by Emerson Rose
“Liam Wild,” I say it out loud and a shiver runs up my spine. Lord, his name alone stirs something unrecognizable deep in my belly.
I’m attracted to him, but there’s something else. Something other than his lean, muscular build and his adorable dimples and perfect white smile. And those deep, dark blue eyes are so commanding, so powerful so…
Oh my God, this is so wrong. What the hell is the matter with me? I’ve hardly given men a second thought since Toby was born. I’m too damn busy with school, work, and being a mother to go on a date, and here I am, drooling over a guy who wants to have a baby with his wife. I should be ashamed of myself, and I am.
Sort of.
Yes, I am. I can’t believe I’m arguing with myself about this.
I shuffle the profiles around and flip through a couple of them again, but Mr. Wild won’t leave me alone. I give in and push them all aside except the Wilds. I sit back in my chair with my arms crossed over my chest, staring at the damn folder.
After a minute of internal battle, I flip the Wilds’ folder open to read about them . . . him.
Curious to see what he-they-do for a living, I skim to the occupation section first. What the hell? He’s a DJ? And she doesn’t work at all. How are they going to afford a surrogate on a DJ’s salary? Now I’m genuinely glad I didn’t choose them. They can’t expect to give a child a full life when Daddy works nights in a bar and Mommy doesn’t have a job at all.
I closely examine the professional photographs taken in their living room. The house looks expensive and big, not what I would imagine a DJ’s house to look like.
Things just don’t seem to be adding up until I read further, and whoa! They make more money in one year than I’ll ever see in my lifetime!
I continue to the personal and confidential information section of the profile and learn that Mrs. Wild has a trust fund that would choke a horse, and Mr. Wild is a professional international electronic DJ
Ok, so that’s were the money is coming from, but I still can’t understand why a trendy jet setting couple like these two would want to have a baby. Mrs. Wild looks like she spends twelve hours a day in a gym, and Liam . . . he looks dangerous, like sex on a stick.
They have only been married for six months, not long enough to try to have a baby. I wonder why they’re taking the surrogacy route? Maybe one of them knows they can’t have children. Yes, that must be it.
I check the time on my phone. I have five minutes before my call with the Malibu parents. I tuck the Wilds’ folder away and pull out Ken and Barbie’s. If Mattel ever wanted to do a Barbie movie with real people as their characters, this couple would have to be Ken and Barbie.
After twenty minutes of a painful, boring conference call with Ken and Barbie, I’m thinking that they aren’t the couple for me. Ken was overbearing and snobbish and Barbie was timid. She sounded like she was afraid to say anything at all. Whenever she started getting friendly with me, he would shut her down with a passive aggressive comment, as if he didn’t want us getting too close. That’s not the kind of people I want to be involved with. I do agree to meet them in person, though, because the counselor at the agency said sometimes people don’t act like themselves over the phone. I’m not holding out much hope for them though. It’s pretty clear these two have shown their true colors today.
I call Mr. and Mrs. Weaver next, couple number two, and I’m immediately comfortable with Mr. Weaver’s polite tone and the good energy flowing between us. His voice is like thick velvet with a tinge of grit, and I find myself leaning back in my chair with my knee pressed against the table, rocking back on two chair legs, until Mrs. Weaver joins the call. She’s late. He made an excuse for her at the start of our call, and he didn’t sound hopeful that she would make it, but unfortunately, she did.
If I have to listen to this woman’s Nicki Minaj, whiney voice for the next nine months, maybe ten, I may not live to the end of my pregnancy. It’s painful and anxiety inducing. I can feel my top lip pulling up involuntarily every time she interjects, which is often. She’s not only annoying to listen to, but she’s an interrupter as well. With every other word, she’s circling the attention back around to herself. All I want to do is sit and listen to Mr. Weaver’s words glide off his tongue like honey, but Mrs. Weaver is constantly shaking me from my trance with her ugly tone.
After forty minutes of tug-of-war between the Weavers and me, we agree to meet tomorrow for dinner. But first, I’m having lunch with Malibu Ken and Barbie. I feel a long day of stress eating coming on.
