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“Do you ever regret it?” Deidre asked as their run wound down.
“Regret what?”
“The whole surrogacy thing.” Obviously Bella hadn’t been the only one mulling over her situation during the twenty minutes they’d been running. “I know you say you don’t want to get married and have kids, but being pregnant and giving up the baby, that’s different.”
“I knew what I was getting into.” She was a farm girl—when she was six she’d learned a difficult but important lesson about the difference between pets and livestock. As much time and energy that she put into raising a prizewinning calf, there was always a chance that it would be sold. “I wouldn’t have done it if I thought I would have a problem. Besides, Drew isn’t my baby. He belongs to Blake.”
“And Victoria,” Deidre prompted.
Bella shook her head. “She left him. Left them.”
“What?”
“That’s why he needs a nanny this summer. Victoria decided she didn’t want to be a mother.” Of course, she wasn’t Drew’s biological mother, but only Victoria and Bella knew the truth about that.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“A little sea air might be exactly what you need.”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t thinking about sea air; she was mulling over the weeks of sleepless nights when she’d be battered by temptation, knowing Blake would be dreaming peacefully in the master bedroom down the hall. Keeping her attraction hidden had been easy when he was married to Victoria. That was a line she’d never cross. But now that he was single, would she send out vibes without even knowing it? How humiliating to be fired from a nanny job because she had the hots for her employer.
Uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts had taken her, Bella made sure to shift the conversation away from Blake and Drew during the walk back to the apartment. Deidre had called dibs on the first shower, so Bella headed to her bedroom to pack away the supplies she’d brought home from her classroom. By the time she finished, she was ready to call Blake and turn down his offer. Picking up the phone, she noticed she’d missed a call during her run. The message was a giddy explosion of good news from her sister Kate: she’d been accepted into a global health program in Kenya.
It was impossible for Bella not to smile at her sister’s enthusiasm. Kate had set her sights on this program since she’d started college three years ago and had worked diligently toward the goal. She would graduate next year with a major in social work and intended to get her master’s in public health. Bella couldn’t be more proud.
Kate was well on her way to making a life for herself beyond the fetters of the farm and her siblings’ constant drain on her energy and resources. It was the dream Bella had for all her siblings, but thus far only Kate and Jess were poised to achieve it.
The phone rang before Bella had a chance to dial Kate’s number to congratulate her.
“Hiya, Bella.” It was Jess. At eighteen, she was the most practical of Bella’s three sisters.
“What’s up?”
“I heard Kate leaving you a message and just thought you should know that she’s probably not going to be able to afford the semester abroad.”
Bella’s good mood crashed and burned. “Why not? Last I heard she’d gotten the scholarship and had enough saved.” Kate had been working so hard for the past three years to make this trip happen.
“There were some extra costs she hadn’t accounted for and Mom and Dad weren’t able to give her the money she was counting on.”
“How did that happen?” The long pause that followed Bella’s question told her everything she needed to know. “What broke down?”
“The tractor. It was in the middle of planting. Mom and Dad didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course not,” Bella mumbled bitterly and felt a stab of guilt over her tone.
It didn’t do any good to complain that the money to fix the tractor was supposed to be given to Kate to make her dream come true. Their parents sacrificed so much to keep the farm running and raise a family. Clothes wore out before they were replaced. Food was home cooked and simple. Entertainment consisted of the games they played in their living room or around the dining table.
“I know she’d never ask,” Jess continued. “But is there any way you can help her out? I’m giving her five hundred.” Money earmarked for her college tuition next year. “Mom’s going to give Kate the six hundred in egg money she’d put aside for Sean’s truck.”
Jess’s voice trailed off. Guilt wrenched at Bella. What a horrible sister she was to selfishly cling to her nest egg when Kate needed help. This particular program was only offered once a year. She had to go now, because next year she would begin her graduate studies and the window would be closed.
