Designer Genes (13 page)

“She was
rubbing people’s ankles and I was afraid she’d get stepped on,” Buffy
explained. “I stashed her in my room. With food, water and a litter box.”

“She freaks
out when she’s shut in.” Carter hadn’t thought to warn Buffy that the cat used
to be a stray. “You shouldn’t mess with her.”

“I thought
she’d be okay. Take a nap or whatever cats do when they’re bored.”

Thrashing
noises emanated from behind the closed door. “Doesn’t sound like she’s bored
now.” Bracing for anything, he opened it.

The bureau,
whose wobbly leg he’d been meaning to fix for months, lay at an awkward angle
atop the sofa. Drawers had fallen out and spilled Buffy’s possessions across
the floor. Wispy black bras, jewel-colored bikini panties and a bright red
bustier seared indelible images into his eyeballs.

From the back
of the couch, Toast yowled and sprang to freedom. “My apologies,” Buffy told the
cat as she streaked by.

There was no
point in chewing out Buffy when she’d intended no harm. Also, that tantalizing
lingerie was rendering Carter close to incoherent. “I should have warned you
about the dresser not being all that stable. Need help with your, uh, things?”

“I can handle
it,” she said quickly.

“Not your—” he
cleared his throat, “personal items. Just these papers and suchlike, before
they get wrinkled.” Carter crouched to collect a few official-looking documents
that had landed in the mix.

“Seriously,
don’t bother.” She reached for them.

“No trouble.”
He frowned, seeing the letterhead of the Los Angeles fertility clinic where
he’d made his donation. “What’s this?”

A sharp,
indrawn breath told him something was amiss. Carter took a step back, holding
onto the documents. He might not be a suspicious man by nature, but neither was
he stupid.

It seemed an
awfully big coincidence that the same woman who’d recruited him a year and a
half ago in Los Angeles should suddenly turn up in Nowhere Junction. He’d been
willing to ascribe it to chance, until now. The presence of these papers, and
the fact that she acted eager to hide them, didn’t bode well.

Giving up her
protest, Buffy stood silent as he riffled through the documents. They included
medical records, his consent form and a letter, which he read aloud, skipping
the convoluted legalities. “Dear Mrs. Arden...” Phrases leaped at him.
“...checked our records...confirm the error indicated by your DNA test..
.regret to inform you that instead of your husband’s sperm...”

He read the
next sentence twice before the significance sank in. When it did, the meaning
plunged all the way down his esophagus and landed in his gut like a heavy-duty
socket wrench.

It explained
why she’d driven a thousand miles to see him. It explained why Allie was the
spitting image of his mother. It explained everything.., and nothing.

“The father of
your infant daughter,” the letter said, “is a donor named Carter Murchison of
Nowhere Junction, Texas.”

Everything had
gone well that morning. Even the leaky pipe had timed its break perfectly,
drawing Carter out of the garage so Buffy and the other ladies could set up
shop.

She should
have known something would go wrong. Something always did.

But not this
crushingly wrong. The stunned expression on Carter’s face worried her. She’d
betrayed his trust, and they both knew it.

If only she
hadn’t taken off for Texas like a ninny. She should have contacted him first
and arranged a meeting with lawyers standing by. Stiff and awkward as it might
have been, at least he wouldn’t believe she’d double-crossed him.

“I should have
told you sooner.” The words sounded as inadequate to her as they must to
Carter.

He stared at
the paper in his hand. “I’m Allie’s father? How is this possible?”

Buffy perched
on the edge of the couch. “The clinic made a mistake. It was a careless
accident.” She babbled on, hoping to stem the tide of dismay. “Things like that
aren’t supposed to happen. Usually, from what I’ve read, clinics have double and
triple checks at every stage of fertility treatments. Especially the kind
involving injections and transfers and donations.”

“That doesn’t
explain what you’re doing here,” he continued doggedly. “As I understand it,
you don’t work for them anymore, so you can’t be here on the clinic’s behalf.”

“Of course
not! I’m not representing them, I’m representing Allie.” Heaven knows, that was
true. “When I found out you were her biological father instead of my husband, I
couldn’t think straight. After a while, I got this idea that it would be better
if I told you in person. Kind of idiotic, huh?”

