“I’ll have your baby.”

No did what he always did when he was confused. He stood absolutely still, his face conceding nothing as he watched her swipe at the tablet and with her index finger, slowly sign page after page. Vowing to carry his child to term, take on sole custody, and raise it to the best of her abilities, all in exchange for a six-figure monthly sum.

For a moment, No could only wonder what had so thoroughly changed her mind. But then Ana raised her eyes, fixing him with a determined look, while saying, “You mentioned something about a signing bonus. How soon can I get that?”

Greed, he automatically thought. But then No forced himself to stop and really think about all the new information he’d uncovered about Ana since yesterday.

“This is for your niece. You’re signing this so you will have enough money for Ruby.”

And then he wondered what this woman wouldn’t do for her family.

Ana replied, “Yes, this money would allow me to give Ruby things I couldn’t otherwise provide her. But I’m also doing it for the baby.”

No shook his head, not understanding.

“If I don’t do this, you’ll ask someone else to.”

Ana was very much mistaken about that. He could only make this bargain with her. No one else. But he remained silent on this point. Rather than give her such information, he waited for her to continue.

Which she did with a watery sigh. “I know if I don’t do this, there’s a good chance the other person will simply do it for the money. And that’s not right. Also, I really want a child. I mean, of course I have Ruby. But that’s a pretty one-sided relationship. She hates me, and I love her, and that’s pretty much the pattern repeating itself. But I don’t want to become my mom. And I…” she mopped the heel of her palm over her face, “I want to love someone and be loved back. Just once.”

Ana shook her head as if disgusted with herself. “So yeah, I guess maybe I’m as messed up in the head as you. But I’ll make sure this baby doesn’t suffer, because it has a terrible father. I can promise you that.”

He didn’t want to feel anything. Her opinion of him should not have mattered. Especially after what she’d done to him. But her words cracked his chest and made him feel weaker than he already did where she was concerned.

No still didn’t have the words to explain why he was asking…no, demanding this of her. And he seriously doubted she would have believed him anyway, especially given what had passed between them the previous day. How he’d promised…not threatened, mind you, but promised to keep her here against her will if she didn’t sign the contract.

In the end, he did as his father would have. Pushed his inappropriate emotions down as he reached for the tablet. “Thank you. I will forward the documents on to my lawyer.”

“Wait!” Ana hugged the tablet to her chest. “I only have one other condition. I’ll stay here, but you’ve got to allow me to return to work. I love my job, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stay sane if I don’t at least have that to focus on. My next shift starts in less than an hour, so you’ll have to decide quickly.”

No considered her words. Made some rapid calculations. Ruby’s school wasn’t too far away, and Montana-san would be back in time to take Ana to work today.

“Okay,” he agreed. “But I want Montana-san to drive you every morning and pick you up. Going forward, he will drive for both you and Ruby.”

“It’s a deal,” she said with a nod.

In that awkward way of hers, she stood up and presented the tablet to him with two hands. “Okay, I’ve officially promised to deliver you one revenge baby. So now what?”

Now what turned out to be the arrival of a fellow nurse on the house’s west-facing stone steps no less than thirty minutes after Lilli signed the contract. Of course this nurse, a stout brown-haired German named Uta, was a private concierge nurse practitioner. One who seemed totally unperturbed when Lilli told her they’d have to meet in the back of Dallas’s black Escalade, since she was already running late for work.

In fact, the only time Uta looked even slightly discomfited was when Dallas opened the back door for the two woman and said, “Here you go, Nurse Uta…” giving the sturdy woman lots of appreciative eye contact.

“Your driver seems very…friendly,” the woman observed after Dallas closed the door behind them and walked around to the driver’s side.

“He’s totally not. I think he likes you,” Lilli whispered back.

“Yes…um…well, to get back to the business at hand,” Uta replied, her voice crisp with professional duty as she pulled out a blood kit. “We must take some blood from you in order to run a few tests.”

“Sure. What tests are you running?” Lilli asked. “I can easily get them done at work.”

Uta shook her head with an apologetic smile as she readied the syringe and first blood collection tube. “I’m sorry but our medical concierge service values client discretion. For this reason, only the doctor and I can have access to your bloodwork.”

“Okay,” Lilli agreed, admiring the nurse’s needle game as she swabbed Lilli’s arm and inserted the needle without the slightest pinprick…all despite the moving car. “Wow. You’re good at this.”

