Chapter 7 – Darren
“Midland Surrogacy Agency,” answered a nasal voice on the other end of the phone.
“Yes. I would like to make an appointment.”
“Please hold.”
Before I could respond, she had put me on hold and I could hear soft elevator music playing. Damn it. I always became so impatient on the phone but this time was even worse.
I had finally made up my mind about what I was going to do, and now this ungrateful receptionist— of a company to whom I was trying to give a lot of money for its services— was making me wait. And she wasn’t the first one to do that. You’d think places that stand to benefit financially would move a lot faster in providing services, but that was not turning out to be the case.
Plus, I was just fucking grumpy all around, for multiple reasons. Hope had left without cleaning. I was going to have to fire her— and Eve too, I suppose, for sending her daughter without telling me, and not ensuring she wouldn’t be a nuisance. I still couldn’t believe she would do that. She must have been really under the weather.
I wasn’t sure I had the heart to fire poor Eve. As I listened to the boring elevator music, I had to admit that truth to myself. She’d worked for me faithfully. If she was feeling bad enough to send her daughter, then she must be seriously sick. And then, she wouldn’t have had any other choice except to leave me in a lurch without cleaning or cooking services—even though that’s precisely what I had ended up with today. That wasn’t Eve’s fault, though—she couldn’t help that her daughter was so bad at the job she herself was so good at.
Perhaps I would just have to tell her to never send anyone else again. That would be a hard order to obey, if she was sick. What would I ever do without Eve? I wondered. I sure hoped that she was feeling better soon— for her sake as well as for my own. But I knew I had no control over that.
All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t chance seeing Hope in my house again. I was unable to get her out of my mind and that wasn’t fucking like me at all. I didn’t get smitten. I was always the one in control.
I thought what bothered me the most about the whole thing was that she had left. I could and should have kicked her out the moment I caught her in my library, which was off limits, trying to steal one of my books, no less. But I had told her to go clean and she had just left.
Perhaps I was so frustrated because I wanted to take her over my lap and spank her, but I couldn’t do that. Could I? She was the daughter of my employee. That would only complicate things. And complication was something I tried to avoid. I wanted to live a simple life, devoid of drama.
So, I was determined to find a surrogate to carry a child for me. The scare that I’d had with the doctor giving me the bad news made me realize that there wasn’t much time left. I needed to make a baby right away— not only because, according to Dr. Milton, if I didn’t act now I might lose any chance I may have, but for other reasons I didn’t even like to think about because they were too damn depressing.
After eight calls to different agencies and being flat out turned down or being told that I basically had to jump through hoops of fire to get a surrogate, I started to get a little disappointed. It seems that paying a lot of money to have someone carry my baby is harder than I thought it would be.
But then, I mentioned how much money I had. And how I would happily pay any amount required to have a baby. Then, everyone changed their tune. Suddenly, it was all about getting me what I wanted— but not nearly in the way that I wanted it, or on my own timeline. Apparently, not even a shit ton of money can buy those things.
One of the things that they told me is that I would have to leave the house to do this. I tried to see if arrangements could be made for a surrogate to come to my house. I was even willing to pay a lot extra for it. No such luck.
It was going to be a parade of lawyers, surrogacy agency representatives and potential candidates, not to mention that I didn’t want just any surrogate. I wanted one that I was comfortable with and that’s a tall order. So, that meant tedious interviews until I found the perfect one. It just seemed like the agency wanted me to take part in some type of lottery where the nearest surrogate would be assigned to me. I wasn’t okay with that.
I was starting to get a headache just thinking about the process. I didn’t want to do any of it. I wanted to keep my peace and privacy. I didn’t want to be exposed to the rest of the world, have people staring at me, reminding me why no one would ever accept me in the first place.
Plus, for those reasons I didn’t like to think about, I needed to start the surrogacy process now, for real, so that I could have a baby for Christmas. If I didn’t, it would be too late. So, I didn’t have time to go through all this rigmarole. I needed the pregnancy to start right away.
My terrible secret was eating me up. It was part of the reason why I didn’t want to be around anyone.
If anyone were to ever know…
I couldn’t help but think about what had happened, the incident that made it hard for me to connect with other people. As much as I had tried to hide from it and forget about it, there it was almost staring me in the face.
I couldn’t think about it. As soon as I had a baby, I could face it, but not before then. It looked as if I really would have to do this process the old fashioned way. It seemed that even though Mother Nature worked slowly, her timeline was surprisingly faster than waiting around on some agency to make decisions.
It was clear that I was going to have to take matters into my own hands— or, cock. And hopefully I could find a willing participant.