"I thought you didn't want me,” she confessed emotionally. Daniel crossed the distance between them and stood before her, breathless and determined. He shook his head meaningfully.
"I want you more than anything. I want you more than a partnership. I want you more than the city. I love you, Carla. I choose you and Maria above all those other things."
Tears of joy were now running down Carla's face and she threw herself into Daniel's arms. Those arms which had once been so slow to return her affections now tightened around her and she felt all his coldness become warmth and all the distance between them vanish.
"You don't have to choose."
"What do you mean?" Daniel asked with confusion.
Then Carla explained to him about the store in the city, about how she was ending things with Michael and about how she had been ready to run away at the thought that he didn't want her, but was now overjoyed that he had finally told her how he felt.
"We thought we were such different people," she said through her happy tears, "but we're both heading in the same direction. Let's go to the city, Daniel. You, me, and Maria. Let's build our lives without having to choose. We can have it all."
A radiant grin broke out on Daniel's face and he swept her up in his arms to kiss her with a kiss that wouldn't lead into the bedroom, but would lead into a full and happy life together. Finally, he'd met that one person who could transcend everything else.
Carla had come into his life and disrupted it, but, somehow, he'd still ended up exactly where he needed to be, but with a future laid out before him that was more satisfying than anything he could have ever imagined. Carla was breathless from her joy. She had it all. She would get to open a new store in the city and start a family with a man who loved her, and who she deeply loved.
One year later, Carla and Daniel were at a wedding once more. Daniel helped her carry in the wedding cake with the poker table bridge-and-groom cake topper into the main reception where Lily rushed into Carla's arms to greet how old friend.
"Congratulations, Lily!" Carla beamed.
"It's so good to see you!" Lily gushed. "I was afraid you wouldn't make it, what with the bakery doing so well in the city."
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world,” Carla said.
That evening when Daniel and Carla danced, it was with everything exactly as it should be and then, after the party was over, Daniel asked Carla to walk with him in the beautiful grounds of the exquisite manor that Lily had hired for the day. Daniel walked her down a tree-lined path that was strung with glittering fairy lights that twinkled in the darkness.
"It was a nice wedding," he thought aloud, "but one thing kept bothering me."
"What's that?"
"Well, I couldn't help but think that it should have been you and me up there getting married." he said. He bent to one knee and produced a beautiful diamond ring, which sparkled under the fairy lights. Carla gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. Her Daniel, who was so bad at the romantic gestures, loved her enough to ask her to spend her life with him.
"Carla Bennet," he began with a big grin that came so much more readily to his face these days, "will you marry me?"
After all the ups and downs and chaos in their relationship, there was now no doubt left in Carla's mind. This man made her deliriously happy.
"Yes!" she exclaimed.
Daniel slid the ring onto her finger, raised himself from the ground and embraced her, pulling back only to kiss her passionately.
From there, life only got better. Carla conquered another town with her bright smile and cupcakes, and Daniel built up a fierce reputation in the big city. Maria grew up happy and loved and in time had a little brother joined her. Neither Carla nor Daniel would have pictured their lives turning out so perfectly, but their love affair taught them that sometimes giving into something completely different, is entirely worth the risk.
THE END
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Book2
THE MOVIE STAR'S
DESIGNER BABY
ALEXIS GOLD
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
World famous Hollywood star Derrick Stone has realized he wants a child but after a messy divorce he is reluctant to get married again.
Derrick knows he wants his baby to be just as healthy and good looking as he is so that his child could go on to be a huge star like he is and continue the Stone movie legacy. He sits down with his team to draw up a design of what his perfect woman would look like in order to find a surrogate.
Only the perfect woman will do for Derrick and when his team recruit a beautiful woman named Gracie he believes he has found his match.
However, this is no ordinary surrogacy as Derrick is not a man who wants to leave anything to chance and so he has one special request....
He wants his special baby to be conceived naturally. Could this blur the line between business and pleasure?
Chapter One
A patchwork quilt in rich earth tones spread out as far as the eye could see from the mini-jet’s window. Gracie had never seen Montana from the air, and the view took her breath away. Grey and blue mountains rose up to the west like pieces of frost-covered glass reaching for the sky, followed by emerald-colored ridges of evergreen forest. The emerald was interspersed with the brown of open range, and the blue-green finger of some river meandered through the landscape.
In fact, Gracie had never seen Montana before at all, from land or sky. And if you really wanted to get into it, Gracie had never seen anything from the sky before, aside from in pictures, and they couldn’t even compare. At age twenty-eight this was Gracie’s first time on an airplane. Born and raised in a small town outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, Gracie had seen as far as the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Appalachian Mountains in the west. She had lived in Virginia briefly, where she had gone to college to get her degree in biology and ended up working in a lab studying the mating habits of stinkbugs (she often joked that she’d gone into biology for the glamour of it all). But before long her help was needed at Nana’s diner, and Gracie found herself back home again.
