The Parent Portal

Back from the dead...

And back in her heart?

Emily and Winston Hannigan had a fairy-tale romance...until he perished for his country. So when Winston arrives on her doorstep very much alive, Emily’s overjoyed. Winston’s a changed man, though. He may have survived the unthinkable. But he believes he doesn’t deserve Emily—or their unborn child. And Winston’s secret shakes Emily to the core. But at that core is still love...

Having written over eighty-five novels, TARA TAYLOR QUINN is a USA TODAY bestselling author with more than seven million copies sold. She is known for delivering intense, emotional fiction. Tara is a past president of Romance Writers of America and is a seven-time RWA RITA® Award finalist. She has also appeared on TV across the country, including CBS Sunday Morning. She supports the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you need help, please contact 1-800-799-7233.

Also by Tara Taylor Quinn

The Daycare Chronicles

Her Lost and Found BabyAn Unexpected Christmas BabyThe Baby Arrangement

The Fortunes of Texas

Fortune’s Christmas Baby

Where Secrets are Safe

A Family for ChristmasFalling for the Brother

Family Secrets

For Love or MoneyHer Soldier’s BabyThe Cowboy’s Twins

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Having the Soldier’s Baby

Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09121-3

HAVING THE SOLDIER’S BABY

© 2019 TTQ Books LLC

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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“Winston? Oh, my God, Winston! I knew you’d come. I was waiting. I knew!” The outburst went on, slightly garbled with tears, as weight slammed against his body.

He grabbed for it, lest it fall. Or he did. Arms clung to him, around his neck, as breasts fit into him in a familiar, completely natural way. His arms lowered enough to find their place at the curve of waist just below his as his foot scooted, allowing room for the smaller foot sliding in between his.

The drill was embedded in him. As much of his naval training had been. Came to him with ease. Until Emily lifted her head, gazed into his eyes and planted her mouth against his.

Lips pursed tightly closed, he stood there, eyes open.

And waited for her to figure out that the man she’d known and loved no longer existed.

* * *

THE PARENT PORTAL:

A place where miracles are made

Dear Reader,

Welcome to The Parent Portal—a place where miracles are made for those struggling to have children. A place where the professionals trying to make the magic happen might find a miracle or two of their own. So come with me inside the doors of The Parent Portal, a privately owned fertility clinic where biology matters. People here understand that donors are more than science—and they arrange legally binding agreements that provide both parties with “the right to know.” The right to know if a child is born. To know the child is loved and safe. The right to find your biological child if you have a burning need to do so.

Or the right to have a child with your soldier husband’s sperm when he dies in battle.

So much in the world is uncertain, but at The Parent Portal, you can be sure that people come first, love matters and miracles can happen.

Having the Soldier’s Baby is my eighty-ninth novel with Harlequin and I can promise you an intense, emotional ride!

I love to hear from readers! You can find all of my social media at tarataylorquinn.com!

Happy reading!

TTQ

To all of those who’ve struggled to have a family...may your hearts be filled with love.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Dear Emily,

Forgive my familiarity. We’ve never met and yet I feel as though I know you. You will be receiving formal notification, but I couldn’t leave it at that. The decision has been made to officially pronounce Winston’s death. This will award you the death benefits and pension you deserve, and yet somehow, I sense that isn’t what matters to you.

As Winston’s immediate superior I could go on about the standout soldier he was. But during this last tour... I walked into the trap with him. Ahead of him. I unknowingly led him to his eventual death. He saved my life. And we spent days in hiding together. Perhaps I am being selfish, but I need you to know that you are all that kept us alive. His talk of you. His love for you. His belief that that kind of love was real.

In any event, it’s been two years since he left to find water for us and never came back. Two years since I was discovered by friendly forces. Two years of trying to understand why I am here and he is not. He had everything to live for.

Please know that for the rest of my life, I am here for you, a willing servant, pledging to have your back or do whatever I can for you, no matter what...

A signature followed. Contact information. Emily couldn’t see any of it through her tears. She wadded up the letter and threw it across the room, half watching as it hit the wood blinds open to the California sunshine outside her living room window. Their living room window.

