“Yes, of course,” he agreed immediately as he stared ahead at nothing.
“I’m very proud of you, Pierce, and I know that someday you’ll be able to do this for your own family. You are taking on a great legacy, and you’ll pass it along just as I am doing.” His father sounded proud of him. He knew he had earned it, but he wished that he didn’t feel as if there was a gaping hole in his chest.
“Thank you, Father,” he answered quietly. He was humbled by his father’s praise. It meant the world to him to have it, but it was only a momentary salve on the worries that were beginning to eat at him.
“I’ll see you this evening for dinner,” Carter stated. It wasn’t an offer.
“Yes, of course. I’ll be home tonight,” Pierce replied. His father didn’t have many standing rules for the four Carrington offspring, but one of the ones that he was insistent upon was that they all be present for dinner, unless their absence was otherwise unavoidable. An occasional night away was overlooked, particularly for Pierce if there was some business that was keeping him in the city, but beyond that, they were all expected to join their father for dinner mostly every night.
They said goodbye and Pierce sat down at the chair before his computer again, staring at the monitor and not seeing a thing on it.
His father’s words went through his mind over and over again as if they were on some kind of circled track. The inheritance. Someday he would be leaving a legacy and inheritance to his own children. He had no one to leave anything to. Nothing but himself in his life, and the hollow in his chest seemed to open wider and feel colder still. There was no one who would be in his life, not for a long while, if ever. He felt as though he was at the edge of a bottomless precipice.
With his head spinning, he picked up his cell phone and brushed his fingertips over the screen pulling up his best friend’s contact page. The phone only rang twice before it was answered.
“This is an early call. What’s going on?” Matt asked with a calm but slightly concerned voice. It was common for Pierce to be up so early, but it was uncommon for him to call Matt any time before midday.
Pierce felt breathless as he spoke, trying to push down the worry that was beginning to build in him. “I just got off the phone with my father.”
“Is he alright?” Matt asked, his concern growing more evident in his voice. Carter was a bit older, but not so old that there should be any concern for his health.
“Yes, he’s fine. He was calling to tell me that my brothers and sister and I are going to be getting our inheritances soon.” Pierce drew in a deep breath as he tried to focus on the present rather than the looming future.
“Well that’s good news, I guess. Congratulations on that! I’m sure it’ll be nice to get.” There was an easing smile in Matt’s tone.
“It will be nice to get, of course, but… I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about. About me not having a lady in my life or a family. This move of my father’s really puts that absence into sharp perspective.” Pierce turned and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment.
“I can see how it would. Is it worrying you?” Matt asked, intuitively.
“Yes, actually. It’s got me thinking about what my father is giving me and what I would be giving a child of my own. I have a legacy to pass along, and I want to have a family. I’ve been so wrapped up in my work, so focused on the business and my father’s family that I didn’t stop to notice that time has been sweeping right past me and I’m afraid I’m running out of time.” Pierce lifted his hand to his closed eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“Well, if it’s something that’s important to you, I’m glad we started talking about it. So, what are you going to do? Are you going to start dating?” Matt asked with a hint of a grin at the other end of the line.
Pierce dropped his hand and opened his eyes, giving his head a shake. “No, I’m right in the middle of the biggest business deal that my father and I have done since I’ve been working with him, and I really just don’t have time to cultivate a relationship. I mean, think about that, I have to start dating and there’s no telling how long it will be before I find a girl I want to marry; I mean, look at you! Didn’t you just say that you haven’t stopped dating and you still haven’t found a girl that you wouldn’t let go of? Isn’t that what you said? Yeah, we’re in our thirties. If you haven’t found her yet, and you’re one of the most eligible bachelors in the city, then that doesn’t bode well for me. Who knows how long it would take for me to weed through all of the prospective women to try to find someone I’d like to spend the rest of my life with, and then once that’s done there’s the term of dating to engagement and then engagement to the wedding.”
“Well, you could always go to Vegas. You don’t have to draw it out.” Matt chuckled slightly, at the risk of bringing humor into a serious conversation.
“You know my father and my family, and my status in the community. I can’t get married in Vegas, though a quick wedding is a tempting thought. Anyway, after all of that, then we could try for a child, but who knows how long that might take, and then it’s another nine months from there. Even if I started dating today, which I don’t have time to do, and I was lucky and found a girl I wanted to spend all of my life with and raise a family with, it would still be at least two years from right now before there was even the possibility of a child. That’s fairly far into the future, considering my age and what I want to accomplish. This is bad. It’s going to take too long, and I don’t have the time to get started right now with any kind of dating to kick the whole thing off.” Pierce leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, dropping his head into his left hand.
There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line. “So the traditional route isn’t going to work for you.”
“No, it doesn’t seem like it could.”