No, no one would ever call Gracie a world traveler, but she actually had a very full life, a life she was content with. She had her Nana and three brothers, a whole slew of aunts, uncles and cousins; she never spent a Friday night alone (unless she was in the middle of a really good book), and was never without a shoulder to cry on. Work in the diner kept her busy during the day, and in her free time she volunteered with the YWCA and Girls on the Run, a nonprofit program that taught young girls positive life skills through running. The problem was; as well rounded as her life had turned out to be, she was stuck in a rut. Dangerously close to the big 3-0, she felt there was still something missing. It was as if there was something more right around the corner, but every time she tried to peek around that corner something pulled her back to home base. Something needed to change. That was why she had decided to go through with this whole crazy venture. She hadn’t thought anything would ever come of it but here she was.
As the plane began its descent, Gracie’s belly leapt up into her throat. It wasn’t just the change in altitude. It was the thought that somewhere down there on one of those ranches was the man who would change not just the next nine months, but the rest of her life. It all sounded like some kind of movie plot, not her actual life. She looked down at In Touch Weekly in her lap. On the cover was a picture of a handsome man next to a painfully gorgeous blonde woman. A lightning bolt zigzag had been superimposed through the middle of the couple, and the headline read “Derrick Stone and Anicka Andersen Finally Call it Quits- The Truth Behind their Messy Divorce.” It was an older issue, but Gracie had dug it up from her best friend Becca’s stash. Becca was a celebrity gossip junkie, and her pe
nchant paid off for Gracie. Gracie wanted to know everything there was to know about that man on the cover. She had plumbed Becca’s deep well of knowledge, raided her stash of gossip mags, scoured the Internet, and even visited a couple Derrick Stone fan pages to see what his adoring public had to say about him. Stone was, after all, waiting for her somewhere down there in Montana.
Everyone who owned a television set or had been to the movies knew who Derrick Stone was. He lived a life that normal people only dreamed of. As a child he had gotten his start as the irksome but lovable neighbor boy on a cable sitcom. He broke into his first Hollywood movie at age thirteen, and rather than suffering the downward-spiraling fate of most child stars, his career only got better as he got older. He landed the role of head gunslinger in the remake of an old western and quickly became nicknamed “the Paul Newman of the twenty-first century.” Movie star handsome, yes, but the boy could actually act, too. Anyone who had seen his dozens of movies and kept track of his equal numbering awards could tell you that.
Stone was purported to be your all-around, down-to-earth, good-guy type. Sure he was richer than God, but he didn’t let the stardom go to his head. At least, that’s what the gossip columns and late night talk shows would have you believe. Sure, he had gone through his playboy phase in his twenties- it was almost a requirement for men in the public spotlight- but as he got older he had settled down. Part of it was his marriage to Danish supermodel Anicka Andersen. Though as In Touch would tell you, that had lasted only briefly and hadn’t ended well. Gracie had turned up a wealth of facts and opinions concerning that particular debacle. According to some, Stone had caught Anicka in bed with another man; according to others it had been Stone who’d been caught with the other man. The divorce proceedings escalated into all the screaming-match, mud-slinging, cocktail-pouring-over-the-head shenanigans that the adoring public so loves to see from celebrities.
Gracie liked Stone’s movies well enough, though action-adventure had never been much her thing. She was more of a romantic-comedy type herself. She could see where people could praise his acting prowess. As for his personality, she would have to judge that for herself. And by the looks of it she would be finding out within the next hour or so. She hoped she at least liked him, because if all went as planned she would soon be carrying his baby.
*
Gracie was beat: dog-tired, dead on her feet beat. It had been yet another long day at the diner, followed by a three-mile trail run with the girls in preparation for the upcoming 5K. And the day wasn’t over yet. It was date night. Every Tuesday night she and Becca got together to cook a yummy dinner and watch their favorite motorcycle gang drama on cable. Neither of them really cared much about the story line, they just liked to swoon over the main character, a tough but soft-hearted bad boy called Deuce.
Gracie dropped her keys on the hallway table and bent to pick up the mail. Bill, bill, junk mail, more junk mail…a thick manila envelope surfaced to top of the pile of unpleasant postal trash. Her name was typed professionally in the center of the envelope, but there was no return address. Odd. Gracie turned it over in her hands. The postmark on the top corner read Los Angeles, California. Gracie didn’t know anybody in California, let alone Los Angeles. Perhaps it was more spam. With the recent email trend of long-lost relatives offering inheritance, and African princes trying to give away their vast empires, it wasn’t so unlikely that someone had gone the old-fashioned route with the scam game. Of course, it was just as likely these days that the enveloped was packed with Anthrax. Mentally going through the list of possibilities, Gracie skeptically flipped over the enveloped and tore it open.
