Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (114 page)

“You could always, oh, I don’t know, Google
him. I’m sure there’s plenty of information.”

“Google can’t tell me if someone is nice,
Jessika. He might be faking it. When I talk to him I’ll know for
sure. Trust me on this, I’m your mother.”

“Right. Bye mom. Love you.”

“I love you, too. Be safe.”

I hung up the phone and let it fall into its
receiver. That hadn’t gone at all like I expected, but I was glad it went
alright. I thought she’d be more… upset? Maybe not upset, but
concerned. Not that she had any reason to be, or not that I thought she
had a reason, but still.

“Your mom sounds like a hoot.”

Startled, I jumped up and stared at my bedroom
door. Jeremy stood there eating a cookie, powdered sugar covering his
lips.

“You have something—” I gestured to
my lips. “There.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Saving it
for later. You can never be too careful. Who knows when my next
meal will be?”

“That was the corniest line I’ve ever
heard,” I said.

He grinned. “Let’s pack your stuff, Miss
Stripper Adulteress.”

…

I packed some of my shoes and clothes in an overnight
duffel bag. I didn’t really need them, since Asher had asked Jeremy to
buy me clothes and he’d filled an entire walk-in closet with them, but I liked
some of what I owned. It was comfortable and familiar.

“Maybe she has the plans written down,” I
said, cramming another t-shirt into my bag. “Maybe that’s why she
doesn’t like Asher sleeping in the same room with her. At night, when he
thinks she’s sleeping, she’s actually writing down her evil plan in a notebook
that she hides in her bedside table.”

“Are we coming up with plots for a YA fantasy
novel or are we talking about how to figure out what, if anything, Beatrice is
up to?” he asked.

I frowned. “Sorry, I read a lot.”

“It’s fine, but I doubt she did that. If
anything, it’d be on her computer. No one writes stuff down these
days.”

“True, true. So… we could check
that?”

“Maybe. I imagine it’s password protected,
though.”

“She might use a simple one. Did you know
that a lot of people use ‘password’ as their password? It could be
that.”

“I… I doubt it. I mean, it’s possible,
but I don’t think Beatrice is one of those people. She graduated from
Dartmouth.” Jeremy rummaged through my drawers and grabbed a cute
blouse. “Let’s bring this.”

“I really like that one. Put it in the
bag.” He did, then I stared at him. “Can you stop going
through my drawers, too? There’s…”

“Do you really wear this? Wow.”
He held up one of my cutest and sexiest pairs of underwear; a frilly pink
chiffon piece that always clung tight to my body, with a black silk bow in the front
at the top. “This is… wow. I mean, there’s sexy,
right? But then there’s cute, and then… wow. This is really
good. How do you not have a boyfriend?”

I snatched the underwear away from him.
“Give me that! Stop looking through my underwear drawer!”
I shut the drawer on him, nearly slamming his fingers in it as I did.
“Also, my last boyfriend didn’t even like these. That was awhile
ago, but still. He said they made me look like I was twelve and he felt
like a criminal whenever I wore them before we had sex.”

Jeremy burst into laughter. “Ah,
well. Weird. I don’t know how anyone could ever mistake you for a
twelve year old, underwear or not. Really, I think the appeal to a pair
like that is the innocence, though. Like, hey, they’re cute, right?
But also sexy. It’s the best of both worlds, really. You get the
hotness, but the demure nature, too, so you’re going to have some really good
sex, but you won’t feel like you’re with a slut. That’s how I think about
it.”

“I guess thanks for not calling me a slut?
Can we stop talking about my underwear now?”

Jeremy snickered. “Yeah, sure.
Sorry. I just… man… if Asher saw those on you, he’d…”

He didn’t say more. Why wouldn’t he say
more? “What?” I asked. “He’d what?”

