He shoved the thought of her round and glowing and pregnant to one side. That didn’t matter. That wasn’t the mission. He would find her a guy and get her exactly what she wanted so that she would stay with him. He could do that. That was what he did. He fixed things. He could fix this.

“You’re going to help me find a baby daddy?”

“I am. Look, I know everybody in town. If you want to find somebody that you know a little bit more about, you want things to be personal.”

“So you’re going to act as my pimp?”

“Don’t say that,” he said.

“Well, I’m just saying, it’s a little bit weird.”

“You’re the one that has an aversion to donors.”

“Fair,” she said.

“Why do you, exactly?”

“I told you,” she said. “It’s clinical. And honestly... I want to know that the guy is a good guy. I don’t want to just guess. Anybody can put stats into paperwork and lie about who they are. And granted, I don’t really trust anyone enough to settle down with them and build a life with them, but knowing somebody... Their reputation, getting to talk to the people that know them...”

“Are we going to conduct interviews?”

“Would you?”

“I will do whatever the hell you want Sammy Marshall. Because that’s what I do.”

She stared at him with wide, doeish blue eyes. “I suppose you do. And...thank you. I guess.”

“Okay,” he said, taking the pan out from in front of her and dumping the bacon onto the plate beside the eggs. “What is your top criteria?”

“Don’t take all the bacon.” She grabbed another plate and divided the food up evenly. The two of them walked over to the long, empty dining table that still had some plates on it from the night before, and they shoved them down to the side.

“Criteria,” he said.

“Kind,” she said. “Probably... You know, kind of smart.”

Leave it to Sammy to try and make this somehow soft and sweet.

“Looks?” he pressed.

She laughed. “Looks don’t matter.”

He arched a brow.

“They don’t,” she said. “I mean, there are plenty of people who are awful and very good-looking.”

“Sure,” he said. “You’re going to sign up to sleep with a guy that isn’t good-looking, and also is going to be passing on half of that poor genetic material to your child.”

She sniffed. “I’m not comfortable evaluating somebody that way.”

“This is literally the best time to evaluate someone that way,” he said. “You’re basically shopping for baby ingredients.”

“That is the most distasteful thing you have ever said.” But she dug into her eggs nonetheless so he couldn’t be that distasteful.

“You don’t want to put flawed ingredients into your baby cake, Sammy. That’s all I’m saying.”

The conversation was bordering on absurd, but there was actually no way to have a conversation like this without straying into the absurd.

“Fine,” she said. “I would like him to be tall. I’m not very tall. I would like to make sure that the gene pool is...you know, boosted.”