“Did it feel different? Like you know, no condom vs condom.”
“Yes. It felt very different. The biggest difference was when he…” I couldn’t tell her this. I couldn’t tell anyone this.
Dear God, I had to tell someone.
“After he, um, let go inside me, he did this thing. He, ah, lifted my legs up. Straight in the air. So—”
“So the ejaculate didn’t run down your legs.” Sage fanned herself. “Lordie, I’m about to blow.”
I laughed again. “Skip using the word ejaculate, because ick, but yeah, me too. It shouldn’t have been hot. It freaked me out more than a little. But it was hot. Everything he does is hot, and now I might be pregnant, and I should be running the other direction. Instead, even though it’s insanely premature to even think this way, I can’t help wondering what if I can’t do this for him. What happens then.”
“If you can’t do what?”
“If I can’t give him a baby.” Just saying it sounded ridiculous, so I laughed again, right on cue. I wasn’t prone to fits of tears all that often. Hysterical laughter was another story. “I’m untried in that area, you know? I could have fertility issues. We could be a mismatch. So many reasons why this might not work, and that’s not even why I’m wigging the most.”
Sage just waited.
“I loved the guy before we got naked,” I whispered. “Now I can’t imagine life on the other side. Where he gets where he wants or he doesn’t, but he can move on.”
“What if he can’t? What if he feels exactly the same way as you but, I don’t know, concocted this elaborate ruse so he doesn’t have to put anything on the line?”
“Oh please. Seth Hamilton? Do you not know the guy? He oozes confidence. He could have any woman he wants, and—”
“And he wanted you. Not just you, but to have a baby with you. A lifetime bond, Ally. Do you get that? You have a kid with someone, you’re not walking away. Even if you think you can, there’s always that tie. That piece of you linked.”
Shaking my head, I rubbed at the sudden moisture in my eye and looked away. Anywhere but at her. “He wanted to pay me off for my egg, basically. Send me away and raise the kid on his own. He might not think I’m a bad risk DNA-wise—and even that’s a crapshoot with my family’s history—but as for me, he didn’t even want me at first.”
“At first?” She inched up on her tiptoes and got right in my face. “Lawrence, you’re holding out on me.”
I sniffled. Stupid allergies. “After I bailed on him after we did it, when he found me here at the diner the next day, he apologized for coming up with such a crazy plan. And he suggested we do it together instead. I don’t know, it could’ve just been his new way of getting me to say yes.”
“Have it together. Raise it together.”
“Yeah.”
Sage let out a laugh. “Girl, I might be the virgin, but you’re the dummy. He so wants to put you on lockdown. Forget put a ring on it. He wants to put a baby in it.”
“You’re being silly. He just wants a kid for Laurie, so she has a sibling like he did before they’re too far apart in age.”
“You just said he could have any woman. Does that or does that not include their wombs as well?” She propped a hand under her chin. “Wonder what the average woman would say if a man like Seth Hamilton asked them to have his baby. He’s a wonderful, devoted father already, and he’s rich, smart, suave, kind-hearted, and judging from today’s office performance, a near stallion in the bedroom Olympics. I’m sure he’d get few takers.”
“He didn’t ask them, did he? He asked me.” I shut my eyes. “He offered me money, Sage. As if I was a common—”
“As if he wanted to make things easier for you and knew you’d never accept the help any other way.” Sage’s voice turned soft. “Honey, you don’t always make it easy for people to love you. Me, I make it so easy people aren’t interested.” She laughed weakly and my eyes popped open. “There’s a fine line between playing hard to get and being impossible to get. You’re practically a fortress, and Seth’s the only man brave enough to try to find a way in.”
“He was always in, and he never even knew it.” And now my shitty drugstore mascara was running from the heat in that stuffy room. Never buying that brand again. Nope.
“Al, after he put your legs up,” she paused to fan herself again, “what happened next?”
&n
bsp; “We talked for a minute or two then he went to speak to his secretary about lunch.” I gripped my stomach. The hole inside it was growing vaster by the second. “Wonder if I can grab a hamburger before my shift. I’m starving.”
“His secretary was right there the whole time while…” Sage blinked and swallowed. “Stallion,” she said reverently, and I had to laugh or flush forty shades of red.
I probably did both, but I was laughing too much to care.
“What happened after that? You’re talking hamburgers, so what, you didn’t like lunch?”