The Baby Plan

by Tia Siren

  There was one guy tipping well, at least. He was one of our regulars, and he was sitting down at the end of the bar with one of his friends. They had started out tipping well, and they were tipping better as they got drunker, so I made sure to keep sliding drinks their way, even though I could tell that Michael, the regular, was getting more and more down as the night went on.

  It was strange to see him like that; normally, he was quite the playboy, and the ladies all loved him.

  The other strange thing was that even after his friend went off with a lady, Michael continued to sit there at the bar, not engaging with anyone, just staring morosely down into his drink. I frowned, wondering if I should cut him off soon, but he wasn't causing trouble, and I didn't think he was all that drunk.

  I gave a little mental shrug and tried to put it out of my mind. It was easy to do, given how busy it was.

  Finally, we got a little lull in business, and I went over to dry some glasses next to them. “What's up with you tonight, Michael?” I asked him. “You seem down.”

  Michael gave himself a visible shake and smiled over at me. “I'm fine,” he said. “Just a lot on my mind.”

  I hummed in response. “Well, I can listen for a minute, if you need a sounding board. You know what they say about bartenders, they're the poor man's therapist.”

  Michael cracked a smile. “I'm far from being poor,” he told me. I just shrugged, and he sighed. “I had a meeting with my attorney,” he said. “I think I'm having a mid-life crisis.”

  I laughed as well. “Think you've got a few more years to go before you have a true mid-life crisis,” I pointed out. “Ten, at least.”

  “I don't have a wife or kids,” Michael said flatly.

  I frowned, about to say that I hadn't asked when suddenly I realized this was what he was freaking out about. “That's a weird worry to have,” I said, trying to figure out why he suddenly seemed so bothered by it. After all, he was a notorious playboy. He clearly liked to sleep around, so wasn't it his own fault that he didn't have a wife?

  “I want kids,” Michael said impatiently. “One kid, anyway. I need an heir.”

  I burst out laughing, unable to help it. “Right, of course, you're freaking out about having kids because you need an heir. God, is it the Middle Ages again? Did I miss the memo?”

  Michael groaned and slugged back his whiskey. I poured him another glass.

  “Why don't you just adopt?” I asked. “I know it can take a while, but you're young enough.”

  “I know it sounds selfish, but I want a kid that's my own flesh and blood,” Michael said simply, shrugging a little. He watched his friend, who was getting handsy with a blonde in one of the back booths. Finally, he shook his head and turned back to me. “I want a kid who can take over my business once I'm gone. Someone I can leave my fortune to. The problem is, I'm just not interested in having a wife.”

  He knocked back another drink, and I poured him another, accepting his tip and then going back to drying glasses.

  “I'm sure you have enough money that you could pay someone to have the kid for you,” I said. “Surrogacy, I believe it's called?”

  Michael's eyes widened. “I never thought of that before,” he said. Then, he frowned. “But don't most women want to have a normal family life with the father of her child?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure what the numbers are on that,” I said dryly. When Michael's face fell, though, I rolled my eyes. “Look, maybe most women might want that, but I'm sure there are women who don't mind. Surrogates are a real thing, after all. Don't couples who can't have kids use them all the time? There must be companies set up who could take your jizz and make it happen.”

  “Do you think it would take a long time to get to the top of whatever waiting list there is?” Michael asked. “They probably give priority to people who can't have children, rather than people who just don't want to be in a relationship.”

  “So tell them you're gay, I don't know,” I said, rolling my eyes again. Why was he making things so needlessly complicated?

  “Anyway, I'd kind of like to be part of it, when the child is conceived,” Michael mused, taking another sip of his drink. “I don't know, the whole idea of doing this medically, masturbating into a cup and then having that put in a syringe, that just seems so clinical. Cold.”

  “But the baby would never know that, would it?” I pointed out philosophically.

  “Maybe it would,” Michael said. “I grew up knowing full-well that my parents only got married because my mother was pregnant.”

  This whole bartender-as-a-therapist thing was starting to go a little too far, I realized. I didn't want to dissect his whole life and find out all about his daddy issues or whatever else might be lurking under the surface of his playboy attitude. We got too many guys like him into the bar, and even though I knew there was a reason they were so sleazy, I didn't necessarily want to know what those reasons were.

  I was certain if I knew all their backstories, it would destroy my faith in humanity. It was bad enough living with Erica and having to comfort her through all the assholes she brought home with her. I put my towel up over my shoulder, looking around for Erica. Fortunately, it was starting to get busy again, and I had run out of glasses to dry anyway.

  “I'm sure you could pay a girl to have sex with you and give you the baby,” I said, distracted now by trying to figure out who was the first in line at the bar. “There's got to be someone in this city that needs the money that badly.” I tried to think how much money someone would have to pay me to get me to carry a baby for them, but then, I shook my head.

  Michael seemed to think things over for a moment. “You know, I'll have to think about it,” he said, but for the first time that night, he looked relieved and some fraction of his ordinary self.

