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 monthswas 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.
We met two more times after that initial meeting—once at her country club while she was waiting for a tennis date to arrive, and once more at the house. Nicolas Costa wasn’t at those meetings either. I didn’t actually meet him until after all the medical stuff was done—the exam and whole battery of blood and urine tests they made me take. I felt like I was preparing to go into space or something. The doctor they had working on me even asked for details about my sex life. On the one hand, I could see how it was his business whether or not I had ever had a sexually transmitted disease. But did he really need to know when I lost my virginity and whether or not I was into what he termed ‘rough sex’? At one point, about a month into the process, I began to wonder if it was all worth it.
After a month of meetings and medical exams and whatever else, I finally met Nicolas Costa. I already knew what he looked like. You couldn’t live in Los Angeles and not know what he looked like. His face was constantly on billboards and magazines and those placards on the side of buses all through the city. Yet, meeting him face-to-face was so intimidating I almost lost my lunch on his toes. And those toes were covered in Prada shoes that were probably worth more than all my belongings put together.
“So, you’re the famous Ana Martinez I’ve been hearing so much about,” he’d said, approaching me with his hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to finally put a face to the name.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I’d managed to mumble.
And that was the extent of our first meeting. He ducked out a few minutes later, blaming an urgent business matter. However, I met him a few more times after that, particularly the day they did the first implantation procedure. However, the day after that, everything went to hell.
My mom was set to begin chemo the Monday after. Aurora gave me a check the day I signed the contracts, another when I passed the health exams, and a huge check the day of the implantation. That was why we had to wait. I was waiting on that check to pay the enormous payment the hospital would want the moment mom checked in for the chemo procedure. The doctor had wanted to admit her the day he found the cancer, then again two weeks later when a CT scan showed that it was more invasive than he had originally thought. But, even with my modest savings and what little my mom had, we couldn’t swing that initial payment. So we waited.
I wonder now if that had been a mistake.
That Sunday, just twelve hours before she was to check into the hospital, my mom died. It wasn’t even the cancer that got her—it was a heart attack. She was joking about making enough meals to feed me while she was gone when she suddenly grabbed her chest and fell over. I tried to do CPR, tried to bring her back, but nothing I did helped. The paramedics said she died instantly, that there was nothing I could do. But I still felt like I’d let her down somehow.
The funeral was a dark, somber affair. It was all so sudden that even her friends couldn’t wrap their minds around it. At least the funeral gave me something else to think about. That lasted until the last mourner walked out of the little house my mom and I had shared. All that was left then was…nothing.
I was devastated. I didn’t know how I was going to face life without my mother. I was alone. No mom. No dad. No cousins or aunts or uncles—at least, none that I knew. My mom’s family was all back in Mexico, and she’d never really made an effort to reach out to them—something about what made her come to the U.S. in the first place. My best friend moved to Texas for college and never came back. As a flight attendant, she was always gone, anyway. I was completely alone.
And then Aurora died. I remember Constance pounding on the door—as she had done for the past week, trying to get me out of bed—and she yelled through the thin wood that Aurora was found dead that morning, but thankfully it wasn’t at the house, she said. Apparently, Aurora was in New York by herself to attend some fashion show. She was found unconscious in the back of her limo after she was picked up at a restaurant in Manhattan. A drug overdose was the suspected cause.
So my mom was dead. And now the prospective mother of my surrogate child was dead.
As that thought crossed my mind, I realized with my mom’s death and the funeral and the week-long, self-imposed isolation, I had forgotten to go to the doctor to find out if the implantation of Nicolas and Aurora’s embryo had resulted in a pregnancy. I slipped out of the house after a long overdue shower and bought a test at a local pharmacy. And, of course, it was positive.
The moment I knew, a wave of absolute unconditional love washed through me. I had a life growing inside of me. And that led to the realization that this baby was all mine. At least, for the moment. I had something to live for, something to get out of bed for. The thought of giving the baby up after delivery tore me apart.
