Her Last Wish (2 page)

I placed my hands
against his solid chest for balance. The light aroma of his cologne mixed with
his musky, masculine scent teased my senses. Although I didn’t often
acknowledge it, especially not aloud, I had missed him. I couldn’t even deny it
to myself, and I certainly tried. Something about wanting to follow him around
like a lost puppy never sat well with me. I didn’t want to
need
anybody,
men especially. That was the whole point of how hard I worked on everything
else. Still, he was a nice distraction from all that.

His lips claimed mine,
and I could feel his heat rush through my body. Just the contact gave me a high
that I was admittedly addicted to. With each brush of his tongue against mine,
I could feel myself slipping away. I craved him. My body screamed out for him,
begging him to sweep me away into a world of ecstasy. His mouth teased me,
luring me out into the unknown.

He reached behind his
back. With the slam of the door, he began leading me through my living room
toward my bedroom. His intentions for me were crystal clear.

My veins chilled in
panic. I quickly regained some of my senses and threw my arms out, blocking the
doorway to my room. I couldn’t go in there with him. I knew exactly what would
happen. It might have been what I ached for at that moment, but I had to
resist.

I pulled myself out of
his embrace. I didn’t want to, but I had been left with no choice. Just his
touch was enough to sway my resolve in ways I knew I’d regret later. “No,” I
said, panting. God, why did he always leave me breathless?

“No?” he asked in
disbelief.

I shook my head
furiously. “No, I can’t do this right now.” I closed my eyes to shield myself
from the disappointment clearly written all over his face. “I’m so sorry. I
know we’ve been together for a few years, now. I know I’ve made you wait all
this time. I know we’re both adults, and there shouldn’t be any reason why I
wouldn’t want to.”

“Shouldn’t be, but …?”
He waited impatiently for my conclusion, if only I could quit rambling long
enough to get there.

“But I’m just not
ready. I’m so sorry. It has nothing to do with you. I just … I need you to wait
a bit longer for me.”

I could feel his
frustration radiating throughout my apartment. I had never feared his reaction
quite as much as I did at that moment. My constant refusals to go past a
certain point seemed to irritate him more every day. I felt guilty for always
turning him down, and I never wanted to upset him. But I wanted my first time
to be special. I wanted perfection. I wanted romance. A last-minute decision to
strip down that had been made the second he walked in my living room just
wasn’t good enough. I deserved better. For that matter, so did he.

Most importantly, I
wanted love. Though I cared deeply for Jackson, I just wasn’t sure how deep my
feelings ran. I was always told that when you love someone, you’ll just know.
In my mind, to question those feelings must have meant that I didn’t truly love
him. At least, not yet. Perhaps my feelings for him needed to mature. Perhaps
I
needed to mature in order to recognize them. Either way, I couldn’t go
into something so serious with any doubts. Not even if it meant he’d eventually
start to hate me for it. It was a risk that I just had to take.

His jaw flexed and then
quickly relaxed as he mulled over his next move. He slowly inhaled and released
a defeated sigh. “More time?”

I stared blankly at
him, silently begging him for understanding.

He slowly nodded.
“Okay. I can wait longer. I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want
to do.” I didn’t think I was supposed to hear it, but he also mumbled, “Blue
balls it is, then,” under his breath.
“As always.” 
That
was his usual complaint when I turned him down.

I wanted to tell him
that I
did
want to, but I didn’t see how it would make anything any
easier. We danced around the topic several times before. It always ended in
some level of an argument. Did I think it was fair for him to react so
negatively to my need to wait? No. But I cared about him, and I didn’t want to
fight. I also didn’t want to give him any leverage to try to sway my decision
in any way. It was hard enough to tell him no the first time.

“Perhaps,” he decided
carefully, “we should go elsewhere today. If you want me on my best behavior, there
should probably be more people around.”

“Okay.” However, I
never understood why he would need supervision in order to control himself. Why
was it so hard for him to just understand?

Chapter Two

Connor

As I sat in the coffee
bar at the university, I couldn’t help but think about how much better the
coffee was when one of my British Lit students worked behind the counter. She
didn’t water it down like her heavyset, bearded coworker companion. It seemed I
never really noticed how much I missed her being there until she wasn’t. I just
wished I remembered her name so I could compliment her coffee skills properly
next time she happened to be there. At the same time, I supposed she’d have a
name tag. Beardy did, though it was scratched up and lopsided. Likely from a
combination of just tossing the thing wherever he felt like it once his shift
was over, plus an obvious general state of not caring how he looks.

In comparison, my
coffee girl always looked pristine, no matter where she was. Perhaps that was
why I always had higher expectations of her. Fortunately, I was never
disappointed by the expectations that I had set for her. For two full
semesters, she’d put forth the same amount of effort into her papers as she’d
put into everything else. Ugh! What was her name? I knew it started with a “c.”
Candace? Christine? I’d know it when I saw it …

I didn’t usually
remember many of my students, anyways. I figured the slight memory of even one,
no matter how small, was proof that I wasn’t as hopeless as I felt. I hadn’t
seemed to notice or care about the identities of any of my students since …
Elizabeth. It had been a little less than three years, but it was still so
painful to think about her, as if it had just happened the day before. I wasn’t
sure I’d ever get over the pain or her. I didn’t want to.

