Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  “And if I don’t? Let’s face it, I should be crawling all over you and I’m, um, not. Dating is so artificially hopeful, randomly selective. I rate my chance of finding a man I like, enough to want to father a child with, at about a three out of ten. Even if I sift dating site profiles eight hours a day and put myself out there every night.”

  “It won’t be that bad.”

  “I don’t share your optimism.”

  “I notice you didn’t say marry.”

  She shrugged at herself in the mirror. “I’ve never dreamed about a wedding. It just never figured in my plans. It seems like it’s going to be easier to convince a man to loan me his sperm without having to take any responsibility than it will be to find someone I want to marry and raise a child with.”

  And that was another thing to resent the boys for. Reid and Owen had found the loves of their lives, and whatever was going on between Dev and Shush was newly serious. If they wanted families, and Owen certainly did, they were halfway to having them. Way to make a girl feel lonely and hopeless. Which was why she was here, so she wasn’t either of those things in the future.

  “My parents have an open marriage. They love each other fiercely but they’ve both had affairs, and alternative relationships. It seems more realistic than thinking one person can be your everything forever.”

  Colby shoulder-bumped her. “If what you said didn’t have truth to it, I’d be under-employed.” He took her hand in his, smoothed her palm over his thigh. “So long as you know you’re not unattractive, Sarina. I feel like I have to tell you that. I like the way you look, not just this hippie chick thing you have going on. You have a lovely face, you have a nice body.”

  “But you like women. Who was your last client?”

  “She was fifty-two, four kids, husband in love with golf, hadn’t been interested in her for years.”

  “Fifty-two and fabulous?”

  “Fifty-two and . . .” she read his hesitation. He was a man who liked women. “She was fabulous. Freeze your eggs,” he said. “Win yourself more time.”

  “Thought about it, and honestly, it’s a backstop. But this window of my life is the right time to have a baby if I can make it happen.” It was right for her body. It meant she’d be a youngish mother. “It also fits in with our business plan. I might want to be a mother, but I’m not giving up my career to do it.”

  “So have a baby, Sarina.”

  She ruffled Colby’s hair. “I don’t know what you know about the make a baby thing, but it doesn’t just happen.”

  “Yeah, it can. You said it already. Not quite Walmart but you can shop for sperm the same way you shopped for me. You can have a baby on your own timetable, your own way.”

  “I can’t.” He wasn’t serious.

  He lay back on the bed, hands under his head. “Why not?”

  She’d say he looked serious, except he looked more incredibly hot available A-list stud.

  “Shopping for you was hard enough and we’re talking about a baby, a mini-human being. It would be . . .” Selfish. Wrong.

  She’d had two committed, if occasionally distracted parents. Dev’s parents were the gold standard. But then Reid didn’t know his father. Owen’s family were hard work and best avoided. Zarley was estranged from hers. Cara’s mom died when she was a kid. There were all kinds of families.

  Colby realigned his thigh so it was pressed against hers. “My sister is a single mom by choice. You don’t need a husband to have a baby. You don’t need a forever person. You need cash, a sperm donation and a support system.”

  It would be disingenuous to say she hadn’t thought about it. It would be . . . Perfect. She got to her knees on the bed. “I don’t know why I didn’t decide that in the first place.” She crawled closer to Colby. “It’s completely practical. I have money. I have family support. I can do it on my timetable. It would be better if the baby had two loving parents, but you know what, I can find a way to make up for that. My dad, Reid, Owen, Dev, once they get over the shock of it, they’ll all be there for me. This kid will have its own village.”

  He grinned up at her. “There you go.”

  She didn’t feel the impossible weight of this as a thankless chore anymore, a distasteful means to a desired end. “I would like to have sex now.”

  He laughed. “Because you feel you have to? It’s not a test.”

  She reached for the bottom of her cami. “No, because I’m not conflicted anymore. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to have a baby on my time, my way. I’m going to have sex with you because it’s going to be more fun than bowling. Everyone I know is having sex, regular sex. I’m the freaking Mojave Desert and you are one beautiful man who likes women and I think you know how to make me feel good.”

