but Ethan held their gazes steadily, making his own quick assessment of things. Just from the cornered expression on the face of the brunette, Ethan knew her poker buddies weren’t simply here for a night of playing cards. He would bet his last dime they came here every Friday night more to check up on Savannah than to gamble and they would take care of her. The smartest thing for him to do would be to get the hell out of here and regroup before he said or did something that he regretted, if only out of compassion for the woman carrying his child.
His child.
He almost couldn’t believe he was about to have a baby. The knowledge overwhelmed him. Took his breath. Which was exactly why he had to be careful. The last time he let an emotion control him, it cost him much more than he could afford to risk.
He looked at Savannah and forced himself to see her objectively, honestly and through the filter of unhappy possibilities. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
The second he was out the door, Savannah turned to her four friends. Protectively placing her palm on her stomach, she said, “I’m in big trouble.”
“What?” Becki, one of the twins, groaned. “Please don’t tell me that good-looking guy is suing you or something.”
“Or something,” Savannah said, leading her friends into the living room, where they sat on the sofa and round-backed chairs, tucking their feet beneath them and getting comfortable, though they continued to stare at Savannah with rapt attention.
“He’s the father of this baby,” Savannah said, then looked from blond-haired, blue-eyed Lindsay, to the red-haired twins Mandi and Becki, to dark-haired, dark-eyed Andi. “I didn’t know it. He didn’t know it. But Barry did. Ethan had sperm cryogenically frozen for some reason when he was married. Apparently, my fear about getting a good father for the baby led Barry to search the banks of people who had sperm stored but weren’t donors. When he found Ethan’s name he knew we had our father because we knew Ethan to be a good man since I had worked with him. So Barry forged Ethan’s signature to get his sample mainstreamed into the donor banks to be used for my pregnancy.”
“Oh, boy,” Mandi said slowly, her blue eyes widening with each word.
“Yeah, oh, boy.”
“So, is this guy pressing charges?” Lindsay demanded.
Savannah licked her lips. “Not if I marry him.”
“You’re kidding!” Becki gasped, flopping back on her chair as if flabbergasted.
“It gets worse. His father is…”
“Parker McKenzie,” Andi said. A reporter who was part of a team that covered the Washington beat for several newspapers, Andi knew everybody on Capitol Hill. She had facts at her disposal that the general public wouldn’t have. She also knew backgrounds that frequently got forgotten. “He’s a senator who had to live down the pasts of a starlet mother and drug-using pro-football player father. His son’s sperm theft would be the final embarrassment of his career. But his son’s marriage, even a hasty marriage, would go virtually unnoticed.”
“That’s approximately what Ethan said,” Savannah confirmed.
“He’s right,” Andi said, combing her fingers through the mop of thick, blunt cut sable hair that fell to her shoulders. “A marriage would make this ‘problem’ a nonissue.”
“So you think I should marry him?”
“I don’t know what you should do—” Andi began.
“Marrying him virtually guarantees legal standing in a custody suit,” Mandi interrupted.
“He doesn’t need to marry her to get legal standing,” Lindsay said, as all eyes turned to the law student. “He has legal standing. He is the baby’s father. Actually, it’s probably more documented than if you had gotten pregnant because you were lovers. He doesn’t even need DNA tests. He has papers that prove his sperm created your baby.”
All eyes then turned to Savannah. “Does he have papers?” Becki asked.
“The Georgia State Police told me Barry forged Ethan’s signature to mainstream his sperm for use by the clinic. So, that’s one paper. They also had search warrants that let them roam the entire bed-and-breakfast looking for clues of where Barry might be. Since police don’t get search warrants from judges without a good reason, I’m assuming it’s all documented somewhere and that’s why Barry went into hiding.”
Becki caught Savannah’s gaze. “Do you know where Barry is?”
Savannah shook her head. “No. All I know is he called me and told me that he was leaving for a new job in Canada. Though he avoided telling me where the job was, I knew something was wrong. Then eight hours after he called, the police arrived and told me that when the clinic was auditing their procedures, they randomly chose my pregnancy to follow to make sure everything had been done properly. Apparently, Barry only got away because he saw what case they were going to audit and he left before they began pulling files. No one noticed he was gone until after they called Ethan. Because he had not originally been a sperm donor, they had to confirm he had reclassified his sample. Ethan, of course, had not. When they started putting two and two together with my pregnancy, Ethan’s reclassified sperm and Barry’s absence, it was already too late.”
“He does look guilty,” Becki said sadly.
“Yeah, he does,” Savannah agreed. “The ironic thing is that I don’t even know where to find him to tell him Ethan is dropping the charges if I marry him.”
“And just like that Barry can come home?” Mandi said skeptically. “No punishment, no problems.”
“He didn’t really do anything wrong,” Savannah insisted. “I’m the one who said I couldn’t do this without a guarantee that I would get a good father. He promised me a good father. He delivered.”
“Yeah, he delivered, all right,” Becki said. “He could have delivered you to a jail cell.”
“That’s not what he intended.”
“Savannah, you’ve got to quit defending that kid,” Mandi said.
But Lindsay stopped her with a look. “Barry is Savannah’s brother,” she quietly reminded Mandi, but Savannah knew what she was really saying.
“He’s my only family,” she said, not needing to remind everybody of past tragedies. “Besides if I don’t marry Ethan, he could sue for custody. And he’ll win because I can’t fight the McKenzie money.”
“Oh, Savannah,” Andi said, jumping from her chair to rush over and hug Savannah. “I don’t think you need to worry about him suing for custody. These people can’t afford bad press. Even if you don’t marry him, I don’t think he’s going to try to take this baby away from you.”
“You think the baby’s safe?”
“I think that if you stand your ground, the McKenzies will settle for whatever you are willing to give them to keep this out of the papers.”
“I agree,” Lindsay said, obviously thinking this through from a legal perspective. “Fathers have more rights than they used to, but if the McKenzies try for custody it will end up as a lawsuit. And if what you’re saying is true, Ethan McKenzie can’t afford an ugly lawsuit any more than he can afford for this story to leak. You’ve got some leverage here, too. If nothing else, you can expose the truth.”
“Except you don’t have the papers that prove any of it, do you?” Becki asked.
Savannah shook her head. “No.”
“Then get them,” Lindsay said. “Don’t wait until the evidence is mysteriously lost or destroyed. Call tomorrow. Because whether you marry him or not, the papers that prove you used in vitro fertilization are your best bet for making sure Ethan sticks to any deal you guys make.”
“You