February 1
The pencil snapped in Flynn's fingers Monday morning.
Ledgers forgotten, he rose with the phone still pressed to
his ear and walked around his desk to close his office door.
He leaned against it. No one on the sixth floor of Maddox
Communications needed to hear what he thought the woman on
the other end of the line had just said or his reply to her
statement.
"I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?"
"I'm Luisa from New Horizons Fertility Clinic. Your wife
has asked to be inseminated with your sperm," a cheerful
female voice enunciated precisely as if he was an idiot. At
the moment he felt like one.
His
wife? He didn't have a wife. Not anymore. A
familiar hollowness settled in his chest.
"Do you mean Renee?"
"Yes, Mr. Maddox. She's asking for your sample."
Head reeling, he tried to break down this crazy conversation
and make sense of it. First, why would Renee try to pass
herself off as his wife when they'd been apart seven years?
She'd been the one to file for divorce the minute the
one-year waiting period had passed. And second, there was
the donation he'd made on a stupid dare back in college. Not
a wise decision. Linking the two separate incidents boggled
his mind.
"My 'sample' is fourteen years old. I thought you would
have disposed of it by now."
"No, sir. It's still viable. Semen, if properly stored,
can last beyond fifty years. But you stipulated that your
specimen not be used without your written consent. I'll need
you to sign a form to release it to your wife."
She's not my wife. But he kept the rebuttal to
himself. The advertising agency dealt with some extremely
conservative clients. One whiff of this story getting out
and they could lose business—not something Madd Comm
could afford in these tight economic times.
He scanned his office—the last happy project he and
his ex-wife had completed together. When he'd resigned from
his previous job and joined the family advertising agency,
he and Renee together had chosen the glass desk, the pair of
cream leather sofas and the profusion of plants. Plants he'd
managed not to kill—unlike his marriage. He and Renee
had been a good team.
Had been. Past tense.
He intended to get to the bottom of this fiasco, but one
thing was certain. Nobody was getting his frozen,
fourteen-year-old sperm.
"Destroy the sample."
"I'll need your written consent for that, too," the
faceless voice quipped back.
"Fax over the form. I'll sign it and fax it back."
"Give me your numbers and I'll get it right to you."
Flynn's mind raced as he gave the numbers by rote. He tried
to recall the awful months surrounding Renee's moving out,
but much of it was a blur. He'd lost his father, his
architectural career and then his wife all within six
miserable months. A year after Renee had moved out he'd
received the divorce papers, reopening an unhealed wound.
The old anger returned—anger toward Renee for giving
up on them so easily and toward himself for allowing it to
happen. He detested failure. None more than his own.
The fax machine in the corner beeped, signaling an incoming
missive. He checked the letterhead. "It's here. I'll
return it before the ink dries."
After ending the call, he whipped the sheets off the
machine, read, signed and then faxed them back.
His last memory of the divorce papers was of his brother
promising to mail them after they'd sat on Flynn's desk for
a month because Flynn hadn't had the heart to mail them and
break that final link with Renee. What had happened to the
documents after Brock took them?
The back of Flynn's neck prickled. Wait a minute. He didn't
remember receiving a copy of the divorce decree. Hadn't his
divorced friends said something about getting an official
notification in the mail?
He was divorced, wasn't he? But if so, why would Renee lie
to the clinic?
Lead settled in his gut. Renee had never been a liar.
He reached for the phone to call his lawyer, but stopped.
Andrew would have to track down the information and call
back, and Flynn had never been good at sitting and waiting.
Brock was closer.
Flynn yanked open his door so quickly he startled his PA.
"Cammie, I'll be in Brock's office."
"Do you want me to call and see if he's free?"
"No. He'll make time for this." He'd damned well
better make time.
Flynn's feet pounded on the black oak floors as he strode
down the hall to the opposite side of the sixth floor and
Brock's west corner office. He nodded to Elle, his brother's
executive assistant, but didn't slow down as he passed her
desk. Ignoring her squeak of protest, he barged into Brock's
office without knocking.
His brother, with the phone to his ear, looked up in
surprise, then held up his finger. Flynn shook his head and
made an
X with his forearms in the universal
"shut down" signal, then closed the door. Brock
wrapped up his conversation.
"Problem?" he asked after he'd cradled the receiver.
