The Surrogates: The 5 Book Paranormal Pregnancy Romance Box Set

by Angela Foxxe

  She hung her head and she felt the tears burning out of her eyes and racing down her cheek like ants of fire. They had taken her child from her and she had nothing from this now. Money didn’t mean a thing to her and there was nothing about money that was going to take away the pain that was in her heart. It was like a piece of her was missing. They hadn’t even let her hold her child. She hadn’t been given the opportunity to take her child in her arms and know whether or not it was a boy or a girl. The mystery was still enormous to her and she was never going to have an answer for it.

  Sure, she could probably look it up later on down the road, but she was alone now and those questions were going to haunt her for years. For her entire life she would never find a way to get t hos answers. The thoughts that plagued her were horrifying and they were monstrous.

  They had taken advantage of her and there was nothing that she was going to be able to do about it. There was something that was comforting in the idea that she would be able to fight anything that came up against her. The thought of revenge was something that could sustain someone who had been grievously wounded or taken advantage of, but without the hope of justice, there was nothing but despair. As she wept, she knew that she was the only person that she could truly blame for all of this. She shouldn’t have made the deal.

  When the nurse came back, Tasha decided that it was time to find out if her sinister inclinations were true. She looked at the new nurse who was a larger woman with short, curly hair that made her look even larger. “Were there any other surrogates from the Matterhorn Company?” She asked in her most inquisitive voice. “There were two other women that I was there with and I was wondering if either of them had come through yet?”’

  “Hard to tell,” the nurse told her. “That’s private information that I can’t give out, but since you know them, I’m sure you’d probably have better information that I do. The Matterhorn Company has their fingers in every pie across the city. I don’t think you’d be able to find a hospital or clinic in the city that doesn’t get some kind of funding from them. They’re everywhere.”

  Tasha felt her heart sink. If there were other women that Dane had impregnated, they probably would have shipped them out to different hospitals so that they couldn’t talk or find out about each other. It sickened Tasha and as she sat alone, all she could think about was how foolish she had been.

  What a foolish little girl, she thought over and over again.

  *

  Tasha had dreams that were stranger than anything she had experienced before. They felt so real that it was almost painful for her to close her eyes and give herself over to the thought of sleep. When she finally closed her eyes on that terrible day, she felt that her sleep was hunting for her, chasing her down in the waking world so that she could finally go to sleep and experience what was waiting for her. It was like being chased by a rabid dog that wouldn’t stop until it caught her.

  So when she did finally go to sleep, her dreams were filled with fire and pain, death, and emptiness. She pictured weeping children in the darkness, calling for their mothers and their fathers while Tasha could see the bodies of their parents spread out across the gloom. They were torn apart, bloodied, and still as the crypt itself. She knew that they were all dead and the children were weeping and calling. Beyond all of it, in the true darkness of her sleep, she could hear the roars and the shrieks of unearthly horrors, monstrous things that had no names and that no one had ever seen. They were rolling in the darkness, hissing and cursing as the children wept.

  Tasha didn’t know what it was and she didn’t want any part of it.

  She ran from the sight in her dreams, but she could only see pools of light, illuminated by old chandeliers that were infested with spiders, coated in their webs. The warm, orange light flickered as the footsteps in the darkness hounded her, chasing after her with wicked laughter and sinister hissing. She could hear them chasing her, the sounds of bare feet scraping and pattering against hard stone.

  Screaming, she ran from them as quickly as she could, dashing from pool of light to pool of light until she came to a great abyss that she couldn’t cross or even see the other side of. She was alone on this side and beneath her, a raging, roiling river boiled deep in the darkness.

  “Jump,” she heard a voice shout.

  When she snapped her eyes open and looked around, she remembered that she was no longer in the familiar home of her suite at the Matterhorn Tower, but that she had been abandoned in the middle of some hospital with a scar on her abdomen. Sweat covered her face and her hair, soaking the pillow and her sheets as she stared up at the ceiling that was cast with the ominous shadows and the lights of the street beneath her.

  Even in the hospital and over the machinery around her, she could hear the city beyond this prison. It was only then that she noticed that she wasn’t alone.

  Rolling her head to the side, she saw the figure standing in the doorway. The light of the nurses’ station down the hallway backlit him and the light from the window wasn’t shining on his face. The border of light was halted four feet from where the man was standing in the doorway. At first, she couldn’t take in the details or make out the form of the man and she thought it was her father. She thought that her father had chased her down and was here to chastise her and yell at her. She knew that he was here to rub her face in the mistake that she had made and laugh at her, calling down damnation and ancient verses on her head.

  But as her eyes adjusted, Tasha realized that this man was far too tall to be her father and that her father was still far away in Idaho. He was still gone and there was no way that he could have found her. This man was standing in the doorway with a bomber jacket on and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, watching her. There was no doubt about it that his eyes that were sunken in the shadows of his face were watching her, fixed on her like the sights of a hunting rifle.

