“Is it a mail-order Russian oligarch?” Libby laughed, amused by her joke.

“No.” Jess’s jaw tightened. She didn’t have a better idea, or any idea at all, but she’d had enough of Libby issuing dating instructions from the comfort of her marriage. Sometimes her friend’s “doctor knows best” attitude collided with her general good fortune in all things, and the result thoroughly pissed off Jess. This moment was one of those times.

“What then?” Libby asked.

Jess suddenly remembered a conversation she’d overheard earlier in the week in the office tea room. One of the office clerks had been going on and on about her IVF cycles and discussing her husband’s defective swimmers in great detail with anyone who was foolish enough to stop and listen.

“I don’t need a man to have a baby.”

“What?”

“I’ll use donor sperm.”

Libby’s mocktail squirted out of her nose. “Jess, no! You do not want to have a baby on your own.”

Jess bristled at the unwanted command and her annoyance with Libby moved closer to anger. “Why not? It’s the perfect solution. I won’t have to answer to a man and I can raise my child on my own. Heaps of women do it. My mother did.”

Libby’s eyes widened into two blue pools of sorrow. “And you’ve always said you’d never inflict the life of an only child onto a kid.”

Jess gulped champagne, needing to dull the emerging memories of her mother, but at the same time wanting to demand her place at the motherhood table. “Too easy! I’ll have two kids.”

“Oh, God, you’re drunker than I thought.” Libby leaned forward, her face earnest. “Jess, listen to me. The easiest part of my week is when I’m at the clinic being Dr. Hunter. The hardest part is arsenic hour, which is really two to three hours when I’m trying to feed, bath and get the girls into bed without stringing them up or slashing my wrists.”

White hot fury exploded behind Jess’s eyes and she slammed her empty glass onto the coffee table. “Don’t do that!”

Libby jerked back, surprise and hurt on her face. “Do what?”

“That exaggerating thing all mothers do. If the job’s so frickin’ hard and awful, why did you go back for a second let alone this third kid?”

“This one’s a total surprise. To be honest, I cried when I saw the two pink lines on the stick. I didn’t tell Nick for three days.”

“Why? Problems in paradise?” It came out harsher than she’d intended.

“No, but we’re already juggling two businesses and two kids under four. This time there’ll only be fifteen months between Indi and the baby.”

“So?”

“So, it’s going to be tough. I wish it had happened next year or the year after.”

“So, the timing’s not perfect, but jeez, Lib! You’re pregnant. I’d kill to have a baby.” Dejection slumped Jess back against the couch. “Why can’t I have that?”