Chapter1
Soft jazz rolled through the air, accented with the tinkle of silverware on plates and glasses meeting in agreement. The low hum of conversation filled in the spaces between notes in the music, and there was an occasional laugh ringing out above it all as the patrons of the restaurant ate their way through a meal and slowly found the bottoms of their drinking glasses.
It was a posh restaurant, one of many dotting the street where the well-heeled strolled by windows dressed with the most luxurious finery in New York City. Fifth Avenue was renowned throughout the world for its glitter and gold, and it was mesmerizing to some and nothing but home to others.
For the two men seated at a private table in the restaurant, it was just another street in the city. Pierce Carrington and his best friend Matt Gardner had both surpassed the millionaire mark and had drifted comfortably into the billionaire club. Pierce’s money was old family money, though he had substantially increased the wealth that he was born into with his keen business sense and his brilliant mind. He had a knack for knowing good business, and money seemed to fall on him like rain in a monsoon. He was a magnet for it.
Matt’s money was self-made. He had some good ideas in high school and his first year of college that the tech industry jumped on, and his good ideas kept on coming, and so did the river of funds into his bank account.
Neither of them were pretentious about it. Pierce didn’t care about the money, he cared about his family and the family businesses. He cared about success; failure was never an option for him. Matt had grown up in a home where value was placed on people, not things, and those lessons weren’t lost on him.
They had met in college and become fast friends, and their friendship had deepened over the years. They relied on each other for advice, for humor, for support, and for the bond of chosen brotherhood. It was clear to anyone that their friendship was one that would last a lifetime. Though at that moment, their friendship was the subject of conversation that Matt had brought up with a serious tone.
“You know, Pierce, I’d almost forgotten what you look like. It’s been too long,” he said as the server left them with their drinks. “I know you’ve got a lot going on, but you’ve got to step out more.” His brown eyes were kind but intent on Pierce.
They were almost the same build, tall and muscular; what the general public called ‘big men’, though Matt was a little stockier than Pierce. Pierce had a more toned and narrow body. His carefully styled blonde hair was combed to one side and short around his collar. His jawline was squared, his cheekbones high, his nose long and narrow, his lips were full, and his sky-blue eyes were somewhat stormy, set beneath his furrowed brow.
“I know that, Matt. I’m sorry. I have been at my father’s side almost nonstop the last three months. We’re working on so much with the family businesses right now. It’s been wearing on me a little, to be honest. I haven’t gotten out to do anything, and if I had, it certainly would have been to spend at least a little time with you.” He gave an apologetic shrug.
Matt nodded. “I thought so. Usually when you say you’re working on something with your father, I know that it’s going to be a little while before I see you again, but it’s been a few months now. What’s going on? Anything good?”
Pierce smiled a little as he raised his glass and lifted a brow optimistically. “Very good, but nothing I can talk about until we’re done with it. It’s going to double the size of our business, and that has kept me tied to the desk and the phone and my father’s side while we’ve been making it happen.”
With a grin, Matt took a sip of his drink. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Not that you need it, but nothing makes you happier than success. I hope it works out like you want it to.”
“It will,” Pierce answered. It wasn’t an arrogant answer, but more one of assuredness. He didn’t wonder if it would work out. He knew that it would work out. There was no question of it.
Matt tipped his head to the side a little. “You know, I worry about you sometimes.”
Pierce frowned slightly. “Worry about me? What for? I don’t think anyone’s worried about me since I was behind the wheel of a car for the first time.”
With a laugh, Matt shook his head. “You’re probably right about that.” He took a breath. “I worry about how often you’re alone.”
“I’m rarely alone.” Pierce looked at him with some confusion.
Matt gave his head a shake as he took another drink. “No, I mean alone without anyone in your life. You’re married to your work. There’s no one around when you aren’t working. When was the last time you had a date?”
Pierce let out a long slow sigh as he curled his fingers around the bottom of the glass before him, and looked downward for a moment. “It’s been a while. I’ve just been focused on the business and on the family. I haven’t… I haven’t given any real thought to dating and I keep myself so busy that I guess I don’t even really notice it.”