But Bella had already sent money home to help with Paul’s community-college expenses and Jess’s activities. She’d helped with the medical bills when Scott broke his leg last fall and contributed to Laney’s orthodontic treatments. As hard as her parents worked, sometimes they were caught short financially and Bella’s sense of responsibility kicked into overdrive. How could she not help out her family when she had the resources to do so? But every once in a while, she wished there wasn’t always someone needing something.
“How much is she short?”
“About three thousand.”
Bella’s heart sank, but she kept her dismay out of her voice. “Let me see what I can do.”
“You’re the best,” Jess crowed, her unselfishness making Bella feel worse and worse about her resentment. “Elephant shoes.”
“Elephant shoes right back,” Bella echoed, her family’s endearment failing to give her mood the lift it usually did. Shoulders slumping beneath the weight of responsibility, Bella dropped the phone onto her bed.
“Oh, dear.” Deidre spoke from the doorway. “Which one of them called this time?”
“Kate and Jess. Kate got into the Kenya program, but she doesn’t have enough money to go.”
“And she wants you to help her out.”
“She would never ask.”
“But Jess would.”
Bella nodded. Why deny it? Deidre knew how much Bella helped out her family. “It’s only three thousand.”
“That’s the money you were going to use for our trip to the Virgin Islands during Christmas vacation.”
“How could I possibly go and enjoy it if I didn’t help Kate?”
“I get that, but why do you always have to be the one who gives up what you want to do?”
“Because I’m the oldest.” Bella sighed. “And because I can.”
“Don’t beat yourself up for wanting to say no. You are always there when someone needs you. It’s okay not to be once in a while.”
“I know. It’s just...” Bella trailed off, already knowing she wasn’t going to disappoint her sister.
Deidre rolled her eyes. “You’re just too responsible for your own good.”
“If I was really responsible, I’d be living closer to home so I could be there when Laney needed help with math or Ben wanted to practice his goaltending skills.” Instead, she’d stayed in New York, because here she could go hours without feeling weighed down by the never-ending demands of her large family.
“You need to stop feeling guilty for enjoying living so far away from Iowa.” Deidre pulled the towel from her hair and wrapped it around her neck. Her brown eyes drilled into Bella. “Stop beating yourself up just because you like the freedom you have here. Your parents decided to have eight kids. They’re the ones who should worry about taking care of your brothers and sisters.”
“Worrying about each other is what families do.” But Bella recognized the disparity between what she said and how she felt. She was burdened in equal parts by guilt and resentment.
“But at some point you’re going to have your own family to focus on. What happens to them then?”
Bella shook her head. They’d had this conversation multiple times, but Deidre never listened. “I might someday get married, but you know how I feel about having kids. I don’t want any.”
“Your family really did a number on you,” Deidre said, her expression glum. “You had to grow up way too fast.”
“It’s not their fault.” But there was no denying that the yoke of responsibility Bella had shouldered at a young age had led to her decision never to have kids of her own. Just the thought of being trapped the way her mother had been filled her with dread.
It was why she’d thought she could carry a baby for Victoria and Blake without fear of becoming emotionally involved. Too bad she hadn’t understood that her fundamental nature hadn’t been altered by her frustration with her family’s neediness. If she had, she’d have known she’d fall in love with the child she’d given birth to. A child she had no legal claim on.
“You know,” Bella began, her pragmatic side taking over, “if I nanny for Blake this summer, I could afford to help out my sister and have enough for our Caribbean trip.”
It was a job that would pay well. She needed the money. With it she could go on vacation this winter and feel no guilt, plus she could replenish her nest egg and still help out her family.
“I think it’s a huge mistake.”
“Seems more like a win-win situation. I get money. Blake gets a nanny.”
With her head cocked to one side, Deidre studied her friend. “You forget that I know how hard it was for you to say no to Blake about staying in touch with Drew. And I know why you did it. Now that Blake is divorced, the reason you agreed to stay out of Drew’s life no longer exists.”
Bella felt a flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach. Deidre was right. Blake wasn’t married to Victoria any longer, so Bella’s promise to disappear and give the three of them a chance to become a family was no longer binding.