Dressed in black pants that hugged her ankles, a loose cream-colored sheath, and a short black-and-cream three-quarter-sleeve open sweater, with three-inch black stilettos, she tried to pretend that this day was like any other, that she hadn’t been up all night, that she was prepared for the meeting she would be leading that morning in the largest conference room of the LA marketing firm she’d been with since college.

The forty-five-minute drive north might have been preparation enough if she hadn’t spent the past twelve hours vacillating between grief that cut the air out of her lungs and an anger that was equally debilitating.

In the ten years she’d been with the firm, she’d never called in sick. She’d been at work when officials had come to her two years before to inform her that Winston was missing in action in Afghanistan. She’d remained in her office, mostly comatose, but there, until the end of the day, but had put in for a couple of vacation days before she’d left.

She usually scheduled vacation for birthdays and anniversaries.

And this?

What was it really, but a formality? Something everyone around her assumed?

Good news, even, as it released benefits to her that she didn’t already have.

She didn’t need them.

She needed Winston.

Staring out the blinds, at the grass that she kept carefully manicured just as Winston had, she let the sun’s bright glint partially blind her for a moment or two as she tried to look past it to find some kind of direction.

For two years she’d refused to believe the love of her life was dead. Winston wouldn’t leave her on earth alone. They’d promised when they were fourteen that they’d be there for each other for the rest of their lives. And at fifteen, when they’d proclaimed their romantic love. And again at twenty-two, when they’d stood in front of an entire town’s worth of family and friends and made the vow publicly.

For two years, she’d refused to believe.

For two years she’d been alone, living in an emotional freezer, waiting.

No answers appeared in the brightness outside her window. Stars and yellow-lined pink smears dotted her vision as she moved toward her purse and keys. She had to get to the office.

She wasn’t dead, and work was the life she had.

Almost at the front door, Emily glanced toward the living room. Tearing up again, she went back, picked up the wadded paper, carefully smoothed it. Carried it out to the car with her. Drove all the way to LA with it on her lap.

She parked in her designated spot five minutes ahead of schedule. Dropped her keys in their pocket in her purse. And very carefully, she picked up the letter, folded it and slid it in her wallet.

* * *

Emily wasn’t 100 percent on board with her plan a month later when she presented herself at the fertility clinic in town. Her heart was all there, 150 percent. Her body, the same.

But her mind...wasn’t totally convinced she hadn’t lost it.

“Let’s head back to my office,” Christine Elliott, the clinic’s founder and manager, said as she collected Emily from the large and oddly calming waiting room. Instead of sitting in seats placed close together, forcing patients to face each other, the comfortable armchairs were arranged in separate areas, only two to four per grouping, with large floral arrangements separating them. Healing tones of new age music played, and the wall art, with predominant shades of purple, was somehow comforting.

The air was infused with a hint of lavender. She recognized the scent immediately only because, in her attempts to survive over the past couple of years, she’d gone through a phase of relying heavily on aromatherapy.

And, okay, still dabbed her wrists with pure lavender oil on occasion.

She’d taken up carrying peppermints with her at all times, too—just in case they really did promote calm and mental clarity.

As they reached the door bearing Christine’s placard at the end of the inner hallway, Emily pulled an individually wrapped little white circle out of her pocket and slipped it into her mouth. Fresh breath was always good.

In a short flowered summer dress, Christine could have been heading out for a day of shopping and lunch with friends. Emily liked that. Just...it felt better entering her office for “that” conversation with a woman who looked like shopping and lunch, rather than austerity.

Not one who’d ever really spent tons of time contemplating her wardrobe once she’d purchased clothes—figuring she did the work in the store so whatever was in her closet had already passed inspection—Emily had troubled herself for most of her shower time that morning, trying to determine what to wear. Would she do better if she appeared casual, like she was fully sane and prepared to calmly bring a child into the world all alone?

Or would businesslike and competent serve her better?

Her white capris and short black top with jeweled thongs didn’t seem to matter a whit as she took a seat on the couch Christine indicated for their meeting.

