White Lilies (A Mitchell Sisters Novel) (2 page)

Kids . . . hate them.

Happiness . . . overrated.

Dignity . . . absent.

Self-worth . . . on vacation with dignity.

The only thing I really have going for me is my job. I love managing Mitchell’s NYC. In fact, my parents have entrusted me with it almost completely. Yes, they still keep tabs and show up at least once a week to make sure I’m not royally screwing up their empire, but they’ve moved on to location number three in Long Island.  My job is my life. My life is my job. And that’s pretty much the way I like it. Or I did until my epiphany ten minutes ago. But that was then and this is now. And now is when I tell myself to shape the hell up. Turn over a new leaf. Toe the line. Do something with my life. Become meaningful.

Oh, God. I’ve swallowed an existential pill and it’s regurgitating itself all over my fourth margarita.

“Okay, so let’s say I wanted to change,” I muse. “How would I go about that?”

They all share a look. I know what they’re thinking. I want to tell them to piss off, but they know me too well. They think this will all blow over. I’m sure I say ten times a week that I want to change something about myself. But they know as well as I do that I never mean it. Until now, that is.

“Well, what exactly is it that you want to change?” Mindy asks. “I mean there’s just so much to work with.” The other girls laugh, but I sulk in the face of the truth. She places an apologetic hand on my arm. “Skylar, you know I love you. You have my full support and I’ll help you any way I can.”

I look down into my alluring margarita. “I need to stop drinking.” They all nod their heads in agreement. “I need to stop fucking.” More emphatic nods. “I need to do something deeply meaningful with my life.”

It’s the last one that has them drawing their eyebrows together.

While they think it over, I take a drink. Baylor eyes me skeptically, watching me drain my glass. “I didn’t mean this second,” I spit at her. “Tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow.

“The floor is open for suggestions,” I tell them.

Jenna turns to me with a playful grin. “You could become a nun. It covers all the bases. No sex, no drinking.” Her brows draw together in thought. “Wait, nuns can’t drink, can they? And you can’t get any more meaningful than serving The Big Guy, can you?”

“A
nun
?” Baylor offers. “This is my sister we’re talking about here. Let’s try to be a little realistic.”

I stick my tongue out at her like a petulant five-year-old.

“Oh, you could join the Peace Corps,” Mindy says. “You’d be helping people all over the world, and you’d have to go to really remote places that probably don’t have hot men and alcohol.”

I shake my head at them. “No. I love my job. I won’t leave Mitchell’s. It’ll have to be something else.”

“You could get fat,” Jenna says. “You know, to keep the men away.”

I roll my eyes at her. “First of all, there are guys out there who love fat chicks. And second and third, how does that solve my drinking problem and my do-gooder problem?”

“Yeah, I guess there’s that.” Jenna studies me, waiting for inspiration.

Baylor rubs her hand in a circle on her growing belly. “You could get knocked up,” she teases. “That would easily solve your first two problems. Men are fundamentally turned off by pregnant women unless they happen to be your own super-hot husband.” She sighs and I can tell she’s fantasizing about her man.

“Ewww. Please don’t make me picture you and Gavin having dirty pregnant sex.” I shiver with disgust.  “And, me, pregnant? God, no. I hate kids.”

“You love Maddox.” She looks at me with soft eyes.

“Of course I do. I can give him back,” I explain. “It’d almost be a good idea if it didn’t mean I’d end up with a snotty-nosed brat and some unemployed loser for a baby daddy.”

Mindy sits up straight. “You could have a kid for someone else.”

“As in give one up for adoption?” I ask, my forehead creasing into a dubious frown.

“No, like you could be a surrogate,” she says excitedly, as if coming up with the most brilliant idea to trump all brilliant ideas. “You know, get knocked up in some lab and carry someone else’s baby and then hand it over when the thing pops out. It’s the perfect solution.” She holds her hand up and counts off on her fingers, saying, “You can’t drink. No man in his right mind would want to have sex with a knocked-up stranger. And to top it all, you’d be doing something totally awesome for someone.”

