A Mother's Secret (Mills & Boon Medical) Read online

  Gemma took a deep breath. ‘I know it’s difficult, Logan, and it’s hard for me to comment. I certainly haven’t seen any signs of her being manic when I’ve been with her. But it is obvious that her mood is low. I just assumed it was a result of her longing for a child. I’m not an expert on mental health, so I probably couldn’t be much help.’

  Gemma stood up next to him and touched his arm. ‘Is that what’s been wrong these last few weeks? Why didn’t you say something?’

  He threw his arms up in frustration. ‘Because it’s not really my business to share. I asked Hugh Cairney at the surgery to see her.’ He waved his hands a little. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. Claire gets on well with him and I thought she might talk to him. He’s also known her for years and would be able to judge her change in mood.’

  She reached up and touched his face. ‘And you feel guilty?’ Her voice was quiet, understanding.

  His arms dropped down. ‘Yes. Of course I feel guilty. I’ve let my sister down.’ He paused. ‘And it’s not the first time.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ She kept her hand where it was, feeling the warmth of his skin through the palm of her hand. He was hurting. His eyes looked like a wounded soldier’s. She was so close she could feel the rise of his chest as he took a deep breath.

  ‘My dad. He died on the golf course on Arran when I was an SHO in Glasgow. I wasn’t here.’

  She nodded slowly. Understanding how he felt. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He had an AA. One minute he was fine, the next...he was gone.’

  ‘Oh, Logan.’ She ran her fingers through his hair. ‘You know that’s one of the hardest things to diagnose. Some people don’t have any symptoms at all. There was nothing you could have done.’

  His eyes met hers. The blue was even darker, full of despair. ‘But I think I could. If I’d been here I might have picked up on something—anything—even minor, that meant he would have got checked out.’

  ‘You can’t know that, Logan. And you can’t beat yourself up about that. You didn’t let your family down then, and you haven’t now. We’ve spoken about this before. Sometimes it’s easier for someone on the outside looking in to see what’s really wrong.’

  He nodded his head slowly. ‘I know. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.’ He sagged back down onto the sofa. ‘And there’s more. I can’t interfere because Claire’s seeing Hugh. But she’s still not thinking rationally.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  His head shook slightly. ‘She’s started ranting on about wanting to hire a surrogate. Hire someone else to have her baby. That’s the last thing she needs to be doing.’

  Gemma felt her stomach twist in a horrible knot. The very last thing on earth she wanted to talk about. The one thing on this planet she wanted to avoid.

  But she couldn’t. Particularly not now.

  There was a roaring in her ears. Part of her was horrified. Part of her was indignant.

  Her voice was wavering. ‘Have you spoken to her about it? Maybe it’s the natural next step for her—once she’s well, of course.’

  He looked aghast. ‘How can it be the next step? She needs to get herself straightened out first before she even considers any other option. And certainly not that one.’

  She felt herself stiffen completely. ‘Maybe you should find out a bit more about it before you stand in judgement. Lots of people have babies using surrogates.’

  ‘You think that’s what I’m doing—standing in judgement?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And what makes you the expert?’

  She took a deep breath. Nightmare. If she dodged this question now she could never look him in the eye again. And she didn’t want that. He would find out sooner or later anyway. Best just to get it over and done with. No matter how much she didn’t want to go down that path.

  She might be a lot of things, but a liar certainly wasn’t one of them.

  She couldn’t hide the tremble in her voice. ‘I’ve been a surrogate.’

  Silence. Ticking past. Seconds feeling like hours.

  His eyes had widened, as if he was trying to process what she’d just said. ‘You...what?’ His brow wrinkled, deep furrows appearing across its length and between his eyes.

  This time her voice wasn’t shaky. This time her voice was definite. ‘I’ve been a surrogate.’ She had to be confident. She had to let him know she wasn’t ashamed of her actions.

  ‘But why? When?’ He looked totally stunned.

  This was where it started. The multitude of questions. The expectation that she explain herself. All the things she detested.

  ‘I did it for my friend Lesley and her husband Patrick. Lesley and I grew up together. She was like your sister, infertile. Even when she tried IVF the quality of her eggs meant that she didn’t have a lot of viable embryos. It was always unsuccessful.’

  ‘But I don’t get it. What on earth made you offer to do that?’

  ‘I cared about her. The whole situation was tearing her apart. I could see her collapsing in on herself before my eyes. Just like your sister, Logan. When I first met Claire a few weeks ago I recognised some of the things I’d seen in Lesley. The low mood, the weight loss. And I was with Lesley constantly. I cried the river of tears along with her every month when she realised she wasn’t pregnant again. I couldn’t watch my friend being destroyed by something that was totally out of her control. I decided to do the one thing I could do to help.’

  Logan was shaking his head. ‘That’s a mighty big favour.’

  Gemma bit her lip. She’d told him now. She couldn’t take the words back. But how would he react when he knew the truth?

  Logan hadn’t stopped. He was still shaking his head. ‘So, how did Isla fit into all this? What did she think about you giving away her baby brother or sister?’

