“Is that all?”

  “And a substantial increase to my bank account, a surrogate’s standard fee.”

  He nodded. “Where is this rent-free place?”

  “With them.”

  “No,” he said. The comment was as matter-of-fact as if he were asking her for the salt.

  “Why not?”

  “They both have heart conditions. They don’t need to be stressed out every day by having you underfoot.”

  “I won’t stress them out.”

  “You won’t have to. Your presence will do that. You’ll stay here.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I think I’ll just stay where I am. You can pay the rent there.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll need to know that you’re safe. That isn’t the best neighborhood where you live. And you’ll have everything you need here.”

  Meghan wondered about him. This was too easy. According to the Russells, Thomas needed to be convinced that this was a course he should take. But he’d fallen right in with the plan. Meghan wondered if she should be concerned. She knew things were never this easy.

  “Medical expenses, an apartment,” he said. “Seems fair in that you’ll be giving up the one you have.”

  “So do we have a deal?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “There are some conditions. You will be signing an agreement regarding the medical procedure and parentage of the child. You’ll be turning over the baby at birth.”

  “Agreed,” she said without hesitation. “I’ve already given my progeny to the world.”

  “You have a child?” Surprise was evident in his question.

  “My sister,” she answered. “I reared her after our parents died. I told you, I have no wish to have children.”

  “I want to be clear that there will be no changing your mind after the event.”

  “I’m clear.” She took another sip of her drink. “Anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good, now my conditions.”

  His eyes opened a little wider. Obviously, he didn’t think she’d have conditions. After all, she’d be pampered for nine months. And she’d be walking away with enough money to start a new life.

  “I’m open-minded,” he said, crossing his arms. “Shoot.”

  “When this is over, I want a job.”

  “A job?” He laughed. “We don’t exactly employ social workers at my company. What do you propose to do?”

  “Just something that will pay the rent and buy food and that involves helping people in some kind of way.”

  Thomas slipped off the bar stool. He moved around the back, but didn’t make another drink. He placed his glass there and walked to the center of the room.

  “You’re going to get a windfall of money. Why do you need a job, too?”

  “It’s not that much money. And I have a use for it.”

  “Which is?” he asked, his eyebrows raising.

  “I plan to return to school, earn my master’s degree and go into counseling.”

  He nodded. “It’s a noble use of the money.”

  “It won’t be enough for both school and support. That’s why I’ll need a job.”

  “All right. You’ll have a job.”

  Silence settled between them. Meghan had one more condition and it was a deal breaker.

  “Is that all?” Thomas asked as the silence grew palpable. He was starting to get excited. He had given up on his dream and now it just may come true.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What is it?” She thought she saw him brace himself.

  She swallowed. For a moment she couldn’t speak. She never thought she’d be in a position of uttering this word. Of course, she expected someone would ask her. But this situation was like nothing she’d ever thought would happen either.

  “Meghan, what is the condition?”

  “Marriage.”

  Chapter 3

  “What did you say?” Thomas asked. He would have taken a step toward her or one to sit down, if his legs had been capable of moving. Meghan Howard had done what no one in his life had ever been able to do before, rendered him immobile.

  “Marriage.” She’d said it again. Her eyes were steady. She hadn’t moved from the barstool since she sat down. One arm lay across the bar, the other propped on the arm of the stool. Her long legs were crossed with one foot resting on the footrest. She was as calm as if she’d just told him she needed to brush her hair or change her shoes.

  “You want me to marry you?”

  “It’s a deal breaker,” she said. “I will not have a baby out of wedlock.”

  “But it’s not your baby. It’s a frozen embryo made up of my sperm and my deceased wife’s egg.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll be pregnant. I made a promise to myself years ago, and I’m standing by it.”

  Thomas moved, finding his legs now worked. He walked to where she sat. She watched him approach, but she didn’t move. In the long run, she’d probably make a great counselor, as she had the ability to not let her true feelings show on her face. Thomas wondered what she was thinking. He wanted to know where and why she’d made this promise. Then it hit him.

  “You were born that way,” he stated.

  “Illegitimately,” she supplied.

  It didn’t sound as if she was afraid of the word, more like she was challenging him to say it, think it.

  “And I promised myself I’d never have a child go through what I did.”

  “What was that? There’s little stigma to the child, or the parent for that matter, these days.”

  For the first time, Meghan moved. She got down from the stool and crossed the room. She looked at the books in the bookcases, the fireplace, her body slowly moving around the room. Her hand ran across the leather chairs. Thomas wondered if she was taking in the luxuries she had missed as a child.

  What also caught his attention was the way she moved. She no longer wore the tight jeans she’d had on when he stood in her living room. She had exchanged them for a yellow summer dress with a short-cropped jacket. Her yellow purse lay on the bar next to her drink. Her legs were long and shapely, accentuated by a pair of high heels. Thomas looked her up and down. How could he have ever thought she was homely? he wondered.

