“Soon,” he said. “I have no date, no. I’d just like to get started on the process as soon as possible simply because I’m eager to have a family. I’m thirty-three,” he ended, as though his age played some key role. It was Emily’s biological clock that had mattered. Yeah, he’d like to be young enough to charge up hills with his offspring, but he expected to be able to do that for the next four decades, at the very least.
“I apologize for my abrupt response a few minutes ago, telling you to leave,” she said. “I’m not used to people getting so intimately personal with me. At least not to my face,” she said.
Was this really happening? She was coming around? “As I said, I was totally out of line.”
Something in his stomach started to flop around again. Not a sensation he appreciated, nor one he’d tolerate once he had a moment or two to work on calming it. He’d definitely be adding some abdomen strengthening exercises to his daily regime.
“You were totally out of line with your personal comment regarding my life, and I’ll forget it happened if you’ll forgive my completely unprofessional response.”
He turned to face her. “Done.”
She nodded, picked up a pen and pulled a pad in front of her. “If you’ll give me some parameters, I can get started seeking out candidates,” she said. “This is nothing The Parent Portal has ever handled, as I said, but under the circumstances, I’d like to see if I can be of some assistance. You’ll need your own lawyer, I know that much. And the surrogate will need a separate one. Rule number one in this state—whomever you choose, even if it’s someone in your family, or someone you know privately, will have to have a full medical workup. The surrogacy clinics all have their own criteria, some based on state law, some based on their experience with successful matches and births.”
“I’ve done the research,” he told her, still stepping no closer to her. He didn’t want her help finding a surrogate. He needed her to be the surrogate. There was no scientific or logical basis for his certainty on that. He just felt certain.
Could be the strain of pigheadedness in him.
Or it could be something more.
Jamie needed time to work on that one. For the time being, he’d accept what help she was willing to give him. Maybe she’d find someone who felt right for him. To him. Maybe.
He didn’t think so.
“She has to have given birth before,” he said then, to show her he’d really done research. “A lot of the clinics want her to have a child living at home, as it eases her ability to give one up, but I know that’s not state mandated.”
“It would be best for you if she’s had a psychological workup, too,” Christine said, holding her pen with a hand on each end as she watched him. She didn’t offer him his seat back.
He didn’t presume to take it.
The distance between them seemed...okay.
“You’ll have a legally binding contract, but she still holds all the cards until that child is born, and you want to avoid as much chance of potential heartache as you can. The baby inside her might not be biologically hers, but her hormones will be working as though it was. You need her to be strong enough to love it for the time she carries it, and then let it go.”
Yes. Exactly what he’d concluded. Christine got it. Her focus was on people—their emotional needs—both those who’d been born and those who hadn’t yet. Those who wanted babies and those who were giving them up. It was what made her clinic so different—the contracts she insisted on that allowed all parties to seek out the others, within clearly stated boundaries, in perpetuity.
He wanted her to carry his and Emily’s baby. She knew it all.
Was in great physical shape...
He gave himself a mental shake. He wasn’t there to assess her body. Before any embryo placement could be made, a doctor would determine whether or not she was physically a viable surrogacy candidate—assuming she agreed to his request, of course.
And that’s as far as his knowledge of her body had to go.
“So let’s start with a list of what you’d like in a surrogate,” she said. “And what you have to offer one.”
“I’ll pay whatever it takes.” That had been a given from the beginning. Not only did he make a good clip, but he’d had a settlement from the insurance company of the driver of the car that had hit Emily. And he’d answer her questions because she seemed to need to ask him, but he couldn’t get past hoping she’d have this baby herself. Emily having mentioned her as a potential surrogate...it was as though on some level she’d known...
“I wasn’t just speaking financially,” she said, while making a note. “How do you perceive this going? How involved do you intend to be?”
“As involved as I can be.”
“I’m assuming you want her to be local enough for regular checking in, then?”
He wanted “her” to be Christine. Right there in Marie Cove. Someone who wouldn’t get creeped out if he stayed closely in touch, because she understood his situation. Because he was not yet ready to seriously consider an alternative surrogate, he kept the majority of his response to himself, other than a truthful, “Yes.”
“Do you want to give her the option to pick her own doctor and clinic?”
Sure, if “she” was Christine. “No, I want the procedure and birth to be handled by The Parent Portal.”
He got what she was doing, though. And appreciated her effort. She was seriously committing to helping him find the woman who’d bring his child into the world. Moving closer, he slowly retook the seat he’d vacated. She didn’t even look up from the pad upon which she was writing.
“Any age requirement?”
“Thirty to thirty-three,” he said, not getting too ballsy. “I want her more mature than twenties and yet still well before the thirty-five age bracket that some professionals say increases risk of problems.”
“Do you have any marriage preferences?” Christine asked, looking up at him. “Some couples prefer married surrogates.”
