BECOMING daddy (Sample)

A Billionaire’s Baby Romance

By R.R. Banks

An Amazon Top 100 Bestseller

*259 Customer Reviews – 4.8/5 Stars

I gave her a contract. She gave me a baby.

It was simple. 
Rue would carry my baby. 
My girlfriend and I would raise it. 
Just another contract in the life of a billionaire. 
Sounds simple right? Wrong. 
My girlfriend no longer wants me or my unborn child. 
She may have given up on this baby, but I never will. 
And, I think I’m falling for Rue. 
Rue, with her small-town charm and her enticing curves… 
Ignites the fire inside me. 
I will give her the life she deserves. 

But will someone’s change of heart keep me away from the family I always wanted?  

Chapter One

She was perfect. Too perfect.

That should have tipped me off. I should have known the second that I saw her that things weren’t going to turn out the way that any of us were saying that we expected them to. I should have realized the minute that I looked at her too perfect blond hair, too perfect blue eyes, and too perfect pout on her too perfect lips that something was strange.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves…

Rue

“There have been many sage voices who have spoken on the topic of love and its influence on the human condition. One of the greatest of our time illustrated this in the most powerful and poignant of ways with the words ‘If you want to be my lover, you’ve got to get with my friends. Make it last forever. Friendship,” Tessie looked at me solemnly and wagged her finger slowly, “never ends.”

I stood in the kitchen of my tiny apartment cooking brunch as one of my two best friends read me the opening excerpt of her new novel, the tenth or so that she had started in the time that we knew each other, and the tenth or so that she was going to write five pages of, shove into a drawer, and never finish. My stirring had been brought to a stop by her words and I stared at her, ready for her to get to the joke, but she didn’t. Instead, she brought her notebook down from where she had been holding it high in front of her face and clutched it to her chest.

“That’s it?” I asked.

Her dark eyes snapped to me and she nodded.

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” she asked, sounding deeply offended by my question. “Didn’t it touch something inside of you?”

Yeah, the same thing that it touched inside me in 1996.

“I’m just not sure that that is the best way to start your existential novel on the sexual awakening and pair-bonding rituals of today’s woman and its over-arching impact on life in the context of the human condition as a whole,” I repeated, trying to remember the exact order of the words that she had used to describe this most recent endeavor when she arrived at the apartment that morning.

Tessie nodded, a faraway look in her eyes that I imagined she thought was the same type of look that the great Greek philosophers had when they were penning the great truths and musings of their time.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s too much. It’s too hard of a hit for the very beginning of the book. I need to give my readers the opportunity to gradually warm up to the intensity of the ideas that I’m presenting to them.”

I reached out and patted her on the back.

“You’re a kind and compassionate intellectual overlord,” I said.

Tessie nodded, a tear coming to her eye as she contemplated just how misunderstood she was and the travesty that was her brilliance being wasted on such a dark and emotionally devoid world. I gave a short laugh and turned back to the butter sauce that I was stirring. It was nearly finished when I heard a knock on the back door. I looked at Tessie quizzically. No one came to the back door. Most people didn’t even realize that my apartment had a back door, and those who did were unlikely to actually climb up the winding fire escape to get to it. I moved the curtain that hung over the small window in the door to peek out and saw Christopher standing on the stoop, his hands grasping the wrought iron railings on either side of him like they were giving him life.

“It’s Christopher,” I said, letting the curtain fall back in place and going to work releasing the series of locks on the door.

“What’s he doing on the back porch?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

When all the locks were open I opened the door. The third in our group, and my friend for even longer than Tessie, Christopher never ceased to amaze me with his unpredictability. No matter how long I knew him, I never knew what was going to come out of his brain. That was definitely true now as I took in the electric blue and neon purple striped bike shorts that left virtually nothing to the imagination and matching rollerblades that he was wearing. I had never known Christopher to rollerblade except for his brief foray into roller disco during its resurgence several years back, and his lack of experience was showing. Both knees were turned in toward each other and his ankles were shaking. This explained why he was gripping the railings and appeared several inches taller than he usually was when I looked at him through the window.

I reached out a hand to Christopher and he took it, allowing me to pull him into the kitchen. He glided across the linoleum floor and grasped the back of one of the stools against the wall.

“Good morning,” Tessie said.

“Hi,” Christopher replied.

“Want to tell me what’s going on here?” I asked, closing the door.

“Scavenger hunt,” he said.

“Of course, it is.”

“Want to tell me why you’re half naked outside in November?”

“Rollerblading is a good cardiovascular workout?”

“Right.”

And has absolutely nothing to do with the others who might be participating in the scavenger hunt.

“I’m almost done, but there are a few more things that I need.”

“What are they?”

“A bobby pin in a color other than brown.”

“Got it,” Tessie said.

She reached into her hair and withdrew a lavender pin that she handed over to Christopher.

“That’s a start. Now, three paper clips.”

“I’ve got that,” I said, reaching into my junk drawer. “Does it matter what color they are?”

“Any will do, but I can get bonus points for multiple colors.”

“Here’s a red, a blue, and a rainbow. Bonus bonus points.”

“We’re on a roll! Alright, next is commonly found kitchen items reminiscent of the seven dwarves.”

“What?” Tessie and I asked in unison.

He looked down at the list that he had taken out of the waistband of his bike shorts and repeated the list item.

“Um,” I said, looking around. I went to the spice cabinet and grabbed out a bottle. “Ground black pepper? Sneezy?”

“That’s the spirit. Keep it going. Who’s got Grumpy?”

We scurried around the kitchen for the next several minutes gathering what we could find that made any link to the dwarves. I thought some of them were a little shaky in their interpretation, but I hadn’t been grocery shopping in a couple of weeks and our options were sparse. When I had packed everything into a bag that I hung over Christopher’s arm, I let out a breath.

“Alright, what’s next?”

I need to collect 247 readily distinguishable kisses. Again, bonus points for multiple colors.”

I rushed into my bathroom and grabbed out my makeup box. Digging through, I pulled out every tube of lipstick I could find.

“I knew I could rely on you,” he said.

I handed one to Tessie and smeared on a layer of the brightest red that I could find.

“Ready?” I asked.

Christopher gripped the back of the stool with one hand, opened out the other arm, and squeezed his eyes closed in preparation of the barrage.

“Do your worst,” he said.

Tessie and I went to work, pressing kiss marks over his shoulders, chest, arms, back, and stomach. We changed lipstick colors every few kisses until he was covered with several hues of lip prints.

“Is it enough?” Tessie asked.

I started on one shoulder and counted the kisses. Tessie started on the other and we met in the middle.

“You’re short by 7,” I told him. He looked crestfallen, but then an idea popped into my head. “Wait,” I said. I went to the drawer beneath the junk drawer and then back to him. “Open your bag.” I dropped seven chocolate kisses inside. “Two from Christmas, three from Easter, and two from the bank candy bowl. Five different colors in total.”

“You are the best scavenger hunter ever,” Christopher said.

“Is that all you need?” I asked.

“Yep, that’s it. On my way to Red Skelton’s house to show off my collection.”

“Isn’t he dead? Like…really dead?” Tessie asked.

“Not this one. His parents just had a little bit of a variety show fetish.”

“Ah.”

Christopher started scooting toward the door and then turned to look back over his shoulder at me.

“Could you give me a little push?” he asked. “I’m pretty OK once I’m rolling, but it’s the getting started that’s a struggle.”

I looked at Tessie.

“Pour the sauce into a bowl and start dishing up eggs. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

I followed Christopher as he carefully stepped his way down the stairs, keeping my hands held out in front of me just in case he slipped, and I needed to catch him.

“How did you possibly get all the way up there by yourself?” I asked as I grabbed onto his arm and scooped him up from certain disaster when one rollerblade rolled ahead of the other.

“Cautiously,” he said. “It took me almost half an hour. Really cut into my time.”

“Why didn’t you just come through the front door?”

“I was already behind your building, so I thought it would be easier. By the time I got to the second landing, I was pretty much already committed.”

I nodded.

We had gotten to the bottom of the fire escape and he was still alive, which I was going to count as a personal victory, and I eased him along toward the end of the alley behind the house.

“Which direction?” I asked.

He pointed himself and assumed a position that I could only guess was his official rollerblading stance, his back bent forward, his chin up, his arms tucked close to his sides, and his ass pointed back.

“Ready,” he said.

“Got your bag?”

He held it up without looking at me.

“Yep.”

“Alright. Godspeed.”

I gave him a shove and watched as all 240 kiss prints glided away down the sidewalk into the distance. As I walked back toward the apartment, my mind was churning, trying to figure out how I was going to start the conversation I needed to have with Tessie. I had originally planned on telling both her and Christopher at the same time, but I had gone into such a panic just trying to come up with the right words that I decided it might be easier to divide and conquer. I’d take care of telling Tessie first, considering she was much more likely to find some sort of deeply meaningful commentary on the human existence in the whole thing. Then I’d use how that went to reevaluate my approach and tackle telling Christopher later.

Maybe. In all honesty, he might not notice.

When I got back into the apartment I engaged all of the locks and grabbed glasses of juice to add to all of the food that Tessie had transferred into the living room. There were days when I really loved this little apartment, the only one I had ever lived in since leaving my hometown. Then there were days when living in a postage stamp with no dining room or bathtub was a bit of a drag. This was one of those moments. It was hard to have a sophisticated brunch over which you planned to have a serious, potentially life-changing conversation when you were either sitting on the floor to eat off of the coffee table or balancing your plate on your lap on the couch.

I chose the latter, settling onto the couch and looking down toward where Tessie sat on the floor, her plate on the table in front of her. I offered her a glass of juice and she took a swig before setting it onto the glass top of the table. She took up a massive forkful of scrambled eggs and put it in her mouth.

How do I start this conversation? How do I start this conversation? How do I start this conversation?

“I’m thinking about becoming a surrogate.”

Well, shit. That probably wasn’t the best way.

Tessie looked at me with widened eyes and withdrew the fork from her mouth, still laden with eggs. She lowered it to the plate and pushed it a few inches across the table.

“You invited me over to your house for an egg-heavy brunch to announce to me that you are considering being a surrogate?” she asked.

I wriggled uncomfortably and put my plate on the table.

“Yeah, in retrospect that might have been a bit of a distasteful choice.”

Tessie took another sip of juice, the expression on her face telling me that she was trying to process my announcement. I felt that, much like her novel, I should have had a little more of a buildup. Since I didn’t yet have access to the delete button of life, there was no way that I could go back and try to fix how the conversation had gone thus far, so all I could really do was wait and hope that it smoothed itself out.

“What the fuck are you thinking, Rue?”

Nope. Not looking good for me on the smoothing-out front.

“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“What do I mean?” she asked. “What do I mean? I mean what the fuck are you thinking? You’re just going to go bear some stranger’s spawn?”

“It’s not like it’s someone off the street,” I insisted. “The couple is extensively screened and provide full information to all of the applicants. There are tons of contracts involved and everything. It’s not as shady as you’re making it out to be.”

“I’m not making it out to be shady. I’m making it out to be weird as hell. You’re young, you’ve never had a child of your own, but you want to go through pregnancy for somebody else. What good reason could you possibly have to do that?”

