Divine Design by Mary Kay McComas Read Free Book Online

him.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Meghan. What’s done is done. You’ll never see the man again, and it’s highly unlikely that he’d take you to court over a mere four hundred million missing sperm,” Lucy assured her, still amused.
    “For a doctor, you make up the sickest jokes I’ve ever heard, Lucy,” Meghan quipped, ending their conversation.
    It seemed as though she’d known Lucy forever, but in actuality it had been only ten years. They had been freshmen at Harvard together. Two more unlikely people to become such close friends never existed. They were complete and total opposites.
    Lucy’s parents had paid her way through college and then medical school. Meghan had earned scholarships, taken out loans, and worked her way through till she graduated from law school. Lucy was blond, blue eyed, and petite. Meghan was red haired, green eyed, and tall. Lucy chose to join a group of doctors who managed a “pay as you may” prenatal and obstetrics clinic in Hoboken because she “wasn’t in medicine for the money.” She’d married a truly nice antique dealer and had given birth to a son who was now two-and-a-half years old. Meghan, on the other hand, had become a clever but equitable corporate attorney with the distinguished firm of Alderman, Darkwell & Gibbs. Financial security was one of her prime objectives, taking second place only to her desire to have her own family someday.
    Both women were true to their parentage. Lucy vacillated from benign optimism to fatalistic doom, depending on the situation, while Meghan, sharp-witted and hot-tempered, doggedly held to her initial reactions. Except in this case.
    She felt innocent of any wrongdoing to the man, but guilty too. She hoped he never set foot in New York again, but she wanted to see him. Her greatest desire was to be pregnant, but she’d never repeat that night.
    Two weeks later when the twenty-eight day cycle she’d been able to schedule vacations by didn’t come to an end, she knew her fate was sealed. There was no turning back. By then her guilt had manifested itself. It was moral guilt. If her pregnancy had been an accident, she could have been guileless in her joy. As it was, her calculated intent marred her enthusiasm and heavied her heart with shame.
    Now she was over three and a half months into her pregnancy, and for short periods of time she could still put the whole incident out of her mind. Aside from the tenderness in her breasts, occasional short bouts of nausea, constant fatigue, and rare episodes of dizziness if she got up too fast, there was no evidence to tell anyone, including herself, that she was going to have a baby.
    She was handling the situation at the office very well, she thought self-indulgently. Although her blouses were a little tighter than usual, it wasn’t noticeable to the uninformed eye. Her business outfits still fit perfectly over her slim hips and essentially flat abdomen. Thank God for physical fitness!
    Her secretary, Greta, had cast a peculiar look at her when she’d found the box of saltine crackers in her desk drawer. So Meghan had covered up her symptoms of nausea by explaining that the crackers were just a low-calorie snack for late-afternoon attacks of the munchies.
    When she’d lunged for Henry Alderman’s desk to keep herself upright during a dizzy spell, she had confided to him about the anemia Lucy was treating her for. That excuse had worked well to explain her pallor and fatigue, and headed her list of reasons for a yearlong leave of absence from the firm.
    “Are you sure it’s going to take that long to get back on your feet?” Henry Alderman had asked, none too pleased with her request. “Couldn’t you just take six months or so and come back to a lighter load?”
    “Actually, that’s my plan, Henry. I thought I’d take six months to recoup and build up my strength, and then maybe do some pro bono work down at Legal Aid for a few months. Just a few cases, you know, to freshen up my