LITMIR.BIZ

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      But in all her planning and visualisation it had never occurred to her he would care about the baby that would result, let alone want it. The paradigm she was working from was five years out of date: Reilly Martin, king of the circuit; lover of women; drinker of beer.

      Wanter of heirs, apparently.

      She shuddered in a breath. If anything happened to Lea, Molly would go to Reilly. She’d created that reality the moment she’d driven down Minamurra’s long, tree-lined drive. Never mind that her will named Anna and Jared as Molly’s guardians; Reilly would not rest until his daughter was with him. His threat to fight for Molly might only have been a ploy to win an argument, but if Lea wasn’t around to intervene, her daughter would grow up a Martin.

      Then again, without this particular Martin, her daughter wouldn’t grow up at all.

      The dark, ugly thought crept through and brought her back to Reilly’s request. To give him the baby when it was born; it would virtually be surrogacy. The incubation of a child that wouldn’t be hers, never mind that biologically it was. She’d considered doing it for Anna and Jared, but her sister wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t put someone she loved through the pain of surrendering a child.

      What Reilly was proposing would be just the same, except she’d be taking her payment in the form of stem cells, more priceless than any money.

      But giving up the baby…

      Molly’s eyes began to shift beneath her lashes. The anxious twitching of her fingers meant it was more nightmare than dream. Lea crossed to sink down onto Molly’s bed and placed her hand gently on her daughter’s chest, speaking quietly to her. The twitching ceased immediately. A moment later her damp brown eyes fluttered open wide. She stretched up for a big hug and clung hard to Lea’s neck. Lea kissed her and kept up the reassuring murmurs.

      ‘Where were you, Mummy?’ Molly’s breathless little voice asked. Even hugging her mother made her puff. Lea held tighter.

      ‘I was right here, chicken.’

      Her little face frowned with confused concentration as she fell back onto her pillow. ‘You were gone. I was alone.’

      Lea smoothed Molly’s fringe back from her eyes. ‘Shh. No. I was here. I’m always going to be here, baby. You were dreaming.’

      ‘It was nice there. But I was alone. Don’t leave me alone, Mummy…’

      Lea dug her fingernail into her thumb hard to channel the pain, to focus the grief, not to think about the symbolism of Molly’s dream. It took everything she had not to let the tears well up and spill over in front of her anxious daughter. Time enough for that later.

      ‘Do you feel like waking up now?’ Lea’s voice was painfully tight. Molly rubbed dark, deep eyes and shook her head.

      ‘Okay. How ’bout I sit with you here until you go back to sleep and I’ll make sure you don’t go back to the place where you were alone—okay?’

      ‘’Kay.’ Molly sucked her thumb into her mouth and then rolled onto her side. Lea tucked her in more firmly and gently rubbed her back until she felt her daughter’s breathing regulate. Then it was safe to let the tears creep out. They streamed, un-checked, down her face accompanied by the silent sobs she’d become so adept at.

      Minutes passed and Lea’s whole body hurt from keeping the pain inside. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths then tiptoed out of Molly’s room and headed for her mobile. She punched in Reilly’s mobile-phone number and pecked out a concise text-message with badly shaking fingers.

      Just three words: I’ll do it.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE conception of their second child was a far cry from their first. Even Reilly appreciated the irony.

      Three weeks of blood tests, injections, headaches and hormones, until Lea’s body artificially ripened to bursting point, followed by scans every three days until her eggs were perfect for harvesting. Then the city specialist who had been flown in accessed Reilly’s tiny, frozen sample and injected the healthi-est thaw survivor directly into one of Lea’s eggs.

      Shame had been a near-permanent resident in Reilly’s throat, knowing there’d been barely any sperm left, the rest biologically massacred by his over-zealous immune system.

      Now, Lea stared rigidly at the beige ceiling and did her best to ignore him and the six people in the room all fussing around the business end of her body where her legs were braced in stirrups and her hospital gown was tented over her bent knees. As if she needed the privacy from herself.

      Reilly’s gut tightened and his temperature raised. He hadn’t realised how humiliating this would be for her when he’d insisted on being present for the implantation. Or that every muscle in her body would tremble uncontrollably. Empathy washed through him.

      They’d tried to convince him it was nothing they hadn’t all seen before, but the excited buzz and the number of personnel present seemed to indicate an ICSI implantation was something several of them had very definitely not seen before in their remote hospital posting. He could see the bright lights, the graceless position, the room full of strangers, were all starting to get to her. Even with sedation slowly kicking in.

      His lips tightened. Could they make this any more uncomfortable for her?

      Molly might not have been conceived in love, but at least it had been natural, the joining of two people who had connected for a preciously short time. In a bed. With sweat. This man-made artifice was so foreign.

      But entirely appropriate under the circumstances.

      Lea sighed, just when he might have himself. He glanced back at her eyes and saw they were getting more glazed as the sedation continued to take effect.

      ‘Lift your hips slightly, Lea? Good girl, thank you,’ the specialist requested from down near her feet. She flinched at something being done down there. Three pairs of eyes glanced up at her over blue hospital-masks, then at the clock on the wall. Was she taking too long to relax?

      ‘Why are all the blue people talking so loudly?’

      At least he thought that was what she said. Her speech reminded him of the lost tourist they had found out on the far corners of Minamurra one time, half-frozen after a night in dry, sub-zero Kimberley temperatures.

      Lea started to fight the sedation and he took her hands to stop her waving them about. She forced her head towards him, as though he were a life buoy in a tossing sea, and stared at him with vulnerable, anxious eyes. A pang bit deep in his chest. ‘You’re okay, Lea.’

      ‘Reilly?’ Her frown doubled even as her hand-hold grew tighter.

      He turned to the nearest doctor. ‘Should she be in this much distress?’

      The doctor rested his hand on her calf kindly. ‘She’s not really responding to the sedation as we would have hoped.’

      Lea Curran doing something completely contrary to the norm? No surprises there.

      ‘We’ve ceased the feed now. It’ll ease off shortly.’ The doctor’s attention went back under the sheet as yet another man in blue bustled in the door and dived under the screening covers at the foot of the bed.

      ‘Jeez, buy a girl a drink first,’ Lea said, over-loudly, then started to giggle. Not in a good way.

      Reilly stood. ‘Okay—essential personnel, stay. Everyone else, out.’ He was counting on everyone in the room assuming he was the loving husband, that he had a right to issue orders on Lea’s behalf. Apparently they did. Half the room left with baleful glares, only the chief doctor and two nursing atten-dants staying. Both of them kept a respectful distance.

      At last.

      Lea didn’t look at him but he was sure he heard her voice thank him.

      The tiny whisper made him inexplicably tight-chested. If he

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