“I prefer her to not be married,” he said, only because Christine wasn’t. In his mind, Christine was it. There’d been no backup plan. How could he not have one, though?
He’d just been so carried away by all of the signs from Emily. The messages he knew he was getting from her.
How could he possibly have expected this woman to carry his child? Was he really that self-involved? Or so into the idea of Emily speaking to him that he was losing touch with reality?
Maybe he needed to go home and grieve some more. Get into the next stage of the process of living after your spouse wasn’t.
He didn’t feel like moping around. He’d miss Emily every day for the rest of his life, would always grieve for her, but he had to get out and start living life again. To create his new life. He’d been told that was the next stage. Had been assured by the grief counselor he’d seen that his drive to live, even though it meant doing so without Emily, was healthy.
And that, while it was a normal response for him to feel like an ass for having that drive, he wasn’t one.
He noticed Christine studying him, those deep brown eyes seeming to touch him somehow, and it struck him that maybe this was what was meant to be. Perhaps Emily was leading him to Christine, not as their literal surrogate, but as the woman who helps him find her.
He wanted to think so but felt no conviction.
“If she doesn’t live locally, but is willing to relocate to be close to the clinic during the duration of the process, would you be willing to provide a housing allowance?”
“Pay for an apartment, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I told you, money isn’t an issue. I’ll pay living expenses, whatever is necessary. The woman’s putting her life on hold for me, allowing me to use her body...” He stopped when he heard how inappropriate that sounded. Instead, he wanted to tell Christine th
at he was willing to make a notable donation to The Parent Portal if she’d have his and Emily’s baby for them, but didn’t want to risk being evicted from her office a second time.
Chances were he wouldn’t get a second forgiveness.
She wrote something. And then, pen slightly above the pad, sat there looking at it. Not reading, though. Her eyes weren’t moving. It was more of a stare. Like she was deep in thought.
Introspection didn’t usually present itself in the middle of business meetings. Unless... Was she considering...
Should he mention the clinic donation he would make?
Would that be tacky?
Or show her that he was willing to do whatever she needed to make their business deal a win-win for both of them?
What could he give her that would be comparable to what she’d be giving him?
“I’d be willing to consider some kind of arrangement whereby she could see the child now and then, if she wanted to do that. To have regular updates. Since, as you say, she will likely fall somewhat in love with the child as she carries it.”
Christine blinked, as though coming back to a conscious awareness of where she was. Glanced at him and then jotted on the pad.
“I...please don’t take this the wrong way...but I’ll be making a donation to The Parent Portal. Not to pay for your help, but because I know, firsthand, how important it is that you’re here. Thinking about this place, about those embryos... I think they might have saved me. Or at least helped speed up my recovery. What you do here... I just want you to know that it matters.”
He heard himself and wasn’t done. “Not to say that I won’t pay for your help,” he added. “Of course, I will. I intended to do so all along. I just...”
He’d turned into some kind of blabbering idiot. The comic relief in one of the family dramas Emily used to love to watch.
She’d always been the one with the more obvious sense of humor. He was a numbers guy.
“You already made a donation. After Emily died.”
He had, of course. But... “That was before I had the settlement,” he said. “I intend to make another, and I should have just done it and kept my mouth shut. I just want you to know I’m a good guy. My intentions are pure and...”
Frowning, she put down her pen and glanced across at him. “I don’t doubt your intentions, Dr. Howe.”
“Jamie, please. We’re in a medical clinic. The ‘Dr.’ seems a bit pretentious at the moment.”
He had his students call him Jamie. Emily had been the only one who used Jamison. The way she’d said it... Like an endearment...
“Look—” he stood “—I bungled this. I’m not myself this morning. I don’t normally ramble. Nor am I in the habit of offending people. I am, however, used to narrowing things down to the logical and then acting upon what’s there. This isn’t that.”
“No, it’s not.” She remained in her seat as he walked toward the door. He had to go. Had to think. Maybe refigure.
“Would you just do me one favor?” he asked, as he turned to tell her thank you. And goodbye.
“I’ll try.” She’d placed her pad on top of a file. He assumed his and Emily’s.
“Would you at least consider my original request? Let it just hang there for a day or so before dismissing it outright?”
It made no logical sense, his need to have her be the one to carry his child. And yet it was the only option that made sense to him at the moment.
Maybe after he met with the grief counselor he intended to call as soon as he was out the door, he’d see things differently.
Surely his emotional insistence that this near stranger was the only woman who could carry his child was merely residual grief. Something someone on the outside would see clearly. Nod his head about. Assure Jamie that he wasn’t losing his mind.
Christine was staring at him again. He saw no horror in her expression. Wished she’d stand up and come out from behind her desk—anything that might make it feel like there wasn’t an impenetrable gap between them.