“And you could still run the restaurant,” Jenna adds.

“I could?” I look back and forth from Jenna to Mindy who are both nodding encouragingly. I think about what they’ve said. “Yes. I could.”

“What?” Baylor shrieks, her face arranged in a scowl. “I was kidding, Skylar. You can’t get pregnant.”

I shoot her a venomous look. “It’s not like you’ve cornered the market, big sister. I have a perfectly good uterus that’ll grow cobwebs if I don’t use it.”

Mindy ignores Baylor’s disapproving stare. “There’s a big demand for surrogates. A lot of women can’t have their own kids. They’ll pay you a goddamn arm and leg if you can give them a baby. My mom was recently telling me about this couple she knows who can’t have a kid because the woman had cancer.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to do it for the money, Min. That’d kind of be against the whole do-something-meaningful premise.”

“There’s a slight problem, guys,” Jenna says, tapping away on her phone. “Skylar can’t be a surrogate.”

“What? Why?” I ask, disappointed that the idea would get debunked so quickly.

“It says here in order to qualify as a surrogate, you have to already have your own kid,” she says. “I guess they want to make sure you won’t change your mind and run off with it.”

“Makes sense,” Mindy says.

“Crap.” My shoulders slump towards the table. “It was a perfect solution.”

“Perfect solution?” My sister looks at me through incredulous eyes. “Skylar Mitchell, you mean to say you’d have actually considered it? That’s ludicrous.”

“Hell yes! Why not?”

“Why not?” she spits back at me. “Because your body wouldn’t be your own for nine months. Because you’d throw up and get hormonal and get stretch marks. Because you’d have some strange woman watching everything you do to make sure you didn’t mess up her kid. Because you’d fall in love with the little baby the instant it was born. Need I go on?”

“Those first things you said about the throwing up and stretch marks—that’s what’ll keep the men away. The second thing you said about the woman watching me—that will keep me from drinking and doing stupid shit. And fall in love with the baby—are you crazy? Do you remember how I gave little Maddox back to you every time he so much as looked at me the wrong way?”

I frown at them. “It might have been perfect. But if I can’t even qualify to do it, there’s no use harping on it.”

“Hold on,” Mindy says, not yet ready to concede defeat. “Who’s to say you have to go through an official agency? Why not just find someone who needs a surrogate and have their kid. It happens all the time.”

“What, like run an ad in the newspaper?” I giggle at the absurdity. “‘Womb for hire’?”

We laugh. Everyone but Baylor, that is. Baylor looks pissed. “Would you guys shut up!” she shouts. “Quit encouraging her. This is seriously not a good idea.”

Jenna snaps her head to Baylor. “Not a good idea? What kind of world would we live in if people like Skylar didn’t step up and do selfless things for others?”

Baylor rolls her eyes. “The exact same world we lived in two seconds ago,” she pouts. “She’s
not
doing it!”

“What if you and Gavin couldn’t have kids?” Mindy asks. “What if you wanted them so much you thought you would die from want. What if you didn’t have a sister to loan you her uterus, so some random woman stepped up and said she’d have a baby for you. Are you seriously going to sit here and deny that to someone?”

Baylor puts her hand on my arm. “Promise me you’ll think about it long and hard, and without margaritas flowing through your veins, before you jump into anything, Skylar.”

“So,” I ignore my sister and turn to Mindy. “A newspaper ad?”

“I guess you could,” she says. “But if you’re serious about it, I could probably hook you up with this couple my mom knows.”

“They aren’t going through an agency?” I ask.

“No.” She shakes her head sadly. “The woman, Erin, I think her name is, she had cancer so no agency will touch her. I think there’s also a family history of medical problems, too. I guess they don’t want to risk giving a kid to a sick woman when there are so many healthy ones who want kids, too.”