"What did you do with my divorce papers?"
Brock jerked back in his chair. Surprise filled eyes the
same blue as Flynn saw in the mirror every morning, and then
the surprise turned to wariness.
Flynn's gut clenched. "You did mail them, didn't you,
Brock?"
Brock rose, exhaling a slow breath. He unlocked and opened a
file-cabinet drawer, then withdrew a sheaf of papers and
swore under his breath. "No."
Shock rattled Flynn to the soles of his feet. "What?"
"I forgot."
His heart hammered in his chest and in his ears. "You
forgot? How is that possible?"
Clutching the back of his neck, Brock grimaced. "I
stalled initially because you were so broken up over losing
Renee that I hoped once you two calmed down you'd resolve
whatever issue drove you apart. I felt partially responsible
for the demise of your marriage because I pressured you into
leaving a career you loved to come aboard as Maddox's VP.
And then I forgot. Stupid of me, but if you recall it was a
tough time for all of us after Dad died."
Flynn's legs went weak. Flabbergasted, he sank into a
leather chair and dropped his head in his hands.
Married. He was still married. To Renee.
A confusing swirl of responses swept through him. Tamping
them down, he focused on the facts.
If Renee was passing herself off as his wife, then she must
have known they weren't divorced. The question was, how long
had she known, and why hadn't she called and chewed him out
for not mailing the forms, or at the very least, sicced her
attorney on him?
"Flynn, are you okay?"
Hell no.
"Of course," he answered automatically. He'd never
been one to share his problems. He wasn't going to start now.
As his shock slowly subsided, a completely different emotion
took its place. Hope. No, it was more than that. Elation
filled him like helium, making him feel weightless.
He and Renee weren't divorced.
After years of silence, he had a reason to contact her. A
reason besides finding out why she'd tried to pull a fast
one with his sperm. But for now it was enough to know they
weren't divorced and she wanted to have his baby.
The surreal feeling left him reeling. "I'll call my
lawyer and find out where I stand. I'm going to take a few
days off."
"You? You never take time off. But as much as I hate to
say it, now is not a good time."
"I don't care. The situation has to be dealt with. Now."
"I guess you're right. Here. Again, I apologize. If
you'd ever demonstrated any real interest in another woman,
maybe it would have tripped my memory. Maybe not. It's a
lousy excuse, but there it is. What brought on this sudden
interest in your divorce? Is Renee planning to remarry?"
Flynn flinched. Logically, he knew Renee had probably dated
since their separation, as had he, but the idea of her with
other men filled him with a possessiveness that should have
died long ago. He rose to his feet and took the document
that should have ended his marriage and made an instant
decision not to share the sperm news. His family was better
off not knowing.
"I don't know Renee's plans. I haven't seen her in
years." She'd wanted it that way. But now he would see
her. His pulse accelerated at the prospect.
"Flynn, I'm sure I don't need to warn you that we need
to keep this quiet, but I'm going to, anyway. News of this
getting out won't help our cause against Golden Gate
Promotions, and I'll be damned if I want to hear that
bastard Athos Koteas crowing in glee if we lose more
clients."
The mention of their rival almost dampened Flynn's
excitement. "Understood."
He returned to his office and crossed straight to the
shredder. Through the window above the machine, the sun
glowed just above the roof lines in the distance. The
symbolism of a new day and a new beginning didn't escape
him. Losing Renee had been the biggest regret of his life.
His older brother's negligence had given Flynn the perfect
opportunity to see if the attraction was still there and if
so to win her back.
He fed the papers through the slot one page at a time,
enjoying the whine and grind of the machine turning his
biggest failure into crosscut paper fragments. When he
finished he felt like celebrating. Instead, he sat down at
his computer.
He needed to locate his wife.
MADCOM2.
The light blue BMW's license plate snagged Renee's attention
as she turned into her driveway. She almost clipped her
mailbox post with her minivan's front bumper and quickly
jerked the wheel to the left.
MADCOM equaled Maddox Communications.
Her stomach churned like a dough mixer as she parked beside
her visitor. She knew the identity of the car's owner from
the "2" part of the tag before her ex— her
husband—climbed from the driver's seat.
Ever since she'd heard the clinic's message on her answering
machine informing her that her request for Flynn's sperm had
been denied, she'd known it was only a matter of time before
he came looking for her. The clinic must have contacted him.