The first time she’d been in that room—the only other time she’d been there—she and Winston had been shown to the two leather-bottomed seats in front of Christine’s massive light wood desk. She’d liked sitting there. The woman’s desk looked like something out of an upscale trinket shop, with everything carefully placed to show it off in its best light. To tempt you to want to own it. Angels in various forms. A china horse. Florals and a small colorful metal heart sculpture.

The couch, also light-colored and leather, faced the chair Christine had landed on. Emily had nowhere to look but in the other woman’s eyes.

“You asked to speak with me specifically,” Christine opened the conversation. No “How have you been?” Or “Nice to see you.”

Emily nodded, her light blond hair loose and straight around her shoulders. She used to curl it. Pull it back in clips. It all seemed like too much trouble these days.

“You were behind me in school...what, a couple of years?” she asked inanely, panicked for a second as she grappled with the reality of what she was doing. Christine had never attended parties or been a part of any crowd that Emily knew of, but she’d recognized her when she and Winston had visited the clinic.

He hadn’t remembered her.

“Three years. I was a freshman your senior year.”

“You used to leave during lunch. The McDermott Street door was down the hall from my locker and I’d see you...”

Only seniors had been allowed to leave for lunch.

“You always left alone...”

She’d wondered about it, in the way you’re curious about something in the moment and then forget about it. It hadn’t been any of her business.

And still wasn’t.

“My grandmother was diabetic and needed an insulin shot,” Christine said, not seemingly at all put out by Emily’s rudeness. Or the unprofessional and inappropriate topic of conversation.

“You were, what, fourteen?”

Christine’s short dark hair barely touched her shoulders as she shrugged. “I wanted to help, thought it was cool and seriously didn’t mind doing it. Gram said Gramps hurt when he did it. Besides, she always had a great lunch ready for me when I got there.”

Still...she’d been fourteen. A kid. Missing out on all of the gossip and drama in the lunchroom. And the friendships that formed or solidified because of them.

Not to say that Christine hadn’t had a slew of friends. Emily had no idea who Christine had known.

“I was sorry to hear about Winston.” The compassion in Christine’s brown eyes came close to undoing her. And focused her, too. Finally.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, sitting upright on the couch, nothing at her back. Because that’s how it was going to be. “Labwerks contacted me... I actually forgot to pay my yearly storage fee...”

Christine could have jumped in as Emily faltered. Instead, she sat silently, that warm look still in her gaze.

“They asked if I wanted them to discard Winston’s sperm...”

The vial had been taken as part of an initial testing process when he and Emily first visited Elliott Fertility Clinic. They’d been trying to have a child for over a year with no success. Low motility had been ruled out. As had any other obvious reasons for an inability to procreate. They’d been given the option to keep trying naturally, with some hormonal help, or consider artificial insemination. Because they’d both just turned thirty and figured they had time, they’d opted to go the natural route for a while longer, but had paid to have Winston’s sperm stored just in case.

“So what can I do for you?” Christine’s question came quietly. More of a boost than a push. Like she was helping Emily do what she’d come to do, not forcing her to get on with it.

“I’ve become obsessed by an idea I had and I want your opinion before I allow myself to seriously consider it.”

“Why me? I’m not a counselor—Though, as you know, we have a couple of top-rate ones on staff, and I’d be happy to refer you...”

Emily shook her head. Maybe a counselor was what she needed but it wasn’t what she wanted. Not at that point, anyway.

“I want your opinion.”

“My degree is in health management. I founded the clinic, I run it, but the work that we do...that’s the fabulous doctors and their teams, not me.”

“When we met with you before...it was clear to me...you aren’t in this as a business. You’re here because you care about people.”

With a silent nod, Christine acknowledged the truth of the remark.

“And...you understand that sometimes, for some people, the need to have a family, by whatever means, overrides most everything else...”

“Whatever legal means...” Christine said slowly, her look more assessing. “What are you considering?”

“Nothing illegal.” Emily tried to smile and chuckle. She choked instead. And when Christine brought her a bottle of water, she took down half of it. “I’m sorry.”

