“I see,” replied Kady. “So I take it you’ve been in the industry for a while now then?”
“Well, yes, I’d say that I have,” she agreed, extending her hand as though preparing to shake Kady’s and introduce herself.
“Ms. Caldwell?” said the receptionist. “Looks like they need you now.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, young lady, but duty calls. Maybe I’ll see you again soon?”
“Yes, maybe,” she agreed with a smile as she watched the woman go. She couldn’t decide if she liked her for being so kind, or hated her for getting to go back before everyone else. Her interview must already be pre-approved, most likely. Then again, as a woman who looked to be in her fifties, it was likely that it was. It was much harder to find older models that still had such a perfect figure or pretty face, which the woman definitely had.
“This is just so…” Kady began, and then shook her head with irritation. The back of her head hit some piece of paper that was pinned to the bulletin board, and she turned to look at it just for something to do that might distract her from her woes.
It said: ‘Do you have what it takes to be a surrogate mother? Unwed but wealthy man seeks young, reasonably attractive woman to birth his child. Room, board, and medical expenses will be provided during the pregnancy for the lady who fits the bill. All inquiries please report at the indicated date and time to the address listed below.’
Kady stared at the flyer for a few minutes, contemplating. Pregnancy took practically a year, didn’t it? Sure, it might be a bit ironic to get the job and have a kid when she’d never even done 'the thing' one did to get a kid. She’d been far too busy trying to establish herself to worry about dating, and she’d been a part of the modeling circuit since she was fifteen, so that meant she hadn’t even had a high school crush to speak of. The only guy she’d ever kissed was a fellow model in some cutesy ad campaign six years ago.
However, there were still so many people in this room that she despaired at having even the smallest chance of landing this job. At least if she had room and board for nine months, she could save up a bunch of money for a place and be able to get a good job lined up until it was time for her maternity leave, and then she’d be all set once the deed was done.
Of course, it would probably hurt like hell to give up a child she had carried inside her for nine months, but from where she was sitting right now, it seemed like a far better choice than finding a bench in Central Park to sleep on tomorrow night. She hadn’t been looking forward to that at all. When she looked at her options, they were depressingly few.
Biting at her lower lip, and without allowing herself a second to doubt, she tore one of the slips with the address written on it from the flyer and grabbed her belongings, bolting for the door. Kady wasn’t sure what to expect from the interview as she read the little slip of paper for the third time, memorizing the words. Maybe he was crazy, and she knew she was definitely crazy for considering it, but it just might be the opportunity she needed to keep her head above water. It couldn’t hurt just to go talk to him, right?
The refined, older woman she’d been speaking to stepped out of the back room soon afterwards and looked around the room.
“Damn it, I don’t see her anywhere,” she said tersely. “Will you pull the files of all the black girls in their twenties? I’d like to start with them and see if I might find her again.”
“Yes, Ms. Caldwell,” the secretary at her side replied. “And if I do see her again, I’ll be sure to send her your way.”
“And what is this thing doing on my bulletin board?” she complained, as she pulled the billionaire ad down. “You know I don’t allow trash to be posted on my walls!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the secretary. “It won’t happen again.”
Chapter 3
When she returned to the apartment to finish up the packing and had tossed all of Melina’s things into her bedroom, Kady was in no mood to talk to anyone. She yanked the house phone cord out of the wall and packed the cat-shaped phone itself into one of the boxes. Since she hadn’t paid for her cell phone in a month either, and the service had been cut off a week ago, she knew that she could now pack in total, blissful solitude.
She decided to drag her own bed down the stairs and load it into the back of her friend’s pick-up truck while it was still available, since Ben had only agreed to help her move a couple of loads of the big stuff this afternoon. He had also told her he would have loved to take her in if he could, except he lived in one of the other apartments here and he doubted that Mrs. Knotts would let him.
“It’s all right, Ben,” sighed Kady. “You really don’t need to worry about me. I’m gonna pull myself right back onto my feet, and this time I’m gonna find a worthwhile roommate if possible; and if not, I just won’t have another roommate at all.”
“Still, I can’t believe your best friend for years would do you like that,” he grumbled. “That was real ghetto.”
“We did grow up in the ghetto, so it shouldn’t be such a surprise, but it really is,” Kady admitted. “I should have known as soon as I returned from college that she and I were worlds apart. I don’t know, maybe going to school on a scholarship isn’t as helpful as I thought it would be. I mean, here I am right back to square one, no closer to my dreams than I’ve ever been.”
“Oh no, Miss Kady, I don’t wanna hear that defeat in your tone,” Ben argued. “You’re lovely and talented and you’ve got that degree in computers. That’s gonna take you real far in life. I just know it.”
“Thank you, Ben,” she said, giving him a hug. “I really mean that. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime, eh?”
“You have my number once you get your phone back on. You be sure to give me a call.”
“I’ll do that,” she agreed. “Have fun at work tonight, okay?”
“I wonder how many people I’ll have to bounce tonight,” he said with a chuckle. “What do you think, Kady? Will my big, burly black ass be enough to keep all the drunks in line this time?”
