“Brenna, yes. Your surrogate,” he said. He said the last word like every letter was a single syllable.
“Yes, her.”
“How’s it going by the way. The surrogacy?”
It had been a few weeks since we had found out now and things were going great. We had fallen into a perfect little domestic routine. We saw each other every day. I always knew she’d be home when I got there. We had dinner together most nights, sometimes breakfast too and our sex life was incredible.
“Great. She’s pregnant already.”
“What?” he asked. “I thought it wasn’t supposed to happen that fast.”
I shrugged. “It did for us.”
“I know a guy who was doing that IVF stuff with his missus for two years. It kept… I don’t know, falling out or something.” I stifled a laugh. Thank god Niall never went into the medical field.
“It can take that long but generally if you do it the old-fashioned way, it’s just a matter of timing.”
Niall looked shocked for a split second then laughed. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
“Sure, tell yourself that if it makes you feel good.”
“You’re sleeping with her?” he said, looking at me. “Wait, now this just got interesting.” He sat in the seat on the other side of my desk and leaned in so his elbows were on the desk like we were going to gossip.
“I'm not sleeping with her. She's my girlfriend.”
His eyes bugged out of his head. “Wait, I thought she was your surrogate. When I talked to her, she said she wasn't your girl, she called herself your employee.”
“Well, that was technically how it started. That was how we found each other again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. you know the story I told you about Dana Point Beach? The girl I met that summer?”
His mouth fell open. “That's her?”
Yup, that was her. “When you talked about how it was too bad I couldn't just have the baby without getting away first to make my mother happy, I decided to investigate. I went over legal with the lawyers, a surrogate birth wouldn't affect the inheritance. So, I went for it. I figured I'd rather go through that then deal with my mother and her constantly setting me up with women I have no interest in.”
“Then where does Brenna enter the picture?”
“She was the surrogate that my fertility clinic contracted for me. I don't know, I guess they are always looking for surrogates and she must have answered an ad.”
“She could have ended up carrying anyone's baby then.”
“But she didn't. She ended up carrying mine. Granted, she wasn't all that pleased to see me, but then we got back into the swing of things and well, one th
ing led to another.”
“That's crazy,” Niall said.
“No, it's perfect. It's like, I don't know. God or fate or destiny. We're supposed to be together. After seven years not even a single word from her end or mine, we find each other at the exact right time.”
“Charlie,” he said. “If I didn't know better, I would think you were in love with this woman.”
“In all the years that my mother has been trying to set me up, why do you think it's never worked?”
“To be honest, at one point I just thought you were gay.” I laughed at that.
“You know what? I don't think even being gay would have been enough to stop Veronica Hampton from trying to set me up with a woman of her choice. She's completely obsessed. she just tried to set me up with Elizabeth Thomas a few weeks ago.”