The other woman chuffed, “You would be surprised at some of the places I’ve had to draw blood. I could tell you many stories—if I weren’t required to keep everything confidential…”

They chuckled together, exchanging nurse chit-chat as the car took them out of Bellevue and into Seattle proper over the 520 East.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Uta said when they pulled up in front of the hospital. She pulled a white paper sack out of her medical bag. “You must begin to test yourself once a day, starting tomorrow with your first morning urination.”

Lilli peeked inside the sack and found a rectangular pink and white box staring back at her. An ovulation kit. Which stood to reason, even if the sight of it made her stomach drop.

“Should I contact you when I start ovulating?” she asked Uta.

“No, you must coordinate with Mr. Nakamura, and then one of you can call our service.”

“Oh…” Lilli said, remembering belatedly that just like in Japan, she still didn’t have No’s personal number. Which meant she’d probably have to tell whoever was assisting him these days, “Hi, I’m ovulating! Could you ask your boss to jerk off into a cup so the medical concierge service can shoot me up with his semen?” Because obviously this situation just wasn’t weird enough yet.

This is definitely not how I envisioned my first pregnancy going, Lilli thought with no small amount of guilt as she got out of the car. She’d gone from checking yes to more information about freezing her eggs, to serving as a breed mare for a bitter Japanese billionaire looking for the ultimate revenge.

But remember, at the end of all this you’ll have a baby.

“Oh my God! You’re sleeping with that Japanese billionaire, aren’t you!”

Lilli looked up startled to see Dr. Dunhill grinning and rushing toward her with a green-and-orange Tully’s coffee cup in one hand, and a huge red mock croc tote in the other.

“No! No, I’m not,” Lilli replied, shoving the white bag in her purse. “What makes you think that?”

“Because I have the best nose for gossip, ever,” Dr. Dunhill answered with a proud grin. “Also, because you’re wearing the same Hello Kitty scrubs as yesterday, and that black car drop off of shame is like Rich Dude Morning After 101.

“I’m…I’m not sleeping with him. I swear,” Lilli answered feebly. And it was true because last night’s crazy intense orgasm with No’s fingers on her nipples did not remotely qualify as sex. “And for the record, these scrubs are totally clean.”

Also true. Early this morning, she’d changed into one of the maternity maxis while Mrs. Santos washed her scrubs in one of the GoNo prototype kitchen washing machine units. Lilli only knew the brand because she’d asked the housekeeper to teach her how to use it for future reference. Which was how she discovered Go and No had founded a “practical robotics” company together.

But none of that mattered now because it was pretty clear Dr. Dunhill wasn’t at all convinced. She leaned towards Lilli and took a big honking sniff of her shoulder before saying, “Okay, you’re right. The scrubs are clean…but the real question is, did you wash them or did a member of his staff do it for you?”

Lilli looked away, embarrassed, and Dr. Dunhill shouted, “Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” like she’d just won something on a game show.

“So what happened then?” the other woman demanded. “A dinner-turned-breakfast? Oooh, I know! It was one of those dates where you talk for hours until the sun comes up.”

“Um…yeah. Something like that,” Lilli answered evasively. “We…had a lot of catching up to do.”

Dr. Dunhill waggled her eyebrows at Lilli. “I just bet you did. You go, girl! And more importantly, you better come find me during your lunch hour and tell me everything. I have to get my drama vicariously now that I’m married.”

“Seriously, it’s not like that at all,” Lilli replied in an admittedly weak voice. Because really, how does one explain the romantic dinner her new friend was envisioning actually consisted of Lilli getting drafted into incubating No’s insane “revenge baby” plot. And instead of staying up all night talking, Lilli was in bed tossing and turning while desperately trying to figure out how to get Ruby and herself out of an ultramodern prison disguised as a house. As for breakfast, it was a lively affair that began with a UFC-like smack down between her and Ruby (which Lilli still felt horrible about), followed by several minutes of contract signing, and ending with a blood draw in a moving car.

So definitely not the scintillating romantic interlude imagined by Dr. Dunhill.

Lilli knew she’d given in. But she’d done it after realizing not only did Ruby not give two shits about her, she—as with everyone else Lilli had ever cared about—would never love her back. Not unless Lilli made some dramatic changes to improve their current lot in life. And that’s exactly what she’d done…

Plus you’ll get a baby at the end of all this, she reminded herself again. Not to mention a whole lot of money. Enough to keep Ruby in legs and gymnastic lessons for years. Enough to quit her job.