  She looked at the man, wondering if he knew that she was awake. She remained still, knowing that if he wanted to get to her, there was nothing that she could do. She was trapped in this room and there was no escape from it. She could run to the bathroom and scream, but the odds that he wouldn’t catch her were nonexistent. He was even closer to the bathroom than she was.

  Being watched by someone that you know in the best of times is a disturbing and uneasy feeling, but to have it be someone that she didn’t know, that was a horrifying feeling that made her want to throw up in terror. The man was just standing there, staring at her and watching her. The thought of his eyes crawling over her body made her uncomfortable.

  Having been a beautiful woman for her entire life, Tasha had always suffered from the terror of rape or the idea that someone might force her to do something that she definitely didn’t want to, but this was the most tangible moment of pure terror that she had ever experienced. How had a stranger gotten into the hospital to watch her while she was sleeping? Why weren’t the nurses getting rid of him? Was the Matterhorn Group more sinister than she had originally thought and that this man was here to kill her, to tie up loose ends? Taking a deep breath, she tried to pretend she was sleeping.

  Deception was the only way that she was going to get out of this alive and she made a sleepy movement to make the man think that she was asleep, tossing her arm and feeling for the remote to call the nurse. She wasn’t letting this bastard get a hold of her for whatever reasons he had. Whether he wanted to kill her, rape her, or just follow her around like a creeper, he was going to have to try a lot harder than this.

  Reaching out for the button, she rolled again so that he wouldn’t see her hand on the remote. It wouldn’t be long now. She pressed the button and to her horror, a red light turned on above her head.

  The man in the doorway saw the light immediately and shifted slightly in the doorway, his head turning and looking down the hallway. She caught his profile and saw that he had a short, neatly trimmed beard and was wearing a baseball hat. He grumbled something under his breath and took off before the n
urse arrived and Tasha sat up in her bed, wincing against the pain in her abdomen and looking for something to defend herself with. There was nothing that she could use.

  “Is everything all right, Miss?” A male nurse asked, coming into the room and looking around, worried.

  “There was a man,” Tasha pointed at the doorway. “There was a man standing in my doorway watching me.”

  “I’m sorry, miss,” the man said with a confused expression on his face. “Visiting hours have been over for a very long time now. He would have to have had special access to the wing if he were here. Are you sure you weren’t having a dream?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Tasha assured him furiously. “If you’d been faster, you would have caught him. Go check the cameras.”

  The man didn’t wait a moment. He turned and left the room quickly and headed back to the nurses’ station. When he was gone from the doorway, Tasha knew that she had to move quickly. There was no way that she was sticking around for the Matterhorn Group to send someone else to kill her or rape her while she was sleeping. There was no way that she was dying now. Pulling out the drip from her hand, she tore everything off and climbed out of bed, walking over to the closet and wincing against the pain.

  From everything the nurses had told her, this was her third night here at the hospital, which meant that she was definitely fine to travel, which was good, because she was getting out of this city and she was putting all of this behind her. There was no way that she was spending another second as a prisoner in this hospital. For now, she was done with the Matterhorn Group and everything that they had put her through. She would be back of course, and she would have rage and fury with her. She was going to show them all, but right now, she had to move.

  Dressing delicately, but as quickly as she could, Tasha grabbed her things and made her way to the doorway of the room, looking for any sign of the man who had been watching her, or any sign of the nurses. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. She needed to get to the airport and she needed to get back to Boise as quickly as possible.

  Once she was home, back in a territory that she knew well, there would be no way that the Matterhorn Group could find her or follow her. They definitely wouldn’t be able to send assassins after her. Boise was too small for that. Grinding her teeth against the aches and the pains that dug at her, Tasha stepped out into the hallway and made her way to the exit. She doubted very much that the Matterhorn Group’s hospital was going to care at all that she left without signing out or filling out any of the outpatient paperwork.

  As far as any of them were concerned, she was just a baby factory for their parent company and they were only going to care about the happiness of their benefactors. It sickened Tasha, but that was the way things worked.

  There was no sign of the man who had been watching her. He wasn’t sticking around after she had alerted the nurses to the fact that he’d been here. Tasha felt uncomfortable about leaving, especially in such fancy attire that she hadn’t worn in months. She was glad that it still fit her and that it wasn’t that far out of shape. Since there were plenty of people in the hallways, by the time she made it to the front of the hospital and hailed a cab, she knew that she was fine.

  Glancing around for any sign of the man she’d seen before, she was confident that she was alone. If he was out there, then she couldn’t see him and staring wouldn’t help.

  “Where you headed?” the driver asked her over his shoulder.

  “I need to get to JFK,” she told him.

  “You got it,” he answered cheerily, pulling away from the hospital and heading out into the torrents of traffic that ebbed and flowed through the streets of New York City. It was time to go home.

