by Simply BWWM
“Thank you, Kelly. You’re an amazing friend.” Jasmine smiled at her.
“Well, I try to be.”
They sat on the porch swing and talked for a long while, and when Jasmine was finished with her soup, she began shelling the peas with her friend as their conversation wandered over many different things and went in a wide range of directions.
The sun set brilliant and golden on the sea, sinking down past the horizon, and finally Jasmine said goodbye to her friend and drove home feeling as if all of the world was right again.
***
Jasmine lived in a Queen Anne styled home that had been built at the turn of the century. It had a turret at one corner, a gabled roof that sloped downward on one side, and a balcony off of the top floor that also served as a roof to the room below it. The balcony had a full balustrade around it and was shaped as a big square. There was a bay window that extended off of one side of the house, looking over the garden on that side. On the other side of the house was a driveway and a detached garage.
There were white and pink roses that grew up both sides of the stairs on the front porch, and around the house she had a pretty white picket fence. A green lawn carpeted her yard, and in the front were a few big leafy trees that kept the summer heat at bay.
Rather than having a swing on her front porch like Kelly had, she had chosen instead to have a small café table and a couple of chairs. She sat outside once in a while and sipped tea on weekend mornings, but she was more often in her back yard where she had a large stone patio and a bigger table for more company. There were pretty lights set about the patio and in warm weather, she enjoyed having people over to cook out or drink wine as they visited.
The rest of her back yard was like the front; grass, flowering bushes, some tall old shady trees, and flowers, but the back yard also had a small garden where she grew herbs and a little selection of vegetables. The pride of her home was the flowers that grew all around it. There were many kinds and she had planted them in such a way that no matter what the season was, there was always something growing and blooming in her yard.
The inside of her home was kept as much to the original build as possible, with hardwood floors, crown molding, tall wide windows, arched doorways, and old chandeliers that hung in the bigger rooms and lit them with a soft and glowing light. Her furniture was also a vintage style, harking back to a more elegant time.
Jasmine was sitting on her sofa in the living room a few days after she had been to the doctor when there was a knock at her door. She looked up from the laptop in front of her where she had been looking at real estate that might work for her flower shop, and frowned. She hadn’t been expecting anyone.
Rising from the sofa, she went to the door and opened it to discover Cameron Elliott standing there in front of her with a box under one arm. He smiled at her and she tried not to look as incredulous as she felt about seeing him there.
“Cameron! What a surprise! Won’t you come in?” she asked, stepping back to let him come into her home. She blinked as he went past her, stunned that he had just walked into her living room. She couldn’t have been more surprised by any other person at her door.
“I’m sorry to drop by so unexpectedly like this. I hope I didn’t interrupt you too much,” he said with a polite smile as he looked at her. She saw the smile on his face had reached his eyes, and it made her smile back at him and think what a good man he was. It was inherent in everything about him.
“Not really no, I’m just looking at real estate. Actually, down closer to where your office is,” she admitted shyly as she indicated her laptop sitting on the table before the sofa.
“Can I take that for you? Get you a drink perhaps?” she asked, looking at the box in his arms.
He blinked and laughed, looking down at it. “Well yes, actually, this is for you. It’s the music machine that you mentioned. It’s the best one I could find. I thought I’d bring it over myself, and give it to you. I want to make sure that it’s the right one for you and that you’re comfortable with it.”
She gasped and grinned at him. “Wow, that was fast! Thank you!”
He set it on the table near them and she opened the box and lifted the little machine out, turning it over in her hands and then handing it to him so she could dig the instructions out and read them. She mumbled through them aloud and then walked back to the sofa and sat on it, looking up at him.
“Well, shall we try it out?” she asked with a smile.
He walked over and handed it to her, “I’d be glad if you did,” he said with a chuckle. “I want to know it’s the right one for you.”
She set it on her belly and pressed the button, and a moment later, soft classical music was playing. She smiled up at him. “I think that’s perfect! I love it! It’s comfortable, it’s not too heavy, and the sound and volume are just right. I see that I can adjust them, but they’re good. Thank you so much!”
She looked up at him with genuine delight and he shrugged and smiled, sliding his hands into his pockets as he watched her. “That’s perfect. I’m glad that it works.”
“I’ll use it often. I promise.” She told him as she set it aside on the table and stood up. She cleaned up the packaging from the box and threw the box away, coming back in to find him standing there with a white envelope in his hand.
“I also got this for you. It’s concert tickets to the San Francisco Symphony. They’re doing Mozart, and I thought that you might like to go. I thought that if recorded music was good for the baby, then live music would be infinitely better if it was the same classical music that you were playing here on the machine.” He handed the envelope to her.