Then there was Aurora’s death. How could I give the baby up when its mother died of a drug overdose and its father was potentially another junky, or a hard personality who pushed Aurora to her
death? How could I sentence a child to live a life without a mother? Without a mother’s love? To have such a powerful father and a full stable of nannies—because that’s how I imagined Nicolas would raise a child as a single father—but no mother to wipe snotty noses and kiss boo-boos? That wasn’t happening if I had anything to say about it. Not even if I had to face the wrath of the great Nicolas Costa himself.
I sent a check to his address for the money I received from him and his wife, every red cent, with a letter of condolence that said nothing about the existence of the baby.
I took off the next day with no intention of ever telling Nicolas Costa about his child. In fact, I never wanted to see him again. After some of the things that had happened between us at the few meetings we had…things I didn’t want to think about, especially now that Aurora was dead. All I knew was that Nicolas Costa was not a good man and I didn’t want anything to do with him now or in the future. So, when he showed up at my house, it was downright frightening.
Chapter 3
Nicolas crossed the room then turned and looked at me, his eyes telling me heknew what I was up to and he intended to stop me. My heart was pounding. I pressed my hands to my belly, wishing I could hide the evidence of my pregnancy and we could go back to him not knowing and me planning to raise a child on my own. However, I knew from the look on his face that was not going to happen.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I nodded and waved him to one of my chairs. He looked around, and I saw the place through his eyes—a worn sofa, two mismatched arm chairs, and a threadbare rug in the center. Well, I didn’t carewhat he thought. I was doing the best I could. It wasn’t like I had billions in the bank like the whole world knew he did.
He sat on one of the armchairs and raked his fingers through his hair. He looked so gorgeous then that I felt my heart melt. Nicolas Costa was a beautiful man—and I didn’t use that word lightly. Very few men can be called beautiful. But Nicolas…he had the most intense dark eyes, a deep caramel brown that could be almost amber when he was angry or excited. Or aroused.
I blushed as that thought crossed my mind. I shouldn’t know what this man looked like aroused. He was married the whole time I knew him. Yet, I did know, and it was a source of deep shame.
I watched him and wanted to feel sorry for him. He had, after all, just lost his wife. But I was aware that he had the means to crush me completely. That’s why I couldn’t feel sorry for him, why I had to harden my heart.
But I’d never been that kind of person.
“Would you like some coffee?”
He nodded absently. “Thanks.”
I went into the small cubbyhole of a kitchen and put on the coffee maker, turning my face as I scooped out the coffee. I hadn’t had a lot of morning sickness, not like some women. However, there was something about the smell of coffee that had a power over me that I couldn’t quite overcome.
“Does the smell bother you?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice almost directly behind me. I didn’t look back as I tried to steady my pounding heart. The kitchen suddenly felt as though the air was being sucked right out of it.
“Do you have trouble with the smell of coffee?” he asked again.
I nodded.“Some days are worse than others.”
He nodded as though he understood completely. At my questioning glance, he said, “I’ve read up a lot on pregnancy.”
That made me curious. He hadn’t seemed all the interested before. However, I refused to ask. It reallywasn’tmy business.
His hands came down on my shoulders, gentle but firm, and set me ablaze. I sucked in a deep breath as I felt hot white lust burn from somewhere deep in my center and pool just below my abdomen. The same thing had happened once before…but I tried not to think about that moment. I wanted to step away from him, wanted to go about my business like he hadn’t come into the room at all. He was so still. What would I see in his eyes if I turned around? Did he know how my body was betraying me, how turned on I was just by the sight of him, by the feel of his touch on my body?
It is the hormones, I told myself. All the books said that all the extra blood flow that pregnancy created led to a heightened sense of sexual arousal. That is all it is, right?
But a part of me knew that wasn’t true, either. I wanted him with a desperation that was new to me, and I was helpless against it. Slowly, he turned me around till I was facing him. I stared at the spot between his shoulder and neck and wondered what it would feel like to run my hands over the muscles there. I could feel my chest tightening, and I was beginning to have trouble catching my breath.
The sound of the coffee percolating through the machine and—more importantly—the smell that wafted through the air brought me back to my senses. I jerked away from his touch, marching out of the kitchen to my tiny bedroom, dashing into the bathroom before he could say a word.
