LITMIR.BIZ

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to school together, weathered their dating years together, attended the same university. Macy doubted she would have survived the past few years without Lisa’s emotional support. “I can’t leave her. You know that,” she said simply.

      Lisa’s face creased into a sympathetic smile, and she pushed her glasses higher up on her stubby nose. “Haley’s been in and out of the hospital for nearly a year. I know you’re going to collapse if you don’t start taking care of yourself.”

      “I’m fine.” As though contradicting her words, the weariness Macy felt sank a little deeper, into her bones, but she forced a smile of her own. “And you can’t talk. What are you doing here again? You’ve spent almost as much time at this hospital as I have.”

      Out in the hall, a strident voice over the intercom directed a Dr. Johansen to the emergency room, but such calls came so frequently they were only background noise to Macy now.

      Lisa shrugged her thick shoulders. “You and Haley are family. That bum you were married to isn’t here for you, but—”

      Haley stirred, and Macy waved for Lisa to lower her voice. “I don’t need him.”

      This assertion was met with a skeptical lift of Lisa’s eyebrows as she wrapped huge arms around Macy for the hug she gave to everyone when she came and when she left. “There’s nothing but noodles in your cupboards. Have you eaten today?”

      Macy couldn’t remember whether she had or not, but to save herself from a scolding, Lisa-style, she went on the offensive. “What were you doing in my cupboards? You’d better not have been cleaning my house again.”

      “Damn straight I was. The last thing you need to worry about is cleaning and cooking. You’ll find my homemade lasagne in the refrigerator. See that you eat it when you get home.”

      “Damn straight,” Macy echoed, thanking the fates for bringing Lisa into her life all those years ago.

      Lisa set her purse down and wedged her bulk between the bed and the wall. Her body was big, but not nearly as big as her heart, Macy thought as Lisa stared down at Haley. “You think she’s any better?” she asked.

      Macy let her gaze drop to the soft blond fuzz that was all the hair her five-year-old daughter had left, and shook her head.

      “Did you call that guy Dr. Peters told me about?”

      “Yeah.” She lifted the manila envelope that held Thad Winters’ twenty-page questionnaire. “He gave me this. Can you believe it? He actually expects me to fill out an application to be the mother of his child. Maybe he should copyright it. This has to be a first. Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks something’s wrong with buying a baby. For all I know, he downloaded this application off the Internet. Hell, maybe everyone’s doing it.” She frowned. “On top of everything else, he wants me to take a physical. To be honest, I’m surprised he doesn’t have me go in for some DNA testing just to be sure the baby will have the right color of hair and eyes.”

      Lisa folded her arms across her full bosom, Macy’s first indication that she wasn’t going to get the commiseration she anticipated. “His wife died while she was carrying their child, Macy.”

      “Says Thad Winters. Some guy puts up a hundred grand and women fall all over themselves to get in line. But has anyone checked his story? What if it’s not true?”

      “Did he seem insincere to you?”

      Macy pictured Thad Winters’s rugged face, the high cheekbones, the thick brown hair, the square jaw and slightly cleft chin, light blue eyes contrasting sharply with the darkness of his five-o’clock shadow. The way he easily controlled his tall muscular body lent him a confident air. He seemed driven, focused, intense, but he didn’t seem insincere.

      “No, but good looks and an expensive office are no reason to trust a man, Lisa.”

      Her friend grinned. “He’s good-looking, huh?”

      Macy felt herself blush. She knew it had something to do with the way Thad Winters had affected her on a personal level, but she tried to ignore that, hoping Lisa wouldn’t notice. “He’s not bad,” she lied.

      “‘Not bad’ coming from you means he looks as good as Brad Pitt. And if he’s that good-looking, he could probably get any number of women pregnant without spending a dime.”

      Macy wasn’t sure she wanted to be convinced by Lisa’s rationale. Despite his physical charms, she was angry at Thad, for reasons she didn’t fully understand. He was offering her the one thing she needed. He was also exacting the highest form of payment, making her give him one baby to save another. “Maybe he thinks it’s some sort of interesting game,” she mused. “Maybe it arouses him to hold so much power over a woman’s destiny, to have us all groveling at his feet for the privilege of bearing his child. You should have seen all the gifts—bribes, really—stacked in his office.”

      “I don’t think so. Dr. Peters lived next to the Winters family all the years Thad was growing up and says he’s never met a better man, or someone more capable of leading a successful life.”

      “What, does Dr. Peters make a percentage for brokering the deal?” Macy grumbled.

      Lisa pulled her frizzy light-brown hair out of her eyes and scowled. “My, aren’t we turning into a cynic! Thad Winters wants his own baby, and he no longer has a wife to give him one. So he’s taking an alternate route. So what? He’s an ad exec.”

      “Which means…”

      “He’s creative. As for the application and stuff, there’s nothing wrong with interviewing, playing it safe.”

      “Playing it safe would be waiting until he falls in love and marries again. Playing it safe would be doing it the right way.”

      “The right way didn’t work for him. What if he feels certain no woman could ever replace his wife?”

      Macy considered this, wondering if she’d grown suspicious of all men because of what had happened with her father and Richard. Her father had left her mother before Macy was born. She didn’t know him, had never known him. And Richard had run off almost as soon as he learned of Haley’s illness, which only confirmed what her mother had taught her as a child: men don’t have what it takes to stick around when the going gets tough. It’s women who hang on through thick and thin. Edna was proving her words by being the one to help Macy pay her bills now that she couldn’t work because of school and the time she spent at the hospital.

      “I’m just saying it’s normal for him to have a few questions,” Lisa went on.

      “A few questions?” Macy repeated. “Look at this folder. He’s expecting me to write a book! Have I ever taken any drugs? Have I had unprotected sex in the past ten years? Do I drink or smoke? Have I ever sought or obtained psychological counseling? How much caffeine do I drink? I’d have to be the Virgin Mary to pass this test!”

      “Well, you’d come closer than anyone else I know. You’ve never smoked or taken drugs. You need counseling for what you’re going through right now, but you’ve never sought or obtained it, so you can feel pretty good about saying no to that. And you haven’t slept with anyone other than your ex-husband.”

      After a quick check to make sure Haley was still sleeping, Macy gave her friend a look of incredulity and lowered her voice. “Aren’t you forgetting that guy I went home with from Studio 9 last year? You relieved the baby-sitter I’d gotten to watch Haley that night and picked me up at his house the next morning, remember?”

      Lisa grimaced. “You can’t count that. Your husband had just run off with a seventeen-year-old. I think what you did was pretty understandable, considering.”

      For a short time after Richard left, Macy had frequented the bar scene as a way to help soften the emotional blow, but two things had slapped her awake to the realization that she was heading down the wrong path. One was the night she’d slept with a total stranger and woke up wondering where the heck she was. The other was

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