He’d gone as
stone-faced as a statue. “If you came to Texas to tell me, why didn’t you?”

Buffy
swallowed hard, because she didn’t have a good answer other than her own cowardice.
“After I met you, I figured it would be cruel to break the news without some
preparation.”

“Exactly what
I kind of preparation would that be?” Carter growled.

“I was trying
to explain things gradually. I didn’t do very well, did I?” She tensed, fearing
an explosion. From where she sat, Carter looked so tall, he must have grown
three or four feet in the past few minutes. Or else she’d shrunk.

“Doctors ought
to be careful about these things,” he said gravely. “How did they screw up so
bad?”

“The director
claimed their scanner was on the fritz. Then a technician misread the numbering
code, and the nurse failed to double-check. He assured me he’s completely
revamped the procedures since then.”

“It’s just
plain unforgivable,” Carter said. “I’m surprised lawsuits haven’t put them out
of business.”

“Me, too,”
Buffy agreed. “That still leaves us to deal with the consequences.”

He clasped his
hands behind his back and began to pace. Embarrassingly aware of the nature of
her fallen possessions, Buffy went to stuff them into the drawers. They could
be sorted and folded later.

Carter spoke
at last. “How did you learn about this mistake?”

“Roger was
trying to avoid supporting his daughter, so he insisted on a DNA test. As if I
would cheat on him!” Over the past six months, the pain of her husband’s
heartless treatment had faded but not vanished. “I went through with it just to
humor him, and bolster my case.”

“Only it
didn’t,” he surmised.

She nodded.
“It revealed that Allie wasn’t his.”

That
horrifying moment when she viewed the results on a secure page of the clinic’s
website remained seared into Buffy’s memory. She’d checked and rechecked,
certain that she must have entered the wrong code. When she could no longer
deny that this was the right page, she’d phoned and argued that the clinic had
made a mistake.

Well, it had.
But the mistake was much bigger and more life-altering than mixing up its DNA
calculations.

“You were
married. Couldn’t your husband give you children?” Carter spoke as if from a
numb world beyond emotion. “I mean, was he shooting blanks?”

“No,” she
admitted.

“Then why did
you use a sperm bank?”

She suppressed
a flare of resentment at being cross-examined. Carter had a right to answers,
especially after she’d kept him in the dark.

“When I was a
spokesperson for the clinic, I learned that sperm could be damaged by
radiation.” She took a deep breath. “When Roger announced he had business in
Japan, I was worried about that nuclear reactor that blew up. I talked him into
freezing a specimen.”

“That doesn’t
explain why you used it,” he said.

“He was over
there for a couple of months,” Buffy said. “I should have suspected he was up
to no good, but I trusted him. In fact, I was trying to cement the marriage.
We’d been talking about having a child, and I was eager to get started.”

“Why not ask
him to come home?”

“I nagged.
Frequently,” she assured him. “To shut me up, he told me to use the sperm
specimen. It didn’t occur to me he might be bluffing. So I arranged to be
inseminated, and nine months later, I found myself with a stunning set of DNA
results and no husband. Oh, and a baby.”

“My daughter,”
he repeated softly.

“Please don’t
blame Allie. It’s not her fault.”

“Nobody said
it was.” He frowned into the distance. That appeared to be his entire response.
No yelling, no whining, no blaming.

Buffy had
never seen Carter play his cards so close to his chest. It scared her more than
a stream of outraged accusations because it meant that his outrage must run
deep.

What had she
hoped for, acceptance? He wasn’t offering it and, she told herself harshly, she
shouldn’t expect him to. Accidentally or not, she’d lured him into giving his
sperm, and now she’d showed up with a broken car and an empty wallet, demanding
his help. He had every right to suspect her of exploiting him.

Moreover, all
the men in Buffy’s life, beginning with her father, had bailed out when the
going got tough, and sometimes sooner. Things had certainly gotten tough for
Carter today.

He couldn’t
leave because he lived here. Which meant she’d better start packing before he
threw her out.

