“Chris?”
She only realized, as she heard her nickname, that she hadn’t answered Olivia’s question. And that it was too late for a casual shrug accompanied by “Nothing.”
“I didn’t quite finish dusting Gramps’s den,” she said. She only had to do one room a day in order for her to keep the big house relatively clean without help.
“Sheila’s ready to add you to her client list anytime you say the word,” Olivia said, naming her cleaning woman for about the umpteenth time since they’d known each other.
“And why didn’t you finish dusting the den?” Olivia called Christine’s gaze back to her.
“I have a client who wants me to have his baby for him.” There. It was out. Thank God.
“What!” Mouth hanging open, Olivia’s eyes were wide, brows raised as she stared at her friend. And then said, “Is he nuts? He thinks your clinic is some kind of freakish baby-making place, a drive-through? And you, personally? Maybe you should think about calling the cops. The guy sounds scary to me.”
As a pediatrician specializing in neonatal intensive care, Olivia had seen as many of the emotional family dynamics as Christine had. Probably more.
“No.” And suddenly she didn’t want to say any more. Jamison wasn’t a freak. His request, while bordering on inappropriate, given the circumstances, hadn’t been the least bit frightening. Or even, considering those same circumstances, out of place. “His wife died a year ago. They have frozen embryos. She thought I would be a good surrogate.”
“You know her?”
Where on earth were their salads? “I met her once. They were Parent Portal clients.”
“You want to do this.” Olivia had gone still. Was studying her closely.
“I told him no way.” She’d told him to get out of her office. She cringed every time she thought about it. “But that, even though we aren’t a surrogacy clinic, I would help him find his surrogate. I’ve got people I can call. I can act as his proctor without steering the clinic someplace we don’t want to go, or putting us at risk.”
Still no salad. Her one glass of wine wasn’t going to last through dinner if she didn’t hurry up and get some food.
People came and went around them. Someone from another table cackled loudly. Pop music played softly in the background. She felt like she could hear Olivia thinking. Hear every breath she took. Because she feared that her friend was seeing more of her than she was ready to have discovered. Deciphered. Analyzed and picked apart and contemplated.
Some things were best left to wilt and fade away. It just took time.
And yet, she’d blabbed.
Holding her friend’s gaze, she searched for words that would defuse the firecracker she’d just figuratively lit on the table between them.
“Here you go! Sorry for the wait.” Christine didn’t recognize the young woman who arrived and placed their salads with speed and ease. The waitress added, “Someone else took your order, and then delivered it to the wrong table so it had to be remade. She’s new and I do apologize...”
Christine, putting her napkin in her lap and picking up her fork, was happy to have her rattle on. Anything to distract her from Jamison’s request.
* * *
“You want to be the surrogate.”
Christine had eaten most of her salad. Was taking small sips of her wine to make it last longer. Had thought the conversation was done. At least the part that included Olivia. Or anyone else.
“I want to help him. The man’s a genuinely nice guy. He and his wife... I wish you could have seen them together. They’d been best friends since they were eight years old...”
She hadn’t needed the emergency room story to see the connection between Emily and Jamison Howe. But that piece of history had been replaying itself in her mind ever since the man had left her office. She kept picturing that little girl who, at eight, had been so in tune that she’d received an otherworldly message. Or even just willing to be open enough to reach out when her soul mate arrived in her sphere. Whether or not she’d known that was what Jamison was to her, clearly she’d felt something. And had been trusting enough to believe in that feeling.
Children generally were trusting.
Until they learned through painful lessons to harden the sensitive walls that encased the human heart.
“It’s okay, you know.” Olivia’s gaze was always filled with intelligence and usually compassion. But the empathy...
“What’s okay?”
“You wanting to have this baby for him.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to. I said no way.”
“I know. And I know you. If you didn’t want to do it, you’d have let it go already. You’d go to work in the morning, make your calls, get the ball rolling to proctor his surrogate search, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“With a fee from being a surrogate, I could get all of the renovations done on the house, including a new dishwasher and garbage disposal, new kitchen countertops, electric garage doors...without taking any higher salary from the clinic.”
“You need to pay yourself more than you do, but you aren’t sidetracking me with that discussion now,” Olivia said.
Maybe she told the other woman too much. She had lots of friends. She needed to spread her news around more. Some to one. Some to another.
It was just that she trusted Olivia in the same way she’d trusted Gram and Gramps. Like she’d trust a sister...
“He’s willing to pay living expenses for the duration of time I’d be involved, including recovery, which is somewhat common in the surrogacy world. That would mean my entire salary for all those months would be freed up.”
Maybe she could get her bathroom updated. Have new tiles put up in the shower. The colors of the old were so faded she couldn’t even be sure someone would recognize the pattern if they hadn’t been looking at it for thirty-plus years.
The wooden floors throughout the house were solid, but could stand to be buffed and resurfaced.
