by Rye Hart
“Rebecca?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want a brother or sister?” I asked.
She nodded her head wildly as our food was set in front of us.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I want a best friend.”
“You know you could have one of those at school,” I said.
“But I want someone for home.”
I couldn't blame her there after the shit I witnessed on the playground.
“I would be a good big sister,” she said.
“I know you would, princess.”
“I’d help a lot.”
“Trust me. I don’t doubt that for a second. Now, why don’t you eat your dinner, and we’ll talk more about this later, okay?” I asked, not sure exactly what I was promising.
CHAPTER 2
HEATHER
Why does this have to be so damn hard?
I must have looked like a complete moron on the street as I stood frozen in place, in front of the doors to my bakery.
The greatest memories I had of Whitefish were in this same bakery I had purchased a few years back.
‘Aunt Eunice’s Doughy Rolls’ was the name back in the day. It got a laugh from the community and everyone flocked into those doors to get a taste of Aunt Eunice’s freshly-baked treats. I told myself one day I’d own a bakery like hers. My dream was to put smiles on people’s faces like she had put a smile on mine.
What I didn’t know was that I’d purchase it from her daughter soon after the old woman passed.
It came at a great time. My best friend, Nikki, had experienced a miscarriage that took her to her knees. And she needed her best friend to stick around town. I had a vision of one day getting out of Whitefish with her and never looking back. We had dreams of hitting the road together and starting our lives again somewhere big. Bright. Like California or Florida. Possibly Texas. But life always had a way of altering plans.
Nikki needed me for emotional support when her miscarriage tore her and her boyfriend apart, and a few weeks later the woman we all knew as Aunt Eunice passed away.
So, I bought the bakery and operated it under its original name.
A few years into the business, Nikki returned the favor to me when she was there for one of the toughest times of my life. I went through a bitter break-up with a man I truly thought was the one. It broke my heart and sent me into a drowning spiral of tears for what felt like forever. He was the first man I’d ever seen any sort of a future with, and just like that he dropped me. I turned to Nikki for support on many late nights when I couldn’t sleep, and she had the most brilliant suggestion. She proposed I do something to solidify my own independence. To remind myself of the strength I possessed as a businesswoman and the ruler of my own world.
So two years into owning my bakery, I renamed it ‘Heather’s Bake Shop’. Not as original as the founding title, but it was something I was damn proud of.
I was determined to prove that I didn’t need anyone’s money or reputation or support to run the bakery on my own.
Parents were never a source of support for me growing up. My parents were horrible at caring after themselves and even worse at taking care of another human being.
It was always up to me to make my way in the world.
I didn’t have a pretty past, but I was thankful for all the struggles I’d faced. They’d one day help me become the woman I’d always wanted to be: independent, strong and driven.
With my bakery, I could make my own reputation and make my own money to keep this place afloat without someone patting me on the back or picking me up anytime I fell.
That was always the plan. But plans don’t always go as planned in Heather’s world.
Turning on the lights of my bakery, I dropped my purse onto the counter. I had to get everything ready for the morning rush. I walked over to the refrigeration unit and started pulling out everything I needed. Eggs. Milk. Chilled butter that needed to sit on the counter. A bit of shredded cheese. Then, I moved on to the flour. The sugar. The powdered sugar. The vanilla extract.
I rolled my eyes as I stacked everything in the middle of the table.
The idea of a morning rush was a joke.
I was also in competition with another family bakery that had opened down the road shortly after me. That building was well-lit from the street and opened by a man and a woman who’d siphoned their retirement into the place, so they had the money upfront as well as the debt they’d dragged themselves into. And they really did it right. Painted signs on the windows advertised what they made. A beautiful hand-carved wooden door made people feel at home and led into an interior ambiance where people could sit down and eat.
No one could sit down at my bakery and eat anything. I barely had an operating budget, much less the means to decorate or buy furnishing.
I’d always favored assuming the best of others, but there were days where I couldn’t help by feel they’d sabotaged me on purpose. I’d have a sign made at the local shop after pinching pennies, but then they’d have a similar but bigger sign made up advertising the same thing. If my cinnamon rolls were buy-one-get-one, then their cinnamon rolls were fifty percent off, no matter what. If my cupcakes were a dollar off, then theirs were a dollar and a half off.
It really grated on my nerves.
All I had to do was hear back from the bank. As if on cue, my cell rang with the call I’d been expecting from them.
“Miss Palmer, this is Mark Kipler from the bank.”
“Hello, Mr. Kipler. I’m glad to hear from you?”
“I wanted to call you as soon as I could regarding your application for your loan.”
“Well, thank you for your promptness.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t offer you a loan at this time. The collateral you have doesn't exceed the amount of debt you’ll be in once we offer you this loan. That makes you a risky investment.”
“I understand, Mr. Kipler, but you have to spend money to make money,” I said.