  Colby unzipped his jeans and reached for her. “Sounds like a plan.”

  FOUR

  It happened at the end of the weekly meeting, in the Any Other Business section where nothing important ever got said and the four of them were usually getting ready to leave the room. Today, Owen was going off to a customer meeting. Reid had a dental appointment and Dev was already thinking about the design sprint he was running next when Sarina announced she’d lost her mind.

  “I’m going to need time off work,” she said.

  “You have a decade’s worth of vacation saved, just don’t take it all at once,” Owen responded.

  Then Sarina said something about having a baby, there was a loud crack as Reid broke the casing of his cell with his bare hands, Owen hit the control that frosted the glass windows of the conference room, and Dev’s brain imploded; important bits of it shearing off the side of his head. What was happening?

  He looked at Owen, “What did she say?” He needed confirmation, because he thought Sarina said she was having a baby. It wasn’t the kind of thing you said in Any Other Business. She knew that. This was a whole other agenda. It should’ve been a separate line item. Maybe even an offsite. She was trying to sneak this through and it wasn’t right.

  He looked at Sarina. “What did you say?”

  “Everyone calm down,” she said.

  Reid was on his feet. Owen told him to sit down. Dev kept looking at Sarina, wondering who she was.

  “A baby,” said Owen, same way he’d say an IRS audit, with suspicion and fear, bordering on horror.

  Reid rescued his SIM from the wreckage of his cell. “When?”

  Sarina puffed her hair with a breath and repeated her calm down message then said, “Twenty percent of all women don’t have children. For women with degrees, that number is over thirty percent. I don’t want to be in those percentages.”

  The woman sitting beside him looked like Sarina, sounded like his best friend, but she couldn’t be, because when did she have the time to be pregnant, and who was the bastard who did it to her, and why was he only learning this now? He’d just worked himself up to being comfortable about her dating, but pregnant . . .

  “This is a joke, right?” he said. She had to be having them on.

  “Sit down, Reid,” said Owen.

  “Pregnant.” Reid stalked around the table and stood beside Sarina, towering over her. “How?”

  On Sarina’s other side, Dev stood. This was a joke. And Reid was ridiculous, but then he’d been a virgin until he was nearly thirty, maybe he needed to be told. “Did you just ask how?”

  “Not that kind of how,” Reid barked.

  “How many kinds of how are there?” Dev said. “Stop looming over her.”

  “You stop looming over her.”

  “Sit down, both of you,” said Owen.

  Reid ignored Owen but went to his knees beside Sarina’s chair, so they were eye to eye. “This is what you want? A baby.”

  She laughed. “Everyone settle. Dev, sit down. Reid, go back over there,” she waved her hand at the seat he’d vacated. “Owen, it’s okay to breathe. I’m not having a baby right now.”

  Dev didn’t sit until Reid got off his knees and went back to his seat, un
til Owen said, “Start again,” and Sarina touched his hand.

  “Now that you’re listening,” she said.

  “We always listen. We just weren’t ready for that,” said Owen.

  “Fuck no,” said Reid.

  Sarina had touched Dev a trillion times. This time it felt wrong. He moved his hand away and she said his name in concern. He avoided her eyes and fiddled with his watch, switching to the weather screen because he didn’t much like the climate in here. “We’re listening. Go on.”

  “I’m not pregnant, but I’m putting you on notice that I’m going to try for a baby. I don’t want to be much older before I do, and it’s a good time for Plus. Things are stable for the first time since we got started. In terms of our business plan, and where we’ve plotted growth spurts, this plan of mine is a good fit.”

  “A baby,” Owen said. Dude couldn’t seem to stop smiling now. What was wrong with him? This was a disaster. It would change everything.

