feeling a bit like the wicked stepmother in Snow White. Was this woman Mitch’s girlfriend? Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember his ever bringing a date to the office get-togethers.