  “It wasn’t a stigma,” she began, just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer his question. “At least not one that people spoke of. It was evident in the invitations, parties, group trips.”

  “How?”

  “Father-daughter camping trips, Career Day, Parent’s Day, you name it.” She shrugged. “A lot of the kids brought their fathers. The few who didn’t have a dad, like me, were absent those days. I participated, but I was alone.” She stopped. “My mother came when she could and I blessed her for being both parents, but it made me feel even worse when the men would gather together and leave her out.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Thomas was genuinely sorry. His father and mother came to every parent event that he had. It never occurred to him how it felt to be alone. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone to have no one in the audience cheering them on.

  “So you understand?”

  “Not quite. After the baby is born, you’ll be out of its life. It makes no difference if we’re married or not.”

  “It makes a difference. And it’ll make a difference to him or her later on to know that their parents were married when he or she was born.”

  “Meghan.” Thomas spread his hand in exasperation. “You’re not the mother. This makes no sense.”

  “Don’t you get it?” she shouted. “It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s how I feel.” Her hand went to her chest. Turning away from him, she paced the room, walking back and forth several times, taking deep breaths. “I told your in-laws this wouldn’t work.”

  “You’ve talked to them?” He stiffened. “They’re in on this?”

  Taking a deep breath, she faced him. “We had lunch. I came here from their house. I should have gone home, forgotten about this idea. It’s preposterous anyway.”

  With determined steps, she went to the bar where she’d left the matching yellow purse. Grabbing it, she hooked it over her shoulder. “You were right,” she said. “We are wasting each other’s time.”

  She was leaving. Thomas had to stop her. It wasn’t rational, he knew. And he didn’t do irrational things. His life was made up of assessing situations from all angles and then making the best decision he could. Some of it was instinct. And right now his instinct told him to stop her.

  He hadn’t yet decided on the surrogacy, despite this interview and his apparent acceptance of the situation. But he wanted, for some unexplained reason, to keep her here and hear what she had to say.

  One reason he listened to her was that he did really want his own child. Adam and Nina had brought it up, but it had taken root in his mind and now germinated. He understood that there were thousands of children who needed homes, needed adoptive parents that would love them, but that didn’t negate his need to have his own child. To know that his blood ran in another’s veins. That he had a legacy to leave the world. To know that he and Ruth could still create a miracle. Sundays in the park, horseback riding, camping, baseball games and teaching him his business—all these bonding moments, the patience and fortitude his father had taught him flooded through his mind. He had so much to give.

  “Meghan,” he called.

  Her hand on the doorknob, she stopped and looked back. Her eyes were a little glassy, as if she was holding back tears, but her chin was regal.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s a take it or leave it proposition. I won’t budge on this.”

  This is the point where Thomas would normally throw someone out of his office. To him, take it or leave it meant leave it. But he curbed his tongue. For some strange reason, Meghan intrigued him. She had principles and no matter what she would not compromise them.

  She wasn’t the only person on the planet who would be willing to be a surrogate for him. He could always find someone else. Someone who wouldn’t complicate an already unusual situation with a marriage based on nothing.

  “You’re not a real surrogate, are you?”

  “I don’t know what a real surrogate is,” Meghan answered.

  “You’ve never done this before,” he stated. “I can’t imagine someone marrying because she agreed to carry a baby and then give it away.”

  “You’re welcome to find another host.”

  Meghan wasn’t bluffing. Thomas could tell that from her expression and the way she’d sidestepped the question.

  “I won’t pretend to understand your logic,” Thomas told her. “But suppose, and I said suppose, I agree to this marriage? Why is it so important to you?”

  “If you think I’m trying to shake you down or somehow force you to stay married to me after the child, you’re wrong.”

  “I wouldn’t let it happen anyway,” he said.

  “When your son or daughter is thirteen or fourteen, it’ll ask how it was possible that its mother was…wasn’t alive when it was born, but she didn’t die in childbirth. The child will want all the particulars.”

  “And I’ll tell her or him. But saying the word surrogate rather than wife makes no difference.”

  “It will.”

  “By that time, I could be remarried and the child will only have known one mother.”

  “You said you never plan to remarry.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I know this is frustrating. The logic isn’t there. It has to do with feelings, not something you could put into columns and rows and have all the down totals and cross totals come up to the same number. We’re talking about lives, about people. Like love, logic has nothing to do with it.”

  For a long moment, Thomas said nothing. He was thinking about her proposal. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, Thomas thought. A wedding ring would deflect some of the husband-hunting women he met. He’d been written up in Ebony as a rich widower and it had brought throngs of unmarried women throwing themselves at him. Being an eligible bachelor had its advantages, but it also had its drawbacks. When he added the words financial tycoon to the picture, the drawbacks were inconvenient. Meghan could act as a decoy. But her having his baby as a surrogate opened him to both ridicule and constant speculation. As his pregnant wife, he could avoid all that. This just might work, he thought.

