Chapter2
Jasmine sat in her car after walking out of her appointment with Dr. Clayton, and frowned as she held on to the steering wheel. She was still parked, sitting in her car, her mind stuck on the fact that Cameron Elliot had two women doing surrogate pregnancies for him at the same time. She couldn’t seem to get over it.
Looking over at her purse, she dug in it for her cell phone and swiped her finger over the screen. Pressing the call button, she held the phone to her ear and chewed gently on her lower lip as she tapped her finger on the steering wheel.
“Hey Jas, what’s going on?” her best friend Kelly asked, sounding chipper and happy to hear from her.
“Are you busy? Something came up today that… well I guess it just has me a little… weirded out. Can I come over and talk to you?” she asked, hoping that Kelly was free. “I’m sorry it’s short notice.”
“Oh yeah, of course. I’m just rolling out dough to make pasta.” Kelly bubbled pleasantly.
“I love that you make your own pasta. Are you making chicken noodle soup?” Jasmine asked with piqued interest.
“Yes, would you like some?” Kelly was grinning, and Jasmine could hear it right through the phone.
“You know I live for your chicken noodle soup.” Jasmine answered as a smile came over her face. “And we need to talk. I need a different perspective. I’m way too close to this one to think about it clearly.”
“Okay. Chicken soup and advice is waiting for you. Come over anytime.” Kelly offered sweetly.
They said goodbye and ended the call, and Jasmine headed straight over to her best friend’s house.
Kelly Madison lived on the west side of the big hills that separated Silicon Valley on the east from the ocean on the west. Her house was a ranch, like many homes in the hills of California, and it sat on the side of a golden hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by tall redwood trees that protected it from the winter storms that sometimes rolled in from the Pacific.
Jasmine pulled her car through the white split rail fence and drove along the short driveway until she got to the house, where she parked out in front on the gravel drive. The house was buttery yellow with white trim. There were windows framed in white all the way around it, and wrap around porch that encircled three sides of it. On the front side, facing the blue sea that seemed to go on out forever until it met the horizon, hung a big white wooden swing, big enough for two people.
When Jasmine arrived, Kelly was sitting on the swing. She waved and called out to her. “Come on over here and sit with me. I have your soup ready for you.” There were flower pots sitting at each post on the railing of the porch, and hanging from the eaves of the porch, and planted in the earth around the porch. No matter how warm it was outside, the plants kept it cool and pretty on the porch, and nearly fenced in with green leaves and flowers.
Jasmine walked up to the porch and crossed over it, picking up the bowl of chicken noodle soup from the little table beside the swing, and sitting down beside her best friend with the bowl in her hands. “This is paradise. It really is.” She sighed happily as she relaxed and smiled over at Kelly.
Kelly was thin and strong, she had endless energy and was someone who got up with the sun and worked hard or played hard, or relaxed well all through the day, until a reasonable bed time, and then she hit the hay every night and got a good night’s rest. She was a woman whose life was together.
She had a large garden that she tended, she ate only organic food, she made much of her own food like the pasta that was found in the bowl of chicken soup that Jasmine was eating. She did all of the work around her ranch, fixing fences, tending to the two horses she owned, as well as three goats, two dogs, and one cat who was rarely around.
She had a grove of orange trees and she sometimes set up a stall and sold those at farmer’s markets in the summer, along with other fresh vegetables from her beautiful garden. She also sold some of the flowers she grew, and the honey from her beehives near the orange grove.
Her hair was shoulder length and curly, her eyes were bright and dark, and she almost never wore makeup. She was a simple, clean, healthy, strong woman, who love nature more than the façade of life that she saw many other people living in within big cities. She had gotten a master’s degree in business and finance and then left the big city for the countryside.
She often did some work online, advising businesses and doing day trading, but she was more often kneeling on the ground with earth in her hands than she was trading stocks and creating business plans at her computer.
“What’s bugging you baby?” Kelly asked as she looked over at Jasmine. She had a burlap bag at her side, and a bowl in her lap. She was shelling peas.
Jasmine took a sip of the soup and savored it, closing her eyes and loving the taste as she chewed and swallowed. She was two bites in before she turned and looked at Kelly.
“So, I went to the doctor’s today.” Jasmine began, hardly able to believe that she was going to say what she had come to say.
“Yeah? What did he say?” Kelly asked, sliding a row of peas out of their shell and into the bowl in her lap.
Jasmine laughed for a moment, “Well, he said the baby and I are doing fine, and then he asked me to go out and have dinner with him.” She laughed again and shook her head.
Kelly’s jaw fell open and she stared at Jasmine. “He asked you to go out on a date with him?”
