Chapter 5
5
Rowan
I got the call out of the blue, a couple of days after running into Atlas at that stupid sex club. I was in my cramped little kitchen, making scrambled eggs for Mom for breakfast even though I knew it would make me late for work.
She tended not to eat anything during the day if I wasn’t around, but she would if I made it for her, so I tried to make sure she had something in the mornings at least.
I was at the stove, still in my dressing gown, adding more milk to the scramble in the pan as I tried not to think about Atlas Blackwood for the third time that morning, which considering it was seven thirty, was something.
The damn man had been haunting my thoughts since I’d watched him with that woman in Arcadia, and it just felt so…wrong.
He was nearly twice my age, had been married to my mom, and there was no way I should find him attractive, and yet I couldn’t get him out of my head.
The pure, hard lines of his face. The gleam of tawny in his hair. The molten gold of his eyes. His delicious scent. Everything about him seemed to hone in on some deeply buried part of me that found him so overwhelmingly gorgeous that it was difficult not to think of him.
The night before, I’d tossed and turned in my bed, trying to find a cool place on my pillow, my brain insisting on replaying every moment of that scene in Arcadia. I’d been so tired of resisting my own thoughts that I’d thrown myself into it, imagining myself as that woman with him behind me, moving inside me. I’d put my hand between my legs, thinking about him, thinking about him doing that to me, his hand gripping the back of my neck, all possessive and dominant, and almost as soon as I’d touched myself, I’d come, turning my face into the pillow to muffle my cries.
It was crazy. I was crazy. I’d never had a response like that to any man before and it scared me. It felt as if the whole thing was out of my control and I didn’t like that one bit.
Sex was fun, Mom had told me when she’d given me the ‘the talk’. It was no big deal. Yet, I knew she was lying, because it had to be a big deal otherwise why would she cry about it at night sometimes when she thought I was asleep? No, sex was not fun, I’d already decided. There was something terrible and mysterious about it that made people desperate and unhappy, and I wanted no part of that.
Tina hadn’t been unhappy in Arcadia.
I glared at the pan full of eggs, shoving that thought from my head, because I really didn’t need it there.
Just then my phone sitting on the counter went off, so I grabbed it, hitting the answer button as I picked up the wooden spoon I was using to fuss with the eggs.
“Rowan James?” The woman’s voice was firm and authoritative.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said, jabbing at the eggs.
“Good. It’s Charlotte Hamilton, your grandmother, here. I have a proposition for you.”
Cold shock hit me.
“Grandmother?” I echoed stupidly, the word not making any sense to me. “What?”
“Didn’t Caitlyn tell you about me?” Charlotte Hamilton didn’t sound offended, only amused. “That would be very like her.”
My grandmother. The one my mother had warned me never to contact. Except now she was the one contacting me and I had no idea what to say.
“No, she mentioned you.” I jabbed at the eggs. “Once or twice.”
“Oh did she?” Charlotte’s tone was dry. “Interesting. I suppose she told you never to contact me, hmmm?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, don’t worry. You can safely say you haven’t contacted me. I’m the one doing the contacting.”
I stared hard at the eggs in the pan. “And…uh…how did you get my number?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking.”
“What question should I be asking?”
She ignored me. “Did Caitlyn ever mention her sister? Juliana?”
I frowned. The name meant nothing to me. “No. She didn’t tell me anything about her family.” Which was absolutely true. I’d even stopped asking her about them, since every time I did she went into a decline. All I knew about the Hamiltons were that they were filthy rich, extremely powerful, and terrible.
“Juliana was a couple of years younger than your mother, but she died a long time ago,” Charlotte said.
Another little shock went through me, along with a strange pang of grief for an aunt I hadn’t known existed until now. “Oh. I’m…so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said in the same dry tone. “I lost both my daughters, which I suppose might be what you’d call karma. Though, for what isn’t important. What is important, is that I’d like to start over. I’d like to have the chance to do better this time, to learn from my mistakes. A chance to be a better mother than I was back then.”
I didn’t understand. “Um, okay,” I muttered. “Do you want me to get Mom on the phone?—-”
“No, no,” Charlotte interrupted. “Caitlyn made clear her views on me years ago and I’m not looking to change them. No, what I’m asking for now, is a great-grandchild. A baby that I can bring up myself, as my daughter.”
That seemed a…strange thing to want to do, but people did strange things all the time. And I wasn’t a mother, I didn’t know what it was like to lose a child. Awful, probably.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So why are you calling me?”
Charlotte gave a dry little laugh. “My dear girl, why do you think? I’d like to ask you if you be willing to be a surrogate.”
This time I just stood there, gaping at the stove in shock, the phone clutched in my hand. “What?”
“I know, it’s a strange request. But obviously I can longer have children of my own so I need a someone who can. Preferably one of my own blood.”
There was a weird smell in the room that took me a moment to realize was Mom’s eggs burning in the pan. Muttering curses, I quickly turned off the gas and lifted the pan from the stove, examining the burned eggs.
Yep, well and truly burned. How apt.
“Everything all right?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes,” I muttered, slinging the pan into the sink for the meantime. “You’re seriously asking me to be your surrogate?”