Not that Lilli ever wanted to quit. She breathed out a sigh of relief as she walked through the hospital doors alongside Dr. Dunhill. And she welcomed the feeling of getting lost in her work over the course of the next eight-hour shift. Even though Ruby didn’t answer her phone when she tried contacting her.

“Just text me to let me know you’re all right,” Lilli ended up begging at one point.

“I’m fine,” her niece texted back a long hour later.

Which got Lilli to thinking how messed up it was that she’d agreed to rent out her womb to No partly so she could afford the leg Ruby had been demanding.

Repeating bad patterns, her college therapist would have said.

Yeah, this entire situation reeked of repeated mistakes. It wasn’t like giving Ruby the leg she wanted would magically transform her into a well-adjusted, less-entitled kid. As bitter as Ruby was over the loss of both her parents and half a leg, Lilli would be lucky if she got a week of good behavior in return after gifting her with the leg. And she knew for a fact she wouldn’t get a hug or a kiss or, God forbid, an “I love you, Aunt Ana.”

Lilli was not looking forward to this evening. Dinners had been bad enough between her and Ruby as of late. And now they would likely be intolerable with No in the mix. She also had no idea how to turn this morning’s fight into something positive. Nor did she have a clue how to transition from “no, you cannot have your leg,” to “of course you can have your fancy leg, sweetie! And it’s no problem that you spent the last several months calling me names and acting like a little asshole” without Ruby assuming it was just another sign that she always got her way.

But as it turned out, Lilli didn’t have anything to worry about on either the revenge-bent billionaire or the entitled teenager fronts. After Dallas dropped her off, Mrs. Santos informed her that No had flown to Portland by helicopter and wouldn’t be back until late, so she and Ruby would be eating without him.

And instead of bringing up the prosthetic leg yet again, Ruby spent dinner chattering on about the YouTube videos she’d watched, and how she was developing some thoughts about how to incorporate her PT exercises to better deal with the imbalance and stiffness that comes from gymnastics.

“Ah, Ruby,” Lilli finally broke in, “Look, I know you wanted me to ask Mr. Nakamura to buy that leg for you, but—”

“Oh, he already say he not buy it for me, even if you ask him nice.”

Lilli blinked. “Okay, what? When did he say this to you?” she asked her niece.

“This morning when Montana-san take me school,” Ruby answered with a shrug.

But Ruby didn’t seem all that upset about this, so Lilli carefully asked, “So why are you so excited about researching things you can do on a leg you can’t have?”

“Because he say I can work for him. Earn leg.”

Say what now? Lilli frowned. “Work for him? Work for him like how?”

Ruby shrugged again, and this time the action was accompanied by a muffled, Scooby-doo-like “I dunno” sound. For someone who’d only been in the States less than a year, Ruby was definitely catching on to how American kids responded to requests for further details. Either incomprehensibly or not at all.

Lilli was surprised at how little Ruby appeared to be bothered by the prospect of working for her leg. Which was a nice change of pace from—well, pretty much every single day since they’d moved to Seattle. So Lilli decided to put the conversation she’d originally planned to have with her niece tonight on the backburner.

But she was still a little worried about the earlier “conversation” between Ruby and No. And because she had the day off tomorrow, Lilli settled herself on a couch in one of the less formal living rooms near the main entrance and determined to wait up for him. She wanted to get to the bottom of whatever it was he and Ruby had discussed.

Lilli decided to watch TV until No got home from his meeting. It would be just like in Japan, she figured.

Maybe exactly like Japan. Lilli frowned at the familiar Naka 4K in the sitting room and wondered if she was being monitored. Hopefully not, because whoever was doing the monitoring would have seen her give up on operating the insanely complicated TV remote after five head-exploding minutes.

To make matters worse, her cheapest-plan-possible phone service didn’t work out in the Bellevue boonies, and Lilli couldn’t, for the life of her, get onto the house’s wifi. Remembering the bookshelf on the landing, she climbed the stairs to take a look and, of course, every single book was in Japanese.

Since all the English-language entertainment options were closed to her, Lilli finally resigned herself to settling on the couch with one of Ruby’s Japanese textbooks. Ruby was already past the point where her aunt could be of any help to her at all with her homework, but Lilli resolved to do better…to be better for the baby she would raise on her own. Even if No didn’t stick around after she got pregnant, Lilli had every intention of making sure their child knew about its half-Japanese heritage.

But Lilli had clearly bitten off more than she could chew. She was wiped out from the stress of the insanely crazy past 24-hours. And as a result, she did something she’d never done before in Japan. Fell asleep while waiting up for No.