  Gemma froze. He hadn’t clicked. He hadn’t realised. Her mouth was so dry. Licking her lips did nothing. Only emphasised the sandpit in her throat.

  ‘Isla didn’t know.’

  ‘How didn’t she know? Did you hide the pregnancy from her?’ He frowned. ‘Or was this before you had her?’

  She had to say it. She had to put him right. ‘Isla is the baby.’

  ‘What?’ His head spun around. ‘Isla is the surrogate baby?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But that means...you stole your friend’s baby?’ He was astounded. But it was the only natural conclusion to reach.

  ‘Isla is my daughter. She was my baby. It was my egg.’

  He looked endlessly confused. ‘So, you offered to have your friend’s baby. You donated your egg, then you kept the baby. What about the father? Didn’t he get a say in any of this?’ He was still shaking his head in disbelief.

  Patrick. The one person who could make her skin creep with no explanation whatsoever.

  But Logan wasn’t finished. He was pacing again. ‘Didn’t you have a legal agreement about all this? How on earth could you steal your friend’s baby?’

  ‘Stop it, Logan. Stop it. Isla is my daughter. My baby. She didn’t belong to Lesley, she belonged to me.’ She shook her head. ‘We didn’t have a formal agreement. We looked into it but Lesley—she was desperate. And as soon as I offered she just wanted us to get started straight away.’ She knew how desperate this all sounded. She also knew how foolish this made her and her friends sound.

  But, as far as she knew, Logan had never experienced infertility. How could he understand?

  And even now, after everything that had happened, Gemma realised how lucky she was that they hadn’t had a formal agreement in place. In the end, that had saved her and Isla.

  Somewhere in his brain she could see the penny drop. He lifted his finger. ‘You. You’re the bad surrogate. You were all over the news. There was a court case.’ Then a flicker of recognition came across his face. ‘You. It was you. You put this idea into her head. How could you? You know how vulnerable she is right now.’

  She cringed. Of course he would thi
nk that. It was a natural conclusion to jump to—even if it wasn’t true. ‘I swear to you I didn’t. I’ve never mentioned surrogacy to Claire. I wouldn’t...I couldn’t.’

  The bad surrogate. The label the press had given her, along with every unflattering picture they could take. Finally. The thing she’d absolutely dreaded. As soon as anyone realised she was the woman from the papers they all had to have an opinion. An opinion they intended to share with her. And Logan was going to be no different.

  She gave a sigh. This was all going horribly wrong. ‘There was a court case. It lasted five years. I came here to get away from all that. I came here for a new start.’

  But he wasn’t listening. He was fixating on one thing. ‘I don’t get it. Why didn’t you have a proper agreement?’ Bits of the case were obviously sparking in his brain. ‘You’re a doctor, for goodness’ sake. You should have known better.’ He let out an expletive. ‘Or, more importantly, they should have known better.’

  She shook her head. ‘I won that court case, Logan. The court agreed that Isla was my daughter. That Isla should stay with me.’

  ‘And that makes you feel better? How on earth could you look your friends in the eye?’ He started pacing around the room. ‘You swear you’ve never told Claire about this?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No wonder. You stole your friend’s baby. Why would you tell anyone that?’ It was obvious his mind was jumping from one thing to another. One second it was on Claire, the next it was fixating back on her.

  She sagged back onto the sofa. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. I did what I had to do. I did what was right.’ It was pointless trying to explain. She already knew he was never going to understand.

  ‘How is stealing your friend’s baby “right”?’

  She put her head in her hands. She’d had this conversation so many times, with so many people. But she’d never been so in fear of someone standing in judgement of her.

  For some reason it seemed so important that he understand why she did it. She wanted to persuade him that she wasn’t the worst person to walk the face of this earth. Even though that was the way the press had portrayed her.

  Then again, the press hadn’t known the full story. Because she’d always left part of it out. It had been so important at the time. But it wasn’t rational. She had no evidence. So her lawyer had told her not to breathe a word in case it harmed her case.

  But the case was over. Now she could say whatever she liked.

  She looked at Logan. His hair was rumpled from where he’d run his fingers through it, his pale denim shirt pushed up around the elbows. Just looking at him made her heart beat faster. But the expression on his face was anything but understanding. Why had this conversation even started? Things would have been so much easier if she’d just let him kiss her. Just let herself be lost in his touch. But she’d started now and there was nowhere else to go. She had to finish.

  She sucked in a breath. ‘Everything was fine to begin with. Patrick and Lesley were delighted. But as my pregnancy progressed things started to change. Patrick, he started to get really odd, really possessive. He told me to give up work. He started trying to tell me what to do about everything.’

  ‘Maybe he was just concerned about his baby?’

  ‘No. It was much more than that. He was controlling. It was a side of him I’d never seen before. I started to feel really uncomfortable around him. He was turning up at my flat unannounced, sometimes with a list of instructions in his hand.’

  ‘Did you consider he might just be anxious?’

  She let her head sag. ‘I considered everything. Because Lesley was one of my best friends,’ she said sadly.

  Logan’s brow furrowed. ‘How did you get pregnant in the first place? Did you do it...the old-fashioned way?’