“Grammyma’s house,” I said.

“What?” Tessie said, the horror and anger falling out of her voice. “What do you mean?”

“Grammyma’s house,” I said again. “The payments aren’t up to date and if I don’t catch them up soon, they’ll foreclose.”

“When did you find this out?” she asked.

Tears were forming in the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t want to acknowledge them. I tried to shake my head to convince them to go away, but this only seemed to encourage them, and they filled my eyes faster.

“When I went down there to finish settling up Daddy’s estate. I thought that everything was fine, you know?” I looked at Tessie and tried to offer a smile, but could only manage a weak trembling of my bottom lip. “I thought that he was taking care of the house and making sure that everything was fine. I thought that he was doing everything that he promised her that he was going to do.”

I was starting to feel angry, and I couldn’t let myself do that. I couldn’t let myself feel angry at him. His death was still so recent, and it still cut deeply into my heart every time that I thought about him. No matter how much it hurt, I didn’t want to start covering up those feelings with anger or blame. I knew that the longer I did that, the more those feelings would overshadow the wonderful memories I had of him, and I couldn’t let that happen.

“What happened?” Tessie asked.

“It’s really my fault,” I said. “It really is. I shouldn’t have put everything off like I did.”

“It was just too hard for you.”

I nodded, wiping at my eyes.

“But I should have done it. It was my responsibility. I don’t know why I would think that he paid off that loan. When I got down there the lawyer told me that the payments were behind. I was able to scrounge up enough to pay a couple of months, but I didn’t have much. That’s not all, though. The house itself was in pretty bad condition. The grounds were grown up. The vegetable garden was completely gone. The house itself needs a ton of work. And I’m the only one who can do it.”

“Rue, you hadn’t been back there in years.”

“I know.”

“The only times you even saw your dad was when he came here or when he was in the hospital.”

“I know,” I said, feeling guilt start to creep up inside of me as she spoke.

“You always said that when you were younger, the only thing you could ever think about was how you were going to get out of there and start your life in the city. That once you got out of the holler, you weren’t ever going back.”

“Tessie,” I said sharply to stop her, then softened my tone. “I know.”

She turned to me, reaching up to rest one hand on mine.

“Then why are you so worried about saving it?” she asked. “Grammyma’s been gone for a decade. Your daddy’s gone now, too. Don’t you think that it’s time to just go ahead and let it go?”

I shook my head. The holler that she was talking about was Whiskey Hollow, the tiny valley village where I was born and raised, and then got out of as soon as I got accepted into college.

“No,” I said, struggling to regain control over my voice. “No, Tessie. I can’t. That place is all I have left. I don’t have siblings. I don’t even remember my mama. All I had was Grammyma and Daddy. That’s it. As much as I talk about the bad things about it, there really are wonderful things about it. And that house…I grew up in that house. It was my home. It smelled like the cookies that my grandmother made for me and that I was never able to recreate because she put the recipe aside for safekeeping and we never found it before she died. It was where my Daddy let me try to paint my own room and never even made fun of me when I tried to paint it three different colors and add swirls and it essentially ended up brown. It might not seem like much, but the reality is that it’s everything, and I’m the only one left who can save it.”

“How are you going to do it?” Tessie asked.

I drew in a breath.

“I’m moving back there.”

“What?” Tessie asked. “You’re leaving?”

She sounded crestfallen and I couldn’t even look at her or I would start crying again.

“I have to,” I said. “I can’t afford the payments on the house and this apartment, and besides there’s so much work that I need to do there to get the house and the land back in shape. I can’t be in both places at once.”

“I wish that you would have told us this. We could have helped you. I don’t make a ton, but between me and Christopher I’m sure we would have been able to get together enough that you wouldn’t have to rent out your womb.”

I smiled.

“I know,” I said. “And I love you both for that. I know that you would have helped me, but that’s why I didn’t tell you. I need to be able to do this for myself. I owe it to Daddy and Grammyma. They were both able to get through so much without having to lean on other people. It wasn’t until close to the end that Daddy started to really struggle and let things slide. I want to make him proud of me.”

“He is proud of you,” Tessie insisted. “You don’t have to go through this alone. The only reason that they didn’t lean on other people is because they didn’t have any one to lean on. You do. You have me, and you have Christopher. We love you and we want to be here for you.”

I was suddenly feeling like I was part of some sort of intervention.

“I can’t ask you two to stop your lives just to help me out of this,” I said. “Besides, it’s something good that I can do for someone else. You are always doing good for the world. You do the food drive. The pet food drive. Meals on Wheels. Wheels for Meals, that car donation initiative. If it has to do with food and driving, you’re right on top of it.”

“Sometimes food and driving,” Tessie pointed out. “Don’t forget my Christmas program from two years ago.”

“Oh, yes. Ho-Ho-Homeless.”

“It might have gotten me banned from the development and marketing of any new programs, but they really did enjoy the hot meals and egg nog while they rode around looking at the Christmas lights.”

“They did,” I agreed. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You do all of these amazing things for people, and I really don’t do anything. I might not be helping a lot of people, but if they choose me, I’ll get to make a really big difference in the lives of this one couple at least.”

“So, you’re not pregnant yet?” Tessie asked.

I gave her a quizzical look.

“No, Tessie. That’s why I said that I was thinking about becoming a surrogate, not that I was one already. Don’t you think that that’s something I would mention to you before I went through with it?”

“I don’t know,” Tessie said, her voice rising slightly as she tried to defend herself. “You sound so convinced, I thought that maybe you got all swept up in it and just went ahead with it.”

“I don’t think that this is like a drive-thru situation. They don’t order the baby and get it baking on the same day. It takes time. I still have to go through interviews and briefings and meet with the couple and go to the doctor. There’s a lot that has to happen before they even choose me, if they’re going to choose me.”

“Have you thought about how this is going to impact the rest of your life? Forever, you’re going to be someone’s mother.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t be the baby’s mother. I’m just a vessel. It’s like the T-Rex who put her eggs in the nest with the eggs of another dinosaur to be taken care of until they’re born.”

Tessie stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then blinked.

“Yeah,” she said. “And then the T-Rex babies were born and ate all of the other dinosaur’s babies.”

“Well, I don’t have any babies, so I don’t think that the one that I’ll carry for the other couple will be able to eat any of them.”

“But will you always think of that pregnancy? If you get pregnant with your own children, will it not be as special because you will have already been pregnant? You will have already gone through all of those things. You will have already felt a baby kick inside of you and seen the sonograms and gone through labor and delivery.”

“I will have,” I conceded, “but there’s a major difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Those babies will be mine. I’ll find out that I’m pregnant with my own child. I’ll feel my own baby kick inside of me and see my own baby on the sonogram and go through labor and delivery to bring my own baby into the world. There’s nothing about this experience that will make having my own babies one day any less special or any less important.”

“And what if they don’t choose you?”

She was putting voice to a concern that was strong inside of me, but that I didn’t want to admit to.

“Then I’ll figure it out then,” I said. “The office gave me a leave of absence. They don’t realize that it’s going to be a permanent absence, but it gives me a few months of partial income. If the couple chooses me, part of the agreement is that they’ll pay my living expenses in addition to the surrogacy fee. I’ll put my paychecks into savings to carry me through later. If they don’t choose me, at least I’ll have that to live on while I figure out my next move.”

“You’ve really thought this through,” Tessie said, sounding completely sad now rather than angry.

“I have,” I told her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“I’ll miss you so much,” she said.

“I’ll miss you, too. But it’s time to go home.”

Chapter Two

Rue

I am a terrible, horrible liar.

I had sat right there, looked directly into the eyes of my best friend, and just lied a blue-fucking-streak. That wasn’t really the intention. I was going to tell her the real story. I actually thought that she was going to laugh about it. But when I told her and saw the look on Tessie’s face, I knew that the real story just wasn’t going to cut it. That’s because the truth was I hadn’t actually planned this whole surrogacy thing at all. I presented it to Tessie as if it was something that I thought through extensively and decided upon based on all of that evaluation, but that wasn’t what happened at all.

Having a contract baby wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. It wasn’t climb a mountain, jump out of a plane, write an epic rap battle retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, act as a human petri dish to carry and bear the offspring of a complete stranger. It all started because I needed to go to the dentist. That was it.

I didn’t like my dentist. That was the issue that brought all this about. Just an innocent situation of not liking the dentist that I had and wanting to go in for a little bit of a de-gunk, shine, and polish, and that was what I had every intention of doing that day. I had been complaining about my dentist for months, bemoaning his massive hands and hairy wrists and bad breath. What kind of dentist roams around his office with bad breath? That is simply poor professional form. So, I had been whining about my upcoming checkup and finally Christopher decided that he couldn’t take it anymore. He told me that if I would stop fussing, I could borrow his dentist for an appointment.

This was a momentous moment. Christopher held the identity of his dentist close to his chest in the same way that he protected the secret of his own homemade ranch dressing that somehow reached beyond the deep-seated hatred that I had always held for ranch dressing and burrowed right into my heart. We always heard him speak of this mythically magnificent dentist as he led up to an appointment and then after he emerged all pearly and clean. He anticipated these appointments with great reverence and a level of excitement that bordered on frightening sometimes. According to him, though, this devotion was completely warranted. This dentist was kind and gentle, always wore appropriately sized gloves over his appropriately sized hands, had only a moderate amount of body hair that in no way hindered his ability to perform dentistry, and his breath was always fresh. Sparkly, minty freshness was something that I was very much looking forward to as I tried to follow the somewhat cryptic directions for how to get to the office.

Christopher wouldn’t even let me call the office to make my own appointment. Instead, he called, made the appointment, and then waited until the morning of my appointment to send me a PDF of his instructions for how to get there. If I hadn’t known Christopher for as long as I had and didn’t have extensive knowledge of his personality and his character, I might have been slightly concerned that all of this pomp and circumstance was actually designed to lead me to certain doom. As it was, I was just convinced that he had way too much time on his hands and needed something more to occupy his brilliant, albeit scattered, mind.

That brilliant mind, however, sent me wandering through the city and dipping into areas that I didn’t love being seen in. I was coming out of one of those areas at a fairly fast clip when I must have missed a turn because I soon found myself standing in front of a massive office building that didn’t look like it was included in the directions. I re-read them and consulted the map that was missing small sections like a jigsaw puzzle that didn’t have all of the pieces.

Dammit, Christopher. Why can’t you just be a normal person and send me a map link on my phone?

I looked at the building again and then back at the map and then at the building again. I suppose it was possible that this was the large building in the corner of the map. The sketched one appeared shorter and slightly more square, but Christopher wasn’t known for his tremendous artistic skill, so I was more and more convinced that I had found the right place. After all, this was the fanciest building that I had come across as of yet, and if there was anything that he would look for in a dental practice before he even met the dentist would be the fanciness of the building.