Matt leaned forward and looked at him intently. “Well, you might not notice it right now, but something that seems to evade you is that time is passing you by and the more you work the more time slips away from you. Before you know it, you’re going to be much older and you’ll look up from your work and discover that you missed out on years and years of your life that you could have shared with someone. You used to talk about having a family someday. Is that still something that you want?”
Biting his lower lip for a moment in thought, Pierce nodded and looked up seriously at Matt. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Well, it’s a plain fact that if you don’t start dating, you aren’t going to find a girl, and if you don’t find a girl, you’re not going to have a family.” He looked pointedly at Pierce.
Pierce frowned slightly. “Are you dating?”
Matt laughed. “I never stopped dating. I just haven’t found the girl I can’t let go of yet, but I’m happy to keep looking until I do.”
Pierce smiled a little. “I guess we don’t talk about that too much.”
“No, we’re always talking about business and your family, when we talk about you.” Matt pointed his finger at him lightly as if to drive home the statement.
“You’re right,” Pierce said quietly as he finished off his drink and set his glass down on the table. “I should give that some thought, I guess. I’ll do that as soon as I’m done with this current deal that my father and I are working on.”
He wasn’t sure he meant it, but he didn’t want to talk about it any further. Matt eyed him knowingly and let it go. He turned the topic of conversation to other things, and the night wore itself away. When the meal was gone and the hour was late, the two men bid each other a good night and Pierce went to his condo just down the way on Fifth Avenue, not too far from the restaurant.
Normally he would have driven out to the family mansion in the Hamptons at the end of Long Island where he lived with his father and siblings, but as he had an early morning, he thought he’d stay at his condo and skip the traffic, and get a good night’s sleep.
A good night’s sleep was not to be his that evening. He had tried to wave off the things that his best friend had brought up to him; talk about dating and women and building a family, but the words that Matt had said to him stayed with him.
He had wanted a family. He had always wanted a family since he was a child and understood that one day he would grow to be a man like his father, and he would have a chance to find a girl and make her his wife. He had immediately taken to the idea, and he had cherished it. He had watched his own father and mother, until she had passed away in a car accident, and then he had continued to watch his father, learning how he wanted to be when he found a wife and had his own children.
Building up the family business took time, precious time, and slipped away from him faster than he could catch it, like tiny grains of sand sifting through his fingers. It seemed to him that the tighter he tried to hold on to it, the faster it fell away from him.
He hadn’t meant for the business he did to absorb so much of his life, but it had. Matt had been right. He hadn’t noticed that so many years had passed him by. He stood looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror at his condo and stared at himself.
He was as good looking as he had ever been, and he knew it, though he paid no attention to it. He was a golden boy; the oldest of the four siblings in his family; blonde haired, blue eyed, well built. He was the tallest of them. The leader. The responsible older brother. The first born. He was the one who stood at his father’s side and helped work the family business. He shouldered much more responsibility than any of his brothers or his sister.
His reflection stared back at him and he saw that time was slowly beginning to etch itself around him; there were fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and there were just a few silver hairs at his temples. He was still in his early thirties, but he worked so much that he hadn’t given himself much time to relax and it seemed to show just a little. He felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach as he thought about the years that had gone by in a flash; slipped right past him as he had worked. Money and success had been his lifemates and he knew that there was a great void where there should be much more. Where he had once wanted a family, and he still did, but he had been so long turned away from those dreams of old and so focused on business that he felt like a stranger turning to look back at the idea of a family just then. It was as if the concept was a long-forgotten childhood fantasy that no longer made sense in his adult life in the real world.
He readied himself for bed and sank himself down into the pillows, closing his eyes. He tried to clear his mind, but as sleep took him, his mind stayed on the subject, and his dreams became dark the deeper he slept.
Pierce saw himself years into the future; the king of Manhattan, wealthy even beyond what he was already, with a mountain of gold beneath him, sitting on a lonely throne, with no one around him. The mountain crumbled away, and he knew that it meant nothing, that it could not hold him up and could not sustain him as the visions in his sleep grew ever darker. He called out searching for family and friends, but there were none, it was only him. He called out for a wife, for a child of his, and there was nothing. He saw himself in shards of broken mirrors all around him, so very old that he looked ancient, his hands were weak and he was bent and aged, withering before his own eyes, and the more he looked, the more he realized just how alone he was, and panic overtook him. He knew in his dream that he needed others, that he needed someone there, that he could not be alone or he would die that way, and yet there was no one. He could find no one, no matter how he searched, no matter how he cried out, there was no one.