“Well yeah, he knows this is a surrogacy pregnancy; he’s the one who did it. He knows I’m not keeping the baby, that in six month’s it’ll be just me. He’s interested in dating me, and he said that he wanted to ask me out while I’m still going to him, because once I have the baby, I’ll be gone and he probably won’t see me again. He didn’t want to miss his chance.” Jasmine shrugged.
“Smart man. So, what did you tell him?” Kelly asked, eyeing her curiously as she popped open another pea pod.
“I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea. At least… not now.” She sighed and shook her head. “That’s not even why I came over here. As crazy as it sounds, that wasn’t even the weird part of the visit to the doctor.” Jasmine shook her head and looked over at Kelly as she ate another spoonful of her soup.
“So, what’s the weird part?” Kelly asked, popping a couple of peas into her mouth.
“The weird part is that I was sitting in the waiting room, waiting to see the doctor, when another pregnant woman came in. She was really pretty. She looked like she was from South America; Brazilian or Peruvian or something. Anyway, she and I started talking and it turned out that she was in there for a pregnancy as well, and that her pregnancy was a surrogacy too.” Jasmine frowned a little.
Kelly’s eyebrow lowered slightly as she listened.
“It’s not that weird; the doctor is a fertility specialist. I’m sure there are lots of women who go in there to do surrogacy pregnancies.”
Jasmine set the bowl down in her lap and looked over at Kelly in utter dismay. “The weird thing is that we’re sitting there talking about it and she asks me who the family is that I’m doing this for, and I didn’t want to tell her any details, I feel like that would be a violation of privacy for the guy, so I decide to keep it simple and I tell her that it’s for a local businessman there in Palo Alto. She pipes up that hers is a businessman there too, and that he’s this famous billionaire and she says his name. Cameron Elliot. She asks if I know him.” Jasmine shook her head and slapped her hand down on her leg slightly.
“Kelly, it’s the same guy I’m doing my surrogacy for. She’s two and a half months along and I’m three and a half months along. She’s having his kid too, one month later than me!” Jasmine groaned in frustration as she took another spoonful of the chicken soup.
Kelly’s eyebrows shot up and she turned her head away from Jasmine and stared straight forward. “Wow. That’s quite a surprise.”
Jasmine sighed. “It’s weird for me. It’s… bizarre. I don’t think I like it.”
Kelly shrugged and looked back at her. “You don’t have to like it. Jas, you’re being paid to have this guy’s baby. He’s a billionaire. He can afford as many kids as he wants to have. You’re giving him one, you’re being paid for it, and that’s all there is to it. I get it that it’s kind of weird that he’s having two at once with two different women, but hey… that’s his choice.
The bright side of that is that those kids are going to have a sibling that’s practically a twin, and they won’t be growing up alone. Siblings are important. They are built-in friends, most of the time. It’ll be good for them both.
I know it might seem strange, but if you think about it, it’s nothing to you if he does that. You’re in this for the money. Keep it simple. You have the kid in six months, hand it off to him, take the money, and go build your dream. There’s nothing to it.”
A slow smile spread over Jasmine’s face until it was a grin. “You know what? You’re right. I’m so anxious to get it going. I’ve worked so hard for it, and until now I just haven’t been able to get the funds together for it. Taking nine months out of my life to have this surrogate baby is no sacrifice at all, not when I look at the whole picture.
I’ll get the money I need to open my shop and make my dream happen. Who knows how long it would have taken me without this opportunity. Kelly, thank you. You’re the best. You have this uncanny knack for seeing the simple truth in everything and not getting too caught up in the details. It must be nice in your head. I sometimes wish I could go in there and poke around.”
Kelly laughed at her. “You are in there poking around right now, telling me about this situation with the other mother, and now you have my opinion on it. You poked around and now there’s a perspective on your stick.”
Jasmine laughed at her. “That’s true. See? You just did it again. I love that. You simplify everything. It’s good to do. I’ll have to try to do that more often in my life.”
“What you should be worrying about,” Kelly broke open another pod and slid the peas into the bowl, “is your flower shop. Where are you going to put it, what is it going to look like, all the details. You’re going to have enough funding from this to open it up and do well with it, but you need to start planning it now. That way after the baby is born you’ll be ready and you can go right in and do it.” Kelly gave her a wink.
Jasmine’s dark brown eyes lit up. “You know what, you’re right of course. When I went to go see Cameron yesterday, we met at his office in downtown Palo Alto, in the older part of town. It’s so pretty there! All the buildings on that street and in that neighborhood are so nice. They’re all older, sort of like a vintage neighborhood. I loved it. I was even standing there looking at it, wondering about having a flower shop on that street, or one close by it. It would fit right in there so perfectly.”