“Well then what if you considered a non-traditional route.” Matt was beginning to sound optimistic.
Pierce raised his head and looked straight forward. “What? What do you mean non-traditional?”
Matt hummed a little as he thought. “So, hear me out on this… it’s just a bunch of ideas bouncing around in my head, but we know that what you need most is a solution. Right? So… maybe you should think about something like adoption. You know, find some kid who needs a good home and give him one. That skips the whole process of dating and engagement and marriage and even pregnancy. Instant kid. Poof. Done.”
Pierce bit at his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment. “No, I would want one of my own. Not that I wouldn’t want to give some kid a good home, but it is important to me to carry on the family legacy. My own legacy, my bloodline. That matters to me.”
There was another momentary silence while Matt thought on it. “What if you went way outside of the box and did something like a surrogate pregnancy? There’s still a little wait, but it would wind up being your kid, and you’d only have to wait nine months. So you finish up this big deal you’re working on and you still have some time to get ready, you know, prepare a nursery and tell your father and then bam… you’re a dad. You’d just have to face raising a kid on your own. I have no doubt that you could do that, and you could hire a nanny to help you, and I’m sure Cami would be all over that as the baby’s aunt, but that could be a solution. What do you think?”
Pierce was about to protest when the idea somehow got stuck in his mind and he hesitated, thinking carefully about it. He blinked as the finer points of the suggestion filtered through all the reasoning in his mind. Every reason he had to turn the notion down met with an answer that logically overcame it.
“I…” he began, running all of the scenarios and thoughts through his mind yet again just to be sure, “I… guess I think that wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean, it’s unconventional to be sure, but… you know, the more I think about it, the more it seems to make some sense. I mean… it skips the dating and the marriage situation, which I still would want to do someday when I have time to fin
d the right woman, but it gives me a head start on having a child; at least a firstborn child, that I could ensure would inherit all that I have to give. I could have this child in less than a year, perhaps even nine or ten months if the procedure worked out right away and I found a suitable clinic.”
Pierce let out a long slow breath as he let the idea wash all through him. “That could do it. I could… I could be a father in less than a year. I’d have someone to raise, to fill that void, to leave my legacy to.” A quiet laugh escaped him and he gave his head a shake of disbelief.
“Matt, I do believe that you might very well have come up with a viable solution to this conundrum. This might actually work. I’ll have to give it a little more thought, but I suspect that this might be the best possible answer for me.” Pierce felt a smile turn up his mouth. For the first time since their conversation at dinner, he felt relief.
“Well, that’s what I’m here for, you know. Best friend, counselor, advisor, wise and wondrous one.” He laughed then, and Pierce laughed with him.
“Today, yes. You are all of that today. You get a gold star. Thank you, Matt. That was some sage advice. I’ll give it some thought.” Pierce was beginning to feel a lightness in him that absorbed the darkness and removed it almost entirely.
“Let me know. I’ll be waiting to hear if I’m going to be an uncle at some point,” Matt chuckled softly.
“I’ll do it. Thanks, Matt.”
They said goodbye and Pierce set the phone down on his desk and bit his lower lip thoughtfully. It was a tremendous idea, and one that he was going to want to spend some time considering. He had a meeting that morning, and it was all he could do to keep his thoughts on the business at hand, rather than from wandering too far into the realms of possible children and how to make that goal a reality.
When his meeting was over, he went for a long walk through Central Park, his hands in his pockets, his thoughts on the possibility of becoming a father in the very near future. As he walked he began to notice the babies and children around him; more than he normally saw, and he wondered if there were always that many and he was just too busy to see them before, or if it was the universe somehow telling him to do it.
He could have a baby without the mother being in a relationship with him, and he had more than enough means to care for it and raise it. It might seem somewhat selfish and unfair to the child to consider raising it without a mother, but his sister Camilla would be around and she’d be a superb aunt, so it wouldn’t be as if there wasn’t a caring woman in the child’s life at all.
Besides the fact, he told himself, he was still planning on marrying later. He was certain that it was possible for him to find and fall in love with a woman who might be able to love and care for his child as if it were her own.
The future suddenly seemed wide open, and though he never acted rashly or in haste, particularly with an important situation, he knew by the time he walked out of Central Park and back to his condo overlooking the place, that he was intent on doing it. He had made up his mind. He would seek out a surrogate mother to carry his child for him, and he would be a father before the end of the year, with any luck at all.
He sat down at his computer and began to research fertility and surrogacy clinics in the city and state of New York, and by the afternoon, he had found one that he felt would be a solid choice in helping him create his own family.
Feeling his heart pound inside of his chest, he picked up the phone and called the number as a smile began to grow over his face. The receptionist answered and he drew in a long slow breath.
“I’d like to make an appointment to come in for a surrogacy program,” he said evenly, barely believing that the words were coming from him. It was going to happen.
