"I only care about one person who likes me at the moment," Simon said, and their lips met in an easy, loving kiss that sent currents racing all up and down Cara. This kiss felt deeper than any they had shared to come before it, and she knew that a shadow had been banished forever from their relationship. Like Simon, she was looking forward to the sun.
CHAPTER 29
Cara jogged her leg impatiently, and her seatmate shot her an annoyed look. They were sitting in folding chairs out under the hot sun on the Trinity College football field—and by they,she was referring to herself and the hundreds of others who made up her graduating class. She felt hot and itchy beneath her flowing robe and cap, and she could tell others were feeling the same. They were just better at hiding it.
She cast another glance over her shoulder. She could see her extended family occupying almost a whole section of the bleachers. When they noticed her looking, her older brothers waved broadly and embarrassingly. She was several yards away from them, but she could still see their shit-eating grins.
She was the last of her family to graduate, and she was doing it with top honors and the highest GPA out of any of them. Cara was proud of her achievements, but she still felt like something was missing. Or rather, someone.
She noticed a lone figure standing off to the side, in the shadow of the bleachers. The man had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and he was casually leaning up against the structure. Cara squinted. The man was tall, and wearing what was undoubtedly an expensive suit, although he wore it more comfortably than anyone else she saw dressed similarly around him. The man didn't wave when he saw her looking at him, but he shifted to acknowledge that he felt her eyes. Cara turned forward again quickly, her face red beneath the square brim of her stupid hat.
She hadn't expected him to come. She had told him the date, and even sent an official invitation to his mansion downstate, but the last time she had heard from Simon Banning he was flying out to the U.K. for the remainder of the month. Unless he lied to her, in which case he had probably done so just so he could elicit this exact reaction from her. Cara crossed her arms and glowered, her slumped posture and the position of her arms only making the quick beating of her pulse that much more apparent in the back of her ribcage.
Simon Banning was here. Simon Banning had driven up to Trinity College to watch her graduation ceremony. She was feeling the exact opposite of mad at him at the moment.
Cara grinned helplessly, and hoped that the shadow from her cap would hide how obviously pleased she was.
Soon it was her row's turn, and she rose and walked to the podium with the rest of her group. When they called her name, she mounted the steps and accepted her diploma, shaking hands and smiling for a quick picture. As soon as she made her way back down the aisle and toward the bleachers, she was caught up in a whirlwind of activity. The Langford clan passed her back and forth between them as they hugged and congratulated her; she lost her hat at some point during the proceedings, only for it to pop back up on her oldest brother's head. Good, let him look like the ridiculous one. It certainly came naturally enough.
But she couldn't stop smiling, and hugging, and laughing. Once the ceremony was over and her family had finally calmed down enough to start discussing where to eat, Cara excused herself without a word. She made her way around the far side of the bleachers to join the man in the suit.
While she hoped the sweaters and bad haircuts of the future weren't entirely gone, Cara couldn't deny that the way Simon presented himself these days was enough to make her heart stutter. He looked healthier and stronger than she had ever seen him; he looked right. He filled his suit perfectly, and the way he styled his hair was effortless. He was clean shaven today, and Cara couldn't help but think the special occasion was her. She sidled up beside him and felt nothing but gratitude toward her brother for stealing her hat.
"Congratulations, Cara."
She had expected something different from him—a quip about her outfit, maybe, or even a toast to her student loans. But the sincerity of his greeting, coupled with a sense that he might actually be in awe of her, had her walking straight into his arms.
They hugged for a long moment, until Simon pulled back a little to look at her. "Your family looks lovely from afar. Have you told them about me yet?" he inquired with a raised eyebrow. Cara smiled mysteriously.
"I may have mentioned I met someone," she allowed. "Although I told them I thought you would be out of the country for my graduation. They still don't know you're English. I'm saving that surprise for when they meet you themselves."
"Cheeky girl," he said. "My business concluded early in London."
"You never even left, did you? You just lied about it so that I would be even more surprised when you showed up," Cara said.
Simon shrugged helplessly. "I wanted to see the expression on your face. Can I meet them?"
Her heart thudded in her chest. "You want to meet my family?" She glanced over her shoulder, but it was impossible to distinguish them from the crowd of other people's families. "Right now?"
"If it isn't too much trouble," Simon said. Cara turned back to him and tried not to let her amusement show on her face. Trouble was all she had been in since meeting Simon Banning.
She didn't give him an answer. Instead, she offered him her hand. Simon slipped his own hand out of the front pocket of his sleek black pants and interlaced his fingers with hers. Cara flirted her head in the direction she wanted to go.
"Come on," she said.
#
He arranged to have him all to himself later, of course. After charming her parents and managing to avoid pissing off any of her brothers, who were looking for any excuse at all to knock the head of the new guy dating their sister, Simon convinced them to let him spirit her off for the evening. He had nowhere fancy in mind—just a boring old understaffed mansion out in the New England countryside. They had left the Lanford clan to mull that one over.