I’d spent those years
trying to hold tightly to any piece of her that I could. I hadn’t changed much
in the house that we had shared. Her clothes were still there, waiting for her
to try on six outfits before she finally decided on one for the day. The
blankets on her side of the bed were always turned back, waiting for her to
climb in and put her ice cold feet on my leg. The book she’d been reading sat
exactly where she left it on the nightstand, the bookmark still firmly marking
her place. The only things missing were all her pictures. I had packed them
away, simply because I couldn’t bear to look at them every day instead of her.
They were a poor substitute, and they taunted me with memories of what I’d lost.

Although it always
appeared as if she could walk in the door any minute, it just wasn’t enough. I
finally decided that in honor of her memory, I needed to continue with her
biggest wish, the last one she ever made: to have a baby. Sure, I could have
found someone else, settled down again, had children naturally … But that
wouldn’t have been
her
child. And let’s face it. Emotionally, I was too
far gone to have anything bearing any resemblance to a healthy relationship. I
didn’t want anyone else. I wanted
her
. But since I couldn’t have her,
raising our child would be the next best thing. I was convinced.

So how would a man have
a baby on his own? Well, he couldn’t. Obviously. I had access to Elizabeth’s
eggs. They’d been frozen due to her IVF treatments. Because I was not the one
with fertility issues, I could easily have those eggs fertilized. I had a
doctor willing to help me, the same one that tried to help her. I just needed
someone to carry the result. I called several surrogacy agencies, hoping to
find one to help with that part. So far, I had no luck in actually obtaining
one. I had heard back from all but two. I’d been turned down by each of them.

After only a few
minutes in the coffee bar, my phone rang. My caller ID displayed the number for
Surrogate Solutions, one of the two agencies that I hadn’t heard from. I could
barely contain my excitement. I hoped they had good news for me.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Yes,” stated a
high-pitched female voice on the other end. “I’m looking for Connor Mason.”

“This is Connor.”

“Mr. Mason, this is
Samantha at Surrogate Solutions. We received your application for a surrogate,
and I need to get more information from you before we can continue with the
process. Are you available to answer these questions?”

“Of course,” I replied.
I was always a bit shocked that they would even ask if I had time to do
something so simple as answer questions for something so important. Of course,
I had time. I had all the time in the world for this. This had to happen. “Do I
need to come in, or do you want to ask over the phone? I'm free whenever.”

“Over the phone is
fine. If now is good, I’ll just jump right in, then.”

“Yeah, now is great.”

“Perfect. So, you left
your family status blank. Are you single, married …?”

I directed my gaze out
the window next to me. It was the question I could never bring myself to answer
on paper. I had a hard enough time answering it in my head. Writing it down
felt too official, made it far too real. It figured that they would all need me
to actually fill it in. “I’m a widower.”

Through the phone line,
I could hear her typing on a keyboard. “I see. So are you in a stable,
committed relationship outside of marriage?”

“No. It’s just me.” I
never understood why they would ask that. If I were in another relationship,
wouldn’t it make more sense to just let my new significant other do it? It
would have been infinitely easier. Why wouldn’t they automatically see that? It
seemed obvious to me. Maybe I was mistaken?

I tried to focus on more
specific things outside. I watched the students pass by. I observed the late
spring flowers along the walkways. I tried to find anything, any small, petty
detail, to keep me from breaking down in the middle of the coffee bar. I had to
be strong. That was how men were supposed to act, right? Plus, I couldn’t let
the students see me get too upset. It was unprofessional in the eyes of my
superiors, and even if it weren’t, my students would eat me alive in class
after any signs of weakness had been shown to them. Once I thought about it, I
probably should have stepped outside or, better yet, walked to my car. But it
was too late by that point.

“Are you requesting a
traditional surrogate, then?”

“Traditional?” I had no
idea what that meant. I hadn’t gotten far enough in the other interviews to respond
to inquiries on the procedure, itself.

“A traditional
surrogate would act as both egg donor and surrogate.”

“No. I have the egg. I
have the doctor. I only need someone to carry it.”

Her constant typing was
starting to drive me mad. It was even worse that her voice seemed far less
enthusiastic than when I answered the phone. She continued, anyways. “I see you
work for the college.”

“Yes.”

“Do you work 5 days a
week?”

“Six. Sometimes seven.”

“I see.” More typing.

I couldn’t let her take
that as something negative. “I can choose my hours at the beginning of each
term. If I need to work fewer hours, I can.”

“Of course.” But she
didn’t sound as if it had made any difference.

I didn’t need to see
her face to see how this call was going to end. It would be exactly the same as
the others. My spirits plummeted.

“Well, that’s all the
questions I have for you today. Our agency will give you a call within five to
ten business days. Do you have any questions for our agency that I might be
able to answer?”

“I do.” I didn’t want
to ask, but I couldn’t stand the wait just to be disappointed yet again. “How
likely am I to obtain services through your company?”

She sighed loudly
enough for me to hear over the phone. “I’m not the one to choose who gets
services and who doesn’t. But I can tell you that our agency generally does not
work with single men, especially if they tend to work long hours. We try to
work with families with more … ideal situations. Generally couples in stable
households.”

“That’s not fair!” As I
looked around at the students nearby, I realized I must have yelled in my
frustration. Several of them stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. I quickly
turned my attention back outside to try and calm myself down.

“I know. And I wish it
were different. But I don’t make the rules. I simply fill in the blanks on the
profiles.”

“Right. Thank you.”
Thanks
for nothing.

“Have a nice day.”

I couldn’t even
respond. I simply hung up. I ran my trembling hands through my hair in an
attempt to calm myself. It wasn’t working out well, but I couldn’t let this get
to me. I still had one agency left. It would be different. It had to be.