With the rest of the afternoon to myself in my sister’s house, I let my curiosity get the best of me. I Google Liam Wild. Big mistake. Big, big, mistake. The picture in the profile was flattering, but the things I find online are downright mind blowing. Blowing. Now there’s an idea.
Good grief, what’s happening to me? This stranger is making me a mental slut! The more I read, the more intrigued I am. He isn’t just a DJ. He’s an international super star in the electronic dance music industry. His concerts pack in hundreds of thousands of people, and without even hearing his music, I can see why. I’d go just to stand by and watch him work.
I click on my sister’s Spotify account and pull up DJ Freedom. When the cover of his first album pops up on the screen, I raise my hand to where my necklace sits in the dip of my throat and touch the delicate charm that Terrell gave to me.
Freedom’s cover is all black, and in the center is a gold tree with the leaves blowing off into the wind, representing what else but . . . Freedom. That tree is the same tree as my charm. I frown and lean closer to get a better look. This can’t be, but it is.
I sit, holding my breath while I try to untangle my emotions until my lungs burn. I push away from the computer, gasping for breath, and rush outside onto the porch with memories of Terrell flooding my mind. Terrell playing football, holding my hand, cuddling on the couch, watching movies and planning our future, making love for the first time, and finally, the memory of him smiling while he accepted his diploma on stage the last day of his life.
It’s been years, but my emotions have no concept of time. They feel the same today as they did the day he died, and so do the hot tears that race down my cheeks. I swipe them away and take a deep breath in and blow it out while I step back into the shadows so Rachel’s neighbor, who is out mowing his lawn, doesn’t see me crying. I don’t want her thinking I’m upset about the surrogacy situation.
This neighborhood is like Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives. Everybody knows everybody’s business. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the universe was trying to push me into Liam Wild’s life, but that’s absurd. He’s a happily married man, trying to find a way to have a baby with his wife . . . or is he?
Liam Wild, also known as DJ Freedom, doesn’t look like a family guy in the photos of him touring Europe. He looks like a mischievous handful, a player, and a partier, not a daddy.
I pad back inside in my bare feet and stand behind the computer chair, fiddling with my necklace. I reach out and tap the mouse to expand a close-up picture of Liam standing behind a massive array of electronic equipment with an insane light show going on around him. Surrounded by a crowd of people known for their ability to party for hours on hallucinogenic drugs, alcohol, and who knows what else, he seems to be a part of them but not. His eyes are clear, his clothing is neat and tidy, and his music is phenomenal, he’s like a sober pied piper leading a million drugged-out rats into a massive party.
I click through ten or fifteen more pictures before I sit down and pick apart the scenes. The dates on the articles and interviews are all very recent. It looks like he’s only been home in the United States two or three times during his six-month marriage.
It takes a while, but I finally find a picture of him with his wife, Amira, the night they got married in Germany. He looks nothing like he does in any of the other pictures I’ve seen so far. His eyes are glassy, and he’s slumped over, hanging on Amira’s shoulder with a drink spilling from hi
s hand in almost every shot. There are thousands of pictures on the Internet of DJ Freedom, and so far, I haven’t seen him drinking alcohol in any of them.
In the YouTube videos of his shows, he always looks bright-eyed and energetic, and prior to six months ago, there is not one single pic without at least two or three gorgeous women hovering around him—and none of them are Amira. It’s almost as if she appeared one day and BAM, they were married.
When I Google Amira, I learn that she is the daughter of the wealthiest oil tycoon in the world. This woman will do just about anything to get attention, including making sex videos with famous men and women, sky diving naked, frequenting raves, doing drugs, and craziest of all, in my opinion, refusing to go to college because she will never need to earn a living. There is a whole interview about her lack of desire to go to college.
She’s Paris Hilton spoiled—no, she’s Kim Kardashian spoiled, maybe worse. She’s also fabulously gorgeous, and surprisingly, with all the drinking she seems to do, she’s in incredible shape.
I slam the laptop shut and grab my keys. Why am I sitting around wasting my time researching people I’ve never met and will never know? There is no connection between the rich, worldly Wilds and me other than that damn surrogate profile. The tree thing is just a weird coincidence that I pathetically linked to an emotional event in my life during a moment of weakness.