  *

  Tasha realized that in the past four days, she hadn’t paid attention to any form of news and was completely clueless as to what was happening in the world beyond her own head. It didn’t matter to her. She was devastated and horrified by everything that had happened to her. Her entire life was gone, shattered and she was left with the ashes of something that she had dreamed of in her finger tips, slipping out into the wind. She was alone. The rest of the world could be damned for its apathy toward her suffering.

  On the airplane ride, she drank ginger ale and took the painkillers she had picked up at a store inside the airport. They weren’t amazing, but they would dull the worst of the pain for her until she could get home and talk to her own doctor. Her father and mother would no doubt be willing to help her, but Tasha wasn’t willing to go back to them just yet. She would rather go to the streets than go back to her parents just now. She knew that this was spiteful and stupid, but it was how she felt. There was no way that she was going back there just yet.

  There were still a few friends that she knew how she could call upon in the area and crash on their couch or stay for a while. She thought about what they would think having Tasha show up for the first time in years, asking if she could stay the night or for a while until she got things together.

  All she would need was one day. In one day, she could have all of her affairs in order and she would be able to buy and apartment and be out of everyone’s hair. She just needed a chance to get things together and to figure everything she needed to out in her head. Luckily, she had the entire flight back to figure it out. It was nice to be able to lay back in first class for the first time in her life and let the luxury of her new wealth work on her behalf.

  She thought about what kind of an idiot would spend their own money or access their accounts when they were being hunted. She’d given Matterhorn the authority and the right to monitor everything she had, but she figured that if they saw her heading home, they would be less inclined to try and kill her in the end.

  After all, she was going away and trying to hide from the decisions that were haunting her now; if they wanted to try and find her, they were welcome to chase after her but she wasn’t going to go down easy. They’d have a trail, but she didn’t want them to think that they needed to kill her. Besides, if she just vanished, then they would definitely send people to deal with her. So she was transparent, open, and they were totally able to track her as she flew back home, looking to nurse her wounds and pick up the crumbled ashes of her life and try to make something of herself. She wondered how many women who went through this were totally fine with giving up their child and just going off with a big old bag of money.

  What kind of monster was okay with this? With the prospect of surrogacy, she would have been fine with giving up the child that was growing inside of her. But that had been her child. That had been half of her and now that child was gone. She hated herself.

  When the plane finally landed, she ate dinner in the airport. She sat down at a corner booth in a small sports bar and grill, avoiding the eye contact of men who were feasting on her body with their eyes, looking her up and down, imagining what she would be like naked, in their sheets, what she’d sound like. Tasha hated the feeling and it made her shiver. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t enjoying the attention that her body brought her.

  She had to call for a taxi to come pick her up at the airport and she sat on a bench as the sun was setting, watching the sleepy city exist outside of the knowledge of the rest of the country or the world. It was like living in a little tiny cupboard that no one knew about.

  When the cab arrived, Tasha knew that it was late enough that she wouldn’t be comfortable calling any of the people she knew. All of her closest friends were scattered across the country, finding gainful employment in other states after they had thrown their caps in the air after graduation. She was left alone with the reality that she was going to have to go back to her parents’ house.

  She let out a sigh. This wasn’t something she relished.

  “It’s a bit of the way out there,” Tasha told the driver.

  “As long as you’re paying, I’m driving,” he said with a polite tone.

  He tried to make small chat with her, but Tasha kept he
r answers to his questions short and her comments even shorter. She wasn’t interested in making a new friend and she definitely wasn’t interested in telling him that she had just lost her child.

  What kind of a mother would that make her? Truthfully, none of it was her fault, but she didn’t want the attention that this man was clearly begging to give her. People wanted to be friends with all the pretty faces that they came across on their travels, but right now, Tasha wasn’t interested in that. In fact, what she wanted was to just sink into the back seat and just let the world drift away.

  “We’re here,” the driver’s voice pulled her out of the depths of her sleep and when she looked around, sure enough, she saw that her parents’ home was sitting nestled among the trees well to the north of Boise. It was a familiar sight and something wounded deep down inside of her let out a sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” Tasha paid the driver and stepped out of the cab.

  None of the lights were on and she looked at the driveway that wrapped around the side of the large home and was nestled in the back where the garage was. It was a beautiful home, but her parents had wanted larger when she was younger. Now, they dreamed of a smaller home.

  She took a moment and looked at the house, wondering why the lights were all off. Her father usually kept lights on for fear of bandits and thieves, and all other manner of mythical criminals that didn’t exist in this part of the world. She tried to think of a reason why they wouldn’t be home.

  The light drizzle that was beginning to pick up was enough of a reason for her to swallow her pride, pain, and fear to walk up to the front of the house. It looked and smelled like it had been raining here for the past few days. Everything was drenched and submerged in the smell of fresh autumn rain. Soon it would turn to snow and that would be a sad day for everyone. She grabbed the key out of the mouth of a ceramic toad that sat in the middle of her mother’s flowerbeds and unlocked the front door.