Tucking all of the materials into my purse, I stepped inside the building. There was a decided nip in the autumn air that I had been wandering through for the better part of the morning and the rush of warm air I felt when I got inside was a welcome relief. I was still in the phase that I reached at this point of the season every year when I was still trying to get accustomed to the idea of truly cold weather. Every summer I would bitch ceaselessly about the heat, taking on my very best delicate magnolia blossom persona as though I had never been exposed to such temperatures, even though I knew and those closest to me knew damn well that I had barely actually gone inside during the summers of my childhood. Then the fall weather would come and bring a break in the steaminess. I would hope for cooler and cooler temperatures, wanting to wear a sweater by Halloween, which rarely actually happened. The cold always seemed to hit all at once. It snuck up on me while I was scouring the Halloween clearance racks and talking Tessie down from the teetering pile of volunteer positions she accepted during the holidays.

The first couple of weeks of cold weather usually witnessed a curious reversal in me. The same person who would put on a gaudy glow-in-the-dark sweatshirt in October even if the temperatures were still creeping up far too high just because I felt like it was appropriate, would completely flip and start trying to wear tank tops on days that were clearly so chilly my nipples stood at attention from the time I got out of bed until I curled desperately back in at night. I was just getting over that phase now, donning weather-appropriate clothing and starting to get that warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving feeling in my belly, when I stepped through the reflective glass doors into the lobby of the huge building and looked around, hoping for a massive plastic tooth or something that would direct me to the dentist office.

I hadn’t seen any such indication and was starting back across the lobby ready to call Christopher and shout things that would attest to my holler raising until he told me where the damn dentist was or came and got me to deliver me for my appointment when I heard someone clear their throat behind me. I took a few more steps and heard it again, louder this time. It was that loud clearing that meant that the person was either trying very hard to get your attention while being discreet or dying. I turned slowly and saw a wiry man in a pinstripe suit standing a few feet away. He clutched a clipboard like it held all of the secrets of life and peered at me down a thin nose through tiny round spectacles.

“Were you sent here?” he asked.

I didn’t know if it was meant as an actual question or in an effort to make me admit to some kind of wrongdoing. I suddenly felt like I was back in middle school being brought up in front of the principal for the note that I passed to Mary Sue Griswold during math.

Are you supposed to be passing notes in class?

Do you really think it’s nice to write things like that about your teacher?

While my mind was churning through all the reasons this man might think that I had been mysteriously sent to the building, it suddenly occurred to me that I was. I withdrew the map and instructions that Christopher had sent me out of my purse and tried to hand it to him.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m so glad that I finally got here. I didn’t think that I was going to make it.”

The man made a sound of acknowledgement in his throat, but I saw that his eyes were scanning up and down my body. There was a distinct lack of sex in that glare. Instead, it was sharp with disappointment and scrutiny as he took in my baggy grey sweat suit, pink high tops, and hair knotted onto my head.

Oh, yes. This was definitely who Christopher sent me to see. Judgement was his favorite accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I said, brushing something imaginary off of my shirt in an effort to look more presentable. “Is there a dress code? He didn’t tell me that I needed to wear anything specific.”

The man shook his head, though the expression on his face suggested to me that it was physically and psychologically painful for him to admit it.

“No,” he said dryly. “No dress code. Though I would think that someone in your position might seek to present herself a tad bit more elegantly.”

Elegant? For a dentist?

“I’m sorry,” I said again, even though I was starting to really dislike this man and the compulsion I had to apologize for and defend myself. “I just wanted to be comfortable.”

He nodded slowly as if that had been the most ridiculous and incomprehensible thing that he had ever heard.

“Comfortable,” he repeated. “Lovely. Anyway, you may follow me. Several others are already waiting.” He took a breath. “We wouldn’t want you to miss your turn.”

I wasn’t aware that there was a dentist Hunger Games going on.

I followed the as-yet nameless man back through the lobby and beyond two sets of glass doors before he directed me into a waiting room. Several other women were sitting, the customary Empty Chairs of Derision between them telling me that none of these women came together for an oral health girl’s day. I looked around and noticed that not only were there several women, but there were only women, and those women there were oddly similar. We were all roughly the same age, height, and weight, though I was a little rougher from that standpoint than some of the others.

Dammit, Christopher. You didn’t tell me that your dentist did profiling.

Putting on an expression that I hoped would tell the women around me that I was fully confident in myself even though I looked like I had just tumbled out of bed, I sat down in the nearest chair and reached for the nearest magazine. That’s when things took a turn.

I had been sitting in the waiting room for only a few minutes when a nurse came around handing registration forms to everyone. I started filling out the questions without reading the entire form.

Name…Normal

Birthdate…Yep

Height…OK

Weight…Hmmmm

Last Menstrual Period…What?

Why would a dentist need to know that?

Have you ever been pregnant?

Do you have a history of miscarriage?

Does your family have a history of early labor or other birth complications?

Does your family have a history of any genetic diseases?

What the hell kind of dentist is this?

At this point I could have just gotten up and walked out of the waiting room. Had someone else told me that they were in this situation I would have questioned their intellect for not getting up and leaving right then and dealing with Hairy Wrists. Yet something kept me sitting in that chair. Something made me fill out the invasive questions and turn in the form.

A few minutes after we had all passed in our forms like a well-behaved little class turning in our pop quiz, the nurse started showing up at the door on the far side of the waiting room. She would call a name in a solemn monotone, then disappear into the back with one of the women in tow. Several minutes would pass, then another name would be called. An hour and five names had passed by the time that she called me. I gave a totally unwarranted smug look to the women still waiting and swept through the door. The nurse directed me to a small room that looked like a doctor’s examination room and I noticed the distinct lack of a dentist chair. Nevertheless, I sat up on the crinkly white paper and waited. Another nurse came in and took my vitals, scribbling the results on a piece of paper, and then left without saying anything. The first returned a moment later and escorted me out of the examination room and into what looked like an office.

Well, this is efficient.

I sat in one of the dark wood chairs in front of a heavy desk and waited. And waited. Then waited a little bit more. I was starting to feel like they had forgotten about me when the door finally opened and the man who had found me in the lobby came in. He looked delighted to see me as he sat down in the chair across the desk and proceeded to stare at me for several long, increasingly awkward seconds. Finally, he glanced over the papers he had placed in front of him that I assumed were my registration form and the information that the nurse had gathered, and then looked back up at me.

“So, tell me. Why do you want to be a surrogate?”

Chapter Three

Richard

The look on the woman’s face was enough to catch my attention and make me want to hear what she had to say. The look of her clothing was enough to make Flora not need to see or hear a single other thing and be ready to walk out of the office.

“Honestly, Richie, is there anything that that woman could say that would make her wretched appearance any more forgivable?”

I tried not to cringe. I hated when she called me ‘Richie’. I really didn’t know when she had decided that that was the term of endearment that she was going to bestow on me. No one else in my life, including my parents and my grandparents, had ever called me Richie and I had always detested the sound of it when it was applied to anyone else, beseeching anyone who I met not to shorten my name.

Yet…there it was. Richie.

The only thing that made the sound of the name less disagreeable was that it was tucked right there in the middle of another of Flora’s strings of arrogance. I don’t remember when she picked it up, but somewhere between finishing school and graduating from the university she started speaking in a stilted, unevenly formal way that made her sound like she was trying to sound like a casual British person and came off as her sounding like a horribly pretentious American.

She was already standing, slipping her arm into the sleeve of her jacket, but I hadn’t gotten up from the sofa where I had been sitting, watching the hidden camera stream of the string of prospective applicants come into the office next door. These women had no idea that we were watching them. That was the intention. Choosing an applicant to carry our child was the most important decision that Flora and I would ever make, and it was essential that we made the right decision. I wanted to know everything that I possibly could about the woman who would bring my dream of being a father into a reality, and that wasn’t something that I could achieve just having an interview or two. I was trusting Ellery to handle this first stage of the screening process and sitting in the next room over to watch as he went over the women’s initial medical examination and information sheets with them. This wasn’t really in an effort to learn about their medical health or to even find out much about their history. Instead it was a chance for me to start evaluating their character and personalities in a way that was purely compulsive.

Flora hated the idea. She much preferred the thought of just sending the women to the doctor, weeding out the ones who weren’t healthy enough or who had undesirable genetics, then hold interviews and choose the most qualified candidate from there. I didn’t see that as a viable way to go through the process. Of course, her health was going to be an extremely important element of choosing the right woman, but beyond that, the characteristics that were going to make her the right one was something that I didn’t think could be deciphered just by sitting across the desk from her and asking a series of questions. I had spent enough time in business to know that the person you met when you did an interview was very rarely the actual person that you were interviewing.

People put on a mask when they sat down to interview. They presented themselves in the way that they thought you wanted them to and spewed out carefully prepared, rehearsed answers to virtually anything that you could ask them in an effort to sound exactly like the person you’re looking for. Even if inside, they are completely on the other end of the spectrum. I would never forget walking down the hall in one of my office buildings and hearing a voice coming from the one of the conference rooms that was supposed to be empty. When I peeked in I found a girl who was dressed like she was fifty and looked like she was fifteen pacing around the table, deeply engrossed in the speech that she planned to give when she came into the interview we had planned for ten minutes later. She was preparing herself for all of the spontaneous and charming answers she was going to give, right down to a few perfectly timed Freudian slips and girlish giggles.

I slipped out of the conference room before she saw me and was fully prepared for her when she got into the office for our interview. As soon as she perched herself on the edge of the seat, pressing her breasts forward toward me and crossing her legs so that just enough of her skirt lifted up to make it seem incidental when I knew very well it wasn’t because I had already seen it three times that morning, I started asking her questions.

“ What is your favorite planet and why?”

“If you were an ice cream sundae topping, which would you be?”

“How many roller coasters have you ridden in your life and did you keep your hands up the entire time?”

“Don’t you know that that’s dangerous?”

“A cat and three dogs walk down an alley and see a bowl of food. What color collar was the animal that got the food wearing?”

After watching her squirm through a few minutes of this, I dismissed her, returning her resume and application to her before she walked out of the office. I hadn’t had any intention of giving her a real interview. Anyone who snuck into a conference room that she wasn’t supposed to be in and spent that much time polishing herself up for what was supposed to be an honest conversation wasn’t someone who I wanted working for me. I hoped that the barrage of questions and my deadpan reactions to whatever nonsensical answers she could spin as I asked them were enough to convince her to be a little more authentic next time she was meeting someone. If she was to get anything out of this interview, I wanted it to be that I was hiring an employee, not a Barbie. I didn’t want to look at her thighs and then pull a string and listen to her scripted spiel.

That experience had completely changed the way I saw every other hiring process that I encountered, and as cold and impersonal as it sounded, that was what this was. I was hiring a woman to do something that I couldn’t do on my own and that Flora had learned only months ago that she couldn’t, either. It was a job like any other that I hired for, but with responsibilities far more pressing and valuable than anything that had ever happened in any of my businesses. Choosing the wrong candidate wasn’t just an inconvenience or a frustration and amending that mistake wasn’t so simple as firing the person and starting the process over again. If we went through with this and found a few months down the line that the woman we chose was awful in some way, there was really nothing that we could do about it. We had to be sure that we chose a woman we would be able to not only entrust with our child in its most delicate form for the months before it was born, but also who we would be able to tolerate throughout those months as well.

“Richie, what are you doing?” Flora whined from the doorway.

