‘Human error.’ The words were practically spat out.
‘Poor woman…’ Lily’s voice trailed off.
‘What?’ Carter’s voice echoed around the truck.
Lily shook her head. ‘Do you know how hard it is to get pregnant with IVF? What’s her circumstances? She’s just found out she’s carrying someone else’s baby. A baby she probably has no legal rights to. How must she feel? How does her husband feel? Have you considered her at all?’
Carter shook his head. ‘I can’t believe your first thoughts are for her.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘This is my baby. My baby that has been wrongly implanted into someone else. My baby, my sperm.’
Lily shook her head. ‘It’s so much more than that.’ She waved the letter at him. ‘What does this mean? It says here your embryos were supposed to be “destroyed”,’ she raised her fingers in the air and made quotation mark signs.
Carter sighed. This was harder than he’d thought. He’d imagined meeting Lily and persuading her to stand next to him in court, with the hope of gaining custody of his baby. The last thing he’d expected was for her to go to bat for the opposition.
How could he expect her to understand? She looked as if children were the last thing on her mind. What kind of a woman drove a Ducati and spent her life doing parachute jumps? Was she really the best person to be standing in a courtroom next to him? Maybe his attorney had got it wrong. Maybe he would be better off on his own.
What on earth had made her donate her eggs? The thought pricked his mind. Maybe if he could get to the bottom of that, he would understand her a little better, and understand how she could help his case.
‘I didn’t have a choice about destroying the embryos. We’d had them fertilised purely for the purpose of using them in our marriage. My marriage was over—it wasn’t appropriate to use them now. That—and the fact I’ve no idea where Tabitha is.’
The penny dropped in Lily’s mind. ‘So I’m your back-up plan?’ She looked indignant.
Carter sighed and started the pick-up again, pulling onto the smooth freeway towards the hospital. Lily was going to be difficult. How on earth was he going to persuade her to help?
‘What made you be an egg donor?’ Maybe if he could distract her, turn the attention onto herself, it could work in his favour. Maybe if she remembered why she’d donated eggs in the first place, she might be more sympathetic to his plight.
Lily jerked in her seat, as if the question had caught her unawares. Her head went downwards, facing her lap. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had some student debts to pay. Ivy League colleges aren’t cheap.’
Carter resisted the urge to slam on the brakes. ‘You donated your eggs for money?’ This was even worse than he’d thought possible. A woman who donated eggs for money would never evoke the sympathy of the court.
‘Yes…and no. It’s private.’ Lily turned her head and looked out of the window at the passing traffic, clearly signalling the conversation was over.
But Carter was having none of it. ‘Well, since we selected you as our egg donor, I guess I feel I’m entitled to know. I need your help Lily. Right now, you’re probably the only person who can help me get my child back. I can’t find my ex-wife, so you’re the next best thing. I’m well aware you might not be interested in children, but I’d hoped, as an egg donor, you might be able to say something in my favour. Anything. That you donated your eggs to give childless couples like us a chance. That you believe in families as much as I do. That you know we were screened by the clinic and went through all the psychological profiling to ensure we were ready. Anything—but you did it for the money’
‘Don’t make it sound like that,’ she snapped.
‘Sound like what? You sold part of your body for profit?’
‘How dare you?’
‘Oh, I dare! I dare, because right now I see my chance to be a father floating out the window because some money-grabber won’t help me. I see my flesh and blood being brought up by complete strangers because of a human error.’ He thumped his hand on the steering-wheel. ‘This is my child. Mine. I want nothing more than to be a good father. Is that too much to ask in this life?’
Lily shrank back into her seat. This wasn’t going well at all. How could she explain to him why she’d done it? Who did this man think he was to ask her questions and stand in moral judgement over her? He had no right!
‘Listen, Mr Perfect. You track me down at an airfield and spring this on me. You distract me when I’m due to land and make me injure myself. You know nothing about me. Nothing. And I’m quite sure that there was a clause in the clinic’s agreement that said you couldn’t track me down—no matter what the reason. So, how dare you?’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘How dare you think you have a right to stand in judgement over me? You’ve no idea what my reasons were for donating eggs and I’m sure as hell not going to tell you!’ She folded her arms firmly across her chest. ‘Now drop me off at the ER and leave me alone.’
‘Not a chance.’ The words came out like bullets from a gun.
Deep frown lines etched Lily’s head. She lifted her fingers and massaged the sides of her temples, taking a few deep breaths. ‘Do you know what, John Carter? I don’t need this right now. I don’t need the stress of this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry this has happened to you. But to be frank…’ she took a deep breath, because right now she’d nothing to lose ‘…if this is the way you spoke to your wife, I’m not surprised she’s currently MIA.’
Carter’s brow wrinkled. ‘MIA?’
‘Missing in action.’ Lily sighed.
A smile danced across Carter’s lips. He couldn’t help it. Her bolshiness amused him. She didn’t seem to care that right now he could throw open the door of the pick-up and leave her and her busted ankle stranded at the side of the road. She didn’t seem to know how to keep her mouth in check. She just said whatever she felt. And he liked that. He liked that a lot.
She stopped gazing at the freeway for a moment and stared at him again. ‘What’s with the super-dad clause anyway? Most young, handsome guys I know would run a mile from something like this. Most guys your age are out sowing their wild oats rather than trying to create their own personal football team. What gives?’
Carter’s head turned like a shot. ‘You think I’m handsome?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Yes, you did.’ The smirk stretched over his face.
‘It’s the headache.’ She pressed her fingers to her temples again, then looked down towards the floor. ‘That, and the supposed broken ankle that I have.’ She glanced at the passing road signs. ‘How much longer till we get there?’
‘You didn’t answer the question. Do you think I’m handsome?’ He wasn’t letting her off that easily.
‘Let it go, John.’ She emphasized the word heavily, relying on the fact he’d remember they weren’t friends.
‘Why should I? It’s not every day I get called handsome.’ He signalled and shifted into the other lane of the freeway, getting ready to take the next exit road. ‘And I’m not trying to be super-dad. I’ve done the wild oats things, it bored me. The one thing I’ve always wanted was to have a family.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ He shot her a cheeky glance. ‘Women don’t always get to have the monopoly on wanting a family and having a biological clock that ticks. I want to be young enough, and healthy enough, to play with my kids—not watch from the rocker on the porch.’
Lily gave an involuntary snigger. The image in her mind of an elderly and grey-haired John Carter sitting on his rocker on the porch was too much for her.
He pulled up outside the ER and