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When I’d signed the contract, there had been an email in my inbox almost instantly with a gift card for a local spa. I’d almost fainted at the sight of the numbers on the card. I could’ve bought the entire spa out in my BFE town in Oklahoma for that number. But maybe if you run your own high-end security firm, you can go around throwing thousands of dollars at your surrogate mothers whenever you want.
Of course I had googled him when I found out about the match the agency secured. But all it got me was a variety of distant, blurry photos of a tall-looking dark-haired guy in a suit.
In Chicago, that was more common than pigeons. Which was really saying something. But regardless of that, he looked like he was trying very hard to make this process easy on me.
The man knew his gifts. Or, more correctly, his assistant did. But I appreciated the effort. From what I’d read online, a lot of men who used surrogacy agencies weren’t this over the top. They were excited but didn’t lavish.
Honestly, I didn’t mind it. I’d just put myself through college, and while I was about to start my new job next week, I was more than willing to be a gift recipient. As the only fully functioning adult in my family, I was the giver.
It was a lovely reversal.
Not that he could know that. But I loved it either way.
I’d asked to meet him at some point, and his lawyer had deferred to later in the pregnancy. Emerson Brooks was a rather reclusive human. Maybe that was a perk to owning a security firm. I wondered briefly if he could make that embarrassing photo from freshman-year rush disappear.
I cringed, crunching into another cracker with zest. What I knew was that he was forty-one, loaded, single, and wanted to make a baby with my DNA. And honestly, that’s all I really needed to know.
I sighed, beginning to unload the packages into my messy kitchen. The movers had been very helpful, but now there was the not small obstacle of actually removing my items from the boxes and popping them away into the cabinets. For what it was worth, having everything spread around did make it look like I had more than a few boxes to my name.
I could appreciate that. Moving to Chicago was all part of the contract. Daddy War-Brooks, as I’d taken to calling him, insisted upon it. He had already interviewed all the best doctors, the best hospitals. It made sense at the time to come to him.After all, I could get a job anywhere, and I wasn’t really that thrilled to go back to my hometown in good ol’ OKC.
The only thing waiting there was a disappointing history that I wanted no part in. I swallowed hard. It was the one thing I’d lied about on my application, and the one thing I continued to keep separate. My brother and sister were both addicts. I was the youngest by almost seven years, and while I’d hated that they never wanted to play with me when I was a kid, it meant that I easily escaped their party years.
Instead, I grew up the younger sibling of the partiers, the addicts, and my back-to-school money was spent on rehab and lawyers. It wasn’t that my parents didn’t love me. It’s just that my siblings always needed them more.
I wasn’t sure if either of them saw me walk at college graduation a few weeks ago. They’d been invited, but as my brother was arrested the night before, I was fairly sure they used the ceremony timeframe to be on the phone with more lawyers.
I wasn’t surprised.
And I wasn’t hurt. Not anymore. Chicago was a new start, a fresh start. I was excited about the job I had gotten at the preschool just down the road. All the books told me that I would be grieving in some way after I delivered this baby. But I had always loved kids, loving being surrounded by chaos and fun.
I hadn’t thought about being pregnant at twenty-two, but signing up for the surrogacy agency had been the perfect solution. I was kept safe, I was young and healthy, and it was an enormous paycheck.
Plus, I loved babies.
I’d been shocked when instead of selecting a donor egg, War-Brooks had opted to use my own. Again, there was no reason we shouldn’t. But at the same time, there was a certain degree of surprise about going with an unproven egg donor.
Maybe I would ask him whenever I finally got to meet him.
If I ever got to meet him.
***
Chapter 2
Whitney
Hi, my name is Whitney Bryant, and I’m a virgin surrogate carrying a reclusive billionaire’s baby. I like swimming, chicken wings, and I just moved to Chicago a few weeks ago.
I leaned back against the tile wall, heart in my throat. That wasn’t right. I definitely didn't need to include the virgin part, even if I was pretty sure I was unique. But then, I didn’t know a single person in the room just down the hall. I was hoping I would get to know them though. The agency that had connected me with Emerson Brooks also suggested that I seek out other people in similar situations.
More than the Facebook groups I had already creeped in on. They recommended interaction and conversation. “For expecting mothers.”
Expecting mother. That’s what I was now. A few months ago, I’d barely been surviving as a preschool teacher back in Oklahoma, and now I was here. My home paid for, my life secure. Well, both of our lives secure, really.
I rubbed my hand across the still flat plane of my belly. At eleven weeks, all that was showing was a heavy bloat line from the entire carton of crackers I’d even the day before. The last of the stash from War-Brooks’s gifts. For whatever reason they'd been the only thing I wanted and had essentially made it an all-day eating contest with just myself over them.
I groaned, dropping my head back to the file once more. Maybe if I was showing I would be more comfortable walking in there with all the other surrogate mothers, their bellies rounded and full.