I couldn’t do this. I needed to get him out of my apartment.
“Ana?” he called through the closed door. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I called, as I turned on the water and splashed my face.
It crossed my mind to call the police. I had my cellphone in my skirt pocket. But then I realized that Nicolas had a contract I signed that gave him rights to this baby. Any cop in his right mind would never get between a man and what was rightfully his. I could claim the baby wasn’t his, but an amniocentesis could prove it was, and I wasn’t about to put this baby in a position in which it would have to endure such an invasive procedure. I’ve watched plenty of reality television and I’ve seen the needles they used to draw the amniotic fluid out of the uterus. I’m not afraid of needles, but that one kind of freaked me out.
That left me with few, if any, options.
I stepped out of the bathroom and practically walked into his chest. He was right there, in the middle of my bedroom. My bed, in all its unmade glory, was just a foot to his left. Could this be any more awkward?
“Ana?” He touched my face with the back of two fingers. “You’re pale.”
“It’s not every day the father of my baby shows up on my doorstep and demands to talk to me.”
“Yes, well, it’s not every day the surrogate carrying my child disappears without telling me the procedure worked.”
“How did you find out?”
He shrugged. “A private detective. It didn’t take much for him to track you down, or for your frequent visits to the obstetrics clinic, or pictures of your growing belly to express the obvious.”
“Why would you track me down if you didn’t know about the baby?”
His eyes dropped from my face briefly. “I had my reasons.”
I felt a little bit of a cold chill wash down my spine at the same time my lower belly began to smolder again. I was afraid I knew what he was talking about, and I really didn’t want to entertain what that might mean.
His eyes came back up to mine again, and I wanted to fall into them. He was so handsome! I would have to be inhuman to be able to resist his charms. The memory of his lips on mine was still so strong that it might have happened this morning instead of more than three months ago. My lips remembered that touch; my skin remembered the touch of his hands on my back, my ribs…I so wanted him to touch me again. And then I remembered the way he pushed me away that afternoon and the shame that rushed over me when I realized that I’d allowed myself to fall into the arms of not only a married man, but the man married to a woman I was quickly considering my friend.
I started to walk around him, needing to put space between us. He grabbed my arm and—thanks to that growing baby bump—I lost my balance and fell against his chest. His hands came around me, pressing against the small of my back, forcing me forward just enough that my distended belly pressed against his pelvis.
“It’s so firm,” he said, a touch of wonder in his voice. He stared down at my belly, his hand coming around to touch the side of it. A lot of women are embarrassed by their growing baby bumps, but I was proud of mine.
However, having Nicolas touch me made me conscious of myself in a way I hadn’t been before.
I tried to back away again, but he was still holding me with one arm around my waist, his hand pressed to the small of my back. He pulled me close to him again, his free hand sliding over my belly to cup the very top curve of the bump.
“The baby’s about the size of an apple now. Did you know that?”
I nodded. I had an app on my phone that told me each week how big the baby was and what I should be experiencing as far as symptoms went.
“It’s amazing to think you have an entire human being growing inside of you,” he said, awe and grief mixed in his voice.
It was the first thing he’d ever said that I whole heartedly agreed with.
I pressed my hand to the top of his, both stilling it from moving any further along the curve of my abdomen and to offer some sort of comfort. I wondered if he was thinking about Aurora. She’d only been gone a little less than three months, just a week and a few days less than my mom. I wondered if he’d grieved the way I had. As I still did. But, somehow, I doubted it.
“You’ve been seeing a doctor, right? Everything’s okay?”
“Everything’s right on track.”
“Do you know what it is?”
I shook my head. “I’m supposed to get a sonogram in a month that should show the sex. But I haven’t decided yet if I want to know.”
“I do,” he said. “It’d make it much easier to prepare the nursery.”
And with that, my desire to comfort him was gone. I pulled away and again tried to move around him. This time he let me go.
He followed me into the living room, but instead of sitting back in the armchair he’d abandoned earlier, he gestured toward the kitchen. “Do you mind?” he asked, reminding me of the fresh brewed coffee.
DOMINIC (Dragon Security Book 3) Page 48
