Chapter Six - Donor Daddy

Ditching her keys at the door, Sara removed the sunglasses from her face, surprised that there was even a table beside the front door. She placed her hand on top of it, just to check that it was really there, before she allowed a smile to spread across her lips. They had been living her for twelve days now, and this was the first day that she could actually walk inside, without tripping over any boxes full of their things.

"Hello?" She wasn't worried about waking anyone up, as it nine in the morning. She had been working all night on a case that involved a family similar to her own, making her even more eager to get back to her own. "Oh, hey." She stepped into the front room, finding her husband reading the paper on the sofa.

"Morning." He folded the paper, setting it down beside him. "Good day?"

"Yeah, it was okay. Late start?" Sara motioned towards the bath robe he was wearing, before she took a seat beside him to kiss him. "Mm... I've just been stuck with Ecklie for the past hour, getting a lecture about what we can and can't release to the press. I think by now, we're all old enough and experienced enough to know that we don't talk to them about our cases. Somehow the press managed to get hold of the ID of our minor vic, before we even had the chance to tell the parents. They found out from the news, and we automatically get the blame for it."

"It'll blow over in a couple of days. Ecklie will forget about it before you know it."

"Hope so. So, where's my baby girl? Is she awake yet?"

"Yeah. She's playing in her room upstairs." Grissom removed the glasses from the bridge of his nose, sealing another kiss to his wife's lips. "I have something to confess."

"Can it wait until I shower?" She climbed to her feet, removing the hair tie that had been keeping her sweat soaked hair pinned back. "We've been sweating it out in the desert half the day. I forgot how much of it sticks to you out there." Leaving him on the sofa, Sara hurried up the stairs, stopping at her daughter's room first. "Hello."

"Mommy!" Scrambling to her feet from her bedroom floor, Rosa rushed straight for the open door, throwing her arms around her mother's waist. "Mommy, I missed you."

Sliding her hands beneath her daughter's arms, Sara lifted her onto her hip, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Mommy missed you a lot too." She whispered softly, resting their foreheads together. "Looks like a late start for both of you today. Are you having a slumber party that I don't know about?" She grinned, motioning towards her pyjamas.

"No, Daddy woke up late, so we haven't got dressed yet."

"Oh, it was Daddy again, was it?" She smiled at her daughter, glad she always had someone to tell her the truth at home. "Whatcha playing here then?" Sara took a step closer to the doll's house that was on the floor, recognising it as the set that her mother in law had bought for their daughter. She set down her little girl, letting her explain what she playing.

"This is the Daddy." She picked up one of the dolls. "And this is Mommy. The baby is in her crib." Rosa reached for the crib in the top room of the house, showing it to her mother. "She's sleeping."

"What about the other two?" Sara knelt down in front of her, seeing a man sat in the dining room, while the woman was stood on the stairs. "Who are they?"

"This is their Nana." Her child reached for the one on the stairs. "She went to check on the baby, and this is the donor." She shocked her mother as she reached for the man in the dining room. "He's the sperm donor daddy to the baby."

Sara knew that there was no way her daughter would have ever come up with something like that on her own.

"Mommy, when can I meet my donor Daddy?"

Sara immediately marched down the stairs, ripping the paper from her husband's hands. "Donor Daddy? You told her. I can't believe that you told her. What gives you the right to tell her something like that... without even consulting me first?"

"I didn't realise that I needed your permission to tell my daughter the truth. That is if you even consider her 'my' daughter." Grissom climbed to his face, pointing out to her, "This was what I was going to tell you, before you left for the shower. I told her last night, before I put her to bed, and she was fine with it. She actually thinks it's the most amazing thing. She hasn't stopped going on about it all morning."

"Of course she would, she's five." His wife reminded him. "But you can't just tell her, without consulting me first. Of course I consider her 'your' daughter. We both just agreed to tell her together, when the time was right. Now it looks as though you told her a secret behind my back."

"I thought you'd want her to know. Isn't that why you introduced them at the lab the other day? Nick couldn't take his eyes off her as soon as he stepped into the room. He knows that he can't have anything to do with her, right? You told him that much, didn't you?"

"Oh my god, Gil, is that what this is about? This is your way of getting back at me, after I chose him to be the donor? I knew that it was a mistake coming back here. You haven't been like this, since before I was pregnant with her." She made her way towards the stairs, stopping to shout, "If you didn't want a baby with me, you should have said that from the beginning."

"I wanted a baby." Her husband climbed to his feet, keeping his voice down, so their daughter couldn't hear them. "I just wish that I never knew who the donor was. It's bad enough that I couldn't make a child of our own, but then you have to go and pick someone we both know as the father, who would probably be better at it then me in the long run."

"You're pathetic, Gil. You're the only father she's ever known. Why would she chose a complete stranger to her, over you?"

Hurrying up the stairs, Sara angrily dropped onto their bed, sweeping her fingers through her hair. She only went along with the sperm donation in the first place, because she thought that her husband was on board. If he wasn't on board with this, she wished that he would have told her sooner than five years down the line.

"Mommy," Rosa stepped through the door. "Why are you and Daddy fighting?"

"Oh, we're not fighting," Reaching her arms out for her daughter, Sara lifted her onto her lap as she got closer, holding her tightly in her embrace. She didn't want to scar her daughter for life with her parents constantly arguing, that was the last thing she would have wanted for her. She had lived through that torture herself, and it wasn't exactly a childhood that she treasured. "Grownups sometimes just have little disagreements. I wanted to tell you myself about your donor father, but Daddy did it without me here."

"Are you mad at Daddy?" Rosa titled her head back against her mother's arm, looking up into her eyes. "Did he do something wrong?"

"No." Her mother shook her head, placing her hand on the back of her daughter's head to hold her closer. "I'm not mad with Daddy, and he didn't do anything wrong. He just sorta... spoiled the surprise. I wanted to tell you myself. Or the two of us together, anyway. We never planned on keeping it from you forever, we just wanted to tell you when the time was right."

"Will I get to see my donor father?" She innocently asked her mother. "Daddy won't mind. He told me. So can I, Mommy? Can I see him?"

Sara gently rocked her in her arms, realising why her husband might be feeling a little threatened. She didn't want to do anything else that would upset him or jeopardise what they had, but she couldn't just say no to her daughter either.

"We'll see."

Thank you for reading, please review.

~ Holly