But her agreement with Victoria wasn’t her only reason for staying away. Giving up Drew had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Being on the fringe of his life would never allow her ache for him to dull.
“Plus,” Deidre continued, her eyes narrowing, “there’s that little crush you have on Blake.”
“Crush?” Bella’s voice wobbled when she tried to sound indignant. “I don’t have a crush on Blake.”
“I think you do. Imagine all those lovely moonlit nights in the Hamptons. Perfect for romantic walks on the beach. A midnight swim, just the two of you. Clothing optional.” Deidre’s eyebrows wagged suggestively. “You’d fall hard for the guy before the first week was over.”
“Midnight swims? Romantic walks?” Bella gave a disgusted snort. “Not likely. I’ll be sacked out. Exhausted from taking care of Drew all day, and Blake will be attending parties. Now that he’s single again, he’ll be swamped with invitations.” Bella could see she wasn’t getting through to her friend. “Besides, there’s never been any hint of attraction between us.”
“Of course not. He was married.”
“He was in love with his wife. For all I know, he still is. They haven’t even been divorced two months. I’m sure he isn’t ready to move on.”
“Keep telling yourself that, and when Blake suggests a nightcap one night after you put Drew to bed, call me the next morning so I can say I told you so.”
To Bella’s dismay, a delicious, forbidden anticipation began to build. Crossing her arms over her chest, she felt the rapid pace of her heart and tried to ignore her body’s troubling reaction to Deidre’s warning. It was ridiculous to imagine Blake being interested in her. Her own feelings were more difficult to dismiss.
“That won’t happen.”
“It might if you spend much time around him.”
“Any time we spend together will be with Drew for company. Nothing is going to happen between us.”
“A baby in the house isn’t going to stop a man like Blake Ford from taking what he wants.” Deidre raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“That’s not Blake’s style.” As tempting as it was to ponder whether Deidre was onto something, Bella knew better than to indulge in daydreams. “Blake and Drew are a package deal and he knows I’m not interested in having a family. He’ll find someone who wants the same things he does.”
“I think you’re kidding yourself if you believe you’ll ever be happy without children of your own and a man at your side to share the responsibility with you.”
Bella shook her head. “I’m sure my mother thought the same thing when she married my dad. But what happens when the responsibility gets to be too much for the two of you to handle?”
“So marry someone wealthy. Then you’d have staff to take care of your every desire, not to mention your kids.” Having delivered her final bit of wisdom, Deidre retreated down the hall, leaving Bella to ponder her roommate’s advice.
Would she be as reluctant to have children if money wasn’t an issue? Bella had no clear answer. On the day she’d turned fifteen and had to spend her birthday in the emergency room because her two youngest siblings had stuck M&M’S up their noses on her watch, she’d decided she never wanted the responsibility of motherhood. Her opinion didn’t change through college or the next few years of teaching when she’d moved away from the farm, although she continued to lend her family what support she could by sending money home. But it was never enough.
The emotions stirred up by her pregnancy had called into question a decade of wanting nothing but her freedom. She’d been plagued by doubts. Questioned her choices. But after Drew’s birth, she’d decided that she’d been a victim of pregnancy hormones. Her heart continued to hurt at the absence of Drew from her life, but she knew he was part of a loving family that had his best interests at heart.
Only today she’d discovered that he might have a father who loved him dearly, but the woman who was supposed to be his mother had turned her back on him. Disgust rose at Victoria’s actions. If Bella had suspected how things would turn out, she never would have agreed to carry Drew for Blake and his wife.
So what was Bella’s responsibility to the child now? With Victoria out of the picture, Bella could be a part of Drew’s life. Was that what she wanted? To be half in his life, always there, but never truly belonging? Blake had wanted her in his son’s life before. But how long would it last? What happened when he remarried? Surely his next wife wouldn’t want her around any more than his last one had.
There were no easy answers.
“So you’re going to do it.” Deidre shook her head as she came back into the room.
“I have to.” Bella wished her friend would understand.
“You’re going to miss a fabulous summer here. A friend of my brother works the door at that new club everyone has been talking about. He said he can get us in whenever we want.”
