Free The Hellion by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

openly as his. "My life with Owen was very good," she argued, perhaps a little too quickly.

    Tommy Lee's eyes swept around the room, returned to her before he asked very simply, "But where are the children, Rachel?"

    Her polished lips fell open and a pained expression etched her eyes. Beneath the draping silk blouse he saw her breasts heave up once, as if she were struggling for control. He was

    terribly sorry to do this to her, but what       99 she'd suffered--if she had--was important to him.

    She dropped her eyes to her empty glass and admitted quietly, "We were never able to have any."

    "Why?"

    Their eyes met, delved deeply, and he saw fissures of vulnerability within the woman who always appeared so carefully in control. She pondered the advisability of revealing the truth to the man who'd fathered the only child she'd ever been able to have, but somehow it seemed right that he should know. Her lips trembled, paused in shaping the first word, but finally she got it out. "I ... I was allergic to Owen's sperm."

    He couldn't have looked more surprised if she'd slugged him. His jaw dropped and he tried to speak, but nothing came out. Though she was hidden by the table from the waist down, his eyes dropped to the point where her stomach must be, then as he realized where he was gazing, they flew back to her face again. But his own face was a mask of regret.

    "Ironic, isn't it?" Rachel added. "But it's true."

    "I've never heard of such a thing," he blurted out.

    Her face was slightly pale, his growing increasingly pink as she went on, chafing her crossed arms as they rested on the table edge. "It's not all that uncommon. It seems my body had an excessive sensitivity to his semen, and put up what they called an immunologic reaction to it. I actually created antibodies that prevented the sperm from reaching the egg to fertilize it."

    He was stunned by the queer twist of fate that had made her pregnant at a time in her life when she didn't want to be, but had prevented pregnancy during the years when it was what she must have most desired. Yet she stated it all with apparent clinical coolness while he sat before her, greatly discomfited by the personal revelation. Still, something forced him to go on.

    "Couldn't anything be done about it?"

    "Believe me, we tried. I visited gynecologists as far away as Rush Medical Center in Chicago. Different doctors said it could be treated in a number of ways, but none of them had a history of success. I took

    drugs, but some of them had unpleasant      101 side effects. We even tried artificial insemination--something to do with bypassing the cervix and going directly to the womb--but that didn't work, either. In some women the antibodies disappear by themselves after a while, but I wasn't so lucky. More than one doctor felt that reducing my exposure to the sperm would reduce the sensitivity and the antibodies would disappear, or at least decrease enough so that I could conceive. We tried long periods of no contact, but when we resumed, there still was no pregnancy."

    He drew a hand down his face, covering his mouth for a moment while studying her solemnly. Then he took one of her hands in both of his. "Rachel, I'm so sorry."

    She met his empathetic eyes and saw how uneasy he was with the intimate subject, after all. She was disquieted, too, but forced herself to maintain a poised exterior. "It's all right. I've learned to live with it."

    "But, Rachel, our ba--was

    "Don't say it!" she warned, raising both palms, closing her eyes momentarily.

    But he didn't need to say it, for the awful

    truth scintillated between them as their gazes met again. Together they had conceived the only child she was likely to have, and their parents had decreed that it be taken from her and given to strangers in Flint, Michigan. He felt devastated for her and curiously guilty, as if he'd unwittingly slighted her in some way.

    At last he said shakily, "It should have been me you were