Taking the seat next to her on the couch, Christine turned to her. “I’m happy to listen.”

Chapter Two

Emily rambled for what seemed like an hour. She just talked. Unburdening herself of myriad thoughts. Relaying arguments that played out in her head. Releasing a little bit of the panic that had become an almost-constant companion over the past month. She wasn’t looking for healing. For therapy. Truth was, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Permission maybe.

She wanted some kind of professional response from the health care manager, as though such a response would validate the seemingly unstoppable urge to have herself inseminated.

The clock on the wall said only about ten minutes had passed when she finally fell silent.

“You have the legal right to use your husband’s sperm.” Christine’s response sounded professional. And maybe more, too.

She didn’t need the other woman’s pity. She had so much of that coming at her she was almost buried in it.

“Everyone I know is feeling sorry for me,” she blurted. “I’m attempting to prevent myself from sinking into the pool they’re creating and letting it drown the life out of me. And yet is it fair to bring a child into the world because I’m drowning in grief?”

“Is that why you’d be doing it? Because of the grief?”

It was obvious, wasn’t it? That’s what everyone would think. Would assume. Including her.

“When I met with you before it seemed to me that you and Winston were equally determined to have a child. That it was something you both needed in equally intense measure.”

“It was!” Why would the woman be going back there at this point in time? That dream, that life, was over.

“And your desire to be a mother, to raise a family, do you think that died with your husband?”

“Of course not. If it had, having a child wouldn’t assuage the grief now, would it?” She heard the sarcasm in her tone. Was ashamed of it. And kind of relieved to know that she had fight left in her, too.

Christine stared at her. Expecting her to get something?

“My mother died when I was ten, trying to have the sibling I so badly wanted, the son my father wanted,” Christine stated a few moments later. “She was forty at the time. Because my father worked eighty hours a week, he left me with my grandparents...”

“The grandmother who was diabetic.” Emily’s turmoil settled, desperation eased for a second, as she saw again the high school girl leaving at lunchtime.

Christine nodded. “Other things happened that don’t bear going into right now, but ultimately, at twenty-two, I was alone, without any close family, and only the money left to me from my mother’s life insurance policy.”

And here Emily had been wallowing in her own pity. Compassion spread through her instead.

“I’d spent the previous twelve years fighting off grief, eschewing all the pity, desperately grasping sometimes, and there I was, a college graduate with a degree in health management, thinking I’d go on to med school as my mother had...”

“Your mother was a doctor? Here in Marie Cove?” Their little town wasn’t all that well known, had no public beach access, but though it had only been incorporated for a couple of decades, it had been around more than a century and had enough of a population that not everyone knew one another.

“A pediatrician,” Christine said. “Children were her life.”

And she died trying to give birth to one. Emily wasn’t sure where Christine was going with this, but for the first time since she’d received word that her husband had been declared legally dead, Emily felt a sense of...calm. And maybe a wee bit of strength, too.

“I had a choice to make,” Christine said. “I could take that money, leave Marie Cove, start a new life for myself, a family of my own, or I could stay here in the town where I was born, in the home where I grew up, and use my mother’s money to honor her life and the importance of children to families. To make it easier for women like her, and others, too, to have the children they need to feel complete. To give couples that chance.”

The fertility clinic.

Emily wanted to take the other woman’s hand. To thank her somehow, though nothing in her life was any different than it had been moments ago. “What happened to your father?”

“He met a woman in LA, ten years older than me, twenty younger than him, remarried, had his son. And another daughter, too. They never asked me to live with them, but honestly, even if they had, I’d have chosen to stay with my grandparents.”

“Do you see them? Your dad and his family? Your half brother and sister?”

“Once or twice a year. For an hour or so over a meal, usually. I never got along with his new wife. Probably somewhat my fault. But on the other hand, he never tried all that hard to bridge the gap.”

Certain that there was a lot more Christine wasn’t saying, Emily thought over what she had said. Searching for its application to the current situation.