“Finella’s
excited about the dress business, and it’s a benefit for the school. Maybe she
can take over.” As usual when Buffy was agitated, words spilled out. “There
must be someone driving to a city who can give me a ride. I’ll be out of here
tomorrow, if I can find a lift. You keep the car to cover the cost of repairs.
In case there’s money left over when you sell it, I’ll send you my mailing
address.”

“Pardon me?”
he said.

“I won’t
prolong the agony.” Buffy swallowed hard. “I can tell it’s time for us to
leave.”

Bracing his
arm against the wall, Carter shook his head. “You’re not leaving until we sort
this out.”

“Are you mad?”
she asked.

“Not at you.”
He resumed talking in the same grim manner. “I can’t pretend to understand how
those clinic people could be so careless, or why that ex-husband of yours acted
like a jerk. And you’re a grown woman, so I won’t preach to you about your
behavior.”

Buffy said a
silent thank-you for small favors. “What exactly do we have to sort out?”

“This thing
about Allie being my daughter,” Carter answered. “Our daughter. The one I just
found out I have.”

He probably
figured she was planning to hold him financially accountable, which she
supposed the law might allow even though he’d become a father by accident. In
Buffy’s opinion, just because the law allowed something, that didn’t make it
ethical. Why should he pay, when Roger had agreed to have the child? “I’m not
asking for support.”

“That isn’t
what I meant.” Carter glanced down at Rover, who had ambled into the room and
was depositing his black-and-tan self atop a mound of Buffy’s T-shirts. “We’ll
discuss this later. Right now, I’m way behind in my work.”

“Carter, you
don’t deserve this trouble,” Buffy said earnestly.

He nudged the
dog to one side. “Discovering that I have a daughter is hardly what I’d call
trouble.”

He had a whole
different perspective from Roger. “What
would
you call it?”

Carter
scratched his head. It was, Buffy decided, one of his most endearing gestures.
Funny, too, since the dog was vigorously scratching his flank in almost an
identical rhythm.

“I’d call it
amazing,” he said.

“Do you mean
amazing as in wonderful, or as in bizarre? A or B?” she added, to simplify
things.

“C,” he said.

“What’s C?”

“Amazing as in
surprising. Kind of like God let Finella rule the world for a day, and she took
these odd ingredients and mixed them together a new way.” Carter hoisted the
bureau and, with Buffy’s assistance, shifted it upright. One leg had broken
and, to compensate, she wedged a how-to book about caring for babies
underneath.

What good was
advice that didn’t cover the kind of situation she was stuck with? The experts
never told you what you really needed to know, such as how to respond to a man
who refused to show his emotions.

“That’s all
you feel?” Buffy prodded. “Surprised?”

“I’ll think on
it and let you know the rest at dinner.” After shaking the bureau to verify
that it wouldn’t repeat its tumbling act, he left.

Numbly Buffy
went about replacing the rest of her possessions in the drawers. She decided
not to pack yet. Not until after he spoke his piece tonight.

*

When he
reached the garage, Carter was glad to find that the ladies had finished using
the office and removed the curtain. Not a single garment remained hanging from
the overhead door, either.

The only
person left was Mazeppa, in the office making goo goo eyes at a playpenned
Allie. When Carter entered, the woman pursed her thin face and waved a sheaf of
twenty-dollar bills at him. “I guess these are yours, to pay for the car.”

“Give them to
Buffy,” he said. “I’ll watch the baby.”

She cocked her
head as if to argue, but for once restrained herself. With a click of the
tongue, Mazeppa departed with the day’s take.

Cautiously
Carter approached the playpen. He felt clumsy and not much like a father. Heck,
he didn’t even know what a father was supposed to do with a little tyke like
this.

Although he’d
held Allie several times during the past three days, this was different. Now he
knew that his blood ran in her veins. That might be an old-fashioned way of
thinking, but it meant she shared his heritage, all the way back to his
great-grandfather, a traveling peddler and tinker who’d arrived in town in the
1920s. And his great-grandmother, a cattleman’s daughter. And his other
ancestors, down the ages since Adam and Eve or a hairy ape, depending on which
story you believed.