I missed all of the scenery on the ride home, reeling at the turn the evening had taken. Jonathan Dane wanted me to have his baby? Why?

I thought back over every moment of the hours we’d spent together, every glance, every touch. He seemed to enjoy my company, and seemed to be just as attracted to me as I was to him; was that it? Was he using my desire to be a mother as a shortcut to get me into bed?

No, that didn’t seem right. The PR problem seemed to be legitimate. Maybe that was it, then. He never had said how he would get me pregnant, hadn’t mentioned romance or sex at all, actually.

What if he just wanted to inseminate me in a hospital room somewhere and fabricate everything?

“Excuse me,” I said to the driver.

“Yes, miss?”

“How long have you worked for Mr. Dane?”

“I’ve been with the family 30 years, miss.”

“And…I’m sorry for asking this, but…is Mr. Dane a womanizer? In your opinion.”

His amused glance met my eyes in the mirror. “I generally keep my opinions to myself, miss. However, I very much doubt that anyone who knows Mr. Dane would describe him as a womanizer, at least in the last seven years or so.”

I did some quick mental math. Mr. Dane had celebrated his thirtieth birthday just before being named CEO of the company. It had been a big deal, according to Imogen, and the whole company had participated in the festivities. That must have been what, two or three years ago? So five years before that would have been right in the middle of Mr. Dane’s twenties.

“He had a lot of fun in college, then?” I asked.

The driver winked at me, but said nothing. He switched the radio on, implying that the conversation was over, and I let my head fall back against the seat. There was too much to process, and I didn’t even know the right questions to ask.

We drove in silence for half an hour before pulling up to my building. Looking up at it, all I could think was that the entire fifty-unit building could have fit comfortably in a single wing of Mr. Dane’s mansion. The thought depressed me, somehow, which was irrationally frustrating. I cast around my mind for something solid to sink my angry teeth into, some part of this complicated ordeal to get righteously outraged about.

“When the time is right,” I muttered under my breath. “How the hell does he get to decide when the time is right?”

I tossed my black dress on the pile of unwashed laundry in the corner of my bedroom and kicked off my heels. My bra followed, releasing tension from my tail bone to the base of my skull. If I ever did get to be a housewife, bras would be the first sacrifice I would make in honor of the transition.

Frustrated and conflicted, I switched on the music playlist I usually reserved for hard workouts (when I remembered to go for a run) and began to clean my apartment. I might not have the money, but I would be damned if I didn’t develop some mothering skills.

After an hour of scattered, inefficient cleaning, I turned the music off and sat on the floor. I needed to think.

“Okay,” I said to myself in the mirror hanging from the bathroom door. “What are your options right now? One. Take the CEO of AllGood flippin’ Incorporated up on his insane offer. Have a bunch of babies, live in a freaking palace and have everything I want or need right at my fingertips. Everything except love. Option two, artificial insemination or a one-night stand, bibbity-bobbity-baby.”

I stood and paced my apartment, my bare feet gripping the threadbare carpet. I couldn’t raise a kid here. Babies crawl; they get into everything.

I began noticing every dangerous part of my house; the peeling baseboards with their exposed, rusty nails. The cracked plastic covers over the electrical outlets. The stove, undersized and old, which would catch fire at the least provocation. A scrabbling in the walls emphasized the danger of living in a place like this with an infant; if the germs and nails didn’t get him, the rats would.

“Okay, so, option three: move back home,” I said, wincing away from the idea even as I said it. “Or not. Back to option zero, then. Fall in love…with who?”

I had no prospects at all. I had spent the whole of last year dating and searching, trying to fill the hole that had been left in my heart when my dad had passed. Dozens of dates with dozens of men had left me weary and despondent. Maybe true love really was a myth. Maybe people just did the best they could with what they had.

“And what do I have?” I asked my dingy walls.

The scratching began again.

“Rats,” I answered myself. “I have rats.”

* * *

The next day, after finishing up the cleaning as best I could (there really was no way to get everything looking new, but by the time I was done, at least it was less depressing), I couldn’t avoid the question anymore.

What was I going to do? This was a question of long-term happiness, of doing what was best for me and my future offspring. If anyone knew what lengths a person had to go to in order to find happiness, it was my mother.

So, with my phone in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, I stepped out onto my tiny balcony and curled up in the deck chair the previous tenants had left for me.

“Mom?”

“Kaley! Is it Thursday already?”

“No,” I laughed. “It’s still the weekend. I, um…I wanted to talk to you about something. Are you busy?”

“Oh, a little, nothing that can’t wait. You sound upset; who upset you?”

“Just my own brain,” I told her, smiling fondly at her fierce protectiveness, even half a world away. “I’ve been given an offer, and I don’t know whether or not I should accept it.”

“What sort of offer?”

“My, um…” I sighed heavily. My boss wants me to have his baby doesn’t sound good, no matter how you phrase it. “It’s complicated. Essentially, a very wealthy man has asked me to have his child.”

“Do you love him?”

I love his body, his scent, his eyes…but not him.

“No. I barely know him. I know he could provide a good life for me and any children we had, but it wouldn’t be love. It would just be…convenient.”

“Paidi mou,” she said admonishingly. “Convenience kills the soul. Money won’t keep you warm at night. You are passion and light, Kaley. Search your soul, find your passion, chase that passion. That’s when everything falls into place.”

“What if my passion is to be a mother, though?”

“Then be one,” she said affectionately. “But don’t tie yourself in knots about the how and the when and the why. Open your heart to your child, wherever they are, wherever they might come from. As soon as you know that you are ready for the baby, the baby will come. You did.”