That was something that she was exceptional at, I had become more and more aware of in the months since we started talking about having a baby. Whining. I drew in a breath, reminded myself for what felt like the hundredth time that day that this was the woman I was supposed to be sharing my life with, and smiled at her.

“Darling, I really want to see this.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

That was completely true. There was something about this woman that was different than all of the other woman who had gone through the interview process already, and it went beyond just the clothing that she was wearing, not that that hadn’t gotten my attention as well. The goal of this phase of the screening was to let me see how the women conducted themselves when talking to someone who wasn’t technically the person who was hiring them, and then how they behaved when they were alone and didn’t know that anyone was watching them. I knew in the back of my mind that there was a bit of a shady element to how I was doing this, but the stakes were too high for me to take any chances.

When this woman walked into the office and Ellery asked her why she was considering being a surrogate she looked totally taken aback. She stared at my assistant with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, absolutely still and silent for a few seconds. It was an unexpected reaction, but it was also something that I had been looking for in every other woman who had come into the room…authentic. Ellery’s eyes widened to match hers and the change in his expression seemed to snap the woman… what was her name... out of her shock.

“Babies,” she suddenly said. “I’d do it for the baby.”

I covered my mouth to muffle the laugh that was bubbling up.

“Well, yes,” Ellery said. “That would be why anyone would be a surrogate. It’s the entire purpose of the process. Beyond the actual carrying and birthing of the child, why would you consider carrying my clients’ child?”

The woman quieted again, but this time she didn’t seem startled. Instead, the expression on her face seemed more like she was looking into her mind, seeing something that was difficult for her and that she was trying to put into words that the stranger across the desk would understand. Finally, she let out a sigh and met his eyes.

“My father died recently and there are things that I need to take care of,” she answered confidently.

“So, it is a financial motive?” Ellery asked.

I had heard him ask the same question to two other women, both of whom had been completely tripped up by it and stumbled through fairly meaningless justifications. This woman, though, seemed unfazed. She kept her eyes strongly trained on Ellery, unflinching, not intimidated by him.

“Absolutely,” she said. “This is a business transaction, is it not? There is a fee to be paid?”

“Well, yes,” Ellery said.

It was his turn to seem put on the spot now and I found a bit of strange enjoyment seeing this usually unflappable man flustered.

“If this was a charitable act that a woman was doing purely out of the good of her heart, that wouldn’t be the case. As it is, this is a service that is to be fulfilled in exchange for money. That in of itself establishes a financial motive. Any woman who tries to say that there isn’t one is lying at worst and flattering herself at best.”

She’s the one.

I wanted to just clear the building of the rest of the candidates and tell this woman that she had the position, but I knew that I couldn’t. There were more steps to be taken, and as much as I thought of this phase as being one of compulsion, I couldn’t let that control me entirely. I meant to use those gut feelings to trim down the field of applicants, so I could then focus on them each more intently.

As if that thought had beckoned him, Ellery made some excuse and got up from the desk, hurrying out of the office and closing the door behind him. A second later he appeared at the door to the office where I was. His face was high with color and he looked somehow ruffled, like a little angry bird. Flora was still standing by the door, her arms crossed over her chest and her hip cocked now, and they exchanged glances as if they were wordlessly expressing the same thought. He took several long strides across the office toward me.

“Can you believe her?” He asked.

“No,” I admitted. “I can’t.”

“Then I will just go in there and tell her that she’s dismissed, and we aren’t interested.”

“’We?” I asked. “I didn’t know that you were going to be involved in the gestation of my child, Ellery.”

The color on his cheeks deepened and he squeezed his lips together to try to hold back whatever he was going to say.

“Did you see her?” he asked.

“Of course, I did.”

“Then surely you see that she is totally unsuitable.”

“I told him the same thing,” Flora steamed, “but he won’t listen to me.”

“All I can see is that she didn’t put a lot of thought into her clothes today,” I said.

“And if she showed up for your next agent position looking like that, you wouldn’t turn her away instantly?” Flora asked.

I knew she was right. If someone came into one of my offices in a sweat suit with her hair looking like a cinnamon bun on her head, I wouldn’t even think of her twice. Something about this woman, though. She was different.

That word again. Different.

“Maybe we should appreciate the fact that she wants to be comfortable with us,” I said. “This is a very intimate relationship we’re going to be in together, and being comfortable with each other is going to be important.”

“A very intimate relationship?” Flora asked. “What do you mean by that?”

I looked at her.

“She is going to be carrying our child inside of her and giving birth to it. I can’t really think of many things that are much more intimate than that.”

Without worrying about their reaction, I turned my attention to the computer screen to see how the woman there was handling her sudden isolation.

“What’s her name?” I asked, not taking my eyes from her.

“Rue,” Ellery told me.

I nodded.

In the office next door Rue was still sitting in the chair where Ellery had left her, staring at the chair that he had vacated almost as though there was still someone there. She didn’t move for several seconds, and then suddenly flung herself forward, her head dropping down between her knees and her arms dangling down by her sides, so her hands grazed the floor. Once in this position, she let out a long breath. As she hung there, I heard her muttering to herself. I wished that I could hear what she was saying, but the thick layers of grey cotton now blocking her mouth muffled the words.

“Invite her back,” I said to Ellery.

He looked at me with wide eyes.

“Are you serious?”

“Very,” I said. “Invite her back for another interview next week.”

I closed the computer on the image of Rue still folded over in the chair and stood up. I tucked the computer into my briefcase and crossed the office to the door where I grabbed my jacked from the coatrack and slipped into it.

“Where are you going?” Ellery asked.

“Lunch,” I said. “I have some very important appointments later this afternoon, but I will be taking the next couple of hours away from the office. Please continue with the screening and take notes if you’d like.”

“You aren’t going to stay to watch the others?” Ellery asked.

“No,” I said, not feeling the need to justify myself any further.

I opened the door and allowed Flora to walk ahead of me out of the office. Ellery followed, and I looked back over my shoulder to watch as he went back into the office, wondering what Rue’s reaction would be when he asked her to come back for another interview.

Half an hour later Flora and I were sitting at our usual table at our favorite lunch restaurant. She sipped white wine with delicate discrimination as if it wasn’t the exact same wine she ordered every time we came. I watched her, suddenly wondering if she had, ever in her life, worn a sweat suit. It was a strange thought and I shook my head to get it out, instead turning my attention to the menu in front of me.

“What’s looking good to you this afternoon, Darling?” I asked.

“I know what looked good to you,” she retorted.

I looked up from the menu and narrowed my eyes at her.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I saw the way that you were looking at that woman,” she said, her icy eyes glaring at me from across the table.

“I wasn’t looking at her in any way,” I said.

Was I?

“Oh please, Richie. I know that look. Remember, I used to be the one who was on the receiving end of those looks.”

I couldn’t honestly believe that I would ever have looked at Flora in any way that I would look at Rue. They were just too different.

Different.

I reached across the table and took her hand, pulling it close enough to lean over and kiss it.

“Listen to me. I wasn’t looking at her in any other way than as the potential carrier of our child. That’s it.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell her to leave,” she said.

“I can’t really explain it,” I said. “But you can trust me when I tell you that I am thinking of nothing but finding the absolute perfect woman. Just a few more interviews and meetings and we will have that woman, and with any luck in a month or two we will have a baby on the way.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked. “I mean, really sure?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Flora reached across the table with her other hand and took mine in both of hers.

“I just want to make sure that you are absolutely sure that you want to go through with this. It’s a really big decision.”

“I know that,” I said. “We’ve talked about this. I thought you wanted to be a mother.”

“I do,” Flora said, nodding. “Of course, I do. I want nothing more than to raise a baby with you, it’s just that…”

“That what?”

“When we found out that I can’t have children, I just thought that having a baby was off the table, at least for right now.”

“I know,” I said, squeezing her hands comfortingly. “I know that was so hard for you, but then we talked about surrogacy. We can still have our baby. It’s not the same thing as you being able to be pregnant and carry our child and deliver him or her, I know, but it will still be such a beautiful experience and we will be able to raise our wonderful little family together.”

She gave the hint of a smile and nodded.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just having more trouble with this than I thought that I would. I’m really not sure about that woman. Please tell me that you’ll keep looking.”

“Of course,” I said. “I told Ellery to keep interviewing the other women and there are a few from before Rue that I asked him to invite back for the second round of interviews. We’ll narrow those down further with another talk with Ellery, and then you and I will get a chance to meet the final few to choose the one who is really right for us. I promise everything is going to work out perfectly.”

“Alright,” she said, looking slightly happier now.

“Alright.”

I picked up the menu and started reading the specials, my minds already drifting into the future when I would finally be able to hold my baby in my arms. It was something that I had wanted for so long, and now that it was so close to happening, it was all I could think about.

Almost all.

Chapter Four

Rue

Dear Baby,

You aren’t there yet. I honestly don’t know if you are ever going to be, but just in case your parents do choose me, I wanted to have a chance to tell you a little about myself and let you know why I’m doing this. It seems so strange to even talk about “your parents” when I might be the one who grows you inside of me. I know that that doesn’t make me your mother. It doesn’t mean anything except that I happen to have a body that does something that’s useful. It sounds so cold to put it that way, but that’s the way that I have to see it. Do you understand? It’s what I have to do to make sure that I can go through with this.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to really meet you. I know that we’ll be pretty well acquainted since we’ll get to share the same body for 40 weeks, give or take a couple of weeks. Don’t take too little, though, OK? You need to stay right in there and make sure that you are fully done before you come out. The world is a pretty exciting place and I’m sure that you will have an amazing life, but it’s not worth rushing. I wouldn’t want your mama and papa to have to put you in baby layaway because you get here early. I might need to remember not to call it that if that does happen. NICU just sounds awful to me. Saying that just sounds like you are admitting that there’s something wrong with the baby and it needs to be taken care of, that it might not make it through. Baby layaway, though, that’s just temporary. That’s just like picking out a shirt that you really want for the next season, but it’s not time to wear it yet so you put it in layaway until the weather changes and then you go get it out. They put a baby in the baby layaway until it’s ready to go ahead with life and then their parents can get them out.

I’m going to be meeting with your mama and papa tomorrow to talk to them more about the possibility of me carrying you for them. I just realized that I’ve been calling them “mama and papa” the way that I called my parents when I was growing up. Well, what I called my father. My mama has been gone since I was very, very little. I don’t remember her. I hate to admit that. All I ever heard about her was that she was so beautiful and kind, and that she loved me more than anything in the world. When I turned 18 Papa gave me a scrapbook that my mama had started for me even before I was born. It was full of pictures and doodles and notes. She even included the hospital bracelet from when I was born and a letter that she wrote to me while she was in labor. She had meant to keep building on it as I grew up so that by the time I was grown I would have a chronicle of my childhood. Looking at all of the empty pages in it always made me so sad when I was younger. I knew that I had done things and lived days that should have filled those pages. I just didn’t have Mama around to record them for me. It was almost like they weren’t as real, like they didn’t happen as much because she wasn’t there to see them. Does that make sense? On the front of the book she had written “I love you more than the moon and the sun and all the stars in space.”

