by Simply BWWM
Jasmine stared at her and tried to remain as indifferent as she could. She was dumbfounded at the name that had come out of the woman’s mouth. It was the name that had been on the tip of Jasmine’s tongue only moments before; the name that she had withheld for discretionary purposes. The name of the father of the baby she was carrying.
Try as she might, Jasmine couldn’t get around the shock that Cameron had hired two women to simultaneously carry surrogate children for him. She remembered what he had told her just the day before about wanting a son and how important it was to him. She wondered if he was trying to increase and better his chances of having a son by having two women carry surrogate children for him, or if it was some other reason that he was bringing two children into the world at once. simultaneously.
Eva looked at her with a strange expression. “Do you know him?” She asked, studying the look in Jasmine’s eyes.
“Yes, I’ve heard of him.” Jasmine answered, feeling her stomach tighten as she said it. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t her business, she thought to herself, but she didn’t like it.
The receptionist looked over at her then. “Miss Thompson, he’s ready for you now.”
Jasmine looked over at the round woman sitting behind the wall at the open window before her. She was the only one working there. She was the only receptionist who worked in the office.
“Thank you, Jeannie.” Jasmine smiled at her and stood up. She looked over at the other woman who was watching her interestedly.
“It was nice meeting you, Eva. Good luck with your baby and your surrogacy.” Jasmine meant it, though she was still reeling in a way from learning what she had about Cameron.
Eva waved her fingers at Jasmine, her shiny red nails matching the red on her full lips. “It was very good to meet you, too. Good luck with your baby!” she smiled widely again, and Jasmine went into the examination room to see the doctor.
He came in shortly after she was ready for him, not making her wait long at all. He measured her belly and was talking to her about the baby and the pregnancy as he set up a heart monitor machine on her belly to hear the baby’s heartbeat.
“Well this little one sounds as if it’s doing well.” He grinned at her. He had short brunette hair that was gelled and carefully combed. His eyes were hazel, and his jaw chiseled. Jasmine had thought to herself the first time she had met with him that he was quite a good-looking man. She was glad that he was also thoughtful and kind.
“How are you feeling? Are you eating right and getting enough rest?” he asked, sitting on his swivel stool and looking at her pleasantly.
She nodded as much as she could while lying on the table beside him with her head on a pillow. “I am. I’m eating strictly organic foods and working out regularly still, but I’m being careful about that. I’m doing maternity yoga and getting about eight hours of sleep a night.”
He grinned. “That’s good. That’s the best report I could have gotten from you.” He looked at her curiously then and gave her a coy smile. “What about your social life… are you seeing anyone… romantically?”
She thought for a moment that he was going to talk with her about intimate relations during pregnancy and she felt her cheeks warm slightly. “No, there isn’t anyone in my life that way.”
He nodded slowly and the grin stayed on his face as he gazed at her. “That’s good to hear.” He watched her closely as he spoke. “I know that this is a surrogate pregnancy for you, so you won’t be keeping the baby, and I know it might seem like a strange time to ask you this, but… I was wondering if I could take you out for dinner sometime. That is… if it wouldn’t be too weird for you to go out on a date with your doctor.”
She blinked and stared at him in amazement. “You… you want to go out on a date with me?” She could scarcely believe that she was asking him the question, and more than that, that he had asked her out on a date.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I do. You’re a really sweet lady, you’re beautiful, you’re brave enough and kind enough to do something like this for someone else who needs the help. It says a lot about the kind of person you are, and I like that. I like you. It wouldn’t be weird for me to date you, and after you have this baby I doubt I’ll be seeing you again unless you do another surrogacy, so I thought I’d better ask now while I have you as a captive audience.” He chuckled a little and kept his eyes on her.
She laughed a little then too and sat up, looking down for a moment before she met his eyes again and answered him. “I’m not sure if this is a good time for me to start dating anyone. I’m trying to focus on the pregnancy and on a few other things, so I’m going to say not right now, but thank you for asking me. I am pretty flattered.”
He looked away with a half-smile, and then looked back at her before he walked out of the examination room. “If you change your mind, you have my number. That’s a standing offer. I’ll see you next month.”
He closed the door behind him and she dropped her face into her hands and laughed at the irony that her good-looking doctor would ask her out while she was three months pregnant. She chuckled as she picked up her keys and her purse and wondered if she ought to change her mind about it. It might be nice to date a doctor, but it just seemed to strange to do it while she was pregnant with another man’s baby, even if that doctor had helped her to become pregnant with the other man’s baby in the first place.
Chapter2
Jasmine sat in her car after walking out of her appointment with Dr. Clayton, and frowned as she held on to the steering wheel. She was still parked, sitting in her car, her mind stuck on the fact that Cameron Elliot had two women doing surrogate pregnancies for him at the same time. She couldn’t seem to get over it.
