you want no part of having an influence on your child,” Natalie said. “If you’re sure you just want a baby and no father to go with it, then a sperm bank would be the way to go.”
They weren’t saying anything she hadn’t thought of herself, but something squeezed her heart at the idea of lying on an examining table and being impregnated so impersonally. “I don’t know if I could do that,” she admitted honestly. “It just sounds so…”
“Clinical?” Lily supplied for her. “You’re right. It does. But if you don’t want a man…”
“Just because I can’t trust a man enough to have one in my life doesn’t mean I can’t get pregnant by one…then walk away.”
Silence fell like a stone. “I’ve surprised you,” she said quietly.
“Could you do that?” Natalie asked, curious. “Could you meet a man, have sex with him and get pregnant, then just walk away?”
For the last few months, Rachel had asked herself that same question more times than she could count. And the answer was always the same. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter 1
Standing before the large round mirror of her antique dresser, Rachel studied herself with a critical eye. She never had been what she would call a girlie-girl. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d painted her fingernails, and she wasn’t one of those women who spent hours in front of the mirror, messing with her hair. Half the time, she twisted it up on top of her head, clipped it out of the way, and walked out the door without even looking at it twice. Lipstick was an afterthought, perfume was the smell of sugar and yeast that clung to her from the bakery. She wore jeans and a baker’s smock to work, and given the chance, tennis shoes.
So how was she supposed to dress to attract a man? she wondered wildly. It had been so long since she’d had a date that she didn’t even know where to begin.
More blush, she decided, frowning at her pale, reflected image. She needed more color in her face…and jewelry. Her neck looked bare, her earlobes naked. What did the kids call it now days? Bling-bling. That was what she needed. All she had, however, was a simple gold locket that her grandmother had given her. Would that date her? Or make her look like some kind of innocent who’d been living in a convent?
Undecided, she slipped it on, then added blush to her cheeks and painted on red lipstick. Stepping back, she frowned at her reflection. The woman who stared back at her in the mirror was a stranger. Dressed in red, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, she looked hot, sultry, sexy.
It was the dress, she decided. There was no question that it was designed to appeal to a man. It hugged her slender figure and ever so slightly dipped between her breasts, revealing just a hint of cleavage. Paired with strappy, spiked sandals, the dress gave her the look of a woman on the prowl.
Suddenly having second thoughts, Rachel seriously considered chickening out right there and then. Maybe Abby and Lily and Natalie were right. There was another way to have a baby. What difference did it make if she actually met her baby’s father? It wasn’t as if she would have a chance to learn that much about his character. She was never going to see the man again.
She wanted a baby, not a relationship, she reminded herself. And with a sperm bank, she wouldn’t have to worry about some man calling all the time, wanting to get to know her—and his baby—better. All she wanted was his sperm. So what if it was clinical? What could be more clinical than picking a stranger out of a bar to be the father of her baby?
Don’t second guess yourself now, a voice in her head warned. You don’t have a lot of choices here, you know. Unless you want to get pregnant the old-fashioned way—by a man you fall in love with—you’ve only got two options. The sperm bank or seducing a stranger. If you want to know for sure that the father of your baby is not only intelligent, but a kind and caring man, then don’t you think you’d better meet him face-to-face?
Her heart stopped dead at the thought. Could she really pull this off? What if he guessed what she was up to? Any man in his right mind would be furious, and she couldn’t say she’d blame him. She intended to use him in the worst way a woman could use a man, but she truly had no other choice. She’d already tried the fairy tale, love and marriage, but there’d been no baby to make three.
And during the years of their marriage, Jason had made sure that she’d known who was to blame for that. She was the one whose hormones were out of whack. She was the one who was somehow deficient and didn’t have what it took to have a baby. And she’d believed the lying jackass.
The day she’d discovered the truth, she’d walked out. How could she have loved a man like that and never realized what a monster he was? How could she have been so blind? She’d promised herself then that she was done with men, with lies, with trust. Never again would she place her hopes and dreams in anyone else’s hands but her own.
She wanted a baby, and she didn’t have a clue how long it would take to get pregnant. Months? Years? The constant tick of her biological clock echoed in her ears at the thought. The women in her family had all gone into menopause by the time they reached forty. If she ran out of time…
Pain squeezing her heart at the thought, she grabbed her purse and turned her back on the woman in the mirror. When she locked her front door and slipped behind the wheel of her VW Bug a few minutes later, she tried to convince herself she was doing the right thing. All she had to do was shut her brain and conscience off and go after what she wanted. Other women did it all the time. So could she.
Of course, she’d been telling herself that for months, long before Lily and Natalie and Abby had called last week and asked her to be in their weddings, and she’d yet to do anything. And who could blame her? She was going to have sex with a stranger in order to get pregnant! And that wasn’t something she did lightly. On top of that, the father of her child had to be someone special. Someone who was caring and kind and smart, someone any child would love to claim as his father. And she’d decided there was only one place where she could find such a paragon…in a hospital. The father of her child needed to be a doctor.
Still, even after she’d come to that conclusion, she’d done nothing. Then she’d turned thirty-five on Monday, and she’d felt time slipping through her fingers, time she would never get back. And she’d known she couldn’t wait any longer. She had to do something. Now.
The man she was looking for wasn’t in Hunter’s Ridge, Texas. The town was too small, barely eight thousand people, and ever since she’d moved there five years ago and started running her grandmother’s bakery, she’d met just about every inhabitant of the place. The only doctors in town were pushing retirement and happily married to little white-haired old ladies. If she wanted to find someone, she would have to go into Austin.
The city was forty miles and a world away. No one knew her there, but her pounding heart took little comfort in that as she drove toward the city lights. She was about to make one of the most important moves of her life, and she was a nervous wreck. Her palms were sweating, her mouth dry, and every instinct she had urged her to turn the car around and race back to Hunter’s Ridge. In her head, however, she could hear her biological clock ticking. Her chin set at a determined angle, she headed for the medical center.
The bar she chose was trendy and popular, and a friend who was a nurse had told her that if she wanted to meet a doctor, this was the place to go. It was one of the favorite watering holes of residents and medical students alike. As Rachel pulled into the parking lot, she could well believe it. She couldn’t find a single parking space and had to park on the street.
Cutting the motor, she stepped from her car, her heart skipping every other beat. It was game time, she thought grimly. No more excuses, no more procrastinating. If she really wanted a baby, this was her chance. All she had to do was walk inside the bar and find a man who met her requirements for a father, then seduce him.
It should have been easy. The second she walked through the front door, she drew every male eye in the place.