  More than a fraction of his ordinary self, I corrected myself, as he turned to the woman next to him and struck up a conversation with her.

  I shook my head and moved on to serve someone else. For the rest of the night, it was too busy to talk to anyone, and by the time I went home at the end of the night, I'd forgotten all about my time as a stand-in therapist for the rich regular.

  Chapter Five

  Michael

  I debated blowing off the meetings that I had scheduled on Friday morning, but the whole reason I had scheduled them for that morning was so that I could justify taking off Monday and Tuesday of the following week, giving me a long weekend to relax and unwind. Not that I needed to justify it; I owned the company, so it wasn't like anyone could say anything about my attendance. The work still got done, whether I was there or not.

  But every once in a while, I had to check in with various departments and make sure that everything would continue to run smoothly. That morning, it was the marketing department I had to talk to. Our latest advertising campaign had flopped, and we needed to talk about what had gone wrong and how we were going to make things better.

  The meeting was ridiculously boring, though, and I was hungover as shit. Beyond that, I hadn't even gotten laid the night before. I knew I was stressing more than I should about having an heir, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. I couldn't relax, and I couldn't take a girl home for a meaningless fuck when all I wanted was to ask if she would have my baby for me.

  That wasn't exactly the kind of thing a man could just come out and say.

  It wasn't just that the attorney that had me thinking about this, though. I had always wanted a child. Call it a matter of pride, wanting to be able to raise a child better than my father had done with me. But even more than that, I wanted a kid that I could teach to ride a bike, play ball with, and groom to take over my business one day. The attorney may have put the idea of having a child at the forefront of my mind, but it wasn't a new desire.

  I thought back to the conversation I'd had with the hot bartender at The Shift. Paige, I remembered from her name tag. What she had said about finding a surrogate really stuck in my head. But like I'd told her, I wanted to
find someone whom I could have a moment with, creating a life, but who wouldn't want any of the relationship ties.

  I wondered if Paige would be interested. I could pay her better than that bartending job at The Shift. And she was hot. It was in one of those careless ways, you could tell she didn't put much effort into it. She hardly even wore makeup, and her clothes were casual. I could only imagine what she would look like in something more formal.

  Mm, her in a dress, preferably one that exaggerated those sexy, swinging hips of hers. I could picture her sauntering across a fancy restaurant; everyone would turn to look at her. And then later, in the privacy of my room, I could strip that dress right off her, lay her down on the sheets and have my way with her.

  I cut off that line of thought before it could go too far because it was one thing to be distracted in one of these meetings, but it was another to be sporting a raging hard-on during them. I had no wish to embarrass myself.

  I couldn't stop thinking about Paige, though. She seemed intelligent, if our conversation from the previous night was anything to go by. She and I could make a good kid. The perfect little kid, one who could take on my business after me with no problem.

  Not only that, but Paige didn't seem all that interested in being a mother. Maybe her nurturing side just hadn't woken up yet, because I could tell she was a little younger than I was, maybe fresh out of college. But the way that she'd been discussing the situation last night made it seem like she wasn't one of those clingy women set on finding the perfect Hollywood relationship. She understood that the real world wasn't like that, and she was prepared to deal with it. I couldn't see her getting too attached to the kid.

  Not having to deal with a custody battle, that was big. My parents were still together, even though I knew that both were sleeping with other people. Al of the friends I knew whose parents were divorced had been unbelievably upset at the time, having to choose between their parents. If Paige didn't get attached to her baby, she wouldn't be worried if I demanded sole custody of the child.

  Especially not since it was clear that I could give the kid a better life than she could, what with her night shifts at the bar. I could give the kid a future. She would probably be happy to hear that.

  I frowned, thinking it over. The more I considered it, the more it seemed like the perfect solution.

  The only question was, how would I approach her? It wasn't the sort of thing you discussed in the middle of a crowded bar. There would need to be some sort of contract; this was a business transaction, after all. I would pay her a certain amount of money, and she would give me a baby, with no strings attached. There would probably need to be some sort of NDA as well because, although I was okay with her telling her friends and family that she was mothering a baby for me, I didn't necessarily want it all over the media that I had to pay a woman so I could get an heir.

  That wasn't true, anyway. I didn't have to do it this way, it just seemed like the most expedient choice.

  Besides, I still wasn't sure what the legalities of this were. I knew that sperm banks and surrogacy agencies were a thing, but did a private arrangement like this count as buying a baby? I was confident that wasn't allowed. To protect both of us, I needed to have my attorney look into this.

  I grinned a little to myself, thinking triumphantly about how I would finally have the answers to all of Lee's questions.

  I texted Lee and told her to meet me in my office after the meeting. There was no time to waste.

  “Mr. Adams, if you asked me to meet you so that you could continue to proposition me,” she began.

  I waved a hand dismissively. “No, no, it's nothing like that,” I said, unable to hide my excitement. “I think I've found the perfect solution to my loneliness, and the perfect solution to the problem of my lack of an heir. I want to have a surrogate carry the child. That way, I won't have to be romantically involved with the woman, but the child would still be mine in the end. That's the way these things work, isn't it?”