A day-dreamy look came over Jasmine’s face and Kelly watched her with a big smile. “So, check out the neighborhood, find out what they have for flower shops there already, do some homework and research and see if that’s a good spot, and if it is, then open your shop there. Get the planning done now. I’m sure storefront property there isn’t cheap, and I’m sure that it gets snapped up fast, so have a realtor on the line and have them keeping their eyes open for anything that might come up around there for you. Get your plan in gear.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I get the big lump sum payment for the surrogacy at the end when he takes the baby, but he is going to give me five thousand a month extra for every month of the pregnancy to help with expenses. I could put some of that to work for myself now and get the plans for the shop going. I think that’s a really good idea.”
Kelly winked and fired her finger at her like a pistol. “That’s my girl. I’m glad to be here for you. You know I’ll help you with any part of it if you want me to. Just let me know.”
“Thank you, Kelly. You’re an amazing friend.” Jasmine smiled at her.
“Well, I try to be.”
They sat on the porch swing and talked for a long while, and when Jasmine was finished with her soup, she began shelling the peas with her friend as their conversation wandered over many different things and went in a wide range of directions.
The sun set brilliant and golden on the sea, sinking down past the horizon, and finally Jasmine said goodbye to her friend and drove home feeling as if all of the world was right again.
***
Jasmine lived in a Queen Anne styled home that had been built at the turn of the century. It had a turret at one corner, a gabled roof that sloped downward on one side, and a balcony off of the top floor that also served as a roof to the room below it. The balcony had a full balustrade around it and was shaped as a big square. There was a bay window that extended off of one side of the house, looking over the garden on that side. On the other side of the house was a driveway and a detached garage.
There were white and pink roses that grew up both sides of the stairs on the front porch, and around the house she had a pretty white picket fence. A green lawn carpeted her yard, and in the front were a few big leafy trees that kept the summer heat at bay.
Rather than having a swing on her front porch like Kelly had, she had chosen instead to have a small café table and a couple of chairs. She sat outside once in a while and sipped tea on weekend mornings, but she was more often in her back yard where she had a large stone patio and a bigger table for more company. There were pretty lights set about the patio and in warm weather, she enjoyed having people over to cook out or drink wine as they visited.
The rest of her back yard was like the front; grass, flowering bushes, some tall old shady trees, and flowers, but the back yard also had a small garden where she grew herbs and a little selection of vegetables. The pride of her home was the flowers that grew all around it. There were many kinds and she had planted them in such a way that no matter what the season was, there was always something growing and blooming in her yard.
The inside of her home was kept as much to the original build as possible, with hardwood floors, crown molding, tall wide windows, arched doorways, and old chandeliers that hung in the bigger rooms and lit them with a soft and glowing light. Her furniture was also a vintage style, harking back to a more elegant time.
Jasmine was sitting on her sofa in the living room a few days after she had been to the doctor when there was a knock at her door. She looked up from the laptop in front of her where she had been looking at real estate that might work for her flower shop, and frowned. She hadn’t been expecting anyone.
Rising from the sofa, she went to the door and opened it to discover Cameron Elliott standing there in front of her with a box under one arm. He smiled at her and she tried not to look as incredulous as she felt about seeing him there.
“Cameron! What a surprise! Won’t you come in?” she asked, stepping back to let him come into her home. She blinked as he went past her, stunned that he had just walked into her living room. She couldn’t have been more surprised by any other person at her door.
“I’m sorry to drop by so unexpectedly like this. I hope I didn’t interrupt you too much,” he said with a polite smile as he looked at her. She saw the smile on his face had reached his eyes, and it made her smile back at him and think what a good man he was. It was inherent in everything about him.
“Not really no, I’m just looking at real estate. Actually, down closer to where your office is,” she admitted shyly as she indicated her laptop sitting on the table before the sofa.
“Can I take that for you? Get you a drink perhaps?” she asked, looking at the box in his arms.
He blinked and laughed, looking down at it. “Well yes, actually, this is for you. It’s the music machine that you mentioned. It’s the best one I could find. I thought I’d bring it over myself, and give it to you. I want to make sure that it’s the right one for you and that you’re comfortable with it.”
She gasped and grinned at him. “Wow, that was fast! Thank you!”
He set it on the table near them and she opened the box and lifted the little machine out, turning it over in her hands and then handing it to him so she could dig the instructions out and read them. She mumbled through them aloud and then walked back to the sofa and sat on it, looking up at him.
“Well, shall we try it out?” she asked with a smile.
He walked over and handed it to her, “I’d be glad if you did,” he said with a chuckle. “I want to know it’s the right one for you.”
She set it on her belly and pressed the button, and a moment later, soft classical music was playing. She smiled up at him. “I think that’s perfect! I love it! It’s comfortable, it’s not too heavy, and the sound and volume are just right. I see that I can adjust them, but they’re good. Thank you so much!”