I need some fresh air and ice cream to clear my mind of raves and sex tapes, and I could use a night out with a man, but that’s not an option for at least another year with a pregnancy looming on the horizon. Lord, I can’t imagine the basket case I’ll be by then. I’m already falling for a married stranger from my prospective parent profiles and stalking his wife online! What’s it going to be like when I’ve been abstinent for almost a year and hormonal?
Chapter 11
Liam
Fucking Amira isn’t here yet. I’ve been circling the parking lot looking for her Jaguar for five minutes, and there’s no sign of her. She’d better show up. I don’t even want to be here. I have a thousand things to do today.
After giving up, I drop the keys to my Touareg into the valet’s hand and take a deep breath in and release it slowly. Amira is testing my patience more than usual lately, and it’s making me want to start scheduling another European tour just to get away from her. Having a kid is going to seriously change how I tour. I’m not leaving our baby alone with Amira for a minute. She hates kids, and she doesn’t know the first thing about babies. But I do.
I had a baby brother when I was five. I loved helping my mother take care of him. I held him and told him stories. My happiest memory is snuggling with Mom and Dylan in her big, warm bed on a Saturday morning, watching it snow outside. I was too little to know where we were stationed, but it was somewhere in the Midwest. Dylan died when he was one year old. My father killed him. I know he did. When he came home from being deployed for the last time, he was out of his mind. Before he left, he wasn’t a bad father—more of an absent one—but when he came home from Afghanistan, he wasn’t my father at all. Dylan’s death was ruled as a case of SIDS and no one was ever convicted of his murder. Life was never the same. Mom and Dad got divorced after a couple of years of him knocking her around and making her think Dylan’s death was her fault. I hated him for becoming the monster that singlehandedly demolished our family. I never want to be anything like that man.
Inside the dimly lit restaurant, a young, wide-eyed hostess greets me and mentions that she loves my music. I love my fans, but today I wish I could be a little more anonymous. I don’t want this baby story leaking to the press just yet, but the agency insisted on a public meeting place.
The cute little hostess leads me to a table, and I notice the tip of a tattoo peeking out from underneath the collar of her shirt. It’s a tree—my tree, the DJ Freedom tree used on my first album cover.
“Hey, do you have a pen?” I ask. She pats down her pockets until she comes up with one and hands it to me with a big smile. A waitress walks by, and I tap her shoulder while I wink at the hostess. Hostess fan girl giggles.
“Could I borrow a piece of paper?” I ask the waitress.
“Uh, yeah,” she says, giving me a once over before ripping a piece off a pad on her tray.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, no problem,” she says, full of indifference and absolutely no recognition. I hope she’s going to be our waitress.
I write a little note, sign the paper, and hand it to the star struck hostess just as Amira joins me.
“Giving signatures, Liam? God, can’t we have a quiet dinner without one of your groupies butting in?” Amira pulls out her own chair and sits down without even looking at the poor hostess.
I ignore her and move so that my back is to Amira and I’m shielding fan girl.
“Don’t mind her. She’s crabby until she has a couple of drinks.”
I lean over and kiss her on the cheek and whisper.
“Thanks for being a fan.”
Her hand floats up to her cheek, and she silently turns to leave while Amira makes a snide comment under her breath.
“You need to learn your place, Amira. I love my fans. Everything I do, I do for them. If you’re uncomfortable with that, then just keep your fucking opinions to yourself, you got it?”
“Li-am, I just don’t like to share you.”
She’s using her wretched baby voice. Fuck, I hate the baby voice.
“Let’s start over, Amira. The surrogate is going to be here soon, and I’m guessing you want to make a good impression since your future is riding on this baby.”
She snorts as scrolls through Instagram on her phone. Our waitress approaches, and thankfully, it’s the one who didn’t seem to know me a few minutes ago, but I have a feeling somebody’s filled her in since then. She’s appropriate and professional, but something in her eyes says hey, I know you now.
