The Holiday Surprise: A Billionaire Surrogate Baby Romance

by Alice Blakely

  “Oh, that’s a shame,” I shrugged, taking a seat and pulling off my jacket. “So, how are you doing?”

  He looked slightly surprised at my question, but then what was I supposed to do – treat the man whose baby I’d be carrying as a stranger? He hadn’t said much during the interview process, and his wife had done most of the talking; I wondered if maybe he was as nervous about this as I was.

  “Uh, pretty good, I guess,” He nodded, a smile spreading out across his face. He did have a great smile. In fact, the two of them, both Sophia and Nathan, were knockouts, and this baby was going to be blessed with some killer DNA. Nathan looked particularly good that cold late November morning, in a sweater and a pair of jeans that looked much cuter than his suit and shirt that he’d been wearing last time. He was tall, much taller than me, with a strong jaw and bright blue eyes that popped against the deep brown of his hair. He smelled expensive, the scent of his aftershave filling the waiting room. I usually didn’t like it when guys wore scents, but it worked on him – it just added to this feeling of luxury that he exuded with every movement, like he was completely in control of everything and everyone in the room. I could see what had attracted Sophia to him; if I’d been single and looking for a rebound, someone like him would have done just nicely. If I hadn’t sworn off older men, of course.

  “What have you been up to today?” I asked conversationally, rubbing my hands together to warm them up. “Anything exciting?”

  “Uh, just meetings mostly,” He replied. “You know, for this business and all.”

  “What is it you do again?”

  “I’m not sure I told you in the first place,” He replied with a smile. “I do data analysis. It’s severely uninteresting unless you’re in the industry, but I like it. I guess I’m a bit of a geek that way.”

  “Oh, you’re talking to a politics student,” I held my hands up. “I know a lot about geekery. In fact, I pride myself on it.”

  “Politics?” He seemed to perk up a little. “I studied history at college, had a lot of crossover with the politics department. I wish I’d spent more time studying it while I had the chance.”

  “I think a few courses here and there are the best way to do politics,” I admitted. “Unless you care to spend all your time with your nose stuck in a dusty-ass book.”

  “See, I kind of liked that part of college,” he admitted.

  “And there I had you pegged for more the frat boy type,” I teased. And I realized that I was flirting with him; yes, it was harmless, but I didn’t even want to go near that line, let alone toe it as I was doing now.

  “Yeah, I did a lot of that as well,” he shrugged, cocking an eyebrow like he was going back over all the fun he had when he was playing the unrepentant frat boy back in the day.

  “How did you meet Sophia?” I waved a hand, gesturing to his wife, wherever she was. It would probably be a good idea to keep her at the front of his head.

  “Uh, my parents introduced us,” he replied, and his voice instantly dropped off, the excitement sapping from it like I had scolded him or something. “A few years ago. Well, a long time ago now.”

  “But I bet it doesn’t feel like it,” I remarked, urging him not to give me an opening. “You guys seem like you’re perfect for each other.”

  He let out a snort, and I raised my eyebrows. That didn’t sound good. Not one little bit.

  “Is there something I’m missing?” I asked, my nose for gossip drawing me in deeper than I knew I should have gone. There was a part of me justifying this in my head – I didn’t want to get involved with a couple who were going to break up and end up leaving me in the lurch, maybe with a baby or at least a pregnancy to take care of.

  “I shouldn’t talk about it,” he slid his eyes away from me, avoiding my gaze, but I was already on to the scent and I wasn’t about to let it go just because he was backing away from me now. No, I wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  “You guys having problems?” I pressed. “How long has it been going on? Should I be worried about all of this?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” he waved a hand unconvincingly. “It’s probably just the stress of all this baby stuff. Sometimes I feel like she looks at me as a sperm donor and not her husband.”

  “Honestly, I don’t have any idea how that feels,” I replied bluntly, and he seemed to realize that he’d gone a little too far with his confession. He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t be dragging you in to any of this.”

  “Yeah, probably not,” I conceded. “But don’t worry about it. Fertility stuff can be a pain, I get that. Things’ll get better once you get me all…”

  I gestured my hand in a roundabout motion down to my stomach.

  “You know,” I grinned at him. “Once we’ve got it all sorted.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he conceded, though he didn’t seem convinced. He looked down at his watch. “Hey, do you mind if I head off to get a coffee? I still haven’t really woken up this morning and I feel like I need a kick in the ass.”

  “Be my guest,” I waved my hand and he got to his feet and headed for the door. I couldn’t help but follow him with my eyes as he went; he looked good, better than last time, and I had the brief, crazy thought about what it would be like to run my fingers through his thick hair. To pull him close to me and press my body against his. Damien had been so wiry and little and weak, but Nathan seemed like the kind of man who would speak his mind, who wouldn’t back down. I could do with someone like that in my life. Shame he was already married.

