Having the Bachelor's Baby. Victoria Pade

wasn’t something Clair disagreed with. It was just that when it came to this baby, she felt sort of selfish.

      She wasn’t proud of that. She hated to admit it even to herself.

      But in the past year she’d lost her father, her husband and the home she’d built with Rob. She’d lost half of what they’d received as wedding gifts, half of everything they’d acquired during their marriage. Rob—being Rob—had competed for the friends they’d shared and because her father’s death and divorce had piggybacked and left Clair emotionally reeling, she simply hadn’t had the energy to woo those friends to her side—so she’d lost many of the people in her life, too. She’d lost the future she’d been planning on, the future she’d been so sure she would have. She’d even lost half of the goldfish she alone had nurtured for years because Rob had actually gone to court to battle for them, and the court had even divided those down the middle—three to Clair and three to Rob.

      And she knew, that had she and Rob had children, those children and every minute of their lives would have been something she would have had to fight for. So she couldn’t help feeling that as long as Ben didn’t know that she was pregnant, this baby was hers alone—like a wonderful, secret little gift to help ease the pain of all those other losses.

      Not just any gift, either. The one gift, the one thing she’d spent the last three years of her marriage trying to have. The one thing that had been her deepest heart’s desire for as long as she could remember. The one thing that she knew she couldn’t bear to lose any part of….