Her attorney had warned her of the possibility.
But nothing could prepare her for Flynn looming over her car
even before she could pull the key from the ignition. The
moment she disengaged the locks, he opened her door. Heart
racing and her mouth going dry, she fought to appear calm,
grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and stepped from
the vehicle, ignoring the hand he offered in assistance. She
couldn't touch him yet, and wasn't sure she'd ever be ready
for that again even in the most casual way.
Dreading the conversation ahead, she tipped back her head to
look up at the man she'd once loved with all her heart. The
man who'd broken her.
Flynn had changed. And yet he hadn't. His eyes were still
impossibly blue and his hair inky dark, but a few strands of
silver now glimmered at his temples. His shoulders were as
broad as she remembered and even with him wearing his suit,
she could tell he hadn't added any fat to his lean torso. If
anything, his jaw looked more chiseled.
But the past seven years had been hard on him. There were
grooves beside the mouth she'd once lived to kiss, and a new
horizontal crease divided his brow. She didn't think those
were laugh lines fanning out from his eyes, although he used
to smile often during the early days of their relationship,
before he'd begun to work for Maddox Communications.
"Hello, Flynn."
"Renee. Or should I say, wife?" His deep, gravelly
tone filled her tummy with the sensation of scattering
butterflies. "How long have you known?"
She could have played dumb, but didn't see the point.
"That we weren't divorced? Only a few weeks."
"And you didn't call me."
"Like you didn't call me when you decided not to file
the papers?"
He frowned at her snippy tone. "There's more to it than
that."
"Enlighten me." And then she remembered the
Wednesday-morning fish-market cargo in her cooler. "But
you'll have to finish this riveting story inside. I have to
get the seafood into the fridge."
She opened the van's back door. His hip and shoulder bumped
hers when he nudged her aside to grab the cooler. Her senses
went wild over the contact. The way they used to. Darn it.
Her reaction didn't mean anything. She was over him. Well
and truly over him. He'd ripped out her heart piece by piece
before she'd left him. No feelings remained other than
regret and disappointment.
"Get the door," he ordered.
His words shocked her into motion. She locked the car and
hustled up the flower-lined brick sidewalk of her bungalow,
scanning the exterior and trying to see it through Flynn's
eyes. He hadn't been here since the early days of their
short marriage when this had been her grandmother's home.
Renee had made a lot of changes since then as she'd turned a
private retreat into an inviting place of business.
She'd added flower beds beneath the lemon and orange trees,
as well as a bubbling fountain, and she'd hung multiple
trailing-flower baskets and a swing on the porch. The stone
foundation and shingled exterior had been pressure-washed
last year and the trim freshly painted a rich emerald-green,
but she'd done the majority of her work inside.
She unlocked and pushed open the front door, then followed
him through the foyer and living room to the kitchen, her
masterpiece.
He stopped abruptly. "You've expanded."
"I needed a larger kitchen for my catering business, so
I enclosed Grandma's back porch and redid everything. I'm
using her old bedroom for an office."
Stop babbling.
She closed her mouth and focused on her stainless,
commercial-grade appliances, acres of granite counter-tops
and bright white cabinet—a cook's dream. Her dream.
Something she had not been allowed to pursue as Flynn's wife.
"Nice. What made you decide to open your own business?"
"It was something I'd always wanted. Granny talked me
into taking the leap before she passed away four years ago."
From the shock in his eyes, she guessed he hadn't known
about her grandmother's passing. She probably should have
notified him, but she'd had enough heartache to deal with
over losing Granny without having to face Flynn at the funeral.
"I'm sorry for your loss. Emma was a wonderful lady."
"Yes, she was. I don't know what I would have done
without her, and I still miss her. But she would have loved
this—another generation of Landers women working with
food and feeding the masses."
"I'm sure she would."
In the silence that followed, Renee looked across the
kitchen to the ladder-back chair that had been her granny's
favorite. There were days when it felt as if Emma were
watching over her, but then, Emma had been more of a mother
to Renee than her own had been. Her grandmother had
certainly been a rock of support when Renee had arrived
brokenhearted on her doorstep after leaving Flynn. Emma had
opened her arms, her heart and her home, offering Renee a
sanctuary for as long as she needed one.
© 2003-2026