“I understand that fully. My wife owns a business that she runs from our basement, but when you’re fronting with other people’s money, it’s a different game.”
“I’m keeping up with my payments. I haven’t missed one.”
“And when you whittle that loan down a bit, we can consider looking into this one again.”
“Mr. Kipler, I don’t have any other options. I need that money to expand. Otherwise, I’m going to go under,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Miss Palmer, but there’s nothing I can do. Bank policy states we can’t re-examine someone for a loan once they’ve been turned down until a six-month period has passed. If you keep good on your payments, we can talk again in six months.”
I sighed as I leaned against the edge of the counter.
“Thank you for calling, Mr. Kipler.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t help,” he said.
I hung up the phone and put my face in my hands. That loan had been my last shot. It was the last bank in town, and I’d known it was a risk since my original loan had come from there. But everyone else had turned me down, and I was desperate. If I couldn’t expand to keep up with that damn bakery up the road, I’d go under. I’d have to close my doors, and I would be three hundred thousand dollars in debt with no way to pay it off.
I already had the expansion plan figured out in my head.
There was an empty rental property next to me that would really set me up to compete. I could move the front of my store over a door, which put me closer to the road instead of tucked away on a corner with a side entrance down an alleyway. I could knock out the wall and have two spots to make food with, one for sweets for takeout and another for sweets in-house. I could have a small coffee bar and a sitting area. I could really compete with the bakery up the road if I had somewhere for people to get coffees, teas, and sodas, as well as have places to sit.
Of course all that planning didn’t mean crap, if I didn’t have the funds to put the plans to actio
n.
“Anyone in here?”
I smiled and shook my head as Nicole’s voice reached me. “Come on back, Nikki.”
“Who does a girl have to sleep with around here to get a bagel and cream cheese?”
“Nikki! Shut up and get back here.” I looked up as she walked in, but her face fell when she saw mine. Was I that transparent?
“Okay. I’m making coffee, and you’re going to talk. I’m also grabbing a bagel with some cream cheese. I’ll leave some cash in the register.”
“One bagel isn’t going to make a difference,” I said.
“Tough. Now how do you get this thing to open?”
“Press the red and the purple button down together.”
I heard the register ding open before she pulled her wallet out.
I’d known Nikki for years. We grew up in Whitefish together and had plans to get out of this small town one day. But life happened, things spiraled, and pretty soon, I was buying this hellhole for my bakery, and Nikki was trying to come back from the largest loss a woman could ever experience.
“Bold or extra bold?” Nikki asked.
“As black as you can get it,” I said. “Make it sludge.”
“Yikes. Maybe we should go straight for the alcohol?”
I giggled as Nikki began crunching into her bagel.
“Start spilling. I’ll get you coffee while you talk.”
“Well, it all started three weeks ago when my landlord informed me that my rent is going up almost a thousand dollars.”
“Excuse me, what?” she asked.
“Yep. I only signed a six-month lease, so once that lease comes back up, rent’s going up. And I don’t have the money for that and not enough to move either.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Have you applied for loans?” she asked.
“You have enough things to worry about. As far as the loans, I applied with everywhere I could think of, but everyone’s turned me down. My back’s against a wall, Nikki. I have no idea what to do. I’ve drained my measly savings account. I sold off my car, and I’m walking everywhere. I took that extra money from gas and insurance and threw it back into the business. Nothing is working. That bakery up the road is sinking me, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Thank fuck you don’t have student loans.”
“Not helping,” I said.
“Have you tried running discounted specials? Like, Uber-discounted? To drive business to you? Maybe some people just don’t know what you have to offer.”
“I’ve tried that. The bakery up the road discounts slightly underneath me to drive the customers to them.”
“What about a freebie day? You could open on a Saturday and set up a little stand outside. People could try for free. Those cocksuckers up the road can’t beat free.”
“I’m sure they’d find a way,” I said.
“You could always call up Charlie.”
I slowly panned my gaze up to her and watched her grin from beyond her coffee mug.
“You know that boy has crushed on you since high school, and he’s loaded now. I’m sure one phone call to him while batting your eyelashes would dig you out of all this.”
“One, I don’t like Charlie. I never have, and I never will. Second, I’m not calling him up to use him for his money. I’m not that kind of person,” I said.
“You could trade a date for it.”
“I’m pretty sure that borderlines on prostitution.”
“I didn’t say sleep with him.”
“Moral prostitution.”
“You and your ethical code.”
“I know. It’s so terrible how some people have those,” I said.
I had too much respect for myself, and I couldn’t do that to Charlie. I knew how he felt about me, and I wasn't going to take advantage of that. I’d made it known to him on multiple occasions that I wasn’t interested, and he’d finally backed off with his constant insistence on a date. I wasn’t breaking that wall I’d finally thrown up between us so I could have a go at his money.