Kady laughed. “It never does seem to, does it?”
“No,” he agreed. “It never does. Well, here you go, kid. I’m afraid the last of the boxes you’ll have to get another person to take over there.”
“Oh, I already got all my boxes stashed, thanks. The stuff that’s still in there either belongs to Melina or I’m not interested in bringing it. That couch, for example. We dove it out of a dumpster, so it can go right back where it came from.”
“Great, then, you have a good night, and remember that I’m pulling for you,” he said. “And don’t forget to call the shelters another time. You might get lucky.”
“Yeah, thanks,” she replied. She sighed as she watched him drive away, wondering if she was ever going to see him again. He had been a good and kind neighbor, and she would miss him and his silly jokes. She turned abruptly and headed back up the stairs.
As she looked around the place that had been her home for the last seven months, she couldn’t help but sigh in regret. Kady had worked so hard to build something stable in her life, to help launch her career and hopefully become a space to funnel her creativity into fashion designs. That definitely wasn’t going to happen now, and the uncertainty of her future ate at her. As well, she was deeply upset about the feelings of betrayal that still simmered hotly at Melina’s actions.
She’d been planning to sleep here tonight on Melina’s bed, but she was still so mad at her that she couldn’t stand to be around her belongings anymore, so she took her last eighty dollars and the key to the apartment. The key she dropped off in the landlady’s box. The eighty dollars she used to find a really cheap motel room where she could sleep until they threw her out.
Maybe she’d go tomorrow to see that guy. It seemed like a rather desperate idea, having a baby just so you could get on your own two feet. It was depressing, really, and it almost made her angry as well. She had spent four years at school and even more years than that taking odd modeling jobs, and yet here
she was, in some motel in a seedy part of town all thanks to one inconsiderate friend.
It was hard to believe that she was lying here contemplating such a drastic course of action, and yet, in her current frame of mind, she just couldn’t come up with a better way. It shouldn’t be too difficult to just go to a clinic, have the sperm of some guy she didn’t even know placed in her body, and birth a kid she most likely wouldn’t even get to know, right? She wasn’t sure she could lie to herself quite that well, but maybe by morning she’d have worked up enough courage to convince her resistant mind it was true.
Tears pricked at her eyes as she considered what a good mother she could make. She had taken care of plenty of cousins, nieces, and nephews in her time. She could bake cookies and cakes with the best of them, and she knew plenty about how to read them stories and teach them to talk and to go potty. So it would be such a waste, giving her baby to some single rich guy who, for some reason, didn’t have a wife and didn’t seem to want one.
“What reason could this guy possibly have for not wanting to get married and have a baby with his wife the normal way?” she asked herself out loud. “Is he even the kind of guy I’d want raising any kid of mine?”
With a name like the one on this slip, ‘Archer Devonshire’, he sounded like some kind of import from England or something. Probably as white as they came. So, if that was true, hopefully the racial diversity would not be a factor as well.
“It’s either this guy or a park bench,” she grumbled. “Either way I go, tomorrow is going to mark one hell of a change in my world.”
Chapter 4
Morning came far too soon as far as Kady was concerned. She took the overnight bag that she’d brought with her to the motel back to her storage unit via the bus, and then took the train out to the White Plains area, where Archer Devonshire’s house was located.
She got out of the train and walked for about a mile before she reached the main road of the house she was looking for. It took her another fifteen minutes of walking to get halfway close to the street number listed, and she was already becoming exhausted by the effort. The houses along this road were more ornate, with huge yards and fancy drives leading up into them. Some of them took up entire city blocks just to themselves.
“I didn’t even know there was a place like this in the Bronx,” she complained tiredly.
A black town car stopped beside her on the road and the tinted window slowly rolled down, revealing a kind-looking man in his late sixties, wearing a navy blue suit and matching navy hat pressed to crisp perfection. The chauffeur leaned out the window and asked, “Do you require a ride somewhere, miss?”
“Oh yes, thanks,” she said with a smile, relieved she wouldn’t have to keep walking through the warren of mansion-like houses on her towering high-heeled shoes. “Wait, you don’t have anybody back there, do you?”
Kady tried to peek into the back seat, but couldn’t penetrate the dark, almost black, tinted glass of the window.
“No, miss, not right now,” he smiled, and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled reminded her of her old neighbor Ben, whom she probably wouldn’t see again. “However, you may prefer to sit in front.”
“Oh, sure,” she agreed. “I wouldn’t want to look too fancy for the place I’m heading anyway.”
“Get in, then,” he said. “I’m Daryl, by the way.”
“Hi, Daryl,” Kady replied. Once she was inside the car, she showed the address to him, and he raised one brow delicately.
“You are acquainted with Mr. Archer, then?” he asked, glancing at her figure and nodding.
“Uh, no, we’ve never met,” she explained. “I’m hoping he will hire me for—well, for a job he recently placed an ad for.”
“Pray tell, what sort of job does a playboy billionaire advertise for?” he asked, finding it difficult to hide his curiosity now.