I know that your mama is going to just love you so much. I wonder what you’ll call her. Maybe Mommy. Maybe you’ll have a Mommy and Daddy rather than a Mama and Papa. You sure are going to be raised differently than I was. No one who grew up in Whiskey Hollow would be able to afford the surrogacy fee that they are offering. That’s wonderful for you, though, Baby. At least I hope it is.

I never want you to be embarrassed or feel bad about the way that you came to be. It might not be the same way that other people are born, but it doesn’t mean that you are any less important or any less valuable. In fact, you are so very important, so very treasured, and so very loved, already, even now before you even exist, that your parents are willing to go through an unbelievable amount just to give them a chance that they will get to have you. I hope that they make you feel as special as you already are.

I also never want you to blame your mama or feel like she did something wrong for this having to be the way that you came to be. Sometimes the people who want children the most are the ones who have the hardest time actually having them. It’s not her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong and I know that if she had the choice, this wouldn’t be what she would do. I’m sure that if she had the choice, she would be the one who got to hold you inside of her and protect you until you were ready to be born. But she is still your mother. She is just as much your mother as if she did carry you and deliver you herself. Please never forget that. If you get a chance, remember to thank her. She put aside a lot of pride and a lot of self-doubt to bring you into this world, and I’m sure that she went through a lot of people telling her that she was doing the wrong thing. Even if they acted like they were supporting her and would never actually say that they thought that she was doing something that she shouldn’t, she would be able to feel with her heart what they actually thought of her. People have a way of presenting themselves one way when they are really something different underneath. But she went through all of that, she endured all of that, for you.

As I said, I don’t know if we’ll ever get a chance to really meet. I’ll see you the moment that you are born, of course. I’ll even get to hear your voice. But I don’t know if they will ever let me hold you. I don’t know if I’d want to. Those are moments that you should be spending with them, not with me. I’ll have the chance to cradle you, in a different way, for the first months of your existence and that’s something that I’ll always remember. I’ll be the only person who will have ever gotten to connect with you like that, and I won’t forget how significant that is. To be honest, I can’t really think of any situation when they would want for you to meet me when you are older, unless it is only because they want you to know the woman who made it possible for you to be born. That sounds so arrogant when I write it out, like I’m doing something that’s all that big of a deal and not what countless other women do every day.

If we did get a chance to spend any time together when you were old enough to understand who I am, I would want to tell you that what I told the man interviewing me last week was totally true. I really am considering doing this for you. That might not have been the case initially, when he surprised me with the whole thing, but after a few minutes of thinking about it, I realized that as crazy as it sounded, I really did want to be a part of making you a reality. It’s almost like I can feel you waiting, like even though you don’t exist yet, I know that you’re somewhere, just hanging out and getting ready for when it’s time for you to come, and that I might be the one who is supposed to make sure that happens. Does that sound crazy?

What I told Tessie is totally true, too. You’ll probably never have a reason to meet her, but she’s one of the two people who mean the most to me. She’s…well, she’s really hard to explain, we’ll just leave it at that. When I told her that I was thinking about helping your parents have you, her reaction wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I thought that she would be supportive and think that it was a wonderful thing to do, considering all of the good work in the world that she does. But I suppose when she is doing a good deed for someone it doesn’t involve sacrificing her body for almost a year. I needed to tell her more than just that I wanted to do something good for the world. I needed to explain to her about Grammyma’s house.

You’ll never get to meet my Grammyma. I don’t know, maybe you already have. She’s up there in Heaven where I’m imagining you floating around in some celestial waiting area for a nurse to come call your name and tell you it’s time. Your name. It’s funny, I didn’t even think about the fact that you wouldn’t have one of those when you came. That’ll be up to your parents to decide. It’s like I think that you’re going to show up with a little manual and a name tag, so I know who you are and which parents to give you to when you’re born. Anyway, Grammyma died about ten years back. She was the most amazing woman. Her eyes never looked old, even at the very end. As I got to be an adult, she shriveled up like a little raisin, but her eyes didn’t change. They always sparkled and looked young and full of life. That sparkle was the same one that was in my Daddy’s eyes.

His faded a little, though. He struggled a lot in the last couple of years of his life. I know that he was sick, but I felt like it was something more than that. It was almost like he had been missing my mama for so long that his heart and body just couldn’t take it anymore. Like he had been holding on for me while I was growing up because he wanted to make sure that I had at least one of my parents, and then when he saw that I had gotten there, I was grown, all of the stress and sadness of not having Mama just took over. I wish that it had been easier for him. I wish that I had gone home to see him rather than just bringing him to my apartment. If I had, I would have found out that he had never paid off the loan that he had to take out on Grammyma’s house, the house I grew up in with the two of them, when I was a teenager and his business went bad. I would have found out that he hadn’t been taking care of the house in the years since I had been there and that it was starting to fall apart.

I know it’s just a house, but some day you’ll understand what it is to have a home that is the one place in the whole world, no matter what other types of memories you associate with the place around it, where you feel loved and protected and safe, and as though anyone who you wanted to be was the person who belonged there. At least I hope you do. Sometimes I think that I didn’t really live up to what Daddy really would have wanted of me. Well, I know for certain I didn’t because I left Whiskey Hollow and I’m not married. That doesn’t matter, though, he would have always welcomed me right back home, right back into the kitchen that smelled like cookies and the living room that always sounded like sports or old TV shows. That’s why I have to save it. It’s my responsibility now. I’m all that’s left and I’m the only one who can make sure that my family’s legacy doesn’t disappear from the Hollow completely.

I’m moving back there in just a few weeks. I have to move out of my apartment by the first of the year, but I might go back before that. Christmas in Whiskey Hollow is something. I don’t really know what, exactly, but it’s something. By then, I should be carrying you with me.

I’m going to go to sleep now. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the energy I can get tomorrow. Wish me luck, Baby.

Rue

Chapter Five

Rue

What are you supposed to wear when you are going to meet with people hoping they choose you to carry their baby?

The letter that I had written to the potential future baby was still laying on my dresser the next morning while I stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging from the back of my bedroom door and evaluated all seventeen of the outfits that I had picked out for the day’s meeting. Considering the spectacular ensemble I had worn for the first meeting, I didn’t know how I was going to make any more of an impression, but I felt that I needed to at least put some effort into it.

The truth was that I was on the brink of obsessing over what I was going to wear, how I was going to do my hair, and which lipstick color to put on. It was like I was getting ready for the strangest and most foreshadowing-filled date that has ever been.

I want to look super pretty so that we can chat for a bit and then I can get pregnant and not have anything to do with you or the child after the baby’s born. Sound like a plan?

I straightened the hem of the hip-length jacket I had paired with a pencil skirt, twisted side to side to look at myself from all angles possible, and then tore off the jacket and tossed it aside so I could try a cardigan on instead. How formal, exactly, was a surrogacy interview? Was this executive assistant to the CEO with my own office, or was this secretary with a desk on the main floor? I tried not to think about the job that that comparison brought to mind. I had worked hard to get the position that ensured I could stay out of Whiskey Hollow and in the city where I had gone to college on a partial scholarship. I had carried the rest of the expense of school on my own back, working whatever jobs I could get to pay it knowing full well that Daddy would have helped me if he could, but it just wasn’t in the cards for him. Not a lot of people leave Whiskey Hollow at all, but they certainly don’t leave to go off to the city to go to college and start a career. So, I did it myself. I worked harder than I knew that I could, and I got through school then landed the first position I applied for.

Now I had left that behind.

They didn’t know it yet, since I was fully intending on continuing to collect the benefits of the extremely generous leave of absence policy that the company had until the very last moment that they were available to me, but I was never going to walk back into that office and sit behind my desk. I had even smuggled home the potted plant and framed picture of Mama and Daddy that I kept on display to perk me up during difficult days. Those had come with me on my very first day on the job. It felt like an obligation. Every movie that you ever see when a girl gets her first job in the big city, the first thing she does is sit down at her desk and put out a potted plant and a picture of her family. That was when I was just in a little cubicle squished up into a honeycomb of dozens of other cubicles where it was hard to even hear myself think over the voices of all the other people working around me.

As I rose through the ranks of the company, though, so did they, and when I finally made it into my own tiny little office, that potted plant and picture got first dibs on the desk space even before the paperweight and my name plaque. The picture even got an upgrade to a silver frame. I felt like the pinnacle of success even though I was still only just barely able to stay comfortable paying for my apartment and bills and all of those other pesky expenses of adulting. That in itself was pretty comfortable, though. Having a lot of money was something else that people from the Hollow just didn’t do. We weren’t scraping around in the dirt, but we also weren’t driving around in the long, shimmering cars I constantly saw in the office parking lot or eating at restaurants that cost two weeks’ worth of groceries for dinner.

Now my potted plant and picture of my parents had had to take up new real estate on the side table in my living room, never again to oversee my work. Giving up the career that I had cultivated over the years was the most difficult decision that I was having to make in this situation. I was having to give up all that I had committed myself to and all that I had accomplished so that I could return home and get this situation fixed. The money that they were offering would be plenty to carry me through for a while. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do after that. I would figure it out when the time came.

I took off the cardigan and tossed it over to join the rapidly growing pile of discards that were telling me that I either needed to get rid of a lot of clothing or buy more. I wasn’t sure which. I tugged a turtleneck sweater on and immediately tore it off.

Why the hell do I have a turtleneck?

I looked at myself in the mirror, standing in just the pencil skirt and bra.

I’ll just go like this. Show them what they’re working with. Baby-birthing hips and ribs ripe for the kicking.

Finally, I grabbed a pale pink shell and black wrap-around sweater and put them on. They settled into place around me and I felt like I had landed on the right look. It had a bit of a ballerina vibe going, yet still looked immeasurably more presentable than my sweat suit. It was a win-win. I checked the clock and realized that it was only twenty minutes until I was supposed to be back at the building. Swirling my hair up onto the back of my head in a bun that I hoped would continue the ballerina look and not bring back memories of my untamed bedhead, I wriggled into my shoes, grabbed my purse and keys, and ran out of the apartment.

By the time that I reached the office building I had a greater appreciation for why ballerinas wore legwarmers. I hadn’t gotten my coat on the way out and the weather had decided that it was very determined in its downward slope, leaving me shivering as I walked into the lobby. I felt like my heels were skittering across the floor as I walked across the gleaming lobby, and the sudden appearance of Ellery from the week before did nothing to help me feel calmer or more at ease. I was hoping that I wasn’t going to have to deal with him anymore. I got bad feelings from him and really didn’t want to think that he was going to be extensively involved with this process.

As I crossed to him, he met my eyes and by his expression I could tell that he was just as happy to see my return as I was to see his.

At least we’re on the same page. Equal opportunity disdain going on here.

I pasted on as big and bright a smile as I could and walked right toward him.

“Ellery!” I gushed. “So lovely to see you this morning.”

“Rue,” he said by way of super-abbreviated greeting. “Are you nervous?”

I was briefly confused by the question then realized that he probably saw my shivering.

“No,” I said. “I’m cold. It’s cold out there.”

“Oh,” he said, apparently disappointed that I wasn’t quaking in my boots to be facing him again.