“There will be one more joining us, a woman in her early twenties. Could you bring her back when she arrives?” I say.
“Of course. Can I get you anything to drink while you wait?”
“Bring me a long island iced tea,” Amira says without looking up from her phone. The waitress takes Amira’s rudeness in stride, writing down her order without a word before she looks to me for my order. I like her. We’re going to get along well. I can already tell.
“Just water, please.”
My order earns me another snort from my wife.
“You’re so boring, Liam. Why don’t you ever have any fun?”
With one eyebrow raised high, the waitress leaves us alone to get our drinks.
I lean on the table and lower my voice.
“Shut up, Amira, or I’ll leave, and you can get a fucking job at McDonalds and live in public housing. Would you like fries with that?”
She slams her phone down and glares, but she quickly switches her attention to someone standing behind me.
“Um, excuse me. I think there’s been some confusion. I was supposed to be meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Weaver tonight from Joyful Connections, but you’re Mr. and Mrs. Wild, aren’t you?”
I’d recognize that soft, melodic voice anywhere. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the woman connected to that voice for twenty-four hours. We had an immediate connection during our conference call, and Amira made it painfully clear that she wasn’t having any of that.
Amira dominated the spotlight, and poor Lourdes could hardly get a word in edgewise.
I glance up and immediately feel drawn to the woman standing at the head of our table. As soon as our eyes meet, her hand flies to her throat to fondle a charm on her necklace, a charm of a tree. She’s the same woman who took my breath away that day at Cecconi’s, the woman who brought every cell in my body to attention by simply existing. I’m naturally drawn to her like one end of a magnet to another. This is the woman who turned me into a babbling idiot with a massive hard on. How could the universe be so cruel, bringing her into my life this way? And why is she wearing a neck
lace with my trademark on it? There are a million other women who could be our surrogate, but this one . . . this one is supposed to be more. She’s supposed to be mine.
Amira is saying something, and Lourdes yes, that’s her name. She’s looking at her but the only thing I can hear is my heart pounding in my chest. The urge to reach out and touch her silky toffee skin is overwhelming as she gestures with her hands while she speaks. I want to reach out and take one of them and pull her into my lap so I can look at her closer, feel her, smell her.
I’m not supposed to, and I shouldn’t, but I do anyway. I push out my chair and stand, which in hindsight might not have been the smartest idea. My cock stiffened the moment I heard her voice, the same way it did during our conference call and the day I saw her in the restaurant. My plan is to simply shake her hand and offer her a seat, but what I end up doing is entirely different.
I take her hand. She’s not offering it, but I take it anyway. I have her attention now. Her eyes are wide as she looks at my hand holding hers, and I lean in to kiss her on the cheek and softly say, “Nice to meet you.”
“Liam!” Amira says, raising her voice.
I ignore her and breathe in the faint smell of coffee and cinnamon in Lourdes’s hair. I don’t drink coffee, but I might start if it reminds me of her. I move back, and she shakes herself from my surprise attack, stepping away and pulling her hand from mine. She doesn’t speak. Her mouth opens and closes and opens again, but no words come out. I’ve affected her. Good.
“Please have a seat . . . Lourdes, isn’t it?” I say, pulling out a chair for her.
“Li-am.” Amira is seething. I can see her out of the corner of my eye, and I should care, but I don’t. I really don’t. She wanted this. She wanted a baby to save her fortune. Well, now she’s gonna get one, and I’m going to enjoy the company of this gorgeous creature for the next ten months provided she chooses us.
“This is my wife, Amira,” I say absently, waving my hand in her direction. She’s still speechless but offers a timid hand to Amira, who gives it one quick jerk. I glance at Amira when Lourdes looks at the chair I’m offering her. I widen my eyes and then narrow them with a lift of my brows. What does she expect me to do, be rude? I’m being a dick to Amira, which is unlike me. I’m usually more discreet. I have a talent for smoothing over problems and hoping they will just go away, like Amira. I really wish she would just go away, but she’s like one of those tiny fibers that gets stuck in your eye. The one you can’t quite find, but it hurts like hell. You keep digging and rubbing, but it’s still fucking there.