  I instantly scolded myself as soon as that thought shot through my head. I couldn’t think like that. The last thing I needed was to get a crush on the guy whose baby I’d be carrying. I needed to keep both of them at arm’s length, and I intended to keep it that way. No emotions, just enough money to get me through the next year. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

  Chapter Four

  Nathan

  As I went to fetch myself a coffee, I scolded myself internally. What the fuck was I thinking, flirting with her like that? I was acting like I was twenty again, like I wasn’t married and trying for a kid. But…fuck, if she wasn’t cute as hell. She was wearing this little dress and a pair of thick stockings and looked cozy and sweet, like she should have been curled up on a big chair flicking through one of those big dusty books that she seemed to like so much.

  I was married to Sophia. I had to keep reminding myself of that. In fact, I had had to keep reminding myself of that a lot recently. I knew it was bad, that I found my eye wandering as we started the process to begin a family together, but I just couldn’t help it. Maybe I was just nervous and looking for a distraction. Yeah, that’s what I could tell myself was going on. Even if I knew it went a little deeper than that.

  I stopped my thoughts before they got away from me. It didn’t matter how deep it went; we were trying for this baby with Jen in tow and I had to keep focused on that for the time being, no distractions, no overthinking. While Sophia was away, I had to be the face of our marriage, and convince Jen that she was doing the right thing by working with us on this. If we showed any little cracks in our surface, then she might abandon us and Sophia would try to figure out why and I would have to reveal that it was because I’d said something as stupid as “I feel like a sperm donor in my own marriage” to her. And that was going to be a tough one to apply any logic to.

  There was a little coffee shop attached to the doctor’s office, and I got myself a coffee and headed back through to the waiting room. I dawdled a little before I went in, trying to center myself and relax. Yes, there was a little something between us, but all that that meant was that she was the right person to carry my child.

  My child. Fuck, that was an intensely weird thought. All this time, the thought of a child had been so distant, so oblique, but now it was right here in front of us and not fucking around. If this doctor’s appointment went well and everything
was right with Jen, then we would just go right on and ahead with this. She could be pregnant in a matter of weeks. Maybe even for Christmas; now there was a weird thought, this could be the last Christmas we spent just the two of us. I finally felt a little uptick of excitement in my chest. This was actually happening.

  That same thought flickered through my mind again though, that one about whether college girls had always been this cute. I mean, I hadn’t exactly been the coolest kid on campus when I’d been heading off to college, but I was pretty sure that girls like her weren’t exactly common amongst the women I’d gone to school with. She was just…maybe it was just the connection I felt thanks to the fact that she was going to be having my baby, but I couldn’t deny the fact that I was sincerely and severely attracted to her. As I stepped back into the waiting room and saw her sitting there, casting her gaze around the room and taking it all in. Her expression was curious and interested, and I wondered if this was the same kind of look she gave to everyone and everything. Jen just seemed so…alive. That was what it was. She seemed so alive compared to the people I spent most of my day around; whether I was down at the office and stuck in meetings all day with people who looked as though they’d rather be anywhere but there with me, or with Sophia at the end of the day while she sat across from me at the dinner table tapping away on her phone, I never felt like I had any particular connection with the people I was spending my time around. And that fucking sucked. But Jen, Jen felt different. And, as I headed over to take a seat next to her again, I had to reel myself in a bit.

  I didn’t want to get too attached to this girl. Once the baby was born and she had the money, she’d be out of our lives so fast that our heads would spin. She wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of her heart, she was doing this because she needed the cash and wanted it quick. That had been one of the first things she’d asked about in the interview, when Sophia had asked her to give us some questions. I wondered what had happened that this was the best way she could think of to make money; I mean, I was grateful and glad that it was, of course, but she seemed bright and sparky and the kind of girl who could make a killing behind a bar or at a coffee shop charming the hell out of all of her customers. I would have to get the story out of her one day.

  I took my seat back next to her and she glanced up at me and shot me this brief, dazzling smile, and I fought the way my heart flipped back and forth in my chest at being under her gaze like that. I needed to keep myself together. We had a doctor’s appointment to attend, that was the extent of our communication for the day.

  “I guess I’ll have to forfeit coffee for the next nine months,” she remarked, nodding at the steaming cup in my hand. “At least let me have a whiff of it.”

  I held the cup out to her and she leaned over and inhaled deeply; a strand of her dark hair fell from behind her ear and brushed against my hand, and I fought the urge to reach up and tuck it back where it had come from. But that would have been completely inappropriate.

  She sat back up and smiled at me again, brushing her hair back from her face, and I shifted in my seat. Yup. Completely inappropriate.

  Chapter Five

  Jen

  “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

  That was what I woke to, after the implantation; I was still so woozy and groggy that I could barely pay attention to the fact that the two people who I was trusting above all else to actually get along were fighting just a few feet from me only moments after I’d presumably been implanted with their baby. Well, hypothetical baby at this point – I wasn’t sure if anything had taken or how long I would have to wait to find out, but it was a start.