“And in addition to that, he’s going to make a contribution to the clinic—not a surrogacy fee, just a donation...”
“You’d be asking a lot of yourself,” Olivia said. “Having your body change, the hormones, morning sickness, fatigue, back pain...”
Yeah, and no wine. She gulped at the liquid barely filling the bottom of her glass.
“It’ll only be for a matter of months, realistically,” she said. “You don’t even show the first two or three months. A lot of women don’t even know they’re pregnant until two or three months. And the fourth month, okay, maybe some morning sickness, but otherwise your pants just fit a little more tightly.”
She stopped herself. Chilled and a bit light-headed as she heard, in her mind, where her words had been headed. Olivia knew a lot about her. But not about Ryder. That was her name for her son, not the one the boy had been given by his parents. She had no idea what name was on his birth certificate. First, middle or last.
No one in her current life in Marie Cove knew about Ryder. Her father knew, but not because he’d been around. Gram and Gramps had had custody of her by then and had agreed not to tell her father. And going five months without seeing her father, to keep him ignorant of her pregnancy, would have been surprisingly, heartbreakingly, easy. He hadn’t seemed to notice when that much time had passed in between visits. But his health insurance company had sent a bill for the ultrasound...
Or rather, she’d thought no one in her current life knew about Ryder.
She’d told Emily Howe—with Jamison sitting there beside her.
“I’m not sure if you want kids of your own,” Olivia was saying, blissfully not seemingly in tune with quite every thought in Christine’s mind. “But have you even thought about what it would be like to have one growing inside you? To feel him moving, a part of you...how would you not fall at least a little
bit in love? And then to have to give it up?”
Now there was an easy answer. “I’d be giving him or her to someone who wants only to love and support him, who has the means and the desire to give him a happy and secure life in a world filled with love.
“And besides,” she added, blurting words out of the panic that had nearly consumed her seconds before, “I’m not sure I can be a surrogate. All of the clinics require that you’ve delivered at least one healthy baby. I’d have to check to see if, in private surrogacy, that stipulation still exists.”
“I’m not sure it does,” Olivia said.
Not an issue for her. She’d basically just lied to her best friend by omission, and it made her feel kind of sick.
“I guess, when you think about it, no one can stop you from having a baby if you want to. And, legally, you can work out any custody or adoption arrangements you want to, as long as the recipient of the child passes adoption inspections, but with the proposed recipient actually the biological parent, then that wouldn’t be an issue. You’d just need to make sure he couldn’t ever come after you for child support...”
She’d led Olivia to a wrong path, and her friend, sweetheart that she was, was galloping down it.
“The state of California requires that both parties, no matter who they are, have separate surrogacy lawyers,” she said, needing to get them both going in another direction.
Olivia finished her wine. Grabbed the bill that had been left before Christine could do so, and the two of them walked out to Christine’s car. They’d driven over from the center together.
She asked her friend about a project she was working on at the hospital, something to do with a research study that measured the health benefits of reading to babies, in an effort to get a library set up in the neonatal intensive care unit. Christine had offered to help to fundraise for books as soon as the project was approved.
And they talked about a two-day Catalina Island cruise Christine was taking the next weekend. She was going with two of her friends from college, one of whom was going through a divorce.
“You want to tell me why you really want to have this baby?” Olivia asked when she was supposed to be getting out of Christine’s car back at the women’s center and then into her own just a couple of steps away.
“I told you. The money would help a lot. It’s not like I have any family or am in a relationship that would be affected by it. And, as you pointed out, I’ve never been sure about kids of my own so the emotional part wouldn’t be such an issue...”
Even if she did want kids of her own, there was nothing to stop her from having another one once the favor was done. Women could give birth multiple times. Her great-grandmother had had fourteen children.
Olivia nodded. Moved to get out. But not before Christine had seen the quickly masked hurt in her eyes. The two of them—they’d bonded over their true desire to live alone. To be single. They were the odd girls out. Those who didn’t want to be part of a couple.
And they kept very few secrets from each other.
She had Ryder. And Olivia had whatever it was that kept her single.
“His wife...” she blurted. “Emily. I remember her so distinctly. She got to me, you know?” She’d told her about Ryder. “We went to the same high school. They’re from here, but I didn’t know them. Still, it felt like she was a friend. And then, to hear that she’d told her husband that if they ever needed a surrogate she thought I’d make a great one...”
Olivia’s eyes glistened in the blend of light and shadows.
“Have you ever felt like something stronger than what you can see and prove is at work in a situation?” Christine asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Almost as though she’d taken a lid off the magic potion only to find out that it had no power at all.
“Every day,” Olivia said. “I see it in the eyes of the parents who hang on and believe after I’ve told them that their newborn has little chance of sustaining life. And then, sometimes, in the little ones who prove me wrong.”