Looking over at her purse, she dug in it for her cell phone and swiped her finger over the screen. Pressing the call button, she held the phone to her ear and chewed gently on her lower lip as she tapped her finger on the steering wheel.
“Hey Jas, what’s going on?” her best friend Kelly asked, sounding chipper and happy to hear from her.
“Are you busy? Something came up today that… well I guess it just has me a little… weirded out. Can I come over and talk to you?” she asked, hoping that Kelly was free. “I’m sorry it’s short notice.”
“Oh yeah, of course. I’m just rolling out dough to make pasta.” Kelly bubbled pleasantly.
“I love that you make your own pasta. Are you making chicken noodle soup?” Jasmine asked with piqued interest.
“Yes, would you like some?” Kelly was grinning, and Jasmine could hear it right through the phone.
“You know I live for your chicken noodle soup.” Jasmine answered as a smile came over her face. “And we need to talk. I need a different perspective. I’m way too close to this one to think about it clearly.”
“Okay. Chicken soup and advice is waiting for you. Come over anytime.” Kelly offered sweetly.
They said goodbye and ended the call, and Jasmine headed straight over to her best friend’s house.
Kelly Madison lived on the west side of the big hills that separated Silicon Valley on the east from the ocean on the west. Her house was a ranch, like many homes in the hills of California, and it sat on the side of a golden hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by tall redwood trees that protected it from the winter storms that sometimes rolled in from the Pacific.
Jasmine pulled her car through the white split rail fence and drove along the short driveway until she got to the house, where she parked out in front on the gravel drive. The house was buttery yellow with white trim. There were windows framed in white all the way around it, and wrap around porch that encircled three sides of it. On the front side, facing the blue sea that seemed to go on out forever until it met the horizon, hung a big white wooden swing, big enough for two people.
When Jasmine arrived, Kelly was sitting on the swing. She waved and called out to her. “Come on over here and sit with me. I have your soup ready for you.” There were flower pots sitting at each pos
t on the railing of the porch, and hanging from the eaves of the porch, and planted in the earth around the porch. No matter how warm it was outside, the plants kept it cool and pretty on the porch, and nearly fenced in with green leaves and flowers.
Jasmine walked up to the porch and crossed over it, picking up the bowl of chicken noodle soup from the little table beside the swing, and sitting down beside her best friend with the bowl in her hands. “This is paradise. It really is.” She sighed happily as she relaxed and smiled over at Kelly.
Kelly was thin and strong, she had endless energy and was someone who got up with the sun and worked hard or played hard, or relaxed well all through the day, until a reasonable bed time, and then she hit the hay every night and got a good night’s rest. She was a woman whose life was together.
She had a large garden that she tended, she ate only organic food, she made much of her own food like the pasta that was found in the bowl of chicken soup that Jasmine was eating. She did all of the work around her ranch, fixing fences, tending to the two horses she owned, as well as three goats, two dogs, and one cat who was rarely around.
She had a grove of orange trees and she sometimes set up a stall and sold those at farmer’s markets in the summer, along with other fresh vegetables from her beautiful garden. She also sold some of the flowers she grew, and the honey from her beehives near the orange grove.
Her hair was shoulder length and curly, her eyes were bright and dark, and she almost never wore makeup. She was a simple, clean, healthy, strong woman, who love nature more than the façade of life that she saw many other people living in within big cities. She had gotten a master’s degree in business and finance and then left the big city for the countryside.
She often did some work online, advising businesses and doing day trading, but she was more often kneeling on the ground with earth in her hands than she was trading stocks and creating business plans at her computer.
“What’s bugging you baby?” Kelly asked as she looked over at Jasmine. She had a burlap bag at her side, and a bowl in her lap. She was shelling peas.
Jasmine took a sip of the soup and savored it, closing her eyes and loving the taste as she chewed and swallowed. She was two bites in before she turned and looked at Kelly.
“So, I went to the doctor’s today.” Jasmine began, hardly able to believe that she was going to say what she had come to say.
“Yeah? What did he say?” Kelly asked, sliding a row of peas out of their shell and into the bowl in her lap.
Jasmine laughed for a moment, “Well, he said the baby and I are doing fine, and then he asked me to go out and have dinner with him.” She laughed again and shook her head.
Kelly’s jaw fell open and she stared at Jasmine. “He asked you to go out on a date with him?”
“Well yeah, he knows this is a surrogacy pregnancy; he’s the one who did it. He knows I’m not keeping the baby, that in six month’s it’ll be just me. He’s interested in dating me, and he said that he wanted to ask me out while I’m still going to him, because once I have the baby, I’ll be gone and he probably won’t see me again. He didn’t want to miss his chance.” Jasmine shrugged.
“Smart man. So, what did you tell him?” Kelly asked, eyeing her curiously as she popped open another pea pod.