  He was no saint, but the women he saw knew where his priorities lay. He didn’t play games of deception, allowing them to think there was a chance to become the next Mrs. Worthington-Yates.

  “There would be a prenuptial agreement,” he stated.

  “Of course,” she agreed. She stared at him, her eyes steady. She was beautiful. And possessed the exact qualities he looked for when interviewing a possible employee. He wanted a person who was confident, sure of herself, knew that she could do the job, knew she would stand behind the decisions she made.

  Meghan was all that. He could see it in the line of her body, the tilt of her head and the attitude apparent on her face. She was direct, and he usually hated that in a woman. But with her, it had been a refreshing change from being surrounded by people who agreed with everything he said.

  “Now, why is that?” his dad would have said. He was always having Thomas analyze his actions. Thomas missed his gentle guidance. But even his dad couldn’t advise him on this course of action.

  “So what are you saying?” she asked. “You’ll marry me?”

  “You’ll have to agree to a background check,” he said.

  “You mean an investigation?” Her brows arched. Thomas’s eyes followed the perfect half-circles above her dark brown eyes.

  “I have to be sure—”

  “As do I,” she interrupted. Again there was the directness, the surprise that he hadn’t expected. “A man in your position needs to know what kind of crackpot he’s dealing with,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t call you a crackpot.”

  “Not right off the bat.” Her eyes softened, taking the sting out of her words. “I assure you I have no skeletons in my closet, but you’re looking for more than skeletons.”

  “I am?”

  “Be honest with me. You’re wondering what kind of woman is willing to go through childbirth with another woman’s baby.”

  “The thought has crossed my mind.”

  “It’s simple. I need a job with benefits.”

  “I’m sure there’s more to it than that.”

  She walked back into the room and sat down. This time on the sofa.

  “I’m thirty years old,” she began. “All my life I’ve given to others. Don’t get me wrong, I did it because I chose to do it. And I’m sure I will go on doing that, but I need more credentials. This will allow me to get them in half the time and without having to work night and day.”

  “And in a way, it’s still giving to someone else,” he said.

  She cocked her head and thought for a moment. “I suppose you could think of it that way.”

  The smile that seemed to come from her heart was bright and genuine.

  “At first I was against the idea. I’d never have come up with it on my own. Your in-laws approached me and I’ve had time to research the idea. I went back to that agency where they saw me and spoke with the counselors. Apparently there is a large number of people who do this.”

  “Are you planning to join them?”

  She shook her head. “But if you want to forget about me and find someone who’s a professional at this, I can give you the name of the agency.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. Speaking with her had been a difficult enough interview, he couldn’t imagine going through this with several candidates.

  “Then are we agreed?” she asked.

  “You’ll have the baby and give it up? No strings?”

  “There are plenty of strings,” she said. “But none related to custody of the child.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  “Well, where do I sign?”

  “Papers will be drawn up by my attorney.”

  “Mine, too.”

  He stopped and stared at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Didn’t you think I’d want to know what kind of crackpot I’m dealing with?”

  For a long moment Thomas Worthington-Yates stared at Meghan. He wondered if there were other women like her. She threw him off balance just when he thought his footing was sure. And he liked it. He smiled. That turned into a chuckle and then into a deep belly laugh.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  The cliché had Meghan laughing out loud. Sipping a cup of coffee, she tucked her legs beneath her and looked out on the street where she lived. It was her neighborhood. She and Suzanne had lived here for over a decade, but in a few days she’d be leaving it, never to return. The house sat close to the street, only a four-foot wide sidewalk separating it from the roadway. There were no trees or shrubs, only concrete and blacktop. A few houses, like hers, had window boxes with hanging flowers or green plants to break up the starkness of the uniform brick, but the place was nothing like the rolling lawns and manicured hedges of Thomas’s home.

  Meghan had wished for a job with better pay and she was getting it. Plus she was really truly helping someone. She laughed again, the same way she’d done in her car returning from Thomas’s house. Many people appeared to talk or laugh in their cars. Most were on cell phones and no one paid any attention, but Meghan imagined people were casting curious glances her way. She sobered and concentrated on the traffic.

  She was engaged.

  Meghan tried to make sense of the statement. The proposal wasn’t ideal. She had no ring and no mention of one was made by either her or Thomas. He hadn’t even offered her his hand to shake. Their agreement had been more like a business merger than an engagement. There was no love, no show of happiness, no kiss. A handshake would have sealed the deal, but she thought it would be in poor taste. Maybe Thomas did, too.

  The agreement hadn’t been anywhere near the idealized version of a proposal, the stuff of her teenage dreams. That was back when she had dreams. When her mother was still alive. Things were tight for them. There was little money for Meghan to go school, so she worked her way through Morgan State, staying at home and commuting in a 1939 classic convertible with a leaky roof and floorboards you could see through. The car had died the day after graduation. Meghan knew it had been held together by need, hope, sweat and her will.