“You’re worried about the morality of using Winston’s sperm when he isn’t here to father his child. Or have any say in whether or not he has a fatherless child in the world.”

Christine’s statement hit home. Hard. “I didn’t say that.”

“You kind of did.”

Not in so many words...but she’d rambled a lot and... “I guess that’s part of it,” she said, clasping her hands together in her lap, slumping some, too, but still not leaning back against the couch. “Is it fair to the child? To bring him or her into a single-parent home?”

“You know these are questions only you can answer.”

But that didn’t mean she liked that truth.

“A lot of people have disagreed with choices I’ve made in my life,” Christine continued. “One of them was choosing to use my mother’s money to build this clinic when I could have gone on to med school, or been a lawyer, or had any other life. But for me, this clinic is a part of her, and using my life to keep her legacy alive, to actually be able to give other people what she wanted most—the chance to have babies—this was my right choice. I’m happier today than I’ve been since I was ten and lost her.”

Emily believed her.

“You have to make your right choice,” Christine’s words fell softly between them. “I could tell you what I think, or give you pros and cons, but you’ve done a pretty stellar job of arguing both sides all on your own.”

No disputing that one.

“You know the paperwork you and Winston signed when you started with us gives you permission for the use of his sperm.”

She knew. Of course she knew. Her, and only her. That had been important to them.

“How do I know this is the choice he’d have wanted me to make?”

Therein was the crux of her self-torture. They’d never talked about one of them carrying on without the ever. It hadn’t been an option for them. Or a possibility she’d ever considered.

Hard to believe she’d ever been that naive.

“He’s not here, Emily. You think my mother would choose for me to be living alone in her parents’ home, dedicating my life to work? You think she’d choose for me to never have babies of my own?”

When she put it that way...not likely.

“You’re young. You’ve got a lot of years to have kids.”

“I’m childless by choice.” The brightly dressed woman smiled as she looked around her office. “This is my life. There’s no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice. And my point to you is...just because grief plays a part in your choice, that doesn’t mean it’s reactionary, and therefore invalid.”

Emily considered that for a moment before replying. “I’ve known since I was a teenager that I was going to be the mother of Win’s kids someday. I knew I’d have a career, that I’d be someone professionally, that that was important to me, but being the mother of his kids, being his wife, mattered more than anything else.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

Emily smiled and teared up a bit, too. “I think that’s pretty obvious, huh?”

Christine shrugged.

“I’m going to do this.”

No judgment came from the other woman. No sense that she was doing the right or wrong thing. That she’d made the choice Christine thought she should make. Or hadn’t.

But she felt a kinship with her.

“I’ve got the ability to have my husband live on, even after his death, to bring parts of him to life, to give him descendants. I can raise his children and love them as much as we both wanted to. I know his views on pretty much every aspect of raising children...we talked endlessly about schooling, about discipline—even eating habits we’d allow. And not allow. It’s crazy-sounding, but Winston and I...we were just meant to be. And our family was meant to be, too.”

She wasn’t rambling anymore. Wasn’t lost in the not-knowing. She and Winston had talked over every detail of child raising, of investing, of career plans, vacationing, homeownership, pet acquiring—but they’d never once talked about one of them not being there.

They’d never discussed death.

She knew how he’d thought about telling his children about sex, but had no idea what he’d think of her using his sperm to have his baby after he died.

So she couldn’t make this decision based on him. She was the only one left. The choice was hers alone.

The first big decision she’d ever made completely alone.

“It might not take,” she said aloud, still a bit shaky as a whole new set of worries came upon her. “This might all have been for nothing if I can’t get pregnant.”

“Nothing in your tests showed you to be infertile.”

“I know, but...”

“If nothing else, insemination gives you a better shot,” Christine said, more distant and professional now than she’d been. “If you’re still unsure, or thinking it might be better if it didn’t work, if you’re looking for an out...”

“I’m not!” She stood, and Christine followed suit. “I want this child more than anything...”

Christine’s smile was a surprise. But not as much of one as the hug the other woman reached over and gave her.

“I know,” the health director said. “And now you do, too.”