  It had been a month since I’d met the two of them, and they had always presented a united front to me. Which I was glad for, considering that I was going to be carrying their baby for the next nine months; the last thing I wanted was to be worrying about getting stuck with this kid at the end if one or both of them changed their minds about wanting to be parents, or at least wanting to be parents together. I guess the two of them were very aware of that fact because they always played nice in front of me, but a few times I had sensed slips and cracks in their perfect little façade that were starting to have me worried.

  The first came when Nathan and I had been in that waiting room together a couple of weeks back, when he had referred to her as seeing him as nothing more than a sperm donor – that didn’t exactly fill me with confidence at what was to come next. And in the intervening time, when we put dates and times on everything, they’d seemed a little cold to each other. She’d rolled her eyes when he’d been talking a few times, and he drummed his fingers when she’d been confirming dates as though pissed that she was underlining what he’d already tried to make clear. And if there was one thing worse than being stuck in a room with an arguing couple, it was being stuck in a room with an arguing couple who you were supposed to be carrying a baby for. I just kept myself focused on that big-ass paycheck and tried not to think about any of the other implications of what I was doing. If I wanted to finish college, that would be that. I had to stick with this, no choice in the matter at all. Unless I wanted to drop out of college and start all over again from scratch, or explain to my mother that I had been dumb enough to let some guy take advantage of me and make off with all of the cash that she had been kind enough to save up to give to me.

  But it wasn’t until I came to on that table that I knew there was something seriously, seriously amiss with the two of them. They were speaking in lowered voices, but the room was small and I could hear every single word they were saying.

  “But you told me that-”

  “No, I didn’t!” Sophia replied harshly, cutting him off. “I know what I told you.”

  “We can get the messages out if you want,” Nathan replied, putting his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone, but she stopped him, pushing his hand away.

  “Why do you always have to be like this?” She demanded. “So…you’re just always so contrary when it comes to stuff like this!”

  “No, I just know when I’m right and I don’t want to back down on it,” he shot back, his voice dripping with exasperation.

  “Oh, but you always think you’re right, don’t you?” She snapped back, shaking her head. My eyes were open at this point, but neither of them seemed to notice that I had come back into the land of the living and frankly I wasn’t going to be the one to speak up and let them know that I was awake again.

  “It’s not like that,” Nathan replied, throwing his hands in the air. “I just wanted to make sure that everything was going to be alright-”

  “And it will be, if you just trust me!” She replied, her voice dropping again but somehow gaining even more disdain as she went. I felt my stomach crumple and curl up. I didn’t like this one bit, but I wasn’t sure how to alert them to the fact that I was actually awake and kind of aware of everything they were talking about.

  I watched as the two of them went back and forth like that, then tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling. There was a slight twinging pain between my legs and I couldn’t help but feel this twist of nervousness and excitement in my heart as I realized that I might actually, really, be pregnant. I hadn’t thought it would happen this soon, but here I was – maybe actually carrying a baby. And I got to do all the fun parts of pregnancy, like eating more and getting to steal all the priority seats on public transport, and then hand the thing over at the end of the day and go on with my life. It would be like a dry run for when I chose to actually have kids. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as the two of them continued to bicker across the room from me. That there actually was something good to come out of this, even if the two of them seemed kind of…on-edge.

  But maybe that was just down to the stress of trying for a baby for so long? Maybe they really loved each other but all of it had got to them. I didn’t know the details behind how long they’d been trying or what they’d been through up to this point in the process, and I wasn’t going
to assume that it had been easy if they were desperate enough to turn to someone like me for help. They had been married a long time, and even if they never seemed to make particular sense to me, they must have made sense to each other or else they wouldn’t have been together in the first place. Right?

  Finally, Sophia looked over and saw that my eyes were open, and she nudged her husband quickly and the two of them fell silent. Sophia’s tone changed at once as she wafted over to address me, her bedside manner impeccable.

  “Hey, how are you doing?” She asked, smiling softly at me. I blinked up at her; it was strange to hear her jump from snarling to sweet in a matter of seconds, but I guess they wanted me to continue thinking of them as a perfect couple so I wouldn’t freak out and back out of what I was doing. A little late for that now, in all fairness.

  “I feel okay,” I replied, blinking the sleep away from my eyes. “A little groggy but I’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” she nodded, and looked over at Nathan, motioning her head in my direction; he was standing a few feet away and just looking at me with this strange expression on his face, as though the enormity of what I was doing for them was just beginning to sink in. I knew it was for me. He stepped over to the side of the bed and looked down at me, and my toes curled against the paper cover on the chair that I was laid out on. There was something about the look in his eyes, that was simultaneously soft and full of fire, that made something in my head spin. It was probably just the pregnancy hormones. Which reminded me…

  “Did it take?” I looked between the two of them, and they exchanged a glance – it wasn’t a pleasant look, but it was one of acknowledgement.

  “Yes, it looks like it did,” Sophia replied, her voice still artificially soft as though she didn’t want to disturb or spook me. I raised my eyebrows and smiled, and finally the two of them did the same.