She looked up at him with genuine delight and he shrugged and smiled, sliding his hands into his pockets as he watched her. “That’s perfect. I’m glad that it works.”
“I’ll use it often. I promise.” She told him as she set it aside on the table and stood up. She cleaned up the packaging from the box and threw the box away, coming back in to find him standing there with a white envelope in his hand.
“I also got this for you. It’s concert tickets to the San Francisco Symphony. They’re doing Mozart, and I thought that you might like to go. I thought that if recorded music was good for the baby, then live music would be infinitely better if it was the same classical music that you were playing here on the machine.” He handed the envelope to her.
She stared at him and smiled, taking it from him. “Wow… thank you, that’s very generous. I’m sure you’re right and it will be very good for the baby.”
He lifted his brows a little and pointed to the envelope. “There are two tickets in there, so that you can take someone with you, and you won’t have to go alone.”
Jasmine bit at her lower lip a little as she looked at the envelope in her hand. The first person who had crossed her mind was Kelly, but then she had another idea, and she looked back up Cameron.
“You know, since you were so thoughtful to buy the tickets, and since this is your child, would you like to go with me? I do know that the baby can hear voices outside the womb, and I think it would be nice if this baby could hear yours, since you’re his father. I’d be glad to have you go with me to this symphony, and then the baby can hear you talking, and that would be nice.” She smiled at him sweetly.
He hesitated a moment and then smiled back at her. “Actually, you know what, I’d like that. Thank you, that was very thoughtful of you to offer. I’ll go with you. It’s next Saturday night.”
“Great! That will be a lot of fun.” She felt good that she had asked him, and she knew as she did it that it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll drive us up to the city, if you like. I can pick you up here, and we’ll go. Does that work for you?” he looked happy that he was going.
“That’s perfect, thank you.” She grinned at him. “Oh! I was going to tell you that the baby’s last appointment went well. It’s growing as it should be, and everything was normal. I got to hear the heartbeat. It was at 155 beats per minute. That doesn’t really tell us much except that it’s healthy and it sounds the way that it’s supposed to.” She didn’t bother to add that the doctor had asked her out on a date.
He brightened and looked almost as if he was breathing a sigh of relief. “That’s good news. I’m glad for the update. So, you said you’d swing by the office after the next appointment?”
“Yes, I can do that.” she answered pleasantly.
“Here’s my cell phone number,” He said, handing her a business card and writing his private cell phone number on the back of it, “just text me when you want to meet and I’ll be there. Easily done.” He gave the card to her and she looked at both sides of it and set it on the table beside her laptop.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “You’re taking very good care of us.”
“I hope so. I want everything to be as good as it can be for you both.” He looked at her laptop where she had set his card and he slipped his hands into his pockets and then eyed her curiously. “You said that you were looking for real estate close to where my office is?”
“Yes, I was hoping to find an empty little shop down there.” Her brain already skipping ahead to the thought that he might know when something came available there, since he worked down there all the time.
“What kind of a shop are you thinking of opening?” He watched her with an intrigued expression.
She crossed her arms over her chest and smiled at him. “I’d love to open a flower shop there, if I can find the right spot. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and because of this surrogacy for you, I’m hoping to be able to do it. I won’t try to open it until after the baby is born, but I’m hoping that one of the store fronts in that area will open up and I can lease it or even buy it between now and then so that I have a place to begin my business.”
He raised his brows a bit. “That’s a great idea. There’s only one flower shop down in that area, and it’s actually out on the edge of the neighborhood, so there wouldn’t be any real competition, and I think that kind of a business would do very well there. I’ll keep my eyes open and if I see any come up, or if I hear any of the other people down there talking about leasing or selling a place, I’ll let you know.”
She breathed a happy sigh. “Thank you so much! I really appreciate that.” He voiced her thoughts before she could, and it was a relief to her that he wanted to help her find a place there if he could. It didn’t surprise her that he offered. He was, as she had already thought more than once, a truly good man.
“Well, I should be going. I don’t want to keep you from what you were doing. I’ll see you on Saturday, for the symphony. We can go to dinner first, if you’d like. I know some wonderful places in the city.” He stopped just at the door and looked back at her as he offered dinner. “What do you think?”
Jasmine grinned her bright wide smile at him. “I think that sounds like a lovely night out. Thank you.”
He nodded and waved to her. “I’ll see you then. Let’s say four-thirty.” He headed out of the door and she watched him walk to his car, get in, and drive away. She smiled the entire time, thinking how nice it was that a man like him was going to be raising a child that she was bringing into the world.
“That was your daddy little one.” She said softly, looking down and patting her belly. “You’re going to have such a good life when you come out into this world and go home with him. He’s going to be the best dad in the world, and you are going to be so happy growing up with him.”