No boots. No quaking.

“Am I late again today?” I asked.

He glanced down at his watch. It still took me aback a little when I saw someone wearing and actually using a watch.

“Three minutes,” he said dryly.

“Getting better,” I said, still forcing my smile so hard it hurt in my cheeks.

“This way,” he said, and we started our path through the lobby, through the glass doors, and into the waiting room.

There was a far smaller group of women in the waiting room this time and I settled into the same seat that I had the first time. We went through the same basic process as we had before, filling out questionnaires with even more invasive questions, waiting for our names, getting whisked back into the examination room. The same nurse as the week before came in and took my vitals. I wasn’t sure why she was doing it, but I figured if the couple chose me I would be undergoing a far more extensive selection of pokes, prods, and tests, so I was going to see this as my warmup.

When I got out of the examination room I was ushered back to the waiting room.

Hmmm. Plot twist.

I sat back in my chair. No point in breaking the streak. There seemed to be fewer women now, even after the last one came back out of the door and settled into a seat. I didn’t know where the others could have gone and had a brief sense of doom, wondering not for the first time if I had somehow wandered into an episode of the Twilight Zone and wasn’t going to be the contract mother, but zapped down to embryo size and turned into a contract baby.

I really needed to stop the late-night TV marathons with Christopher.

Nearly half an hour passed before the door opened again. This time it wasn’t the nurse who peered out with her clipboard. Instead, it was Ellery. He looked out at the waiting room and scanned the remaining women. He called a name and the woman across from me hopped up and scurried toward him like she had been called to spin the big wheel. This went on for the next half an hour, with each of the women returning and leaving before the next was called back. Finally, everyone had left but me and I sat waiting, wondering if I had either been forgotten or if someone else had already been chosen and they decided that there wasn’t any real point in even talking to me. That must be it. One of those other women who had sat here in this room with me, none speaking a single word to each other, had somehow caught the attention of the couple and was going to be the one that was going to carry their baby for them.

I thought of the letter that I had written the night before and felt an unexpected flutter of sadness. Which one was it?

The one with the thicker hair?

The bigger boobs?

The smaller waist?

The one who hummed the entire time that she walked into the back and then out of the room as if there was some sort of mechanical mechanism inside of her that was powering her along?

I was about to just go ahead and leave, save myself the misery of seeing the look on Ellery’s face when he dismissed me, when the door opened and his face poked out. The sour expression in his eyes and his pursed lips told me that maybe I wasn’t done after all.

“You can come with me,” he said, not even bothering with the formality of saying my name.

I stood and crossed the waiting room to him with a touch of swagger.

“Saved the best for last, did you, Ellery?” I asked as I swept past him.

Despite my bravado and sass, my stomach did a few turns of nervousness as we made our way toward the office where we had had our interview the week before. I was about to meet the people who could very well change my life, and whose lives I could change even more. Ellery opened the door and I took a breath, stepping inside. I lifted my head from where I had been focusing on the carpet a few feet in front of me and felt my smile melt when I saw the desk.

Instead of a smiling young couple sitting there, I saw a stern-looking man looking through papers spread across the surface of the desk in front of him.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello. Please, come sit.”

It was one of those times when saying ‘please’ actually made what the person was asking sound less polite. Ellery left the office and closed the door behind him without saying anything. I crossed the room and sat down in the same chair that I had before.

“Good morning,” I said, not really knowing what else I could say to ease the stuffy feeling in the office.

“Good morning. I’m Mr. Lawrence. I’ll be interviewing you today.”

I cocked my head at him, confused by the introduction.

“I thought that I was here to meet the couple who is looking for a surrogate,” I said.

Mr. Lawrence shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I am a family lawyer specializing in surrogacy law. My client is a prominent figure and does not want others, including the media, to know about his surrogacy plans until he is prepared to release such information. To protect his privacy and the privacy of his girlfriend, he has asked that I handle this stage of the interview process and provide legal information and details to those who have been shortlisted.”

“Girlfriend?” I asked, slightly surprised by the word.

The bulbous lawyer looked at me over the rim of his glasses.

“Yes,” he said. “My client is not yet married. Do you have some sort of moral objection to that?”

His pen was poised above the pad of paper in front of him, ready to jot down anything that I said and, likely, to eliminate me as the proper choice because I had a problem with their lifestyle choices.

“No,” I said. “No moral objection. I’m just surprised. Don’t most people get married before they start thinking about children and go through all of this to have one?”

I probably shouldn’t have asked that. It wasn’t really any of my business and the last thing that I needed was for the lawyer, who was probably actually some sort of mole hidden in the process to evaluate me, to think that I was difficult.

“My client has an extremely high pressure, tightly scheduled business and personal life. He must make arrangements for any and all pursuits in his life, including his desire to have a child, according to the time that he has available. A recent business success has ensured that he has time now to begin this process.” He looked at me again, his eyes sharp as though he wanted to make sure that I was listening very carefully to every word that was coming out of his mouth. “But I assure you, he has every intention of marrying his longtime partner in the near future.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? What did he think I was, some sort of gestational homewrecker?

Chapter Six

Richard

His longtime partner. Was Flora really my “partner”? My girlfriend, yes. The woman who had been essentially chosen for me to marry when I was just a child to complete some social Circle of Life that I had no idea about at the time, yes. My partner? I’m not so sure. We were great at doubles tennis.

I was still stuck on that phrase as I listened to the lawyer I had chosen go over all of the legal details about the arrangement. I had heard the spiel a few times already that day. He was pretty amazing at being able to repeat the same information in exactly the same words and tone six times. The sheer volume of that information had had the effect that I both expected and wanted in most of the women who had come into the room. They seemed perky and enthusiastic when they first came in, took a moment to process that it wasn’t the couple they thought they were going to meet waiting for them in the office, and then listened as Mr. Lawrence started outlining the expectations and responsibilities of the arrangement, the fees and financial support being offered, the guidelines we had, and the legal protections being put into place to guard both sides.

Most of the women fared pretty well through the first few paragraphs that he delivered. They would listen with what looked like rapt attention, nodding politely and making those sounds that self-help gurus and life coaches tell people to make so that the person speaking will know that they are being heard and acknowledged. After a few more minutes, right about when he started talking about medical expectations and lifestyle guidelines, the smiles on their faces started getting a little plastic, their eyes became glassy, and the noises that they were making no longer coordinated with anything in particular that the lawyer was saying. One of them stood up in the middle of the speech, announced that her dog needed to be brought to the groomer and that she was so sorry but would have to withdraw her interest because she just remembered how much time it took to take care of him. Another let him finish, but walked out of the office without saying another word. The other three made it through and tried to ask questions about all of the information with varying degrees of understanding and sense.

Then there was Rue. I had barely recognized her when she walked into the office and I saw her appear on the computer screen. Gone were sweat pants and sweat shirt, replaced by tasteful clothes that accentuated a body with incredible curves that had been all but hidden by the loungewear. Her hair had been brushed and even though it was coiled on the back of her head again, it was smooth and shiny, looking deliberately styled rather than just thrown into place to get it out of her way. The makeup she wore was distinctive, with bold eyeliner making her almost golden eyes stand out and the slick of bright red lipstick just contrasting enough with the pink of her shirt that it looked deliberate. She had been beautiful even when I first saw her, but being put together this way made her stunning in another way.

I’m honestly not sure which one I prefer.

Rue listened all the way through the explanation from the lawyer and I noticed that she didn’t seem intimidated or overwhelmed by him or the flow of information. She even interjected her own questions and comments throughout the way, some of which made the lawyer cringe but brought a smile to my lips. This woman seemed unfazed by anything that was thrown at her. She didn’t seem fragile like the other women, as though if a single thing was to go wrong in the process she would fall apart, but also didn’t seem cold or distant. She was unwaveringly present in the moment, right there, listening to the lawyer and involving herself as much in the conversation as she could.

“What do you think of her now?” I asked Flora.

She was reluctantly sitting beside me, examining her nail polish more than she was paying attention to the screen and what was happening in the next office over. I saw her give a cursory glance and then she shrugged.

“I guess she’s alright,” she said.

“You do realize that she’s the woman you said was so horrible when you saw her last week? You were completely offended by her clothes and thought that she had no business even showing interest in this – but you thought that I was showing more than enough interest?”

Flora made a face at me and I was struck, as I so frequently was, by how much she reminded me of a spoiled little girl in the shell of a grown-up woman. Part of me hated that that was the way that I perceived her. I wanted to feel what I knew I should be feeling for her, at least what I thought -I should be feeling. I wanted to look at her the way that I saw other couples look at each other when we went to events together and saw them holding hands, walking with their arms around each other’s waists, and leaning in to whisper to one another, smiling and giggling at what each other said. Flora and I weren’t like that. We walked around the events together, of course, and we looked fantastic doing it. She was a gorgeous woman, primped and perfected, and she looked wonderful draped on my arm wherever we went. But there was none of that warmth between us. We didn’t exist in our own secret little world the way that the other couples seemed to. Sometimes I longed for that kind of connection, wishing that we had the sizzle of passion and tenderness of such obvious love. There were other times, though, when I wondered if what I was seeing in them was no more valid than what we had, only fresher and newer.

Many of the couples had only been together a short time and were still riding that high that came with discovering the spark of new love. Flora and I had been together for so long, or guided into a pseudo-relationship in convenient situations that our parents thought that we wouldn’t recognize for what they were, that it was almost impossible for me to think of a time when she wasn’t around. Perhaps we had just been a part of each other’s lives for so long that there wasn’t room left for those kinds of feelings.

****

Rue

“Alright, so we know that he lives around here because the lawyer was so adamant about him needing to protect his privacy, and that wouldn’t be a big deal if he lived somewhere else.”

“Not necessarily,” Tessie said.

“What do you mean?”

“The lawyer said that this guy is a prominent businessman. Powerful men like that can be pretty well-known all over, not just where they live.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know who Bill Gates is and he doesn’t live around here,” Christopher pointed out.

“I don’t think that Bill Gates is considering hiring someone to carry his child,” I said. “Besides, he’s married. The lawyer was very particular to point out that this man has a girlfriend he’s planning on marrying.”

“Probably for the best,” Christopher said. “If it was Bill Gates he would be seriously cheaping out with that surrogacy fee.”

I nodded solemnly and opened the first website on the results that had popped up from my search.

“What do you think?” I asked, gesturing at the screen. “He’s the right age. It looks like he has several businesses.”

“Married,” Tessie said, pointing out a line on the About Us page.

“Dammit.”

I went back and opened another page.

“OK, how about this one. Not married. Successful.”

“Gorgeous,” Tessie said.

“That wasn’t specified in the description from the lawyer,” I said. I looked at the screen again and nodded. “But you are not wrong.”

The man smiling from the screen had a chiseled face and thick, sandy hair that accentuated piercing blue eyes.

Wow.

“So, when are you supposed to meet him?”

“Well,” I said, still staring at the image of the man who could possibly be the father of the child that I would soon be pregnant with. That was an interesting thought. “Since the last time that I thought that I was going to meet him I ended up sitting with a lawyer while he tried to confuse and scare me into giving up, so I’m not really sure. In theory, though, I meet them tomorrow.”