“I don’t want you to expect me to change my mind about carrying your child for you. Or even have hope that I might.”
He heard the but she didn’t say, which kept him standing there, tense and ready to feel the sunshine on his skin. To run until his feet burned.
“But, of course I’ll let your request ‘hang’ for a day or two. I expect it will be on my mind for years to come,” she finished.
He didn’t know if she was being sarcastic, or just plain honest, and didn’t wait to find out.
With a nod, he fled.
Chapter Four
The roofers were still at it when Christine got home after six that evening. Two levels were done, the third, almost so. Then they’d just have the turret. And she’d get the final bill.
And was praying it didn’t come in any higher than the estimate.
Old houses needed new roofs. And she needed this old house. She also needed money to replace the plumbing.
Still, looking at the new, lighter-colored shingles as she pulled slowly down the old, but statuesque street with its large, beautifully manicured green yards, she smiled. Gram and Gramps had to be smiling down from heaven. They’d loved this place as much as she did. Or close to it.
They, after all, had had each other—and her. She just had the house.
She knew she could get a loan to help to make the fixes. But the idea of borrowing frightened her.
When you only had yourself to count on, and you were your own employer, if something happened to you and you couldn’t work, or your business got sued, you’d be unable to make large monthly payments, which could result in foreclosure.
You didn’t put yourself at risk like that.
Her dad and her stepmother, Tammy, the woman her father had married not long enough after Christine’s mother died, thought she should sell the place. But then they thought she’d been stupid to invest the entire inheritance left to her by her mother’s life insurance to open a small fertility clinic rather than accepting any one of the high-paying jobs she’d been offered at a number of health facilities.
They’d said they wanted her close. Wanted their son, her half brother, Tyler, to grow up bonding with her. She loved Tyler’s fifteen-year-old smart-ass self, but she’d never felt like a member of their family.
From day one, she’d been a mere visitor from her father’s past life.
She’d been only ten when her mother had died at forty, attempting to give birth to a son who had also died, and her father had left her with her grandparents and moved to LA.
He’d moved on by becoming someone else.
Some people dealt with death that way.
Others, like Dr. Jamison Howe—Jamie, he’d told her to call him—moved forward, creating a different life that included who he’d been.
Was that why the man’s request had hit her so deeply? Why his remark about her past had made her feel like lashing out and then wanting to retreat and be left alone?
Was he the antithesis of the man who’d hurt her so deeply, let her down so critically?
Was he asking her to help him do what she wished her father had found a way to do? Did he want her to help him take the man he’d been into the new life he must now create by using his wife’s choice of surrogate?
The owner of the small roofing company she’d hired waved from the rooftop as she pulled into her drive and then around back to the three-car garage. Parking in her usual spot in front of door one, she noticed the peeling paint on all three garage doors and then thought again about the quote she’d had done to have automatic doors put in.
She just was loath to change the garage.
And hated to see it in disrepair, too.
She could borrow money from the trust that she’d designated for The Parent Portal—but while the clinic was currently supporting itself qu
ite nicely, that trust money was the clinic’s security. She couldn’t put something she loved at risk.
Shrugging the problem aside, she gathered her brightly flowered leather bag—a knockoff she’d been excited to find at a street fair in LA—and made her way into the only home she’d ever really known via the back door.
It was her night to help out at the local women’s center. She was teaching a class in crocheting baby hats, which would be sent to neonatal units overseas. It was something Gram used to do—and taught her to do—before the older woman’s hands became so crippled by arthritis that she couldn’t work the needle anymore.
And after class, she and Olivia, another friend and volunteer, were going out for a late supper and glass of wine. Who had time to think about a widower asking her to have his baby?
“It was just another day at the office,” she told herself as she threw in a load of laundry, dusted the library slash Gramps’s den, freshened up for her evening out—and said it again when she was facing Olivia over the booth they’d chosen in their favorite eatery in downtown Marie Cove.
“I hear all kinds of things,” she continued, taking her second sip of wine in almost as many seconds. “Couples struggling to have babies are about the most emotional people in one of the most emotional situations. I never know what someone might do or say or suggest. By the time they get to me they’re often feeling desperate.”
In Jamison and Emily’s case, there hadn’t been anything making it impossible for them to get pregnant. They just hadn’t conceived.
Olivia’s dark-eyed gaze softened. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” They’d both ordered grilled chicken ranch salads, which should have been there already and weren’t. Christine looked around for their waitress.
Olivia insisted she was single because she just hadn’t met the right man yet. Christina wasn’t so sure. In the six years the woman had been her friend, she’d never known Olivia to have gone on any dates. Though she had a ton of friends, both male and female, and a full social schedule, the young doctor seemed content living alone in her upscale condominium, her mother her most frequent visitor.
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