  Gemma was horrified. ‘Sleep with my friend’s husband? Absolutely not. I used a turkey baster. It worked first time.’

  ‘And you just decided not to give them the baby?’

  She let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘I can’t explain it properly. I had a really bad feeling. The more Patrick’s behaviour began to alarm me, the more connected to Isla I started to feel. I’d never thought of her as anything other than Patrick and Lesley’s up until that point. But as I started to get bigger, as she started to grow and move I felt more and more uncomfortable around Patrick. She started to feel like my baby and I started to feel like a mother who had to protect her child.’ She shrugged her shoulders in frustration. ‘I had a hunch.’

  His voice rose. ‘You had a hunch? You based your baby’s future on a hunch?’ He was incredulous and she couldn’t blame him. It sounded awful.

  It didn’t matter how futile things sounded. She had to try and explain. ‘Don’t make it sound crazy. We base our clinical decisions on hunches all the time. We just feel something isn’t right but we can’t explain it. Look at the assessment the health visitor does on families for child protection. She’s allowed to give marks based on her “health visitor hunch” when she knows something isn’t right but she can’t put her finger on it.’

  Something else sparked in her brain and she didn’t hesitate to use it. ‘Look at the clinical symptoms for an aortic aneurysm. One of them is “a feeling of impending doom” by the patient. There’s no rational explanation for it. But it happens so often it’s now considered an evidenced based clinical symptom.’

  She could see the recognition on his face but he just kept shaking his head. She could see the pain on his face at her using the condition that had killed his father as a way of explanation. ‘You’re being unfair. Medicine isn’t an exact science—we know that. But you didn’t have any evidence. How on earth did you win the court case?’

  For some reason she was determined to try and make him understand. ‘It was more than that. One day I was with Lesley and I noticed she had a bruise on her thigh. It was unusual—in a place that no one would normally see—and I only glimpsed it while she was getting changed.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She gave me a reasonable explanation of what had happened.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe her?’

  ‘At first I did. But then there was a mark on her shoulder—a scrape. Something else that would normally be hidden. It started setting off alarm bells in my head.’

  ‘Did you ask your friend if she was being abused?’

  ‘I tried to. I asked if there was anything she wanted to tell me. But she made a joke out of it—as if I was being ridiculous—and cut me off. It was almost as if she knew what I was going to ask.’

  Logan shook his head. ‘So what did you do?’

  The big question. The one she still asked herself when she lay in bed at night.

  Her voice was quiet. ‘That’s just it, Logan. What could I do? Lesley wasn’t telling me anything and I didn’t know—not for sure.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I didn’t have any evidence. And if I’d tried to report it...’ Her voice tailed off for a second. ‘I was worried. I was worried people would say I was making it up to try and discredit them. Try to keep my baby from them. So I didn’t say anything. My job was to protect my daughter. I just said I’d changed my mind and wanted to bring Isla up on my own. She was biologically my child. We didn’t have a formal agreement. The judge found in my favour.’

  The frown lines in his forehead were deeper than she’d ever seen them. It was clear he was trying to understand, even if he didn’t really. ‘I just don’t get it. Why didn’t you try to prove there was a risk?’

  ‘Because my lawyer told me not to. It would have been my word against theirs. Lesley was an adult. If there was abuse in the household, it was up to her to report it.’

  Silence, as he contemplated her words. Was he trying to rationalise her actions in his mind?

  He moved over towards the wall, leaning against it and folding his arms across his chest. ‘So, why did you tell me?’

  His voice was quiet. He couldn’t hide the air of exasperatio
n in it, but it was obvious he was curious as to why she was sharing something with him that her lawyer had told her to keep quiet.

  She met his gaze. There was none of the compassion or desire that she’d seen before. He looked angry. He looked as if he didn’t understand any of this. It seemed as though all the underlying sizzle and attraction had been snuffed out in an instant—ruined by her being honest with him.

  ‘Because I wanted to tell you the truth.’

  He didn’t say anything. She could see him take a few steadying breaths. The rise and fall of his chest was calming. She rested back against the sofa, her hands in her hair. ‘Do you think I really wanted to have this conversation with you, Logan?’

  He looked at her again, and her heart ripped in two because it was almost a look of disgust.

  Anger started to build inside her. This was pointless. He was never going to understand. He was never going to try to understand. Why was she even bothering?

  ‘I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you would do something like this.’ He’d started pacing around her living room, the glasses of wine, box of cakes and almost-kiss long forgotten. ‘It sounds to me like you just got cold feet. You started to connect with the baby and you were just looking for any excuse.’

  He stopped at a photograph of Isla with her red bouncing curls and pale skin. ‘Isla—she doesn’t look like you at all. Is she like her father?’

  A horrible tremor crept down her spine. She loved her daughter with her whole heart. But Patrick’s genetic traits were there for all to see. Her brown locks and sallow skin were nowhere in sight. She gave the slightest of nods. ‘He has red hair too.’

  Logan held his hands up. ‘So what do you tell her? Does she ever ask about her father?’