He struggled and fought against the cold creeping loneliness that bound itself around him, against the death that seemed to hunt for him, and with a loud cry he awoke, sitting bolt upright in his bed, his skin covered in a cold sweat, his breath shallow and short, his body flooded with adrenaline and his heart pounding almost out of his chest.
Laying back against his pillow, he whispered to himself. “It was just a dream… it was only a dream.” He tried to make himself believe it, but the visions he had seen would not leave his mind or his heart. He couldn’t close his eyes and find peaceful rest, and in reluctance, he surrendered the remainder of his sleep and the dark stillness of the night.
Pouring himself a cup of hot tea, he sat down at his computer and willed himself with everything in him to focus on work, putting his mind and his thoughts on everything that would distract him from the agony of his nightmare.
The sun rose over the city, spilling blushing hues and light over the buildings and Central Park like liquid gold. He looked up from his computer and rubbed his hands over his face, sighing wearily. He had needed more sleep, but he wasn’t about to try to get it. Not that night. Instead, he faced the new day with a long hot shower and a strong cup of coffee. He turned his mind to the meetings he had that morning, and the day ahead. It was going to be a busy day.
The phone rang. He picked up his cell and saw his father’s face on the screen. He slid his finger over the surface of it and answered.
“Good morning, Father,” he spoke, trying to sound as if he wasn’t as haggard as he felt.
“Good morning, Pierce. How are you doing?” Carter asked him pleasantly. Carter was a magnate in the business world, and he had always been a tower of strength in Pierce’s eyes. He had admired his father all of his life, and even at that moment, just as in every moment of his days that had led up to it, he wished that he could be like his father.
It was Carter who had taken their family from being wealthy to being a powerhouse leader in the global financial world. They were one of the wealthiest families not only in the state of New York, but also in the country, and they were among the elite on a global scale. While Carter had worked hard for that, it did not define him. He was a good man, and that had always inspired Pierce to be like his father.
“I’m good. How are you?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.
“Very well,” his father told him and he could hear the smile on the old man’s face. “I wanted to let you know that I’ve just been talking with the attorney’s and I’ll be giving you and your brothers and sister your inheritances soon. There’s a good deal of paperwork and all of that to go through, of course, but it will happen within the year.”
“The inheritances…” he trailed off, his mind whirling as the reality of what that meant came to him with stark absolution.
“Well yes, I’m not going to live forever. We’ve talked about this. I don’t want to wait until I’m gone before all of you get your share of everything. I want to give it to you now, and then retire. When I retire, you’ll be handling the bulk of the family business, Pierce. I can’t imagine that Lucas would do too much to step into that role, and we both know that Ryder and Camilla aren’t going to. She would be good at it, and she could take on some of the responsibility, but not Ryder. It’s really going to be you. It’s always been you. You’ve worked so hard at it, even from your later teenage years, you’ve always been involved one way or another. Why, this whole family owes you a great debt for the success that you’ve realized for all of us. I want you to have your share of it, or rather, I want all of you to have your share of it now. It’s due. Time to look to the future, son.” He sounded certain and Pierce swallowed hard.
“Yes, of course,” he agreed immediately as he stared ahead at nothing.
“I’m very proud of you, Pierce, and I know that someday you’ll be able to do this for your own family. You are taking on a great legacy, and you’ll pass it along just as I am doing.” His father sounded proud of him. He knew he had earned it, but he wished that he didn’t feel as if there was a gaping hole in his chest.
“Thank you, Father,” he answered quietly. He was humbled by his father’s praise. It meant the world to him to have it, but it was only a momentary salve on the worries that were beginning to eat at him.
“I’ll see you this evening for dinner,” Carter stated. It wasn’t an offer.
“Yes, of course. I’ll be home tonight,” Pierce replied. His father didn’t have many standing rules for the four Carrington offspring, but one of the ones that he was insistent upon was that they all be present for dinner, unless their absence was otherwise unavoidable. An occasional night away was overlooked, particularly for Pierce if there was some business that was keeping him in the city, but beyond that, they were all expected to join their father for dinner mostly every night.
They said goodbye and Pierce sat down at the chair before his computer again, staring at the monitor and not seeing a thing on it.