“It would be nice to have a sugar daddy, though,” Nikki said.
“Okay. Cut it out.”
“Fine, fine. But it might be the only option you’ve got. If anything, you could approach him as if you would any other person investing in your bakery. Give him five or six percent of it in exchange for his money. Something like that.”
“I’m not asking Charlie.”
“You might not have a choice.”
I choked down the strong coffee, and it forced me awake. I hugged Nikki, thanked her for talking with me, and then I shooed her off so I could get to baking. Lord knew I wouldn’t have to make much. As if my days weren’t slow enough, Wednesdays were the slowest, mostly because the bakery up the road ran their Weekend Wednesday promotion. I still didn’t understand the concept, but the idea of people being able to enjoy something that reminded them of their weekend in the middle of the damn week worked. I watched people walk by my bakery for hours favoring them in the long run.
And all I was doing by baking more was wasting money once the food had to be donated.
I leaned against the counter and started doing some research on banks outside the area I could go see, other ways to make money, and even freelance baking.
Something.
Anything to get me money. I scrolled through pages of information on the internet, wondering where in the world I was going to come up with the cash I needed in one quick turnaround. Everything took way too long to pay out or more collateral than everything I owned in triplicate.
Then, an ad popped up on my phone that grabbed my attention. As I read the page, my eyes kept going back to the ad. It wasn’t something I ever would have noticed before, but under the circumstances, I was ready to try just about anything that wasn’t illegal or unethical.
Healthy Women Needed for Professional Surrogacy. $200,000.00 Minimum Payout.
Two hundred thousand dollars? Were they serious? It had to be a scam. My thumb hovered over the button to close the window.
Instead, I clicked on the ad.
The link didn’t take me to an article but to a website, a very secure, legitimate-looking website. I scrolled through the information, reading up on what it was about. It was essentially a baby bank for men. Just like women could walk into sperm banks and get what they needed, this service specialized in the same process for men. They made guarantees about monetary payout as well as having all medical expenses covered and contracts that would be signed by the two parties. They boasted of their women being happy and healthy and protected while the men screened with the same amount of scrutiny.
Two hundred thousand dollars. For giving birth?
It wouldn’t help me with my problem immediately, but it would in the long run. I was desperate, and I figured there was no harm in finding out what it was about, so I dialed the number and held my phone to my ear, watching as people walked by my bakery and headed up the street.
I rolled my eyes as a cheery woman picked up on the other end.
“SurroPoint Advocacy, this is Marsha speaking. How may I help you?”
“Yes, hi. My name is Heather Palmer. I saw an ad online that shot me to your website.”
“Are you looking to become a surrogate or refer someone to the program?” she asked.
“What is needed to become a surrogate?” I asked. “I mean, the claims on your website are pretty outlandish.”
“They might seem so. For starters, two hundred thousand is a bargain-basement price.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Most of the women in our care are paid anywhere between five hundred and eight hundred thousand dollars.”
I almost dropped my coffee mug on the floor. If this was for real, if it was feasible, it could solve all my problems. I could pay off my current loan and be able to expand and advertise without incurring more debt.
“Okay. Well, how does all of this work?”
“It’s simple. A woman applies, a
nd we do a thorough background check. We pull educational history, criminal history, financial history, familial history. We set up intensive background screenings. Our clients expect the healthiest women for their children, so we make sure to provide that service for them. In exchange, they’re charged a premium price as well as providing for all of the medical expenses that accrues.”
“And how does payment work?” I asked.
“Most women receive the money in monthly chunks. That’s the most popular plan.”
My heart fluttered in my chest at the statement. It was exactly what I’d hoped for. “What would I have to do to start that process?”
“You’d set up an appointment to come in and fill out an application. A primary health screening will be required as well upon arrival. If you pass all those initial windows, then more extensive testing is done before you’re matching with a proper provider.”
Provider. I cringed at the word.
“Would you like to set up an appointment? Where are you located?” she asked.
“In Whitefish.”
“Oh! So not far at all. Perfect. When would you like to come in?”
I looked up and watched more people pass by my bakery like my “open” sign wasn’t even on. What did I have to lose by checking it out?
“Any time’s good for me,” I said.
“I’ve got an open slot for four this afternoon.”
I closed my eyes and tried to settle my swirling mind. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
“Looking forward to it, Miss Palmer.”
I couldn’t believe I was entertaining the idea. It was insane, but sometimes desperation bred insanity. With my business and financial well-being sliding out of reach, I couldn’t afford not to consider something so incredibly lucrative. Besides, nothing was set in stone yet. I could always walk away if anything seemed unsafe.
Sanity be damned.
I needed that money.
CHAPTER 3
CAMERON
“Hello, Hudson.”
“Don’t sound so happy to hear from me.”
“It’s been a long week,” I said as I looked at my sleeping daughter. “What’s up?”