“Well, you shouldn’t wear them around him.
Also, why would he ever see you in your underwear? Strictly speaking,
this will never happen, so this is all hypothetical, but I think he’d go
crazy. In a good way, for you, except maybe not, since, you know, he’s
married.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right, of
course. What time do we have to be at the doctor’s?”

“We should probably leave soon. Asher’s
going to meet us there. You both have to sign paperwork or
something. Anything else you need besides what we grabbed?”

“Yes, um. Can you grab the other boxes of
cookies? I’m going to change quickly.”

Jeremy looked at me funny. “Sure, but I
think Asher can afford to buy more cookies.”

“They’re expiring soon,” I lied.
“I don’t want to waste them.”

Jeremy shrugged and left to go fetch my cookies.
I grabbed the pink panties and rushed into the bathroom to change.
Shimmying my current pair of underwear down my bare legs, I stepped out of them
and then stepped into the new pair. I lifted them up, holding my skirt
above my waist while I did, and fit them into place. And, they didn’t
match my bra, but who cared? I had plans, delicious and devious plans,
and they didn’t involve anything to do with a bra.

…

“Are you on birth control?” the doctor
asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “Is that alright,
or…?”

“It’s fine,” she said. “In a
standard procedure, we would have you go on birth control for a month
anyways. This insures that we’re dealing with a regular cycle. The
long and short of it is that we need to know exactly when your period is so
that we can plan for egg retrieval. There’s medication involved and
various shots. You’ll have to self-administer those, but we’ll show you
how. The shots are simple and mostly painless, but after awhile there can
be slight bruising and discomfort. I assume you have an OB/GYN you
regularly go to?”

“Yes.” I swallowed hard. The
medication didn’t sound bad, but the shots worried me. I was always kind
of a wimp when it came to needles.

“So, what we’ll do today is preliminary
exams. Nothing intensive. I’ll need to speak with your OB/GYN about
your history, but I assume we won’t find anything detrimental to IVF, so
everything should be settled in a couple days. Depending on the type of
birth control and where you are in your cycle, we might be able to start this
sooner than regular. I can’t guarantee anything, though. Do you
know when you usually have your period?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding. “In a few
days. Three? What’s IVF?”

“In vitro fertilization. Sorry, I’m so used
to abbreviating.” She hummed to herself, considering my
answer. “As long as everything checks out, we
might
be able
to begin in three days. That’s a rush, though. Basically, if we do
that, you won’t have much time to back out. If you change your mind or
reconsider, you’d have less of a window.”

“What I’d like to do,” she continued,
“is start you on Gonal-f the day of your period. You’d stop taking
birth control then. You’ll inject the Gonal-f with an RFF pen—which
basically looks like a large ballpoint pen—and that’s about it. I’ll
prescribe you enough refills to last for ten days. You’ll also need to
take some other medications, but those are easier to handle. It’s a good
idea to start taking pre-natal vitamins and oftentimes baby aspirin helps,
too. On the ninth day you’ll come back in and…”

I listened to her, but it all kind of blurred
together. Three days? And then what? If everything went as
planned, I’d be pregnant in a couple of weeks, right? I didn’t really
know what I was thinking before this, but it seemed like it’d take longer than
that. Months, maybe? I had married friends who’d spent half a year
before becoming pregnant, so a couple weeks seemed really quick in
comparison. Though I don’t know why I thought it would take longer,
either. Medicine, advances in technology, and whatever else; these
doctors had it down to a science and knew exactly how to manage it.