His father’s words went through his mind over and over again as if they were on some kind of circled track. The inheritance. Someday he would be leaving a legacy and inheritance to his own children. He had no one to leave anything to. Nothing but himself in his life, and the hollow in his chest seemed to open wider and feel colder still. There was no one who would be in his life, not for a long while, if ever. He felt as though he was at the edge of a bottomless precipice.
With his head spinning, he picked up his cell phone and brushed his fingertips over the screen pulling up his best friend’s contact page. The phone only rang twice before it was answered.
“This is an early call. What’s going on?” Matt asked with a calm but slightly concerned voice. It was common for Pierce to be up so early, but it was uncommon for him to call Matt any time before midday.
Pierce felt breathless as he spoke, trying to push down the worry that was beginning to build in him. “I just got off the phone with my father.”
“Is he alright?” Matt asked, his concern growing more evident in his voice. Carter was a bit older, but not so old that there should be any concern for his health.
“Yes, he’s fine. He was calling to tell me that my brothers and sister and I are going to be getting our inheritances soon.” Pierce drew in a deep breath as he tried to focus on the present rather than the looming future.
“Well that’s good news, I guess. Congratulations on that! I’m sure it’ll be nice to get.” There was an easing smile in Matt’s tone.
“It will be nice to get, of course, but… I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about. About me not having a lady in my life or a family. This move of my father’s really puts that absence into sharp perspective.” Pierce turned and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment.
“I can see how it would. Is it worrying you?” Matt asked, intuitively.
“Yes, actually. It’s got me thinking about what my father is giving me and what I would be giving a child of my own. I have a legacy to pass along, and I want to have a family. I’ve been so wrapped up in my work, so focused on the business and my father’s family that I didn’t stop to notice that time has been sweeping right past me and I’m afraid I’m running out of time.” Pierce lifted his hand to his closed eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“Well, if it’s something that’s important to you, I’m glad we started talking about it. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to start dating?” Matt asked with a hint of a grin at the other end of the line.
Pierce dropped his hand and opened his eyes, giving his head a shake. “No, I’m right in the middle of the biggest business deal that my father and I have done since I’ve been working with him, and I really just don’t have time to cultivate a relationship. I mean, think about that, I have to start dating and there’s no telling how long it will be before I find a girl I want to marry; I mean, look at you! Didn’t you just say that you haven’t stopped dating and you still haven’t found a girl that you wouldn’t let go of? Isn’t that what you said? Yeah, we’re in our thirties. If you haven’t found her yet, and you’re one of the most eligible bachelors in the city, then that doesn’t bode well for me. Who knows how long it would take for me to weed through all of the prospective women to try to find someone I’d like to spend the rest of my life with, and then once that’s done there’s the term of dating to engagement and then engagement to the wedding.”
“Well, you could always go to Vegas. You don’t have to draw it out.” Matt chuckled slightly, at the risk of bringing humor into a serious conversation.
“You know my father and my family, and my status in the community. I can’t get married in Vegas, though a quick wedding is a tempting thought. Anyway, after all of that, then we could try for a child, but who knows how long that might take, and then it’s another nine months from there. Even if I started dating today, which I don’t have time to do, and I was lucky and found a girl I wanted to spend all of my life with and raise a family with, it would still be at least two years from right now before there was even the possibility of a child. That’s fairly far into the future, considering my age and what I want to accomplish. This is bad. It’s going to take too long, and I don’t have the time to get started right now with any kind of dating to kick the whole thing off.” Pierce leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, dropping his head into his left hand.
There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line. “So the traditional route isn’t going to work for you.”
“No, it doesn’t seem like it could.”
“Well then what if you considered a non-traditional route.” Matt was beginning to sound optimistic.
Pierce raised his head and looked straight forward. “What? What do you mean non-traditional?”
Matt hummed a little as he thought. “So, hear me out on this… it’s just a bunch of ideas bouncing around in my head, but we know that what you need most is a solution. Right? So… maybe you should think about something like adoption. You know, find some kid who needs a good home and give him one. That skips the whole process of dating and engagement and marriage and even pregnancy. Instant kid. Poof. Done.”
