Pipe Dreams(28)

He scanned the page and gave her a salute, so Lauren walked over to hand  the same information to Georgia and her partner in the publicity  office-Tommy.

Lauren put her phone away and greeted Georgia with an apology. "I know I  gave you different information this morning, but the host team keeps  switching our ice time, so the schedule changed again."

"No problem. But . . . do you think it's intentional? Are they messing with us on purpose?"                       
       
           



       

Lauren had wondered that same thing. "That would be pretty low. I won't do that when they come to Brooklyn in two days."

"Do it!" Leo Trevi teased, coming over to stand behind his fiancée. "And  let's short-sheet all their beds, and put itching powder in their  underwear."

"Someone spent too many years at summer camp," Lauren guessed.

"You know it! We were worse, though." He pulled out a chair next to  Georgia. "I found a dead frog in my shoe one time, so I put it . . ."

Lauren held up a hand. "I get it. But it's lunchtime."

He grinned.

She gave him a friendly wave and wandered off to check out the buffet.  She wasn't hungry at all, but there was a decent-looking Caesar salad,  so she grabbed a to-go container and forked some salad leaves into it.

"Hi there," a smoky voice said from just beside her. Mike had snuck up and ambushed her. "Are you ready for round two yet?"

Oh, boy. Lauren stifled a laugh, even as her senses began to hum in  unison. "Sure," she said lightly. "As long as you're talking about  hockey."

"Ah, well. It was worth a shot."

Lauren just shook her head, smiling down at the croutons on the salad bar.

"Join me for lunch?" he asked.

"I wish I could," she said quickly. "But I have a ton to do before the game, and Nate is expecting me upstairs."

"Maybe another time," he said, giving her a quick smile.

And, damn, she'd seen that smile in bed just two days ago. Suddenly the room was warmer than it had been a few minutes ago.

"How are you doing, anyway?" he pressed. "Haven't seen you at all in  Tampa. I'd think you were avoiding me, except Coach has had us in  strategy sessions for hours and hours."

She returned his smile, but then looked down at the buffet again, to try  to shake off his sexual tractor beam. None of that. "Fine, thank you.  And yourself? Has Coach been working you hard?"

"You know it." He added a couple of olives to his plate, which already overflowed with two sandwiches and pasta salad.

She'd always enjoyed watching him eat. The man burned so many calories  during the season that he literally could not eat enough to maintain his  weight. Cooking for him had always been gratifying. He'd try anything,  and he loved exotic flavors. "You love food so much," she'd remarked  once as he was tucking into a spicy paella she'd made. "I'm surprised  you never learned to cook something more than pancakes or steak."

"I love food, but I'm a specialist," he'd quipped once. "I only eat."

Yikes. And here she was, falling into a memory. She snapped the takeout  container closed. "I'd better get back to it," she said, grabbing a roll  to go with her salad.

"Enjoy your working lunch," he said under his breath. "But feel free to wear your blue dress to dinner tonight."

"That was a one-time thing," she reminded him. "A special occasion."

He shrugged. "Okay. Then don't wear it. You look sexy in your cute  little suits, girlfriend. I can still see those legs." He grabbed a roll  and shoved half of it into his mouth, smiling as he chewed.

She rolled her eyes, and realized they were having an almost normal  conversation. See? This is possible, she noted. We can be friends and  it's only sort of weird.

"Good luck out there tonight," she said. "I'll be pulling for you." She would, too.

His face became more serious. "Thanks, Lo. That means a lot."

"You're welcome." Maybe most ex-couples didn't even out their  differences with a long night of sex. Then again, they weren't like most  ex-couples. And she was ready to put their differences behind her, and  to breathe more easily when he was in the room.

This was nice. It was almost healthy.

He gave her a full-powered smile, and it only made her knees feel a  little squishy. "See you on the other side." Whistling he carried his  loaded plate off to a table full of players.

Lauren carried her lunch out of the room and headed for the elevators.  She probably could have spared twenty minutes. Nate wasn't expecting her  yet. But if she and Mike were going to be friends, she had to get used  to the idea, first.

Their night together was still too raw. She kept flashing back to their  hours in bed, and the feel of his lips against her own. Those sensations  were bound to fade, though. And the second round of play-offs left very  little time for mooning about. The players had been sequestered with  the coaching staff since the moment they'd touched down. Lauren was  holed up in yet another hotel suite and went to work.                       
       
           



       

She let herself back into the suite and dropped her lunch on the desk  beside her laptop. She'd fibbed to Mike about how soon Nate was  expecting her. But she was busy.

In fact, she'd promised herself that while she ate lunch she would make a very important decision.

Lauren flipped open the file folder of sperm donors and spread four  sheets of paper out so that she could see them all. These were the last  candidates-she'd narrowed it down to four. It was time to pick one and  order the vials of-gulp-sperm to be delivered to her doctor's office.

She'd gotten her period this morning. That meant it was almost time to  start taking the pills in her carry-on bag. And five days after that  she'd ovulate, and it would be time for the intrauterine insemination.

She could be pregnant by one of the dudes described in front of her two weeks from now. It was time to choose between them.

An engineer. Two law students. And a conservator of antiquities.  Choosing the father of your baby as if you were perusing the J. Crew  catalog was the strangest kind of shopping in the world. All their baby  pictures were adorable, of course. And their long lists of achievements  and positive qualities were breathtaking.

There was no way to know whose genes would make the healthiest, happiest  baby. She ought to just flip a couple of coins and allow fate to narrow  down the final four to a single winner.

She scanned the pictures one more time. Three of the little boys had  glossy dark hair. Now that she thought about it, three of them looked a  hell of a lot like Mike Beacon.

Damn it all.

Thanks a ton, subconscious.

Lauren picked up the fourth page-the one with the fairer-haired child  pictured on it. Donor 5683RE had grown up to be a promising law student  who wanted to work on Internet privacy issues. He was a good cook and  played soccer on the weekends.

He was nothing at all like Mike Beacon.

Well then. If all went according to plan, donor 5683RE was going to be the father of her child.

She opened her laptop and navigated to the cryobank's website. She  ordered two vials of Mr. 5683RE, filling in the FedEx information for  her fertility clinic back in Manhattan. The transaction set her back  $1,200 and took five minutes, tops. But this was big-a decision made. A  plan put into action.

A secret.

Lauren cracked open her salad and unwrapped a plastic fork. A month from  now, she might be pregnant. Two months from now she might have morning  sickness. She placed a hand on her very flat belly and imagined a baby  growing in there.

Sitting all alone in her suite, she began to smile. It didn't matter  that her parents would freak out about this decision when she eventually  got around to telling them. This was her journey, and she was ready to  embark. In fact . . .

She lifted her hand off her belly and propped her chin in it. She'd  never expected to be single at thirty-one. And she sure hadn't expected  to be dumped by the love of her life. But now that the shock and anger  were finally wearing off, she could acknowledge that the experience had  made her into a more confident single person. Sometime during these past  two years she'd stopped waiting around for her happily-ever-after and  started crafting it herself.

Take that, Mike.

She ate her salad and then went to work on Nate's rather overburdened  calendar. Now that the play-offs were sure to drag on, there was  planning to do. She cast an eye on Nate's calendar all the way out to  June and tried to figure out where all the landmines lay. There was a  trip to China on his docket over Memorial Day.

That was almost exactly the moment that the Stanley Cup finals would be  played. But there was no way of knowing which day, though, as the league  didn't schedule each new set of games until the participants were  decided.