Disappointment stirred. The reason she’d stayed in New York City was so she could enjoy being young and not have to be responsible for anyone but herself. Last summer she’d been pregnant, so this year she’d been looking forward to dancing the night away at the clubs. Sleeping late. Reading in the park. Being Drew’s nanny meant she wouldn’t get to do any of that.
But she’d have a week in the Caribbean to look forward to. And she had to help her sister.
“That club sounds like it’s going to be so much fun. I wish I could be here to enjoy it with you.”
“Then tell Blake to forget it. You don’t have to make everyone around you happy all the time.”
“I know that.”
“But you never put yourself first. Does your family even appreciate all the things you do for them?”
Bella’s spine stiffened. “They aren’t taking advantage of me.” This wasn’t the first time Deidre had criticized her for helping her family. Being an only child, she didn’t understand why Bella couldn’t ignore that her family needed her help. She might feel anxious about working for Blake this summer, but she was willing to do it for Katie. “Look, if I can help my sister and go to the British Virgin Islands later this year, it will be worth spending a couple months as Drew’s nanny.”
Deidre stepped forward, her expression contrite. “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. You know what you’re doing. Let’s go out tonight. You can borrow my new Michelle Mason dress. We’ll celebrate the end of the school year and three months of freedom.”
“Thanks,” Bella said, grateful to have what she’d always wanted.
Freedom to do whatever she wanted with her time. Freedom to live where she was most content. Freedom to spend money on a fabulous vacation without guilt.
So, with all that freedom to revel in, why did she feel as if something was missing?
* * *
In the quiet Upper East Side apartment, Blake thanked his doorman and hung up the phone, his spirits lightening. Once he put Drew to bed, his mood always dipped. In the days before his son’s arrival, he’d discovered just how much he hated being alone. Most nights Vicky had been at the theater preparing for her off-Broadway debut. The part had been small, but she’d been thrilled. Blake had indulged her, knowing his wife needed a diversion. Waiting to become parents had been hard on both of them.
Or so he’d thought.
It was his nature to be focused and driven. Setting goals and achieving them had made him wildly successful in his business. He’d applied the same principles to his personal life: first finding the perfect woman to marry, and then starting a family with her.
He’d taken Vicky at her word when she told him she wanted children someday. Two months after their divorce was final, he wasn’t sure if she’d really wanted to be a mother before being an actress came along and got in the way, or if she’d told him what he wanted to hear so that he’d marry her.
Either way, the results were the same. He and Drew were alone—the same way Blake and his father had been in the ten years following his mother’s return to Paris—and Blake had no intention of letting his son grow up without a mother who loved him.
The doorbell chimed, startling Blake out of his reverie. He glanced at his watch as he headed for the front door. Ten-thirty was late for his sister to be out. But when he opened the door, he saw it wasn’t Jeanne.
Rocking her weight from one black stiletto sandal to another, Bella looked like a kid caught midprank. But she wasn’t a kid. Nor was she the guileless Iowa farm girl she’d been last summer. In the nine months since he’d last seen her, New York City had transformed her into a sophisticated woman who looked at ease in a one-shoulder black minidress that showed off miles of toned leg and bared slender arms adorned with eight inches’ worth of jangling bracelets.
Her inability to meet his gaze gave him hope that the woman he’d befriended wasn’t gone, only hiding beneath her expensive wardrobe. She’d done something with brown eye shadow to make her large, pale blue eyes dominate her face. Not even the bright red she’d applied to her lips could eclipse their haunting beauty. But the stark color did emphasize her mouth’s downward cant. The urge to smear her perfect lipstick with hot, demanding kisses demonstrated that his reaction to her this afternoon hadn’t been a fluke.
Damn this sudden attraction.
He didn’t want to be distracted from his important mission by a fleeting, if forceful, craving to take her to bed. He had to keep the focus on Bella and Drew’s relationship. She needed to become so attached to Drew that she couldn’t imagine not being a part of his life. That would be jeopardized if Blake got physically involved with her.