“I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea. At least… not now.” She sighed and shook her head. “That’s not even why I came over here. As crazy as it sounds, that wasn’t even the weird part of the visit to the doctor.” Jasmine shook her head and looked over at Kelly as she ate another spoonful of her soup.
“So, what’s the weird part?” Kelly asked, popping a couple of peas into her mouth.
“The weird part is that I was sitting in the waiting room, waiting to see the doctor, when another pregnant woman came in. She was really pretty. She looked like she was from South America; Brazilian or Peruvian or something. Anyway, she and I started talking and it turned out that she was in there for a pregnancy as well, and that her pregnancy was a surrogacy too.” Jasmine frowned a little.
Kelly’s eyebrow lowered slightly as she listened.
“It’s not that weird; the doctor is a fertility specialist. I’m sure there are lots of women who go in there to do surrogacy pregnancies.”
Jasmine set the bowl down in her lap and looked over at Kelly in utter dismay. “The weird thing is that we’re sitting there talking about it and she asks me who the family is that I’m doing this for, and I didn’t want to tell her any details, I feel like that would be a violation of privacy for the guy, so I decide to keep it simple and I tell her that it’s for a local businessman there in Palo Alto. She pipes up that hers is a businessman there too, and that he’s this famous billionaire and she says his name. Cameron Elliot. She asks if I know him.” Jasmine shook her head and slapped her hand down on her leg slightly.
“Kelly, it’s the same guy I’m doing my surrogacy for. She’s two and a half months along and I’m three and a half months along. She’s having his kid too, one month later than me!” Jasmine groaned in frustration as she took another spoonful of the chicken soup.
Kelly’s eyebrows shot up and she turned her head away from Jasmine and stared straight forward. “Wow. That’s quite a surprise.”
Jasmine sighed. “It’s weird for me. It’s… bizarre. I don’t think I like it.”
Kelly shrugged and looked back at her. “You don’t have to like it. Jas, you’re being paid to have this guy’s baby. He’s a billionaire. He can afford as many kids as he wants to have. You’re giving him one, you’re being paid for it, and that’s all there is to it. I get it that it’s kind of weird that he’s having two at once with two different women, but hey… that’s his choice.
The bright side of that is that those kids are going to have a sibling that’s practically a twin, and they won’t be growing up alone. Siblings are important. They are built-in friends, most of the time. It’ll be good for them both.
I know it might seem strange, but if you think about it, it’s nothing to you if he does that. You’re in this for the money. Keep it simple. You have the kid in six months, hand it off to him, take the money, and go build your dream. There’s nothing to it.”
A slow smile spread over Jasmine’s face until it was a grin. “You know what? You’re right. I’m so anxious to get it going. I’ve worked so hard for it, and until now I just haven’t been able to get the funds together for it. Taking nine months out of my life to have this surrogate baby is no sacrifice at all, not when I look at the whole picture.
I’ll get the money I need to open my shop and make my dream happen. Who knows how long it would have taken me without this opportunity. Kelly, thank you. You’re the best. You have this uncanny knack for seeing the simple truth in everything and not getting too caught up in the details. It must be nice in your head. I sometimes wish I could go in there and poke around.”
Kelly laughed at her. “You are in there poking around right now, telling me about this situation with the other mother, and now you have my opinion on it. You poked around and now there’s a perspective on your stick.”
Jasmine laughed at her. “That’s true. See? You just did it again. I love that. You simplify everything. It’s good to do. I’ll have to try to do that more often in my life.”
“What you should be worrying about,” Kelly broke open another pod and slid the peas into the bowl, “is your flower shop. Where are you going to put it, what is it going to look like, all the details. You’re going to have enough funding from this to open it up and do well with it, but you need to start planning it now. That way after the baby is born you’ll be ready and you can go right in and do it.” Kelly gave her a wink.
Jasmine’s dark brown eyes lit up. “You know what, you’re right of course. When I went to go see Cameron yesterday, we met at his office in downtown Palo Alto, in the older part of town. It’s so pretty there! All the buildings on that street and in that neighborhood are so nice. They’re all older, sort of lik
e a vintage neighborhood. I loved it. I was even standing there looking at it, wondering about having a flower shop on that street, or one close by it. It would fit right in there so perfectly.”
A day-dreamy look came over Jasmine’s face and Kelly watched her with a big smile. “So, check out the neighborhood, find out what they have for flower shops there already, do some homework and research and see if that’s a good spot, and if it is, then open your shop there. Get the planning done now. I’m sure storefront property there isn’t cheap, and I’m sure that it gets snapped up fast, so have a realtor on the line and have them keeping their eyes open for anything that might come up around there for you. Get your plan in gear.”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I get the big lump sum payment for the surrogacy at the end when he takes the baby, but he is going to give me five thousand a month extra for every month of the pregnancy to help with expenses. I could put some of that to work for myself now and get the plans for the shop going. I think that’s a really good idea.”