“They aren’t waiting around, are they?”

“What are you going to wear?” Christopher asked.

I sighed deeply and shook my head.

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it all day. It took me hours to figure out that one outfit. I’m not prepared for another.”

The next morning, I strode across the lobby and was passing through the first set of glass doors when Ellery crossed through the second toward me. I smiled, pleased with myself for getting the jump on him.

“Not late today,” I said.

He looked at his watch.

“One minute.”

“Dammit.” I winced. “I mean darn it.”

“This way,” he said, giving me the same type of glare that the Sunday school teacher gave every time I came in with muddy shoes because I ran through the yard before going in. “They’re waiting for you.”

“Already?” I asked. “I’m only one minute late.”

“Their time is very important,” Ellery said. “They don’t have the option of just waiting around for people.”

“And yet, they are waiting for me,” I said, walking through the waiting room toward the door. “I must be pretty special.”

I got to the office and stopped outside of the closed door. All of the nervousness that I had had the day before came rushing back, augmented now by the extra day that I had had to sit around and worry about meeting them. Ellery came up beside me and stared at the door for a few moments. He pointed to the doorknob with the end of his pen.

“You can just use that right there,” he said.

I swung my head to look at him.

“You didn’t get many hugs as a child, did you?” I asked.

He glared at me and opened the door. I stepped into the office and felt my heart flutter slightly when I saw the man from my computer screen smiling back at me from behind the desk.

“Hello,” he said, standing up and reaching a hand across the desk toward me. “You’re Rue.”

I nodded, approaching him and taking his hand.

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m Richard.”

I glanced around the office, expecting to see the blond woman who had been pictured in the society pages Christopher and I had shamelessly pored through the night before.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.

“Flora will be joining us later, hopefully,” he said, sitting down and gesturing toward the chair across from him. “She had a few other appointments this morning.”

“Oh,” I said.

I wanted to point out to him that I hadn’t seen any other women in the waiting room and ask if that meant that he had chosen me, but that seemed a little desperate to me, so I restrained myself.

“I’m sorry about the bait-and-switch situation yesterday. This is a really important decision for me. For us. And I want to make sure I make the right one.”

I nodded.

“I totally understand. Is there anything else that you want to know?”

Stop staring at him. Stop staring at him. Stop staring at him. You cannot be attracted to him. You cannot be attracted to him.

Richard looked down at the papers on his desk and flipped through them, his eyes scanning over them in the quickly flickering moves of speed reading that always made me feel dizzy just watching. He finished and looked up at me.

“There are just a couple of questions that I want to ask you.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Anything you want to know. I’m an open book.”

Probably a slightly crinkled paperback by an author you would never read, but an open book nonetheless.

He looked at me for a few long seconds. He opened his mouth as if to ask something and then closed it, waiting for another few seconds.

“What is your favorite planet and why?” he asked.

“Earth because I live here and it’s the only one that we are currently aware of capable of sustaining life without the use of extensive technology, I’ve seen Biodome. I don’t want to be a part of any of that. If Earth’s not an option, I’ll say Jupiter because it’s huge but gets overlooked by all the Mars-lovers out there and I feel that it needs more attention.”

****

Richard

She didn’t miss a beat.

“If you were an ice cream sundae topping, which would you be?”

“Chopped nuts.”

“Why?”

“Because they add texture and make a sundae more interesting. Besides, all the syrup makes them super delicious, but they’re still nuts, so they’re healthy. That way after people eat the sundae, they might feel guilty about the other toppings and the ice cream, but they won’t feel as terrible about the chopped nuts. I would make it a little easier for people to enjoy a treat.”

“How many roller coasters have you ridden in your life and did you keep your hands up the entire time?”

Rue paused only for a second, her eyes looking up as if she was seeing something in her mind.

“Ten. Some of them yes.”

“Don’t you know that that’s dangerous?”

“No, it isn’t. Roller coasters only have the illusion of being dangerous. That’s why they’re fun. They’re designed to make your subconscious believe that you are facing some sort of life-threatening situation involving a crashing vehicle or a large monster thrashing you around in its teeth. In reality, though, they are completely safe and have only the slightest risk of malfunction that would actually result in injury.”

“And danger is your middle name,” I teased.

“It could be. But it’s not. It’s Bella.”

“Bella?” I asked, waiting for her to laugh or to at least tell me that she was joking. “Your name is Rue Bella?”

Not laughing. Oh, my lord, she’s serious.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

I laughed at the serious look on her face and nodded.

“Fair enough. Alright. One more question. A cat and three dogs walk down an alley and see a bowl of food. What color collar was the animal that got the food wearing?”

“White with little fish, clearly.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it was obviously the cat that got the food. Cats always beat out dogs. Just the way it is. They’re sneaky and they have pointy fingers. Of course, the cat didn’t eat all the food and shared what was left with a dog that was wearing pink rhinestone collar.”

“Because?”

“Bitches always get what they want.”

I threw back my head and laughed, both shocked and enthralled by her answer.

And her.

“What exactly is going on here?”

The sound of Flora’s frosty voice stopped my laughter and I looked at her where she stood at the door.

“Oh, Darling, you made it. This is Rue. I was just asking her a few questions.”

“I can’t imagine what you would have asked her that would have warranted an answer like that.”

I realized that she had heard Rue’s comment and felt a little hint of guilt. Flora had trusted me to run the interview on my own until she got there, and I felt like I had somehow let her down with the questions I’d chosen.

Not that it really matters. Rue is the one. There isn’t anyone else who I even want to consider.

I tried to explain the exchange, but Flora didn’t seem impressed.

“I thought that you were going to ask her things that pertain to the arrangement,” she said.

She was still standing beside the door, looking like she was preparing to escape and run away at any moment. I walked around the side of the desk and took her hands, kissing both.

“I am,” I told her. “Don’t you want to know that the woman we choose to carry our baby can think quickly and has a creative mind?”

“I’m not sure that her creativity has anything to do with her ability to get pregnant and deliver a child,” Flora said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rue’s eyes narrow briefly at Flora before she turned back around to look across the desk again.

This was getting off to a great start.

“I think it does,” I told her. “It means that she will be adaptable to whatever situations might occur, and less likely to close her mind to ideas that we might have about her prenatal care and birthing situation.”

“Ideas?” Rue asked from behind me. “What kind of ideas?’

“So, I suppose that you’re settled on her?” Flora asked. “None of the other women fit your standards?”

“The other women did not make it through this phase.”

I would try to explain the whole situation to her when we got home later.

I expected Flora to get angry. I knew that she didn’t like Rue. She didn’t trust her and thought that she was below her. It was obvious just in the way that she looked at her. But instead, she offered a smile and walked around me to where Rue was sitting.

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Rue,” she said. She reached a hand toward Rue, who looked at her for a few unsure seconds and then took her hand cautiously. Flora pulled her to her feet and wrapped Rue into a hug that was so out of character for her I felt the need to take a step back. “Thank you so much for being willing to do this. You are an angel for giving of yourself so much to help make a dream come true for me and for my Richie.”

Chapter Seven

Rue

I was breathless as I walked across the lobby, my stilettos clicking on the floor so that the sound reverberated throughout the empty space. I didn’t know why Richard would have called me to meet him in the middle of the night, but the sound of his voice even over the phone was enough to make me tremble and I knew that no matter what his reason, I needed to be with him. The floor beneath my feet had been polished until it glistened, and I knew the reflection beneath me would show an image of the hem of my long coat and the fact that I wore nothing beneath it.

Richard had only said that he needed to see me when he called me. He didn’t tell me why or what he wanted to talk about, but it didn’t matter. The moment that I heard him say that he needed me, I was fully and utterly open to him. I had belonged to him from the moment that I saw him, and I was ready to offer myself over to him, to show him everything that he could enjoy with me. Wearing the long coat and absolutely nothing else was my way of ensuring that my intentions couldn’t be misunderstood. No matter what it was that he wanted to say to me. No matter why he beckoned me to the office building well after the final employees there had left and the cleaning staff had performed their duties for the night. I wanted to make sure that the moment that I walked into the office I would be able to show him exactly what was on my mind and keep me from holding back, restraining myself even though I knew that I should.

This wasn’t a good idea. This wasn’t something that I should be doing. The voice in the back of my mind told me that. It told me that the last thing that I should be doing was telling Richard how much I wanted him, that just the thought of him made me wet and my body ache for him to touch me. I hadn’t been able to get him out of my mind since the very first moment that I saw him on my computer screen and my desire for him had only gotten more intense when I walked into the office and actually got to see him. Thoughts of him, his body, his mouth, his hands on me, had taken over every moment of my day. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything but my fantasies and the powerful pull from within me that seemed to take over my mind, my heart, and my body. I didn’t care who he was or how we had met. I didn’t care what was expected of our relationship or that he technically had another woman in his life. I had seen the way that they looked at each other. I had tried to tell myself that he loved her and that she loved him, but the way that they looked at each other told me that that wasn’t the case. There was no warmth between them. No matter what they said to each other or the way that he tried to show affection to her. It was obvious to me that there wasn’t any of the intense love or lasting bond that there should be between them.

Beyond that, I had seen the way that he looked at me. From the first time that our eyes met and I sat down across the desk from him, I knew that he felt the same thing that I did. I saw the heat there, the attraction, the curiosity. He had done everything he could not to show me what he was feeling and to deny it to himself as much as to me. I wasn’t going to let that happen anymore.

His words were few when he called me, but that didn’t change the tension that I heard in his voice. It was there, strong and burning, simmering beneath the words. When he told me that he needed me to come to the office, he was telling me that he needed me. He wanted me. Even if he didn’t want to admit it. Even if he wasn’t calling me to him to act on it, I was going to make sure that he was left with no questions in his mind or his heart.

I crossed through the first set of glass doors and then the next. The lights were dim in this portion of the building, and I felt like I was moving deeper into a forbidden world, something that was going to exist only for us and that could never see the light of day.

The waiting room was quiet and empty, almost as though it were slumbering. I passed through it, my eyes flickering for an instant to the empty chair that I had inhabited several times before. I didn’t need to wait to have my name called this time. I passed through the door and down the hallway toward Richard’s office. The door was standing partially open and I could see a slice of light spilling out into the hallway. I paused outside and drew in a breath before reaching up and gently rapping on the door.

“Come in,” Richard’s husky voice said immediately.

I pressed the door open and stepped inside. Richard was sitting in his massive chair behind the desk, his eyes burning into me the moment that I came into view. He said nothing as I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I kept my eyes locked on him as I walked into the center of the room and released the knot of the belt at my waist. Richard’s gaze followed my fingers as the knot opened and I pushed the belt away before bringing my hands to the buttons of the coat. I moved slowly, letting my fingers gradually open each button to gradually reveal my body beneath.

Richard’s eyes found my skin and I could see the hunger grow within them. When I reached the final button, I opened the coat and pushed it back over my shoulders, letting it slip down my arms and pool on the floor at my feet. Richard pressed his hands to the surface of the desk in front of him and stood from his chair. He paused only for a second to look at me and then rushed around the side of the desk and to me. In an instant, I was in his arms and his mouth was on mine. It was a crushing, breathless kiss, our mouths hungrily seeking as much of one another as we could possibly find. Our tongues tangled, and my hands tore at his clothes, trying to find the warmth of his bare skin.

