CHAPTER FOUR

      IF HE DIDN’T make her pregnant, someone else would.

      No matter how many different ways Michael looked at the situation, he always ended up back in the very same place. Susan wanted him to impregnate her, but if he said no, she wasn’t going to give up on this crazy idea. He’d be sending her directly into the bedroom of another man.

      By Thursday afternoon he had one hell of a headache. And still no answers. In desperation he turned to the only other person he could possibly call. His ex-brother-in-law, Seth—and, next to Susan, his closest friend.

      “What’s up?” Seth asked as soon they’d assured each other they were fine and that both of them had absolutely nothing to do next Sunday but watch the Super Bowl.

      “I’m sure you can guess.” Michael was finding it a little difficult to say the words. He was that opposed to the whole idea. Picking up a pencil, he started to sketch a couple of cartoon characters, a man and a woman, jumping out of an airplane without parachutes.

      “Susan told me she asked you about the baby.”

      “And she told me you think she’s insane.” He dropped his pencil.

      “I never said that!”

      “No.” Michael remembered the tears in Susan’s eyes. “You told her you didn’t think she’d make a good mother.”

      Sounding unusually defensive, Seth said, “And you think she would?”

      Swiveling his chair away from his desk, Michael looked out the window behind him. He gained no inspiration at all from the barren tree limbs outside.

      “She did all right by you and Sean and Spencer.”

      “She didn’t have a career then.”

      “She has a career now and she still looks out for you.”

      Seth swore softly. “Come on, Michael, you know it isn’t the same thing. A kid deserves better than absences, vague promises, excuses.”

      “So, it isn’t her mothering abilities you doubt.” He rested his feet on the windowsill. “It’s her time management.”

      “Or her priorities,” Seth said. “You know her, Michael, she’s been biting off more than she can chew her entire life, all the while insisting she’ll manage. She always thinks that whatever she’s tackling is a piece of cake.”

      He agreed with Seth. But... “She does manage in the end.”

      “Up until now she’s only had one priority.”

      That was true, too. But who was to say she wouldn’t handle two priorities as successfully as she handled one? If she wanted both of them badly enough...

      Michael brushed a piece of lint off his navy slacks. “Answer me something...”

      “If I can.”

      “Do you think she really knows what she wants?”

      “If you mean do I think she really wants this baby, then yes, I do.”

      Michael was afraid he’d say that. “Yeah, me, too.”

      “So...you going to give it to her?”

      This had to be one of the oddest conversations in the history of man—or at least of brothers-in-law. But Michael was getting nowhere on his own. And the decision was too important to be clouded by confusion or wishful thinking.

      “I don’t know,” he finally said.

      Seth hesitated. “You know she’ll, uh, find someone else if you don’t.”

      “I had considered that.” At least a million times in the past six days. “But she might not.”

      “I don’t think anything but an act of God is going to keep Susan from having her baby.”

      Neither did Michael. Dammit. And damn Seth for saying so. “There’s always artificial insemination.”

      “I really doubt she’d consider it.”

      So did Michael.

      “She’d want to know the man who’s going to be, biologically speaking, the other half of her child,” Michael said before he had to hear it from Seth.

      “She’d insist on having the inside scoop on the littlest things, like how soon he’d learned to tie his shoes, how close his family was, whether or not he liked to go to the movies.” Seth twisted the knife a little deeper.

      “She’d ask for a complete genealogical workup going as far back as possible.” Michael rubbed more salt into his wound.

      After all, Susan was a lawyer. A damn good one. She wanted all the answers.

      “Of course, all that extra effort, getting to know someone that well, tracking down someone’s heritage—it might be a little off-putting, might make her reconsider....” Seth was obviously trying his best to help.

      “Not Susan.” Michael voiced what both men knew. Turning, he picked up the pencil and added some finishing touches to the cartoon. “Because she’d underestimate the work involved, the difficulties. Just like she always does.” Just like she had that night she’d tried to talk him out of the divorce. She’d made it all sound so simple. Him living in one state, her in another. But he’d known a marriage could never survive under those circumstances. Marriage meant commitment, expectations. Sharing one life. Not two.

      “So, you going to do it?” Seth asked painfully, as though he were suffering right along with Michael. And, in a sense, he probably was. Seth obviously felt pretty strongly that Susan was making a big mistake.

      Michael tossed the pencil. “The last thing in the world I want is to be a father.”

      “I don’t think Susan’s looking for a father,” Seth said. “I had the impression she just wants the...you know. The genes.” He could tell Seth didn’t approve of that, either.

      “Yeah,” Michael said. “That’s the way I took it.” She wanted his sperm. Not him.

      And that rankled, too.

      THE OFFER FROM Coppel Industries came through on Friday morning. Coppel stockholders wanted to make Michael a vice president of finance. If he accepted, he’d