"You didn't tell them about my English heritage, and you didn't tell them about my money?" Simon was incredulous on the long car ride back to his estate. He was sitting behind the wheel at Cara's insistence. She was determined that he overcome his fear of driving, and the back roads of Connecticut were an excellent place to practice. He listed over into the wrong lane a few times, but considering he had done most of his driving in European countries up to this point, a few mistakes were to be expected. "What else didn't you tell them?"
"Well, they don't know about the murder quite yet," Cara admitted. "They'll know once my piece is published. I figured reading about it would be preferable to me trying to explain it to them all at once."
"If I hadn't lived through it with you, I wouldn't have believed it myself." Simon reached across the car to take her by the hand. So long as he stayed on the road, Cara decided she would allow it. "How did the interview go?"
Cara shrugged. "They offered me the job."
Simon squeezed her hand happily, and she grinned despite herself. She had been in an hour-long Skype interview with one of the top publications in the U.K. just before her graduation ceremony. Considering she was the journalist who had brought Simon Banning back into the public eye and solved his case in one fell swoop, she was in high demand. There were still some logistics to work out—like the fact that her office was literally an ocean away—but the job was almost all telecommuting. And with what they were offering to pay her, Cara wasn't feeling too worried about the future of her student loans.
As soon as they got to the mansion, they relived their first day together. Mimosas and skinny dipping in the pool, followed by sex; conversation in the living room, followed by foreplay that led directly to sex. By the time they reached Simon's bedroom, Cara could hardly see straight.
She came hard for the third time that evening and fell back onto the lush bed with a gasp of satisfaction. Simon rolled off of her and gazed up at the canopy as he ran a hand through his disheveled auburn hair.
"Jesus, I don't think I've shagged that
much in… well, since ever."
"Please don't bring Jesus into this," Cara mumbled sleepily. "I don't want to risk drawing anyone's attention to the sins we're committing."
"Feeling this good shouldn't be allowed, to be sure," Simon agreed. He glanced down at his receding erection and sighed. "You've had your way with me, Miss Langford, and now I'm spent. I think I'll be satisfied for a very long time."
"I hope not." Cara rolled over onto her shoulder to look at him. "We still have to visit the cave tomorrow."
Simon groaned again, and Cara grinned like a fox looking forward to a tasty meal in the henhouse. "My savior is going to be the death of me," he said as he rolled away to fish something off of the bedside table. Cara wasn't paying attention to his grousing. Despite the exhaustion of her body, her mind was awhirl with all of the possibilities the future might hold.
"Hey Simon, can I get that exclusive after all?" she teased as the man turned back to her. "You know, the one you thought I was after? I bet the awful gossip rags in your country would love to know every detail of our torrid affair."
"Funny that you should mention an exclusive," Simon said, and that was when Cara noticed the small black clamshell box in his hands. She sat up immediately, and nearly hit the back of the headboard with her skull. She cast wide eyes at Simon, her heart pounding in her chest. He fixed her with bright blue eyes, and for a moment, she suspected that they had both forgotten how to breathe. Then, he eased the box open, and a shaft of moonlight from the window sparked off Cara's exclusive.
Definitely the happiest day of her life.
~ ~
HIS
Chapter 1
What do you say when you see your nemesis standing right outside your door?
“Hi,” I croaked and wrapped my arms around my middle.
I didn’t want to croak. Croaking was the last thing I needed to do when I faced this man. So I tried again. “What are you doing here?”
Oh, God! Was that my voice? That breathless ‘I’m about to swoon’ version?
This was too much.
“You knew I was going to find you,” he said quite flatly.
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
That was better. Still croaking, but not as bad. Instead of sounding like a geriatric toad, I sounded more like a teenage toad. That was better, right? That gave me some confidence.
I straightened up and pushed my chest out. His eyes immediately dropped to my boobs, and it felt as though some high voltage laser had singed them. My brain was a little muddled, and I could feel my nipples hardening to pebbles right before his eyes. This was crazy.
“Maybe because of that.”
He flicked his hand toward my chest in reply to the question I had forgotten I’d asked. But then, as his eyes widened a little, I realized he wasn’t pointing to my chest. He was actually gesturing toward the small, round bump that my belly had become over the last few weeks.
I was fifteen weeks pregnant. And he was the father.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You’re here because of the baby.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What else? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I’d let you walk away with my flesh and blood?” There was no amusement in his eyes. They were chilly and staring at me quite dispassionately.
So he was angry. I got that.
But he was being unreasonable.
“I did what I thought I had to do. Can’t you see that?” I asked him, trying to appeal to his better nature. I hadn’t seen any evidence of it, but it had to be there. Any man who wanted a child as fiercely as this man wanted the baby in my womb has to have a better nature, right? I had to believe that.
“All I can see is that we are not going to have this conversation on your doorstep.”
