Page 154

People clap again.

Someone near the back says something warm and useless. The cake is moved closer. Maggie nods because that is what the room wants from her. “Thank you,” she says. Her voice is steady.

I reach her side just as the applause begins to fade. I don’t touch her. Not yet. Not with everyone watching and not without knowing whether she wants another person making a claim on her in public.

“You okay?” I ask quietly.

She keeps her eyes on the cake. “Not even slightly.”

That’s the most honest thing she could have said, and it nearly makes me smile despite the situation.

“We can leave.”

Her gaze flicks up to mine. “Can we?”

Before I can answer, Alester speaks again. “And there is another reason I wanted those close to the family gathered tonight.”

Maggie goes still beside me. I feel it before I understand it. The change in her body, the way her attention locks on him.

“I also want to acknowledge why Maggie is important to our family at this particular moment,” he begins.

Alester’s voice doesn’t change. That’s the worst of it. He sounds no different than he did announcing the birthday. Calm, considerate, perfectly in control of the room he built.

“As some of you know,” he says, “my family has been preparing for a significant transition.”

My hand tightens at my side.

No.

Not here.

Not like this.

Maggie turns her head slightly toward me, and I see the moment she begins to understand. She whispers, “Dalton.”

I step half a pace closer to her, but Alester is already continuing.

“There has been a private arrangement in place for some time,” he says. “Maggie has very generously agreed to serve as surrogate. She is carrying the next Chandler heir.”

Chapter Eighteen

MAGGIE

The room is still clapping when Alester steps in beside me.

I barely register him at first. I’m still trying to understand what just happened, still hearing the words surrogate and Chandler heir bouncing around my skull like they belong to somebody else’s life. My face is smiling because it has apparently given up on taking instructions from me.

Then his hand comes to the middle of my back. I stiffen.

Before I can move, he leans in and kisses my cheek.

Flash.

Another flash.

I turn my head just enough to see a photographer near the doorway, camera raised.

My stomach drops. For one awful second I just stand there and let it happen, let this room and this house and this man turn me into a picture.