“Indeed.” There was a pause. “I realize this is a big thing to ask, so I’m going to pay you for it. Enough to set you up for life.”
I stilled. “How much?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
Charlotte gave another dry laugh. “A woman after my own heart. I should have tracked you down years ago.” Then she said a number that made my eyes pop out of my head.
It was a staggering amount. Enough to buy my own place. Enough to cover all Mom’s medical bills and get full time care if need be. Enough that I wouldn’t have to work ever again if I didn’t want to.
“Is this a joke?” I asked, just to be sure.
“No,” my grandmother said. “Check your bank account.”
I blinked, then lowered my phone and clicked on the banking app to glance at my account. It was fifty grand richer.
I stared at the zeroes then lifted the phone again, my hand shaking a little. “Oh,” was all I could think of to say.
“Is that serious enough for you?” Charlotte asked. “And to be clear, you can keep that payment whether you agree or not. But if you don’t, you won’t get the rest.”
The rest….
My mouth dried. All my money worries would be solved. I could go to college if I wanted, get my MBA, which was a dream I used to have before Mom got really sick. We would never have to scrape for a living again…
But you’ll have to be pregnant, remember? Then you’ll have to give your baby up.
I hadn’t thought about having kids. It had been a ‘one day in the future’ kind of thing, for when Mom was better and I’d found a man I wanted to share my life with. Certainly not now, at twenty four.
“All your medical bills will be paid for,” Charlotte went on. “And you’ll have the best obstetric care money can buy.”
My head was spinning. I turned around and leaned back against the stove, still trying to get a grip on what she was saying. “So that’s all?” I asked. “I just have to…get pregnant?”
“You’ll also have to get married, which I’m afraid I’ll have to insist on. It’s a trifle old-fashioned, but I can’t have the child being born out of wedlock. Don’t worry, though, it’ll be a purely on-paper marriage.”
This was getting weirder and weirder.
I swallowed. “So presumably the man I’m getting married to will be the father?”
“Correct,” Charlotte said. “You don’t have to have anything to do with him if you don’t want to, though.”
I could barely take in that she was talking marriage as well, not when the baby thing was taking up the entirety of my brain.
Have a baby. For money. It felt wrong somehow. Not the surrogate part, plenty of women were surrogates, but from what I’d heard most did it out of the goodness of their hearts. For relatives or friends who couldn’t have children.
“How do I know you’ll be good to the child?” I asked, the question popping into my mind at random. “You were estranged from Mom after all.”
“A very good question,” Charlotte said. “And I’m sure you have many more. Let’s meet face to face and discuss this. How about next week, at La Chouette? ”
La Chouette was new, extremely swanky, and almost impossible to get into. But apparently not if you were a Hamilton.
“Oh…uh…that soon?” I forced out, the shock taking its time to wear off. “But I?—”
“If you have anything on, cancel it,” my grandmother interrupted crisply. “I’ll see you there, Rowan.”
Then the call disconnected, leaving me standing there staring at the wall.
I didn’t move for a long moment, my head still spinning with the implications of Charlotte’s offer.
Get married. Have a baby. Earn a fortune.
I should have said no, that there was no way I was going to do any of those things, because seriously? Have a baby?
That would be a life I’d be bringing into this world. A life that would be part of me, no matter that I was a surrogate, and then I’d be handing over that life to someone else. To Charlotte Hamilton, who must have been an awful mother if my mom was anything to go by.
Then again, she’d wanted to do better, that’s what she’d said, and what did I know about being a mother? Nothing. Nothing at all, which might mean that Charlotte was the better option from the child’s point of view.
What about the father, though? The man Charlotte expected me to marry. Who was he? Presumably conception would be via sperm donation because there was no way I was sleeping with a complete stranger. The very thought of it?—
“Rowan?” My mother’s soft voice came from the doorway behind me. “I smelled burning.”
I closed my eyes a second, trying to pull myself together, because I couldn’t tell Mom that her mother had just called, wanting to pay me money to be a surrogate. No, I couldn’t breathe a word of it to her, not when her mental health was so fragile. She was doing pretty well at the moment, but who knew? The very mention of the Hamilton name might send her into a decline.
I was going to have to keep this to myself for the moment and think of any questions I might have for Charlotte, because despite my misgivings, I already knew I was going to La Chouette. I needed to see her face to face, decide if she was on the level, and hey, just meet my grandmother for the first time. Also money….
“It’s just your eggs, Mom.” I straightened and turned around to face her.
She was standing in the doorway, wrapped in one of her old silk dressing gowns, this sleeve hems frayed, the pretty pink silk faded. She must have dyed her hair recently, because there were no silver threads in it, and that was a good sign. When she didn’t dye her hair, things were really bad mentally for her.
“Sorry,” I said. “I burned them. But don’t worry, I’ll make you some more.” It would mean being late to work for creepy Ben Jordan, but maybe that didn’t matter as much as it had ten minutes earlier, when I didn’t have fifty grand in my account.
Mom gave me that sweet smile that made my heart feel full and painful, that told me she appreciated what I did for her, even if she didn’t understand quite how much I did for her.
I smiled back, then went to the fridge to get some more eggs.