Something Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page B

that wife of yours that she can’t have a baby?” and “You sure this young lady’s going to want to give the boy up? I know all about those people who change their minds, say they’re theirs and just run off with ’em.”
    Truth be told, Hale was having some serious problems with the whole surrogacy thing himself. He never should have agreed to let Savannah carry their baby. He never should have let his wife talk him into the child. Things had become strained between him and Kristina, growing worse, rather than better, during the pregnancy. His marriage had never been as solid as he’d hoped, but he’d believed he could make it work, and Kristina had been so desperately eager for a child that he’d said yes to her screwball plan. Now, he wasn’t sure she even wanted a baby any longer. He didn’t have a clue what was going on with her, but none of it was good.
    A few minutes later, with guilty thoughts chasing around in his head, he left his grandfather’s house, dodging raindrops as he dashed to his black Chevy TrailBlazer. Kristina drove a Mercedes sedan, which she’d begged him for, and he’d acquiesced more because he didn’t care than because the expensive car was so dear to her heart. He’d known for a while that his reasons for marrying her in the first place were both more, and less, complicated than love, which didn’t really enter into it at all. He’d been wrapped in grief during his father’s death from a slow, lingering sickness—cancer, Preston St. Cloud had told him—though after his death Hale had learned that none of his doctors had given him that diagnosis. Preston’s last doctor, more an herbalist than a trained physician, had simply lifted his shoulders and said, “Sometimes the dying just know.”
    Kristina had been everywhere during that time, helping him, soothing him, running his house, even keeping in contact with Hale’s mother in Philadelphia, who wanted to be apprised of his father’s condition though she and Preston had ceased even to speak since the divorce. Hale and Kristina had dated casually only a few times before Preston’s last bout in the hospital, but Kristina had suddenly charged to the rescue, and when Preston died, Hale had leaned on her.
    And shortly thereafter, he’d married her. A case of temporary insanity, apparently, for when he’d woken up from his grief, he’d found himself with a wife who was little more than a stranger to him. Still, she was his wife, he’d told himself, and he’d been determined that he was going to make their union work. He’d balked initially when she’d come to him crying, saying she had just learned she couldn’t have a baby, and wanted to use a surrogate. He’d given her a list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, leaving out the biggest one: that he wasn’t sure about their marriage. And then, when she revealed that her sister would be their surrogate, he’d really put his foot down.
    But . . . he did want a child, he’d realized. And though things with Kristina weren’t perfect, he was in no hurry to divorce her. She was his wife, for better or worse. So they weren’t madly in love. They had made plans together and, with the help of an interior designer, had just put the finishing touches on their new home, a Bancroft Development architectural dream, which had a spectacular view of the Pacific and was set well back on a rocky headland, unlike those built on the shifting sands beneath Bancroft Bluff.
    So . . . ? he’d asked himself one long night, when he’d stood on the back deck of their home while it was still being framed. Surrogacy? Was that the answer? He’d been lost in thought for hours, and in the end he’d signed the papers, half expecting nothing to come of the IVF implant. And then the news: the pregnancy had taken. A shock. And he’d shared