I smiled at that. I was long over my adolescent belief that Mom ran away because of me, but the hurt was still there, pulling the way an old scar pulls on healthy tissues. Her acknowledgment meant the world to me.

“I’ll try that,” I promised. “I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing, and I’ll talk to you on Thursday.”

“All right, sweetheart. You keep your chin up and your eyes fourteen. All will work out. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Eyes fourteen. I hadn’t heard that in years, I thought as I hung up the phone. I missed her, and her crazy little sayings, but I wouldn’t ask her to come back to the States. In the last ten years, she had only visited a handful of times, and each time she had been more miserable than the last. There was something about home that kept her steady, something she couldn’t find here.

I could have gone to her, I supposed. I had thought about it, several times. But my mother had always taught me to listen to my gut, and my gut told me that I still had things to do here. I felt like this was where I was supposed to be. So the question, really, was: what was my gut saying about Mr. Dane and his proposal?

Mostly that I hope he wants to impregnate me the traditional way, I thought with a smirk.

* * *

The rest of the weekend was spent in limbo as I went back and forth about whether to accept his offer or take my chances with true love, whatever that was. By Monday, I was relieved to be back at work just so I would have other things to think about. My relief was short-lived, however. My co-star for the first photoshoot ruined it for me.

“Ms. Marshall, for the first few hours you will be working with Jordan,” Ms. Abrahms told me, gesturing to a beautiful baby boy of about eight months.

He grinned and gurgled at me in his doting mother’s arms.

“You will be playing with a variety of toys—our classic line as well as the new line of baby toys due to be released in October. We will direct you if we need to, but it is important for us to capture the candid moments too. Let’s get you into makeup and wardrobe, then we’ll get started!”

I followed her back to the dressing area, finding it difficult to tear my eyes off of the little boy. His cherubic face was framed in dark, fine, wild brown curls which accented his silvery eyes—the casting director had somehow managed to find a baby which looked exactly how I imagined my child would look, should I choose to have it with Mr. Dane.

I barely noticed the makeup artist buzzing around my face, and paid scant attention to the clothes they put me in, distracted by what could be interpreted as a sign.

“Perfect. You look gorgeous,” a flamboyant photographer told me hastily as he pushed me toward the stage.

The stage stole my breath. It was my dream nursery, with clean white furniture and paintings of vintage teddy bears on the false wall, fake sunlight streaming through a nonexistent window, and an array of fun and educational toys laid out atop an alphabet rug, inviting us to come and play.

Without meaning to, I calculated the cost of this nursery and came up with a depressingly high sum. Any nursery I could put together on my own would be full of depressing compromises.

I shook my mood away and took the smiling Jordan from his mother and set him on the stage. I sat across from him and booped his nose with a stuffed lion. His laugh shattered what was left of my resolve.

“Turn toward me and smile,” the photographer instructed.

I did so, and continued to follow his directions for the next three hours. There was one diaper-change break and one bottle break, and then Jordan’s legally allotted time was up. Just in time, too; the happy boy had fallen asleep on my chest during the final set of photos.

His sleepy weight against my heart seemed to be the only thing holding it together, and I felt it shatter as I rolled him gently into his mother’s arms. She met my eyes with an instinctual understanding, and I nearly started to cry.

“All right, everybody! We’re breaking for lunch…no, not you Andre! You need to reset the stage! Everybody, be back here in one hour.”

“It’ll be another baby shoot,” Ms. Abrahms told me. “We have a little girl coming in named Destiny. She’s eighteen months, so you’ll be working with the older baby toys.”

“Okay,” I said, my ears ringing.

Destiny. The gray-eyed baby. The perfect nursery, just out of reach. I couldn’t do this anymore. My heart was breaking every day, and there was only one way to stop the destruction. Mind made up, I left the room in full makeup and the marketing department’s clothes and made for the elevator.

I ran into Imogen on her way out.

“Whoa, when did you start wearing a face full of paint?” she asked.

“Photo shoot. Excuse me.”

“Are you on a break? We’ve got the focus group for the freight trains today; you were part of that team. Do you want to peek in and see how it goes?”

I couldn’t process what she was saying. All I could think about was getting upstairs and talking to him before I lost my nerve.

“No, thanks, I really have to go…”

“Are you okay?” Imogen probed, squinting at me hard, still blocking my path to the elevator.

“Yes! Yes, I’m fine, just… I have to go!” I pushed past her and into the elevator.

From the look on her face, I would definitely be hearing about this later, but I couldn’t focus on that right now. I just needed to get upstairs, say my piece, and deal with whatever happened next.

I forcibly made peace with the idea that the next step might be an appointment to get artificially inseminated. I didn’t need his touch, I told myself firmly. I just needed his baby, and his resources. Guilt comes with cold practicality, but I had it securely tamped down by the time I stepped out of the elevator on the thirtieth floor.

One large window overlooked the pool of cubicles in the center of the floor. The remaining walls were full of offices, and I had no idea who I was supposed to talk to if I wanted to break the barrier of the 31^st floor. Nobody paid me any attention as they hustled back and forth across the floor, answering phones and making copies and such.

“Do you need something?” one woman finally asked me, peering out from behind her thick glasses.

“Yes, I’m looking for Mr. Dane’s secretary?”

She jabbed a bony finger to the left, and I realized with a flush of heat that each door was labeled with the name of the secretary, as well as the name, or names, of the people they worked for.

Bernadette Peters had only one name above hers: Mr. Jonathan Dane. My heart thundered in my ears as I walked toward the door. I raised my fist to knock, but it flung open before I could make contact.

His silver eyes glittered in amusement. “Ah, Miss Marshall! I was just on my way to see you. Lunch in my office, then?”