6

Sara wanted to tell Simon Hamilton what he could do with his car! But, even more important than that, she now deeply regretted having invited Mark to accompany her here this evening in the first place. They had met the previous week, at a party similar to this one. Sara had studied him dispassionately, finding that she approved of his blond hair and blue eyes, and the fact that he was tall and appeared healthy.

On the basis that she couldn’t just march up to a complete stranger and ask him to be the donor for her IVF baby—once tests had proved he was fertile, of course—Sara had decided it might be better if the two of them got to know each other a little better before she dropped the bombshell on Mark. That was the only reason she had gone to his office early yesterday evening and asked him to be her escort to Senator Ashcroft’s cocktail party tonight.

Although Mark seemed to have a very different idea of where their relationship was going… She gave Simon Hamilton a brightly insincere smile. "It’s very kind of you to offer, Simon, but—"

"But there’s absolutely no need when I’m happy to leave with Sara," Mark cut in with smooth confidence, his arm once again moving about Sara's waist. "I booked dinner for the two of us at nine-thirty," he added temptingly.

A dinner that he was no doubt hoping would result in the two of them sharing the bed in his apartment later on this evening, or possibly in Sara's. But Sara knew that sharing Mark's bed—or any other man’s, come to that—simply wasn’t going to happen.

Nor, in this day and age, was it necessary. It had all seemed perfectly logical when Sara had made her decision several months ago. She was desperate to have a child of her own, but not marriage or relationship with a man who would ultimately let her down. One failed engagement was surely enough for her.

She had it all planned out. She would become pregnant before her thirtieth birthday in six months’ time, move her offices to her apartment and continue working from there until her eighth month, have the baby, and then resume working once the baby was three months old or so, hiring a nanny who could take over on the occasions Sara had to go out and visit with her clients.

Logic. Not emotion.

Except it wasn’t logic which drove Sara but an aching, driving need. She'd met Bruce Bennet four years ago, and they had quickly fallen in love. Or at least she had fallen for him. It took her a while to realize that Bruce had never loved her, but he'd told her that he did. And she'd believed him. Sara was so in love that she'd have done anything for him, and she did. Burce asked her to keep their relationship a secret because he and her brother, Scott, were business rivals, and he didn’t want any of that interfering with them. Sara had heard her brother mention Bruce before and knew he had no love for him, so she'd agreed. Also, she figured once he saw how much they loved each other, he would come around. Especially since she became pregnant. Like a lovesick idiot, she'd thought Bruce would be happy about the news. Sara has been overjoyed and all she dreamed about was marrying Bruce and starting a family with him. They would be doing it a little out of order, but she didn’t care. But she had the greatest surprise of her life when she told Bruce about the pregnancy. He told Sara he didn’t want her or the baby. Told her to get rid of it because she was no longer useful to him. Then he walked away, like she was garbage he’d tossed out the window. He used her to get back at her brother. At the time, she worked at Scott's company as his executive assistant and she had been so naive, so snowed by Bruce, that when he asked her questions about Scott's agenda, who he was meeting with, she had given him the information. He worded it to make it sound like he was only asking about her day, what she had on her plate, but he was actually pumping her for inside information. He never loved her, never had any intention of creating a family with her.

Sara had refused to end the pregnancy, but it didn’t matter as she miscarried and lost the baby anyways. She'd been driven into depression too after she found out about Bruce's engagement just months later, and if not for her brother and her mother, she wasn't sure she'd have ever gotten through it.

Now she was doing much better. Her new business as an interior designer was growing and blossoming, but Sara had realized there was still something missing from her life. The same something that had always been missing from her life.

A baby of her own.

Lots of professional women had babies on their own nowadays—so why not Sara? She certainly had enough money to be able to provide for them both comfortably, and her career was of a kind that could be worked around a baby’s needs. So the plan was to find herself a man who was healthy, explain to him what it meant to be an IVF donor, and present him with the legal contract she would expect him to sign. Both of them would be protected from any financial demands being made on the other after the baby was born.

Putting that idea into practice had proved much harder than Sara had imagined. Broaching the subject, asking any man to coldly, clinically donate his sperm for IVF, had proved difficult.

"That’s very thoughtful of you, Mark," She smiled warmly, more for Simon Hamilton's benefit than Mark's . Her smile faded as she turned to look at the businessman. "If you will excuse us?"

"Of course." Simon gave a slight inclination of his head, wondering what thoughts had been going through Sara's head these past few minutes to form that frown between those brown eyes. Whatever they had been, he certainly didn’t hold out a lot of hope for Mark Forbes chances of sharing her bed tonight. "It was a pleasure to meet you both."

"And you," Mark assured him warmly.