Chapter2
The train rattled and rocked, swaying gently back and forth as it rolled down the tracks from midtown Manhattan up toward Washington Heights. There were empty seats here and there, left vacant by the dwindled crowds of rush hour, but two seats were filled side by side by two women who sat talking with one another.
One was shorter than the other, with brown hair and brown eyes, honey chocolate skin and a petite frame. Her name was Olivia Hartford and she was the best friend of the woman she sat beside. The other woman was taller and curvy, with green eyes and blonde hair that fell in big round curls around her shoulders. She had pale skin, though it had a healthy flush to it. She almost looked like a pinup model who had stepped off of an old vintage poster, right out of some men’s dreams into reality.
Her name was Kate Wilder. She may have looked like a pinup, but she certainly didn’t feel like one. She yawned and tried quickly to cover her mouth as she did so. Olivia looked over at her and sighed sympathetically.
“How was work today? Did they have you running?” she asked with kindness in her voice.
Kate nodded. “They did. You know, it might be one of the fanciest Italian restaurants on Fifth Avenue, but behind all the dark wood and red fabric draped all over, it’s still a rushed restaurant in the back with tons of loud noise and bustling workers, and I’m still just a server there. I mean, the patrons tip pretty well most of the time, but not nearly enough to make all the work that I do worth it. If I was paid what I was worth, I’d be a millionaire.”
Olivia laughed softly and patted her friend’s arm. “We all would be, or at least, most of us. How’s school going?”
With a sigh, Kate closed her eyes and willed herself not to fall asleep though the momentary rest was certainly temptation to do it. “It’s fine. It’s sucking up all of my time and I’m busting my backside to get through it all, but I’m getting there. I know I shouldn’t have taken such a full load of courses again this semester, but I just really have to get it done. I can’t drag it out. There’s no way I can keep living like this.”
“Living like what?” Olivia asked, looking at her with a lowered brow.
“You’re right… this isn’t living, but existing, I guess… wearing myself ragged going to school full time trying to get my psych degree, working full time trying to make the ends meet, and taking occasional naps in between.” Kate felt dejected even just talking about it.
“Girl, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can’t keep doing that. I thought you had cut your hours down at school and at work! I didn’t know you were still burning the candle at both ends! You can’t do that. You just can’t! You have to take some time for yourself, or everything you’re trying to do is going to suffer. Your job and your schoolwork will both suffer. That’s no way to live! I know you want to get done with school as soon as you can, but pushing yourself like this just isn’t going to make it happen. You can’t do that. What are you thinking?” She frowned and shook her head with concern.
Kate sighed and looked off into the distance, thinking all the way to her heart. “I’m thinking about my future, about getting an education that will earn me a job in psychology so that I can sustain myself out in the real world, and I’m thinking about my mama. She’s so sick, Olivia. She can’t even barely take care of herself. She’s trying to get by, but she just doesn’t have enough money. I can’t let anything happen to her. I have to take care of her. She took such good care of me all of my life, and now it’s my turn. I’m doing all I can to keep us both afloat, and I do feel bad for not being in Boston with her. I know she needs help there, and I left to come here to go to school and find a good job, but this is where I want to be. What I’m making in tips at the restaurant is just barely skimming the top of taking care of both of us. When I graduate, I can get a good job that pays me a whole lot more than what I’m making now, and then it will be so much easier for me to take care of her and me, and there won’t be long nights and grouchy customers, and homework, and no sleep… I’ll just have a day job and I’ll have enough money for her and for me, and my life will be good. Right now I’m working toward that. That’s what I’m thinking.”
She turned her head toward her friend and smiled sweetly. “But I love you
for worrying about me. Thank you.”
Olivia nodded. “I understand. I know you want the best for the both of you. How’s your mama doing anyway? I haven’t heard you talk about her in a little while.”
“She’s got it rough right now. There are good days and bad days, and I guess it just depends, but she’s getting by. We’re both getting by. I wish I could be in two places at once to help her, but this really is the best I can do right now.” Kate reached her hand up to the pole beside her and used it to lift her sore and tired body up off of the seat she had been sitting on. “I do know she wouldn’t be getting by at all without my help. I’m glad to do it, I love her, but she has no other choice, and that means neither do I.”
Their stop was coming up. Olivia stood up beside her. They were going to get coffee at an all-night café to visit and talk before going home. The train whined and screeched as it came to a slow stop. The doors slid open and the ladies walked off of the train together into the grimy and gritty subway station. They followed a dozen other people up the stairs and out to the street where the cool spring air rushed toward them, smelling of city, which was still better than the smell of the subway beneath the concrete at their feet.
The Billionaire's Secret Surrogate (MANHATTAN BACHELORS Book 4) Page 2