  “When did you decide you wanted one of them?” Reid said. He made it sound like Sarina was buying an extravagant luxury item of dubious quality and she should know better, but at least he was taking this seriously.

  “I’m not asking permission,” Sarina said. “I always wanted my own kids, eventually. I didn’t realize this was eventually until you guys started moving on with your lives and I saw mine was standing still.”

  “Who’s the dad?” said Reid.

  “Back off,” Dev said. He didn’t want to know who the father was. He should already know. Should’ve looked the guy in the eyes and chased him off if he showed any sign of being a dirtbag.

  “If you two don’t take it down a notch, you can go outside until you cool down,” said Owen. “She’s not pregnant. She’s only telling us she wants to be because it’ll change things.” First sensible thing Owen had said.

  Sarina shook her head. “It won’t change anything. Except that vacation you want me to take will have a purpose and we need to plan for that.”

  “How could it not change things? A mom,” said Reid. “You’ll make an awesome mom, but it’ll change things.” Right, even Reid saw that.

  “It’ll change things about as much as it will when you become a dad,” she said. “Or we’re doing it wrong.”

  Reid’s face lost color. “Don’t even. I can’t. Zarley’s not. I’m not. Ready. Not ready for that.”

  Owen and Sarina laughed. “I am,” said Owen. “But I have to wait for Cara to catch up and we’ve got time for that.”

  After the trouble he’d had not being able to get it up, Owen had to be grateful he could say that. But Owen a father was a different proposition altogether. Wasn’t it? He felt Sarina’s eyes on him, but he kept his on Owen and Reid.

  “I’m older than Zarley and Cara and that makes a difference for a woman,” she said. “I have a deadline concern that none of you have. You can be having kids when you’re too old too code.”

  “Never too old to code,” said Reid.

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “So this is you telling us you want to have a baby one day. That’s cool,” Reid said. “I’ve got it now.”

  “It’s not a fictional forecast. I’m planning to get pregnant.”

  “With who?”

  Dev must’ve shouted that because Sarina leaned away from him.

  “Dev,” said Owen. “Let—”

  He cut Owen off and glared at this alien Sarina. “You’re not even dating, just practicing.”

  “What’s practice dating?” said Reid. “I could’ve used that.”

  “It not an app,” Dev said.

  “Could it be one?” said Reid.

  “Let Sarina talk,” said Owen.

  She did. “I suck at dating. You guys know that. I thought I needed to get back in to it and be strategic about it, find someone, like you found Zarley and Cara and Shush.”

  “Not Shush. Shush is not—”

  Owen cut him off. “Let her talk.”

  “A friend convinced me that wasn’t my only option for having a kid.”

  “Egg freezing,” said Owen.

  “Another form of putting my life on hold. A last resort.”

  “What friend?” That brain implosion had done something to Dev’s volume control, racked it up to way loud.

  “Dev.” Sarina tried to touch his arm again and he moved out of her reach.

  “What friend?” he repeated.

  “Someone you don’t know.”

  “You let someone I don’t know convince you to have a baby. What the hell is that about? What is going on with you?”

  “I let them remind me I didn’t need a partner to do it.”

  She spoke calmly and it did nothing to help him understand this. He had to fold his arms over his chest because his heart was trying to slide between his ribs and it pained. “You want to have a baby by yourself? That’s insane.”

  She turned her face away. “I’m going to have one with the support of my family and my best friends, I hoped.”

  “Yes,” said Owen. “Yes, absolutely, yes.”

  “Practice kid,” said Reid. “All over it.”

  They were all looking at him. Waiting. No, he didn’t support this.

  Owen broke eye contact first. “What do you need from us now? I assume this stays in this room. We don’t tell anyone.”

  Sarina nodded. “There’s nothing to tell yet. I have to do the shopping and then it will be a process, I don’t have an exact timeline. I’d appreciate it if it stayed between us.”

  “You got it,” said Owen.

  “By shopping, you mean for sperm,” Reid grinned. “Is there an app for that?