She stared at him and smiled, taking it from him. “Wow… thank you, that’s very generous. I’m sure you’re right and it will be very good for the baby.”
He lifted his brows a little and pointed to the envelope. “There are two tickets in there, so that you can take someone with you, and you won’t have to go alone.”
Jasmine bit at her lower lip a little as she looked at the envelope in her hand. The first person who had crossed her mind was Kelly, but then she had another idea, and she looked back up Cameron.
“You know, since you were so thoughtful to buy the tickets, and since this is your child, would you like to go with me? I do know that the baby can hear voices outside the womb, and I think it would be nice if this baby could hear yours, since you’re his father. I’d be glad to have you go with me to this symphony, and then the baby can hear you talking, and that would be nice.” She smiled at him sweetly.
He hesitated a moment and then smiled back at her. “Actually, you know what, I’d like that. Thank you, that was very thoughtful of you to offer. I’ll go with you. It’s next Saturday night.”
“Great! That will be a lot of fun.” She felt good that she had asked him, and she knew as she did it that it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll drive us up to the city, if you like. I can pick you up here, and we’ll go. Does that work for you?” he looked happy that he was going.
“That’s perfect, thank you.” She grinned at him. “Oh! I was going to tell you that the baby’s last appointment went well. It’s growing as it should be, and everything was normal. I got to hear the heartbeat. It was at 155 beats per minute. That doesn’t really tell us much except that it’s healthy and it sounds the way that it’s supposed to.” She didn’t bother to add that the doctor had asked her out on a date.
He brightened and looked almost as if he was breathing a sigh of relief. “That’s good news. I’m glad for the update. So, you said you’d swing by the office after the next appointment?”
“Yes, I can do that.” she answered pleasantly.
“Here’s my cell phone number,” He said, handing her a business card and writing his private cell phone number on the back of it, “just text me when you want to meet and I’ll be there. Easily done.” He gave the card to her and she looked at both sides of it and set it on the table beside her laptop.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “You’re taking very good care of us.”
“I hope so. I want everything to be as good as it can be for you both.” He looked at her laptop where she had set his card and he slipped his hands into his pockets and then eyed her curiously. “You said that you were looking for real estate close to where my office is?”
“Yes, I was hoping to find an empty little shop down there.” Her brain already skipping ahead to the thought that he might know when something came available there, since he worked down there all the time.
“What kind of a shop are you thinking of opening?” He watched her with an intrigued expression.
She crossed her arms over her chest and smiled at him. “I’d love to open a flower shop there, if I can find the right spot. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and because of this surrogacy for you, I’m hoping to be able to do it. I won’t try to open it until after the baby is born, but I’m hoping that one of the store fronts in that area will open up and I can lease it or even buy it between now and then so that I have a place to begin my business.”
He raised his brows a bit. “That’s a great idea. There’s only one flower shop down in that area, and it’s actually out on the edge of the neighborhood, so there wouldn’t be any real competition, and I think that kind of a business would do very well there. I’ll keep my eyes open and if I see any come up, or if I hear any of the other people down there talking about leasing or selling a place, I’ll let you know.”
She breathed a happy sigh. “Thank you so much! I really appreciate that.” He voiced her thoughts before she could, and it was a relief to her that he wanted to help her find a place there if he could. It didn’t surprise her that he offered. He was, as she had already thought more than once, a truly good man.
“Well, I should be going. I don’t want to keep you from what you were doing. I’ll see you on Saturday, for the symphony. We can go to dinner first, if you’d like. I know some wonderful places in the city.” He stopped just at the door and looked back at her as he offered dinner. “What do you think?”
Jasmine grinned her bright wide smile at him. “I think that sounds like a lovely night out. Thank you.”
He nodded and waved to her. “I’ll see you then. Let’s say four-thirty.” He headed out of the door and she watched him walk to his car, get in, and drive away. She smiled the entire time, thinking how nice it was that a man like him was going to be raising a child that she was bringing into the world.
“That was your daddy little one.” She said softly, looking down and patting her belly. “You’re going to have such a good life when you come out into this world and go home with him. He’s going to be the best dad in the world, and you are going to be so happy growing up with him.”
Chapter3
Saturday came and Cameron showed up exactly on time to pick up Jasmine. She had chosen to wear a pretty summer dress in a buttercream yellow, and dressy sandals. She knew that the color of the dress looked good on her and the flowing style of it would be perfect to wear for the concert.
Cameron was in a button up shirt, dress pants, and a sport jacket. He looked handsome in his casual way, and she liked it. He came to her door to get her and walked at her side back to the car, helping her in and closing her door behind her. She smiled about it, feeling a little spoiled by him, and enjoying it.