“Please be aware that the surgery involved with
egg retrieval and transplant can be painful and disorienting. We do
everything we can to minimize that, though. I know it’s a lot to take
in,” the doctor said. She smiled at me and handed me a
pamphlet. “Here’s some more information and you’re always free to
say no. This is kind of a strange case in that usually we perform IVF on
either infertile women without other complications or egg donors. I
discussed everything with Mr. Landseer on the phone a few days ago and I
understand your situation, though. It shouldn’t be any different than a
regular procedure in the end, so you don’t have anything to worry about with
that.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m not
worried. It’s just…”

“It’s sudden,” she said for me.
“If you want to think about it more, that’s fine by me. Don’t let
anyone pressure you into anything. We do need signed consent forms from
the both of you, though. Whatever your arrangement is with Mrs. Landseer
should be discussed with an attorney, too. We don’t do that here,
though. We’ll manage the process between you and Asher, and the rest is
up to you to decide. Surrogacy can get complicated very fast with how the
laws are in the US. I’m just a doctor, but I’d advise you to look into it
carefully so you know what you’re getting into.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

She smiled. “I’ll be right back with the
consent forms. You can look them over at your convenience. I
believe Asher is waiting in the waiting room, too. I’ll get him, you both
can talk things over, and when you’re ready to continue the preliminary exam
I’ll be waiting.”

She left me in the doctor’s room. I sat on the
cushioned table, swinging my legs side to side, thinking. Was I ready for
this? If—I checked the pamphlet. Alright, so, if I followed this
chart, and everything went as planned, I’d be pregnant in about three
weeks. They did pregnancy tests in office a couple weeks after the second
egg transplant, and anything after that was too late. About a month,
then? In a month I might become a mother.

Or, not really. Technically, yes, but I couldn’t
keep the child. It was for Asher and Beatrice, except…

Oh my God. I hadn’t really thought about this
before, but what happened if Beatrice
was
planning something against
Asher? Personally I had no doubts in my mind about what I heard, even if
I didn’t know the specifics. I did agree that Jeremy had a valid point in
needing to figure it out with more certainty, though. But, then, if she
was planning something, a divorce or whatever, what happened with the
child? If I signed some contract with a lawyer stating that I would give
up the child to the Landseer’s, could she use it as a bargaining chip in the
divorce? How did that work?

I needed to look into it, but I didn’t really know
how. I didn’t have a lawyer of my own, and I wasn’t sure if I could trust
the Landseer lawyer(if they had one, though I assumed Asher would).
Mostly, what if Beatrice talked with the lawyer beforehand. If she was
planning on leaving Asher, she, no doubt, had thought of hiring a divorce
attorney. Except, why hire one if she had a perfectly good one on hand,
one who already knew Asher’s situation and any potential ways to screw him
over?

A bit conspiratorial, even for me, but I decided it
was definitely better to figure out an alternative solution. I’d have to
find a way to talk with a lawyer who didn’t know anything about Asher,
Beatrice, or even me. Hypothetical discussions and… I didn’t have the
money for this. Was I just going to waltz up to Asher and ask him to pay
for it? Why, he would ask. And then what did I tell him?
Also, I couldn’t do that anyways since it was more than rude.

Argh! This was so complicated. I hated it.

Asher stepped into the room after knocking. He
smiled at me and I immediately felt better, different. I had three days
to decide, and if I couldn’t figure anything out by then I’d find a way to
delay. What if I wanted to think about it more? No one could deny
me that, since this was kind of a big thing. At least I doubted Asher
would be upset with me, though who knew about Beatrice. I didn’t really
care about her thoughts, anyways.

“Hey,” Asher said. He sat on the chair
next to the cushioned table. “Everything alright?”

“Yes. I think so,” I said.

“Everything is looking fine,” the doctor
confirmed. “I see no reason why this shouldn’t succeed. Ms.
Fevrier is young and presumably fertile, so there won’t be any issues
there. Obviously the testing, and I have to talk with her doctor, but
other than that… you haven’t been pregnant before, correct?”

She’d asked me this earlier, but I assumed the repeat
question was for Asher’s benefit. “No.” I shook my head.

“For surrogacy, it’s typically better to do this
with a woman who’s proven fertile in the past, but for non-donor IVF it’s
obviously for women who are regularly infertile. For your situation, the
latter is more applicable. I wanted to clarify that quickly in case
you’ve read anything before this.”