  Lee stared at me for a long moment. “It is the way they work, yes,” she said, sitting in the chair across from my desk. She started to say something a couple different times, but each time, she gave her head a little shake and sat back in her seat. “Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked.

  “It is,” I told her. “And I think I've found the perfect woman for it, too. Now, as a businessman, I know that something like this needs a contract, and I was hoping you could help me with that.”

  Again, Lee looked like she wanted to say something. But, she just shook her head. “All right. What sort of arrangement did you have in mind?”

  That evening, armed with the contract, I headed back to The Shift.

  When I got there, Paige was talking to a customer. I tried to wait patiently off to the side for a moment, but it was too difficult. I was excited to start the next phase of my life. And it wasn't as though I thought I could just scoop her up and take her home with me that night. I knew we would have to plan this. I'd do my standard routine, treat her to dinner first. The mother of my baby deserved the best.

  Lee and I had gone over everything. I was willing to pay for all the care that Paige would need during the pregnancy: prenatal care, hospital visits, and an elaborate baby shower. On top of all of that, I would pay 2.5 million dollars to her for having the baby. I had arrived at that sum after a long time of deliberation. I could, of course, have offered her more, but I thought that was more than generous. And since I would be taking care of the baby's welfare, schooling, and everything else, that money would go straight to Paige, to do with as she pleased. In my opinion, 2.5 million for nine months of discomfort was a good exchange.

  The other thing that we would need to do, before everything else, was to take her to have a general checkup. I didn't want to spend nine months waiting for this child only for something terrible to happen to it. I wanted to make sure Paige was healthy prior to the pregnancy. But I was sure she would agree to that; it was just a formality.

  “Paige, I was hoping I could talk to you for a second,” I said, interrupting her current conversation before I had even realized I was moving.

  Paige stared at me for a moment, clearly lost in whatever it was that she had been saying. Then, she frowned, her brow furrowing. “Michael, I'm in the middle of a conversation,” she said, gesturing to the man sitting across from her.

  I frowned as well. “It'll just take a second,” I told her. Suddenly, I had a horrible thought: what if the man sitting across from her was her boyfriend? That could complicate things in ways that I hadn't considered. Even if I paid her $2.5 million, I doubted her boyfriend would go along with my impregnating her, and I doubted that she would be willing to lie to him about it.

  Especially since he would expect to keep the child once it was born, thinking it was his.

  To my surprise, as I waited there expectantly, thinking over all the problems that could arise if I asked Paige to be my surrogate mother, Paige turned away from the conversation that she had been having. “All right, you have two minutes,” she said.

  I jerked my head towards the other end of the bar, not wanting anyone to overhear what I was about to ask her. I didn't think the kind of guys who frequented The Shift would recognize me, but just to make sure that this remained strictly confidential, I was going to be careful.

  “I have a business proposition for you,” I told her.

  Paige frowned. “I'm not the person that you want to talk to, then,” she said. “You'd want to talk to Erica, she's the manager. But she isn't in right now. I can put the two of you in contact, though. But I don't see why you'd want to franchise a shitty place like this!”

  I shook my head. “I'm not looking to franchise it, and I said I have a business proposition for you, not for the bar. Remember what we were talking about last night, about my finding a woman who I could pay to have my baby for me?”

  “Yeah,” Paige said suspiciously.

  “I was wondering if you'd be the woman,” I told her. �
��As you know, I could pay you well. You wouldn't have to worry about the baby, and you wouldn’t have to support it or anything.”

  Paige rolled her eyes. “I don't think so, buddy,” she said, turning to go back to the bar.

  I reached out and caught her arm. “Think about it,” I told her.

  “Why, because all I would have to do is go through all the discomforts of pregnancy, with nothing to show at the other end of it?” she asked sarcastically.

  “I wouldn't say you'd have nothing to show for it,” I said. “After all, I'd pay you $2.5 million for it.”

  Paige didn't respond; she just froze there, almost like I'd hit her in the back of the head with a board. I could see that she was thinking about it, though, and I held out the contract. “Those would be the terms,” I told her. “At the very least, I'll need you to sign an NDA.”

  She was still quiet, her mouth open in surprise.

  I grinned. “I'll give you some time to think about it,” I told her.

  Chapter Six

  Paige

  I woke up on Saturday morning feeling as though I'd hardly slept at all the previous night. There were just too many thoughts rushing around in my head, too much chaos. I couldn't stop thinking about the night before when Michael had come to The Shift to see me. I still couldn't believe that he had asked me, of all people, to carry his baby. I was still trying to figure out why, but the best thing that I could come up with was he thought because I had come up with the idea, I must be okay with it.

  I wasn't sure how I felt about the idea.

  It seemed kind of like prostitution. I mean, I was going to have sex with a guy, and he was going to pay me for it. I would have felt a lot more comfortable if Michael had been willing to just provide a sample that I could put inside me. Then I could just think of myself as an incubator for the baby, nothing more.