  “Almost. A website, and it’s very comprehensive. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about the attributes I want to match with,” she said.

  Ah, this had gone far enough. “Let me get this straight. You let some random person talk you into being a single mom and now you’re shopping online for sperm like it’s a pair of shoes.”

  Sarina shook her head. “Dev, don’t be like this.”

  “Truly, you’ll take any man’s sperm?” His voice was still raised; he couldn’t adjust the volume.

  “No. There’s a process, it’s all highly regulated and totally anonymous if I want it to be.”

  “You don’t even want to know the father of your own kid?”

  “He won’t be the father in any real sense.”

  “This kid already has three fathers, if Sarina wants us,” said Owen.

  “I’m not in this. Don’t count on me.”

  “Jesus, Dev,” said Reid.

  Sarina reached for him. “Dev, please don’t be like this.”

  He’d tripped and stumbled over Sarina the day they met; maybe he’d been wrong to think there had ever been anything personal between them, because more than a decade later, this was the real fall.

  “Dev just needs a moment,” said Reid. “His fucking code is broken.”

  “Were you shopping for sperm in the office that day I wanted Cara’s next of kin number and caught you doing something sneaky?” Owen asked. Dev remembered that day. He’d baked Maple Snickerdoodles for Sarina. This was Owen’s way of giving him a moment. He’d need an age to process this.

  “No, Owen.” Sarina laughed. “There is no sperm being shopped for yet.”

  “You were doing something odd,” Owen said.

  “I was shopping for an escort,” she said.

  “To where?” said Reid, then his eyes widened. “Oh, that kind of an escort. Shit.”

  Dev slammed his hand on the table, because this had gone way, way too far. “You went with a prostitute?”

  “I hired an escort when I was thinking I needed to get my dating mojo back so I could get out there again.”

  “God on an elephant, you’re not kidding. You paid a man to go on dates with you. That was your practice dating. You slept with a prostitute?”

  Sarina raised her voice. “Can we keep this focused on—”

  �
��I’m absolutely focused. You let some stranger you paid for sex talk you into being a single mom.”

  “No. I let a man, whose time I paid for because I haven’t had a date in so long I’ve forgotten how, remind me I have options and I don’t need to be desperate about finding a man to father a child with. I don’t need a man at all.”

  Dev pushed away from the table and stood. He appealed to Owen and Reid. “Are you hearing this? It’s fucked up.” He glared at Sarina. “You had sex with a stranger.”

  Owen and Reid were both on their feet. “Dev, take it easy,” said Owen.

  “A lot less a stranger than a woman you pick up in a bar,” she said.

  That was different. That was . . . not the same. And he hadn’t done that often anyway, not since college. He pointed at Sarina but kept his eyes on Owen. “Are you listening to what she’s saying?”

  Sarina pushed her chair out and stood. “Please don’t be like this, Dev.”

  The room was full of electricity, and he was yelling into the storm. He needed to get out. He stepped around Sarina and made for the door. He didn’t get far, just into the corridor beyond the room before Reid collared him and dragged him up to the rooftop garden. Neither of them said anything on the way up the stairs, but the further away from Sarina Dev was, the easier it was to breathe.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, but there was always someone using the roof garden. Reid clapped his hands for attention. “Hey folks, Mom and Pop need to yell at each other. Beat it.”

  “Please,” Dev added, grateful his volume control was back.

  The group from marketing packed up and cleared out. The last time there’d been a confrontation on the rooftop it’d been when they’d had to talk to Owen about his prescription drug addiction. That was a bad time. Owen was in pain and overmedicating, but this was worse. Sarina was about to ruin her life. This was beyond Dev’s comprehension.

  When they had the place to themselves, Reid said, “Extreme reaction. Not like you. Where’s your head at?”

  He threw himself in one of the big all-weather lounge chairs. “It’s Sarina and I don’t understand. She paid for sex.”

  “She didn’t say she had sex, just a date. And what, you’ve never paid for it?”