Richard took his hands from my body to release his belt and tear at his button and zipper. I felt his deliciously hard cock spring out and brush against my belly. My body responded with a rush of hot fluid, readying me for him. My belly twitched, and I could feel my walls opening, seeking him. I couldn’t wait to feel him inside me. Richard wrapped his arm tightly around my waist and swept me up off of my feet and spun us around, so he could carry me to the desk. Setting me on the edge, he pushed me onto my back and grabbed the tops of my thighs, yanking me forward so that my legs lifted up and he pushed them apart. The movement opened me to him, making me feel both vulnerable and intensely aroused.

The feeling of Richard’s breath on my hot, wet core sent a thrill through me and I arched up toward him. His tongue dragged through my folds and I cried out at the sensation that rocked through me. He focused the tip on my clit for a few overwhelming seconds and then plunged his tongue inside me, bringing his thumb up to massage me in tight circles. My body shook, and I clawed at the desk beside me, looking for something to hold onto to try to find some control. The pressure building throughout my hips and stomach was almost painful in its strength and I couldn’t hold myself back. As he shoved his tongue so far within me that his mouth closed down over my center, I felt the rush of an intense orgasm wash over me and I screamed out, reaching up to dig my fingers through his hair to at once grip him closer to me and pull him away to ease the shuddering power of the feeling.

I was still gasping through the waves of sensation when I felt Richard stand up, heard the sound of a condom package ripping, and then felt him push inside of me. The sensation of his hard, thick cock filling me so much was almost painful and sent me into a new crashing cascade of tremors. I opened my eyes to look at Richard. His open shirt pressed back over his shoulders seemed to accentuate the rippling of his muscles, making him look unchained and even sexier. There was no hesitation in his movements. His fingertips dug into my hips as he pounded into me hard and fast.

Richard’s eyes were fiery as they stared down at me. His jaw was clenched tightly, and I saw sweat beading on his forehead, gliding down his cheeks. He grunted from deep within his chest with each thrust and I cried out at the slam of his hips against mine. I was still wearing my shoes and he straightened, grasping the high, sharp heels so he could press my legs back further and open even more. I reached over my head to grip the edge of the desk and hold myself in place so that the power of his strokes didn’t push me off.

This position drove him even deeper and I let out an unbridled moan as his masterful cock reached a place inside of me that had never been touched. Richard’s thrusts grew harder and faster, his pace becoming feverish as the sounds coming through his gritted teeth grew louder and more forceful. My head arched back but I felt him take one hand away from my shoe and grasp my face, guiding it back into place so that he could stare down at me. He held my cheek, his thumb stroking across my cheekbone tenderly in a stark contrast to the thrust of his hips.

Suddenly he shoved into me with a final thrust that put him as far within me as he could be and he let out a roar as I felt his cock throb. The sensation pushed me over the edge and my body clenched around his, collapsing again into another blinding orgasm that squeezed down on him and made my fingernails claw into the muscles of his upper arms. We paused in breathless, shaking ecstasy until our bodies cooled and relaxed, easing down from the blistering peaks that we had achieved.

Richard lowered my legs down onto either side of him and wrapped his arm around my waist to pull me up to sitting so that he could kiss me. I melted into the kiss, letting my arms fall around his neck to hold him close, and pressing my body nearer to his to remain connected for as long as I could. I was running my fingers down his back, feeling the muscles through the sweat-damp fabric of his shirt, when I felt the muscles disappear, replaced by something soft. I opened my eyes and instead of seeing Richard’s chiseled, sexy face staring back at me, I saw darkness.

I blinked, trying to make my eyes focus, and gradually shadows and shimmers of light appeared above me. I realized that I was no longer sitting on the desk but laying in my bed, stroking the pillow beside me. The sheets around me were damp and the air felt thick and warm, but the more I felt myself pulling up out of the deep sleep that had crafted the intense dream, the cooler the air felt. I sat up and reached down to the end of the bed, grabbed the blanket that was folded at the foot, and pulled it up over me as I lay back down, curling it up around myself.

What the hell was that all about?

Chapter Eight

Rue

Dear Baby,

You are going to be so beautiful. I met your parents yesterday and I can imagine their features coming together to make you and it’s amazing. Your eyes will be so blue, and you will have thick, perfect hair. You’ll be tall, which I can tell you as someone who has difficulty seeing the signs in a grocery store when I’m walking down the aisles, will be a blessing. It’s strange to be thinking about what you are going to look like now, still before you even exist. One day you will. One day you will be ready to face the world and you will come into it and everyone will get to look at you and see just how wonderful you really are. I am trying not to create an image of you in my mind because I know that there’s no real way that I could come up with what you are actually going to look like and then it will seem like you are a stranger when you’re born.

It won’t be long now. Today your parents, Richard and Flora, officially chose me to be their surrogate. I feel so lucky. This is going to help me in so many ways and I’m glad that I can do it in a way that helps them, too. Your daddy is somebody really special. I hope you know that. He’s kind and reassuring, and even though he seems a little bit stuffy, there’s a sense of humor there that’s a lot of fun. I hope that you see that sense of humor and that maybe you get some of it. It’s always better to see the world with a bit of laughter and light in it, no matter what’s happening. Your daddy has obviously lived a pretty sheltered life and probably hasn’t had much experience outside of his little bubble, but I can see something in him. There’s a little bit of sparkle in there and I see it whenever he talks about you.

Your mother is a surprise to me. She wasn’t there when I first met your father and when she did come in, she didn’t seem too pleased to be seeing me. Not that she wasn’t pleased that there was an interview going on, because obviously she knew about that, but not pleased that it was me sitting there. I don’t know why that would be the case since we’ve never met before, but that was the immediate impression that I got. As soon as your father told her that I was the one that he had chosen, though, it was like she turned a switch. Suddenly she was gushing and emotional, and actually came up and hugged me. Now, I can tell you that that hug felt like it was coming from someone who doesn’t do the hugging thing very often. But it was a hug nonetheless and while it seemed to take your daddy aback a bit, too, he was happy as a frog in the rain. It was like everything was falling into place in his mind and he was finally able to actually see how this was all going to work out.

I have all kinds of doctor’s appointments set up for the next couple of weeks. The first one is tomorrow afternoon. I’m supposed to discuss my reproductive potential. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds awkward. I’m sure it’s only the very beginning of a whole stream of awkward, though, so I’m just bracing myself. With any luck, we can schedule the implantation within the next month and we’ll be on our way.

I just realized that if the first implantation takes, I’ll be pregnant over the holidays. No egg nog for me. Well, I can have egg nog, I just can’t let Christopher anywhere near it. Is it ridiculous that I feel a little guilty that you’ll be with me over Christmas and not with your parents? You won’t even be the size of a holly berry, yet I feel like I should go sit on their couch with my belly pointed toward their Christmas tree or something.

Menorah? Is that possible? Not that it matters, of course, it’s just that I’m realizing more and more as this becomes more real to me that I don’t know these people. I’m sure I’ll get to know them better as the weeks go by. I don’t honestly know how well I want to get to know them, though. I know that sounds terrible and I don’t mean it to. It’s just that…what if I really like them? What if I form a friendship with them? When all of this is over and you are born, that friendship would be over too. I can’t imagine that your mother would want to keep me around as Auntie Rue or anything. It’s not that I think she’s a terrible person. That’s not it. Like I said, I just feel like there’s something a little bit off about her. It’s probably not her usual personality or what is actually the way that she is when she’s not in this type of situation. If she was, your father wouldn’t be with her and wouldn’t be going through something like this with her.

Of course, at the same time I don’t want to have no relationship with them. This is something that they should have the opportunity to experience, even if it is just watching my belly grow, being there for ultrasounds, and feeling kicks. I wouldn’t want to think that they would go for the fast food version, being there for the implantation and then just checking back in with me when I was ready to pop and they had spent the last nine months going about their lives. Maybe that’s not the fast food version. The bread maker version? Slow cooker? Definitely not the pressure cooker.

I hope that I will make a good home for you. I’ve been trying to eat better the last few days. I don’t know how much of a difference it will make, but I’d like to think I’m doing a little bit of freshening up before you move in. When you get there, I promise I will do everything that I can to make it comfortable for you and to help you stay healthy and safe until the day comes for you to be born. Wow. Your birthday. That will be your actual, real birthday. I’d like to think that that day has already been chosen. Somewhere out there it has already been decided what zodiac sign you’re going to be and whether you are going to be a summer baby or a fall baby. Somehow, that thought is comforting to me. The responsibility of all of this is already starting to sink in and it makes me feel better to think that I’m not the only one who’s controlling this and that somewhere along the line it will just be about me going along for the ride. All I can promise you is that I will do everything I can to make sure that you get through the months that you’ll spend with me in the best way possible so that I can hand you healthy and safe to your parents and you can go on to live the incredible life they have planned for you.

I know that I’ve spent most of the time since you became even a concept in my life thinking about what I am going to be doing for you and for your parents, but I want you to know that I will never forget what you are doing for me, either. Thank you in advance for letting me be the one who carries you. Thank you for giving me the chance to actually do something good in the world and to help people in a way that even just a few months ago I never would have even begun to imagine I would do. And thank you for helping me to save the home that is so precious to me. You’ll never know how much it means to me that I won’t lose that house. I am glad to know that you won’t know what it is to struggle or to feel that you’re missing out on anything. You won’t ever know what it is to worry that you’ll lose everything that means something to you. That’s a gift and I hope that you will appreciate it. I know those things all too well, but because of you I won’t have to be as afraid. The money that your parents will pay me for carrying you will be enough to secure my grandmother’s home and to get me through for a while. After that, I’ll figure it out, but at least I’ll know that my home is safe. One day when I have children of my own, if I’m ever lucky enough to do that, I’ll be able to raise them there and I will never forget that it is because of you that I’ll be able to do that.

I’ll be going home to Whiskey Hollow soon. I don’t know what the doctor’s going to say about resting or anything after the procedure, but I feel like I should do something. I’ve already taken leave from my job, so I’ll just be packing up my apartment until the day of the procedure. Then I think I’ll take the day or maybe even two to just lay around and hope for the best. Maybe I’ll put my legs up over my head. Do you think that I could count one of those inversion tables as a pregnancy expense and just dangle upside down for a while after? That might be going a bit too far.

Part of me is looking forward to going home and seeing the Hollow again. It has been so long and the last time I was there was so painful for me that going back feels like a way to make that go away and bring back all of the warmth and wonderful memories that I cherish so much and that make me want to make sure that it isn’t taken from me. There’s another part of me, though, that is almost dreading going back. I worked so hard to get out and to make my life what it has become, and going back, not just visiting but actually moving back, feels like I’m giving all of that up. I’m afraid that I’ll lose that part of me and forget what I’m really capable of accomplishing. We’ll just have to see.

Wish me luck for the doctor’s appointment.

Rue

End of Sample… Get BECOMING daddy .