It was all so confusing. The request. The fact that it was hitting her so strongly. It wasn’t the first time she’d had the chance to be a surrogate. There’d been another couple a few years back... They’d both had steady jobs, but an income that wasn’t ever going to allow them to be able to pay for one. The fertility testing and drugs had taken all of their savings. Christine had had herself tested, just to make certain she’d be a viable candidate, but before she could offer to help them, the woman’s sister had agreed to carry their child...
“You think I’m wrong to be considering this?”
“No. I just hope you really think about it, about how it will feel to carry a baby inside you, to give birth to it and not have it be placed in your arms...”
She didn’t have to think about that part. She knew it firsthand. And knew she could deal with it. Which was part of what was pushing her forward.
“That’s what I’m doing. Thinking about it. I don’t think I’m going to do it. It’s like this fantastical episode playing out in my mind, but not real, you know?”
“You’re the most practical woman I know,” Olivia said, reaching a hand out to her arm, as though knowing Christine needed some connection to ground her back into reality. “If it’s on your mind, you’re considering it.”
Her friend was right. She was considering it. Just wasn’t going to do it.
“Whatever you decide, you have my support.”
Olivia’s parting words were more than a promise. They were like a whisper on the wind beneath Emily’s angel’s wings, nudging her forward.
Chapter Five
Running forward to make the slam that would win him the match, Jamie came down with his custom-made tennis racket and hit the lime-green ball at just the right angle to make his volley impossible to return. The grunt he emitted was for show.
The score—6:4, 7:5, 6:3. He’d just skunked the man who’d been a father to him for more than half his life.
Dropping off their rackets in the lockers they rented at the Marie Cove Country Club, they walked out to the beachside bar that would be filling up as soon as the day’s golfers started to wander in. Saturdays were always the busiest, but it was also the only day Emily’s father, Judge Tom Sanders, had free that week. He was heading up to wine country on Sunday for a week of boating and fishing with friends, and Jamie needed to speak with him before he left.
They ordered their customary after-a-match beer, toasted to the win and, rather than settling into a seat at the bar, Jamie asked his father-in-law if they could walk.
“You’ve got something on your mind,” the older man said, his graying hair glinting in the sunlight. A couple of inches taller than Jamie, widower Tom was lean and still drew the eyes of the women at the pool and, farther below, in the sand, as, in their tennis shorts, T-shirts and shoes, they headed down a paved walkway at the top of the beach.
“Let me help,” Tom continued, his deep baritone as commanding as always. “I’ve been waiting for the call that would tell me that you’ve started dating again, and I just want you to know that not only am I prepared to see that happen, I’m hoping for it to happen,” he said, holding his beer by his thigh as they walked. He smiled as a woman passed.
Tom watched the woman go, sipped from his beer and faced forward again.
“You know her?”
“She was in my court a couple of months ago. Tough divorce.” While Tom had done his stint in criminal court, he’d opted to sit on the civil bench after Emily’s accident. It took less of an emotional toll, he’d told Jamie one night when he’d had an uncharacteristic amount of alcohol to drink.
“So...back to what I was saying... I want to dispel any sense of guilt you might be feeling...”
“I’m not seeing anyone.” And he’d thought what he had to say would be easier. Good news. Instead, he felt like a college kid, again, askin
g the man if he could marry his daughter.
Confident of Tom’s regard, just not certain the older man would understand or condone his request. After all, Emily had always had standing in the community and her parents had a lot of money, while Jamie had been the son of a woman who worked five days a week in an office just to make ends meet.
If it hadn’t been for the tennis scholarship Tom had urged him to go after, he’d never have made it into college, much less grad school.
Besides, while he and Em had been close since that long-ago day in the emergency room, they’d taken a long time to get from there to admitting they were more than just friends.
Maybe he was premature in his declaration. He hadn’t heard a word from Christine Elliott, but then she’d only had three business days to start putting out feelers on his behalf—or considering taking on the project herself—and it wasn’t like he’d be her only professional task. She had a slew of clients. A clinic to run.
A life to live.
There’d been more than a few times he’d shuddered over the memory of what he’d done—making an appointment with a woman he hadn’t seen in two years, a woman he’d only met once, to ask her to have his baby.
And yet, while he regretted the manner in which he’d done it, he still knew he couldn’t possibly move forward with a family without doing all he could to get Christine to agree to be the one to make it possible for him.
He downed a quarter of his bottle of beer. Let the liquid wash the nervousness away. Tom would be as delighted about the baby as he’d been about Jamie and Emily’s engagement. And once Jamie told the judge about his intentions, there’d be no going back.
“I’ve decided to use the embryos Emily and I froze to start a family.” He wasn’t looking for permission. Wasn’t going to change his mind. And Tom had a right to know that he was going to be a grandfather posthumously. After losing his wife and then his only child, he deserved to know that there was good around the corner.
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