Free Mixed Blessings by Danielle Steel Page B

unwind. It had been an odd day for her, filled with hard work, endless demands on the part of her clients, some strange moments, and some unfamiliar feelings. She still couldn't get over Nancy's news, or the prospect of her baby.

    "I ended the longest case in recent history today, and I could dance, I'm so relieved." He had had a case in his courtroom that had gone on for two months, and it was tedious and sometimes incredibly boring.

    "What happened?"

    "The jury acquitted the defendant, and I think they were right."

    "He must be a happy man tonight." It brought back memories of her clients when she was a public defender.

    "I am a happy man too." Brad smiled at her, looking immensely relieved. "No homework. What about you? Looks like today was a long one."

    "It was. Long and strange. I had some people in my office this morning about a surrogate mother/adoption case. The husband foolishly paid a minor to father his child, and ultimately she refused to give up the baby. The state brought criminal proceedings against him because of her age, eventually dropped them, but they won't even let him see the child. They were a strange pair, there was a sad kind of quiet desperation about them, an unreasoning attachment to the child, whom they've never even seen, but call Jeanne Marie." It was so weird and so depressing. I thought about them all day, and I really don't think anybody's going to be able to do much for them. Maybe some visitation rights eventually, but not much more than that, unless the birth mother abuses the child. I don't know . . . it's hard to imagine what they're feeling. They were so desperate to have that baby. They tried everything they could for years to have a child, then tried all the adoption agencies, and finally this. . . . It's just a damn shame he went to a minor to do it."

    "He probably would have had problems anyway. You know how those things turn out. Look at Baby M, and I can cite you a dozen other cases like it. I don't think surrogates are the answer."

    "For some people, maybe they are."

    "Why? Why not just adopt?" He loved talking to her, arguing with her, exploring ideas, and discussing cases. They were always supremely discreet, but discussing their work like that always reminded him of their years as opponents in the courtroom, and what a fine adversary she had been. Sometimes he really missed it.

    "Some people can't adopt. They're too poor, too old, whatever. And you can't find babies that easily. Besides, these people really seemed to care that it was his baby. The woman almost apologized to me that it was her fault they couldn't have kids." It had been so odd watching her, and so pathetic.

    Everything about her seemed to reek of sorrow and failure.

    "You think you'll hear from them again?"

    "No, I don't. I told them what I thought about the case, and I don't think they liked it. I told them it would probably take a long time, and that there was probably very little I could do anyway. I didn't want to give them false hope, which would have been cruel."

    "That's my baby, sock it to 'em." He laughed as they finished their first course, and she denied it. But he liked the fact that she was always honest.
    "I had to be straight with them," she explained, knowing she didn't really have to explain. He knew her so well. "They wanted that baby so badly. Sometimes that's hard to understand." It was hard to understand a lot of things, even Nancy's obvious and total pleasure about her baby. Pilar could see it, but she couldn't imagine feeling it. And as she had watched her, she had felt like a stranger looking into a brightly lit window. She liked what she saw on the other side, but she hadn't the vaguest idea how to get there, or if she even belonged there. All those feelings of pleasure about a child were totally foreign to her.

    "What are you looking so pensive about?" He was watching her and she smiled, as he reached out and took her hand across the table.

    "I don't know . . . maybe