His tone said it was not up for debate. Yet, I hovered there, trying to look for a way to stall him. I did not want him in my apartment. I did not want him in my space. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt me or anything. Nicolas Costa was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man who went around hurting women. I wouldn’t have agreed to this insane arrangement if he was.
I couldn’t believe I was here, standing with Nicolas Costa, about to have his baby. I put myself in a difficult situation, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Dear God…if only my mom were here, she would tell me everything would be alright. Actually, no. First, she would chew my ass out and tell me what an irresponsible, thoughtless thing it was I’d done, and then she would wrap her arms around me and tell me she understood why I’d done it and that she loved me.
I felt my throat grow tight and scratchy, and I had to blink really hard to push back the tears. My chest hurt. I rubbed it absently…not like it did any good. I missed my mother so much. It had only been three months since she’d died, and I’d not yet gotten used to being without her.
I sighed again and stepped back.
“Come in Mr. Costa.” I kept my voice cool and polite, hoping if I projected that image, I would actually begin to feel it.
It was time I stopped running away from the facts—no matter how much I disliked them. The truth was, I was pregnant with this man’s baby and I had signed some legal documents saying that I would give him the baby when it came. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I even collected a partial payment.
God, that really does sound bad, like I sold the baby in my womb. But it was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. The baby wasn’t really mine…not really.
The fertilized egg was not mine. I was merely a carrier, a human incubator. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was this baby’s mother in every sense that mattered. And that was the crux of my problem. I loved it with a fierceness that amazed me. And I didn’t care what this huge hulk of a man said. He would have to go over my dead body to get to the baby, and I intended to let him know that.
Chapter 2
It all began fairly innocuously.
My mom was a maid in Los Angeles, working for a couple of well-known actors, some politicians, and a few rich, but not so famous, business moguls. She’d done it for as long as I could remember in an attempt to keep us off the streets. Her best friend, Constance, was in the same line of work. In fact, they used to work for the same agency. But then Constance got a full-time position with Nicolas Costa, who just happened to be one the hottest Hollywood directors the world had seen since Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock. She talked about him constantly those first ten years or so. Sometimes I felt like I knew him just from the things Constance said about him. He seemed human. Kind. That is, of course, until he got married. Constance didn’t have much to say about his wife, actress Aurora Parker, or him, really, after their wedding five years ago. It was like her kindly, honest employer had disappeared and was replaced with something out of that old movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Then, one day, I went to visit my mom and Constance was talking about the Costas needing a surrogate for their baby. When she mentioned the insane amount they were offering to the right woman, I knew I had to give it a shot. I needed the money. Not too long before then, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and there was just no way her insurance would cover the amount of chemo she would need. Not only that, but the chemo would make her too sick to work, and that would mean losing her insurance all together. So the burden fell on me, but I couldn’t afford the treatments she needed—not on a teacher’s salary. After everything my mom had given up for me…being a single mother is never easy, but being an uneducated immigrant only made it that much harder. I hated the thought of my first pregnancy being a surrogacy. And the idea of giving up a child that I would carry for nine months was overwhelming. But I was willing to do anything for her. She was all I had, and she’d given everything just to make sure I had everything she never did. I would never know my father, but I was okay with that because my mom loved me so fiercely that I never felt anything was missing from my life.
And the
idea of doing something that amazing for another couple was exciting. I love kids. I’ve taught kindergarten since I graduated college three years ago. Most of my fellow teachers walk into the school looking like they’d rather be almost anywhere else but there. I’m not like that. I look forward to each and every day with my kids, even when they’re being difficult. So, giving the gift of a child to someone else was another motivation. To give life where none had existed before is miraculous.
I filled out some paperwork through the Costas’ attorney and waited, spending all my free time going to the doctor with my mom to find out what could be done for her stage 3 lung cancer. Lung cancer. I found it so ironic that a woman who never smoked a day in her life and always yelled at people who dared to smoke anywhere near me would be the one who would get it. The doctors thought she might have gotten it from exposure to all the cleaning chemicals she’d used over the years. They said some of the stuff she used was highly toxic if used in huge quantities, which, of course, my mother had always done. Who would’ve thought?
I’d almost forgotten about the whole surrogacy thing when I got this phone call one Saturday afternoon. Aurora Parker wanted to know if I’d be willing to come to her house for lunch. I was…there is no word for what I was. Shocked just doesn’t seem to cover it. I expected her husband to be there, too, but she explained that he was scouting locations for a movie he was set to film in Ireland and couldn’t make it back, but I’d meet him at our next meeting.
Next meeting?
Aurora—this beautiful, perfect blond woman who I’d watched in half a dozen movies over the last few years—chose me to carry her child. She said it was because I was a kindergarten teacher. She giggled and said that she knew I wouldn’t be biologically related to the child, but she liked the idea that the baby would be exposed to an academic setting during gestation. I wanted to explain that kindergarten wasn’t exactly an academic setting, but she seemed so excited by the idea that I couldn’t argue with her.
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