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      To Doc Nona, with all my admiration.

      CHAPTER ONE

      ONE SIGH SAID it all, and for Deanna Lambert that sigh filled an entire story—past, present and future. She stared at her face in the mirror for a full minute, unsure what the face staring back was telling her. Do it? Don’t do it? Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best?

      “You’re no help,” she groused at her image, then pulled up her red tank top and finally assembled the courage to look at her belly yet again. She brushed away another tear. Ups and downs now. That’s what her life was about, ups and downs. “I wish I knew what to do. Wish somebody would just say, Deanna, do this.” But situations like hers didn’t come with a set of instructions. Only regret. More regret than she knew what to do with. And pain. Dear God, the pain nearly crippled her.

      Assessing her belly, Deanna’s new daily routine, she splayed her fingers over the warm flesh, willing herself to feel the child just beneath her fingertips. It was silly of her, of course, but this baby was her only connection to Emily, and she wanted desperately to hold onto that connection, feel that connection the way she used to. Count on it.

      She couldn’t, though. Not any more. But this baby … it was different. A hope she wasn’t ready to accept. Permission to move on. A blessing ready to be claimed.

      Another tear trickled down her cheek and she swatted at it with the back of her hand.

      “Part of me wants to go and find him. He’s your daddy.” At least, biologically he was. “And maybe he would want to know about you.” But the truth was, men who made sperm donations didn’t want to know. It was an anonymous gesture, often for the money and sometimes out of generosity. Or ego. So which was it for Braxton Alexander? she wondered. The unbearable weight of not knowing was dragging her down. The unbearable weight of carrying her cousin’s baby—a baby who would never see his or her mother—was dragging her down ever deeper.

      “Resolve it immediately,” Dr. Brewster, her obstetrician, had warned her. “Your blood pressure is borderline high, you’re not getting enough sleep, you’ve lost three pounds. Regardless of whose baby you’re carrying, you’re that baby’s lifeline. You’ve got to take better care of yourself. So figure out what you need to do, and do it.”

      Kindly old doctor. And he was right. She had to figure out what to do, and do it. “But darn,” she murmured, as she backed away from the mirror and pulled down her top, “why couldn’t somebody just tell me what it is I should do?”

      She was in this alone. Carrying a mistaken baby—her cousin’s child who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was not the progeny of her cousin’s husband. However a mistake like that could be made in this age of technological wizardry. Oops, wrong sperm, Mrs. Braxton. We’re terribly sorry.

      A mistake that had cost Emily her life, as it had turned out.

      “It would have been good,” she said to the baby. “Even if Alex didn’t want you after he found out, Emily would have been the best mother anyone could have because she wanted you so badly.” Even after three miscarriages and a stillbirth Emily had never lost hope. “And I would have helped you raise her.” Deanna ran her hand over her red tank top to smooth the wrinkles but more to acknowledge the love she felt every time she touched her belly.

      And she did love this child. She didn’t feel equal to the task of motherhood, and hadn’t ever even thought of herself in those terms, to be honest. But that didn’t negate the feelings she had for Emily’s baby. And those only grew stronger every day. Along with the irrational guilt. Survivor’s guilt, she’d been told. “So, the question remains, should I tell your father about you, or let him exist as the anonymous donor he was?”

      Stupid question. Anonymous donors wanted anonymity, presumably. But something was pulling her in a direction she knew she should resist. “OK, so maybe we could go there and simply watch him for a while, see what kind of man he is. What kind of genes you’ll be getting from him. No harm in that, is there?”

      No harm except the emotional one that kept her hanging onto something she didn’t understand. Dr. Brewster was right. She had to resolve this. But by going all the way to Tennessee? Specifically, Sugar Creek? That’s where the investigator she’d hired said he was living now. One law firm, a private investigator and some pretty formidable legal maneuvering had gained her a little information, more than most women had when they made their selections from the information inside the catalogs, and that should have been enough. But it wasn’t.

      And maybe that’s because she really did want to know, or simply because hanging onto a man she should never,