“Oh, so this guy’s a playboy?” asked Kady nervously, and a billionaire, she said to herself. It was no big surprise though, when she thought of the high-handedness of the wording in the ad, and the fact that he didn’t seem to play by society’s normal rules. “I didn’t know that. You don’t think he’d—um—put up a false ad, just to trick a woman into coming out here, do you?”
“I doubt it,” he replied. “He can get women anytime he wants. He wouldn’t need to trick them.”
“But why would a playboy be interested in starting a family anyway?” Kady muttered under her breath.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I’m just wondering whether or not I should turn around right now and forget the whole thing.”
“I’ll tell you what: is this just an interview?” Daryl asked.
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” she replied.
“Then I’ll wait around for a while and see if you come back out,” he offered. “I’ve got to eat my lunch somewhere anyway, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” she agreed, touched by his kind offer, suddenly feeling a little less alone in the world. “Thanks.”
“It’s not a problem,” he said, grinning. Daryl’s expression turned serious, the merry twinkle in his eye fading to be replaced by concern and a warning “And also, you should be careful in there, miss. Archer’s really good at manipulating women, and you don’t seem like you’re the party-girl type. I’d take anything he has to say as questionable until you have a chance to check up on it.”
“So you don’t think he’s overly honest either?”
“The guy made his money selling penny stocks,” he said pointedly. “You must have heard how jaded that lot can be. In fact, I even heard that one of his employees was skimming off of investments not too long ago. Archer got hauled into court over it, in fact, but I guess his mother must have fixed things since he didn’t get any jail time over it.”
“Well, did Archer know his broker was skimming?”
“No, that’s just the thing,” he said. “He normally would have fired anyone he even thought might be doing it on the spot, but this guy was really good. They threw him into jail for five years, but they didn’t do much more than slap Archer on the wrist and tell him to hire better lackeys in the future. But that’s the way big business works, I guess.”
“I see,” said Kady slowly, all her nerves rushing back in a big ball that settled squarely in the pit of her stomach.
“Well, here we are, miss,” said Daryl with another small smile, this time conspiratorial. “Head on in there and get that job. Hold your head up high, smile, and act like it’s already yours.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks. I will,” she responded weakly, even though she was seriously thinking she didn’t even want to walk in the door.
Kady’s knees began to buckle as she stepped up and found a sign on the front door, written in perfect cursive script, saying that the surrogate mother candidates should go around back and walk in the open door. She felt weird creeping around in the back yard of what amounted to a mansion, and besides that, who knew how many back doors she was likely to find in the back of such a huge place?
If she thought her legs were trembling before, she was seriously mistaken. She barely made it past the gate before she felt a full-blown panic attack coming on. Breathe, just breathe, she whispered it to herself like a mantra as she crept past hedges of impeccably manicured hydrangea and brightly colored zinnias that seemed to mock her, their cheery petals fluttering in the soft breeze like they were shaking with laughter. At her.
Really? She hadn’t panicked like that in years. She completely owned her body. She was in control. She was like magic out on the stage. So now here, in the middle of some stranger’s back yard and inches from finding the solution to all of her mounting problems, she was going to panic?
“Get ahold of yourself!” she hissed, making sure her subconscious brain heeded her command. “That’s enough out of you. I need food on the table and a roof over my head, and that’s all there is to it. I deserve a lot better than this, but this is all there is. Now get in t
here.”
Finally, steeling herself against whatever unknown situation would greet her inside, she stepped up to the door and raised her hand to knock.
Chapter 5
When Kady went to knock on the door, a butler swiftly opened it before she had the chance, as if he was waiting for her. He looked her over with an assessing, slightly condescending, air before he inquired, “Are you here for the surrogate mother position, miss?”
“Um, yes,” she answered, unable to continue looking the man in the eye.
“Oh, that’ll never do, miss,” he replied, his eyes softening with a hint of kindness at her obvious discomfort. “If you can’t even look me in the eye, you’re not going to last five minutes with Mr. Archer. He’ll eat you alive, make no mistake.”
“I really need to do this, though,” she pleaded, not sure who she was trying to convince more, the butler or herself.
“I won’t ask you why, but I will say this. Mr. Archer will definitely find you attractive, and that’s half the battle right there. If you still have the courage, go ahead and join him and the other women in the salon. It’s through that door right there. And good luck, my dear. I think you’re the nicest one who has come through that door today as well as the prettiest. If he does pick you, it will be my pleasure to serve you during your stay.”
“Stay?” she repeated. “Then he means for the mother to stay here? Not in an apartment or something?”
“Yes, of course,” he commented. “He’ll want to make certain you are properly cared for, after all.”
Kady nodded, for a brief moment, letting herself indulge in the fantasy of living in this gorgeous mansion rather than the park bench that she had been envisioning for days. She stared at the door, taking a deep, calming breath, the panic that had erupted in her chest just outside still fluttered like a hundred butterflies trapped beneath her ribcage, instead of the million that she had experienced earlier.
Dazzle: The Billionaire's Secret Surrogate (Contemporary BWWM Romance) Page 2