They talked about possibilities for her flower shop and different things about the pregnancy on their way up to San Francisco. They were lucky to hit a slight break in traffic, just before rush hour started, and they made it to the city in good time.
He took her to a restaurant in Japan town and they enjoyed a relaxing and quiet meal there together. She had been curious about something, and she hadn’t thought she’d ever actually bring it up to him, but as they sat there talking about everything under the sun, she began to feel more and more comfortable with him, and the curiosity she had about the one question at the back of her mind kept at her so much that she finally decided to ask it.
They were walking from the restaurant back to the car to head to the symphony, and she looked over at him and gave him a shy sort of smile.
“I was wondering, and you can definitely stop me if this isn’t any of my business, but… you’re a handsome, funny, thoughtful, sweet, intelligent, well off guy. Why are you hiring a surrogate? Why aren’t you having a family the traditional way?” She had figured out that he wasn’t gay, and she didn’t want to mention to him that she had discovered he had hired more than one woman to be a surrogate, so she kept that part silent, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what a guy like him was doing being single and hiring women to have children for him.
He sighed long and deep, sliding his hands into his pockets. He looked away from her, studying the city around him with narrowed eyes as they walked, while he considered how to answer her. With a low voice, he told her the truth behind it.
“So, I was always one of the really smart kids. I figured out pretty quickly that most of the other kids didn’t like that too much. Most of the other kids wanted to blow school off, but I was fascinated with it. I loved learning. I wanted to learn everything that I could as fast as I could. So much of it made sense to me, and it came really fast and easy to me. There wasn’t a challenge. The teachers and my parents started putting me in classes where I could be challenged more, and that ended up accelerating me through a lot of my school years. I wound up graduating early and I went to college young. It was the same thing at college that it was in school. I aced the classes and wound up graduating with four degrees really early.” He chuckled a little in an ironic way, rather than in a humorous way.
She watched him, her heart feeling sad for him as she realized what a secluded childhood he must have had. She knew that no one in school liked a nerd who truly knew it all. She could see where his story was going as he told it.
“So, as you can imagine, with all of that school work being done, there wasn’t really much time for socializing, and I didn’t make socializing a priority, so I wound up not really learning how to talk to girls or women, and I wound up not dating very much. I was shy around ladies. I didn’t know what to say to them. I’m still shy around women.” He mused and shrugged.
Jasmine frowned. “You’re not shy around me.” She looked at him with an encouraging smile.
He stopped in his tracks and looked right at her in surprise, his eyes widening. “You’re right! I hadn’t realized that at all. I’m not shy around you. It feels very… natural with you. I feel comfortable with you, and I can talk to you about anything. Even tonight, I think we’ve hit every subject that could possibly come up to discuss, at least on some level.” He laughed then, a happy and carefree laugh.
“You’re sweet and friendly, and I can be myself around you. It’s nice… almost a relief. I can’t be myself around many women. I’m guarded… I guess. Before I was a student with not much money and I had no time to date because I was working so much.
Now I’m well off, as you put it, and I have time to date, but it seems like the women I meet are only after the money, rather than being with me for who I am. That’s why I’m still single, and why I am using surrogacy to become a father. I have a legacy to leave now, and I want to be sure that there is a future heir to leave it to. I want a son… someone to carry on my name and to inherit all that I’ve built up. I made my money fast, from college to now. I happened to come up with the right ideas at the right time, and definitely in the right place, and because of that lucky combination, fortune smiled down on me.
Now I’m getting a little older and I’m beginning to worry that I’m running out of time. I do want a family, and I want to have one while I’m still young enough to raise my children and be a part of their lives for many years… you know, see my grandchildren and god willing, my great grandchildren if I can. I know that if I don’t get started soon, those years at the other end of my life will be too short, and time will pass too quickly.” He sigh
ed and turned to face her.
“I haven’t met anyone who I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with. I had to make a tough decision, and I chose to have kids without the wife so that I didn’t miss out on all of it, and instead I’m only missing out on the marriage.” He shrugged a little and gazed at her, and in some part of his heart, he hoped that she understood.
She smiled at him. “I’m glad that you’re starting a family, but I think perhaps you may still have a chance at love too. You’re a good man, and I know someday there’s going to be a lady who doesn’t make you feel shy, who is a good partner for you, and with whom you’ll find someone that you could share your life with. At least, I hope you find that person, for your sake and for the baby’s sake.”
He saw that she meant it earnestly, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude that she was there with him, doing so much to help him and make his life better, not only by carrying his child to give him a family, but by being his friend as well. He swallowed and gave her an appreciative look. “I don’t have many real friends, but I would count you among them. Thank you.” He leaned over to her then and hugged her, and she hugged him back just as warmly as she would have hugged Kelly.
