Dr. Brentwood is silenced by my theory.

Eighteen months ago, I decided to have a vasectomy.

I thought I was doing the responsible thing.

I went the cryogenic route on the extremely slim chance I might change my mind someday. That’s when I met Eva. Bumped into her in the hall, right before I was about to deposit my tenth and final batch. I’d never seen anyone so exotic and mysterious before. Long neck, high cheekbones, naughty gleam in her eye, and an accent that slayed.

One dinner turned into drinks, and within weeks we were hooking up on a regular basis until I had to end it months later. She was getting attached. Dirty talk turned to pillow talk, which escalated into Eva allowing herself to fall in love which wasn’t part of the agreement.

I jumped that sinking ship while she rearranged deck chairs.

Eva capsized as soon as she realized I wasn’t coming back.

“I’m waiting on a call back from my attorney. I spoke with him last night. He’s going to get in contact with the clinic.” I run my fingers through my hair. It’s product-free for the first time in a long time. I barely had the motivation to take a shower this morning having stayed most of the night at the hospital staring at that innocent little girl and searching for a sign that she was mine. “The clinic will probably come back and say all ten vials are accounted for. If Eva switched numbers or swapped out a vial of my specimen with someone else’s, there won’t be anyway to tell without unfreezing the samples. That’ll destroy them.”

Fuck.

“You’ll have to do DNA testing,” Dr. Brentwood said. “Which could take weeks. Possibly months.”

“What do I do?” I slink back in my chair, glancing at the time. It’s half past eight. Odessa should be rolling in here any moment. “Do I pretend she’s not mine? Pretend that didn’t just happen? Ignore Eva? What if she threatens the baby?”

“She won’t,” he says. “If she believes that baby is yours, or if indeed that baby is yours, she won’t do anything.”

“You and I both know we can’t guarantee that. Eva’s unpredictable. Unstable.”

“Exactly.” He clears his throat. “Which is why you should’ve called me first before going to the hospital.”

“Forgive me for not thinking clearly.” My fist clenches the handle of my desk phone, resisting the urge to slam it. He’s not helping. I need answers. I need directives. There’s no protocol on what to do in a situation like this. Surely someone somewhere has had their ex-fuck-buddy-turned-stalker impregnate themselves with their cryogenically frozen sperm?

I laugh because this situation is as absurd as it is real.

“Can you go to the hospital, Dr. Brentwood? Talk some sense into her? Try to get some answers?”

“I can’t go unless I’m called for a consult,” he says. “The only reason we’re speaking right now is because of the signed release in her file. That expires in two months by the way.”

“Great.” I grit my teeth. “So what do I do now? She’s discharging in a couple days. She’s going to need help getting home, getting around. Caring for the baby. Her friend goes back to Baltimore tonight. She’s all alone.”

I have to ensure the baby gets the care she needs. She didn’t ask to be born into this. I’ve never been so protective of anything before, but seeing her helpless face cradled in the arms of a mother who is clearly mentally unstable brings out the bear I never knew resided in me.

“Can I hire someone? A nanny?” I ask.

“No,” Dr. Brentwood says without pause. “Again, Beckham, we do not want to send the wrong message. You cannot allow her to manipulate you this way. You cannot give in to her demands.”

“It’s not about Eva right now. It’s about the baby.” I don’t know what to call her. Eva asked me to name her, flat out refusing to offer any suggestions. It’s another one of her attempts to manipulate me, to forge a bond between the baby and me. The child needs a name, but I need to prove a point to Eva.

I need to talk to someone else about this. Not Dr. Brentwood. He doesn’t understand. I understand he can’t legally tell anyone what to do. Should anything go awry, he could be held liable, and psychiatric patients of the Eva Delgado variety can be particularly unpredictable.

Xavier’s not exactly level-headed these days, and Dane will just lecture me.

A knock at my door ushers in Odessa, two cups of coffee in her hands.

“I’ll call you back,” I say to Dr. Brentwood.

“Beckham, whatever you do, do not engage with Eva,” I hear him say before I hang up.

“Figured you could use one of these.” Odessa places a cup on my desk, her gaze scanning the bags hanging under my eyes. “Long night?”

“Very.” I take the Styrofoam cup. “Thank you.”

She takes a seat across from me, her tablet tucked neatly under her arm.

“Shit. The website,” I say. “Sorry. I completely forgot.”

“It’s fine, Beckham.” There’s something softer about her today, like she’s going easy on me. “You’re going through some stuff. I understand.”

I almost wish she’d fling a jab at me. Make an underhanded remark. Anything to make my life feel like it did twenty-four hours ago.

Fuck, life was simple then.

“Everything go well?” She crosses her legs and sits straight. “It was a girl, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“The friend. She told me. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you,” she says. “Not my place.”

“Fair enough.”

“Have any pictures?” Odessa asks. I suppose her question is only natural.

I take out my phone. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” She laughs, leaning closer.

I honestly don’t recall. I spent most of last night in a daze. Thumbing through my photo album, I come across a picture I must’ve snapped toward the end of the night, just before going home. The memory of taking it escapes me but there it is.

I hand my phone to Odessa who smiles at the photo of the sleeping baby in Eva’s arms.

“She’s beautiful,” Odessa says. “Like her mother.”

My lips part, the truth lingering on the tip of my tongue.

She hands the phone back, and I go to tuck it away but it starts to ring. My attorney’s name flashes on the screen.

“I have to take this,” I say. Odessa rises, hurrying out of the room. “Roger, what do we know?”

Chapter Eighteen

ODESSA

The second I shut Beckham’s office door, I hear him mutter something about a DNA test.

Seriously?

Some woman he obviously had sexual relations with in the past just had a baby and his biggest priority is doing a DNA test? The fact that he flew back to New York the second he got the news leads me to believe he feels the baby is his, so I’m struggling to find sympathy for his little predicament.

Serves him right.

And he should be there. At the hospital. Not sitting at his desk making phone calls.

That poor woman.

I felt sorry for him yesterday on the plane. He didn’t say more than a handful of words, and he sat there staring ahead with his legs crossed and his ankle bouncing for damn near five hours.

The coffee was a peace offering. For whatever reason, I felt sorry for him, which in retrospect was a huge mistake.

When I return to my office, I check my phone for the millionth time. Jeremiah still hasn’t called me back. It’s not like him. Break or no break, he’s not the type to ever ignore someone.

Especially not me.

I fire off an email to Dane and Beckham with a link to the preliminary website and ask for feedback. After that, I return a call to the Charity Falls Register to confirm the interview date and time. Yanking out a fresh legal pad, I jot down some key statistics and points I want Beckham to hone in on during his interview.

An hour of immersing myself in work leads me right back to where I started: worrying about Jeremiah.

Dragging in a defeated breath, I check his blog. The interface hasn’t changed. We did a good enough job with it, that the show’s branding has been coordinated around it. I click on the latest blog post: a recipe for sweet potato pie tied in with some pie crust sponsorship. He didn’t write it. Those aren’t his words. Some intern must’ve put that together for him.