Gracie never expected the letter she found inside. It read:
From the Offices of Maxwell, Maxwell, and Goldstein
231 W. 16th Street
Suite #11
Los Angeles, California 90015
Ms. Johnston,
Salutations. Our CLIENT, who would prefer to remain unnamed at this point in time, wishes to offer you a one-in-a-lifetime business proposition. It is of the utmost importance that you keep this letter and all further correspondence strictly CONFIDENTIAL. You have been recommended to us by an anonymous source and, after careful consideration, have been selected based on a number of criteria to submit your application for this opportunity. Factors taken into consideration for the selection process included: physical appearance, physical health, emotional stability, education level, genetic history, and criminal history, to name a few.
If you are chosen for opportunity you will be paid a sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) to conceive and carry to term a CHILD for our CLIENT.
At this point Gracie put the letter down in disbelief. Now she’d seen it all. But what kind of scam was this? So far they hadn’t asked for any money. They hadn’t asked her to send her credit card, social security number, or even her mother’s maiden name to some “secured” source. Intrigued, she read on:
Upon delivery, you will relinquish all rights to the above-mentioned CHILD to our CLIENT to raise as his own as he sees fit. You will not attempt to seek out our CLIENT or the CHILD in the future. Once you relinquish the CHILD, no further contact will be permissible. Furthermore, after conception contact with our CLIENT will not be permissible. All contact concerning prenatal care and delivery will be handled through our offices.
If you are interested in this very lucrative opportunity please complete the attached application form and return it to the address listed above. If you are selected to move on to the next phase in the application process you will be contacted with further instruction.
On behalf of our CLIENT, we thank you for your time and deliberation on this matter. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact our offices at the number listed below.
Sincerely,
Alfred P. Maxwell, Sr.
Maxwell, Maxwell, and Goldstein
(424) 861-9025
Gracie almost tossed the whole envelope into the trash along with the rest of the junk mail; but something stopped her. Could this Alfred P. Maxwell be for real? It was almost too bizarre to not be true. She tapped her fingernails on the envelope thoughtfully. One million dollars. To do what exactly? Have a baby? But there was something about the letter that bothered her. What was it?
After conception.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock at the front door. Becca with her signature knock. Flamboyant and full of life, Becca always made sure her presence was known. Even if she hadn’t been standing right behind the door, Gracie would have heard that knock from anywhere in the townhouse.
“It’s open,” she called.
“Finally,” announced Becca, bouncing through the door, “I thought Tuesday would never come. I need me my Deuce fix, sister!”
Gracie laughed. Her best friend wasn’t a sister- in fact she was quite the opposite- but she loved to use the lingo. She had grown up with Gracie and was practically part of the family. Where Gracie was tall, curvy, and mocha-colored, Becca was a short, porcelain-skinned redhead who didn’t even weigh one-ten soaking wet. Gracie’s long dark hair fell halfway down her back in an ebony ripple, while Becca’s mop stuck out every which way in fiery curls. But appearance aside, they couldn’t be closer friends. They shared clothes, secrets, and dreams. They had even been known to read each other’s thoughts: a talent that Becca showed off at that very moment.
“What’s up with the letter?” she asked without preamble.
Gracie glanced down at the envelope she was still holding in her hand. There was no use trying to hide it from Becca, she would just drag it out of her eventually.
“Just some stupid junk mail,” answered Gracie.
“Right,” said Becca. “That why you’re practically about to burn a hole though it with your fingers?” Before Gracie could say a word Becca plucked the letter from her hand. “You don’t mind do you?”
“Go ahead,” Gracie sighed, “I really don’t even think it’s real. I don’t know how they got my addre
ss.”
Becca scanned the letter then lowered it slowly. “Woah.”
“I know, right?” Ready to drop the conversation, Gracie turned and headed for the kitchen.
Becca followed on her heels like an excited puppy, carrying the letter. “Who do you think he is?”
“Who do I think who is?”
“The client. I mean, he’s got to be super rich, doesn’t he? Like a movie star, or one of those stock market guys, or maybe a prince or something!”
“Okay, okay, slow down girlfriend.” Gracie turned and held up a hand. “Number One: this client probably doesn’t even exist. Number Two: did you even read what their proposition is?”
“Yeah, it looks like they want to pay you a million bucks to get knocked up by some rich guy.”
“Wow, have I ever told you that you have a way with words?”
“Well, why beat around it? That’s what they’re saying, isn’t it? Put it however you want. What I don’t get is: is this some rich guy’s kinky fantasy? I mean, if he just wants a kid why doesn’t he just adopt one?”
“I don’t know why we’re even talking about this,” Gracie tried to put a stop to the conversation again. She turned to the fridge and pulled out a package of fresh shrimp. “You going to help me peel or what?”
Becca rolled up her sleeves and joined Gracie at the sink. “You got something more important to talk about than a bazillionaire who wants you to bear his child?”
Gracie was silent for a moment as she pulled the shells off of the fat shrimp and tossed them into a bowl of cold water. “Maybe he wants to pass on his genetics or something.”
The Baby Shower Page 10