Pierce bit at his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment. “No, I would want one of my own. Not that I wouldn’t want to give some kid a good home, but it is important to me to carry on the family legacy. My own legacy, my bloodline. That matters to me.”
There was another momentary silence while Matt thought on it. “What if you went way outside of the box and did something like a surrogate pregnancy? There’s still a little wait, but it would wind up being your kid, and you’d only have to wait nine months. So you finish up this big deal you’re working on and you still have some time to get ready, you know, prepare a nursery and tell your father and then bam… you’re a dad. You’d just have to face raising a kid on your own. I have no doubt that you could do that, and you could hire a nanny to help you, and I’m sure Cami would be all over that as the baby’s aunt, but that could be a solution. What do you think?”
Pierce was about to protest when the idea somehow got stuck in his mind and he hesitated, thinking carefully about it. He blinked as the finer points of the suggestion filtered through all the reasoning in his mind. Every reason he had to turn the notion down met with an answer that logically overcame it.
“I…” he began, running all of the scenarios and thoughts through his mind yet again just to be sure, “I… guess I think that wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean, it’s unconventional to be sure, but… you know, the more I think about it, the more it seems to make some sense. I mean… it skips the dating and the marriage situation, which I still would want to do someday when I have time to find the right woman, but it gives me a head start on having a child; at least a firstborn child, that I could ensure would inherit all that I have to give. I could have this child in less than a year, perhaps even nine or ten months if the procedure worked out right away and I found a suitable clinic.”
Pierce let out a long slow breath as he let the idea wash all through him. “That could do it. I could… I could be a father in less than a year. I’d have someone to raise, to fill that void, to leave my legacy to.” A quiet laugh escaped him and he gave his head a shake of disbelief.
“Matt, I do believe that you might very well have come up with a viable solution to this conundrum. This might actually work. I’ll have to give it a little more thought, but I suspect that this might be the best possible answer for me.” Pierce felt a smile turn up his mouth. For the first time since their conversation at dinner, he felt relief.
“Well, that’s what I’m here for, you know. Best friend, counselor, advisor, wise and wondrous one.” He laughed then, and Pierce laughed with him.
“Today, yes. You are all of that today. You get a gold star. Thank you, Matt. That was some sage advice. I’ll give it some thought.” Pierce was beginning to feel a lightness in him that absorbed the darkness and removed it almost entirely.
“Let me know. I’ll be waiting to hear if I’m going to be an uncle at some point,” Matt chuckled softly.
“I’ll do it. Thanks, Matt.”
They said goodbye and Pierce set the phone down on his desk and bit his lower lip thoughtfully. It was a tremendous idea, and one that he was going to want to spend some time considering. He had a meeting that morning, and it was all he could do to keep his thoughts on the business at hand, rather than from wandering too far into the realms of possible children and how to make that goal a reality.
When his meeting was over, he went for a long walk through Central Park, his hands in his pockets, his thoughts on the possibility of becoming a father in the very near future. As he walked he began to notice the babies and children around him; more than he normally saw, and he wondered if there were always that many and he was just too busy to see them before, or if it was the universe somehow telling him to do it.
He could have a baby without the mother being in a relationship with him, and he had more than enough means to care for it and raise it. It might seem somewhat selfish and unfair to the child to consider raising it without a mother, but his sister Camilla would be around and she’d be a superb aunt, so it wouldn’t be as if there wasn’t a caring woman in the child’s life at all.
Besides the fact, he told himself, he was still planning on marrying later. He was certain that it was possible for him to find and fall in love with a woman who might be able to love and care for his child as if it were her own.
The future suddenly seemed wide open, and though he never acted rashly or in haste, particularly with an important situation, he knew by the time he walked out of Central Park and back to his condo overlooking the place, that he was intent on doing it. He had made up his mind. He would seek out a surrogate mother to carry his child for him, and he would be a father before the end of the year, with any luck at all.
He sat down at his computer and began to research fertility and surrogacy clinics in the city and state of New York, and by the afternoon, he had found one that he felt would be a solid choice in helping him create his own family.
Feeling his heart pound inside of his chest, he picked up the phone and called the number as a smile began to grow over his face. The receptionist answered and he drew in a long slow breath.
“I’d like to make an appointment to come in for a surrogacy program,” he said evenly, barely believing that the words were coming from him. It was going to happen.