He stepped back. The move wasn’t an invitation for her to enter, but a retreat from the way she affected him.
“Come in,” he offered, covering his lapse of control.
“I can’t stay long. I’m meeting friends.” She glanced around as she took three steps into the foyer and stopped.
Blake shut the door, trapping them together in the foyer’s dimness. Intimacy crowded them as the silence lengthened.
A year ago they’d been friends. He’d thought her one of the kindest, warmest people he’d ever met. She was everything he imagined the perfect mother to be. Gentle, but resolute. A natural caretaker with a loving heart. Dedicated to her family.
His heartbeat quickened as images of her in the apartment rushed through his mind. The evening she came over for dinner to celebrate her agreeing to act as their surrogate. The afternoon she’d perched on the edge of a chair in the living room while they awaited the results of her pregnancy test. Her, cranky and uncomfortable the morning before she gave birth, four days past her due date and annoyed with him for being so positive despite the extended wait.
Thinking about that day made his heart clench. Twenty-four hours later, she’d exited his son’s life without a backward glance. “What brings you by?”
“I came to tell you my decision.”
“You could have called.” He softened his tone to take the edge off the words. A hint of anxiety tightened his muscles. Having her company in the Hamptons this summer was instrumental to his plans. Unfortunately, at the moment he wasn’t thinking as a father concerned about his motherless child, but as a man who knew how to appreciate a beautiful woman.
“I should have.” She gnawed on her lower lip. “But something has come up and I was wondering if I could borrow three thousand against my salary before we leave New York.”
Any elation he might have felt at her decision was tempered by her request. He’d hoped that meeting Drew would have made his offer irresistible, but here she was thinking only of the money. “I think that can be done.”
He tightened his jaw against the urge to ask why she needed the money. He’d paid her thirty thousand dollars to act as Drew’s surrogate. Had she gone through all that money already? If that was why she’d agreed to be his nanny for a couple months, getting her maternal instinct to kick in might be more of a challenge that it was worth.
“Thank you.” She sounded very relieved.
He paused, considering her. “Don’t you want to know how much I’m going to pay you?”
“I know you’ll be fair.”
“Ten thousand.”
Her eyes widened. “Very fair.”
“Never fear, you’ll earn it.”
As if to punctuate his statement, a wail came from his study, where Blake had left the baby monitor.
Her gaze reached beyond him, delving into the apartment. “Is Drew still up?”
“No. I put him down an hour ago.”
That caught her attention. “You put him down?”
“I am his father.”
“Of course you are.”
“You didn’t expect me to take care of my own son?”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
A line appeared between her delicately arched eyebrows. “I guess I never pictured you doing anything so domestic.”
“You don’t think I’m domesticated?”
That made her lips soften and the edges curve up. “Not really.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of her smile or the way such a minute shifting of facial muscles made his gut twist. “I assure you, I’m quite tame.”
“Then things have changed a lot since Drew was born.”
“And it’s those changes that brought us to where we are right now.”
“You mean being a single dad.”
“Partially.” He noted her quicksilver frown and guessed he’d sparked her curiosity. Before she could question him further, he said, “I’m planning to head to the beach house on Saturday. Can you be ready?”
“Sure. All I need to pack are some shorts and tops.”
“And a bathing suit. Drew loves the water.”
“Since your current nanny is out of commission, do you want me to stop by tomorrow and help Mrs. Gordon pack for Drew?”
Blake wasn’t surprised by her offer. He’d noticed that Bella often went that extra mile when it came to helping people out. “I’m sure she’d appreciate that.”
“Tell her I’ll be by around ten.”
She was turning to go when Blake spoke. “Want to help me check on him?”
The impulsive request caught both of them by surprise.
Bella gestured over her shoulder. “If I’m late my friends will worry.”
“I understand.” But he didn’t move from the foyer, despite his son’s continued distress. “Text them. Tell them where you are.”
His reluctance to let her go wasn’t logical or sensible. Until he’d gone to her school today, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed her company. The way her eyes danced with mischief. How easily she made him smile.