“That’s sad,” I say. “So I could give a baby to a woman who used to be sick and really wants a kid but nobody will give her one?”

“Yup.” She holds her drink out to me in a toast. “It’d probably pave your way straight to the pearly gates.”

I can feel the smile creeping up my face. It’s a feeling I haven’t felt in . . . well, ever. I want to do this. I want to give someone what nobody else can give them. I look at Mindy. “Let’s do this. Make the call.”

Mindy smiles and pats my hand. “You are an amazing person, Skylar,” she says. “But, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll let you sleep on it.”

“Wait, you can’t be serious,” Baylor says.

“As a fucking heart attack, big sister.”

chapter two

I’m nervous. What if they don’t like me? What if they are like Stepford people and want to control every morsel of food that goes into my mouth and make me do yoga and shit every day? What if they demand I give up coffee? I’ve already given up alcohol, what else do I have left? What if they don’t want their kid to grow in my slutty womb?

I have vowed to be as honest as I can with them about my past, even at the risk of them rejecting me. It’s all part of my resolve to become a better person.

Two weeks. Baylor made me consider it for two entire weeks, thinking I’d chicken out. When I not only didn’t flake out, but did substantial research on surrogacy and how it benefits both parties, she finally came around and is now on Team Skylar. As opposed to Team What-The-Fuck-Are-You-Doing?

I keep checking my watch. It’s almost four o’clock. That’s when they’re supposed to show up. We had to meet on a Saturday because of their jobs. I’m not even sure what they do. I don’t know anything about them except their names. Griffin and Erin Pearce. And according to Mindy, they don’t know anything about me, either. Her mom said it would be better if we got to know each other in person rather than have someone else relay our information.

I look around the restaurant and try to guess what these people might look like. I see a couple having a late lunch. Or an early dinner. They are about mid-thirties. He’s burly like a cop or a fireman maybe. She’s petite and looks like she could be a nurse. Yeah, a fireman and a nurse. They’d make good parents, right? The woman looks over at me and I freeze.
Oh, God, is that them?
Then Mindy walks out from behind me, taking them their check. “Breathe, Skylar,” she says on her way by.

I’ve been anxious all day and my staff has definitely noticed, although Mindy is the only one who knows what’s going on.

I walk into the bar area seeking water to quench my bone-dry anxiety-ridden mouth. As my bartender, Trent, serves me a glass, I see several groups of men enjoying our happy hour. Some of them stop talking and look over at me appreciatively while I survey the area.
Keep looking, boys. These legs are closed for business
. There’s a woman sitting alone at the end of the bar. She’s eyeing all the guys in the room, probably looking for a date for the evening.
Slut
.

Hmmfp
.
Hypocrite
, I chide myself.

My eyes fall on a man sitting at a high-top by himself. He’s reading a magazine, oblivious to the woman at the bar trying to get his attention. He’s stunning.
Can a man be stunning?
He’s got exceptionally dark hair, almost inky black. It falls to his collar, curling up at the ends. He reaches up to push a piece of it out of his eyes as he reads. He’s wearing jeans and a blue button-down that is open to a slate-gray t-shirt underneath. The sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, revealing a small tattoo on the underside of his forearm that I can’t quite make out.

He looks up and catches me staring. I can’t pull my eyes away, because his eyes—they’re incredible. Gray eyes, that are the exact color of his t-shirt, hypnotize me as the edges of his mouth curve up to reveal a smile that only adds to the smoldering appeal of his roguish face. Stubble, as dark as the sculpted shag on his head, dots his strong jaw and I wonder if he’s gone without shaving for a few days, or if this is simply his usual testosterone-laden five-o’clock-shadow.

As quickly as he looked up, he resumes reading his magazine after briefly eyeing the restaurant entrance. I sit at the bar, mourning the loss of the brief moment we shared. It almost makes me want to scrap this whole surrogacy idea and mount myself on his smoking-hot lap.

Get it together, Skylar
. I make my way to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I lean against the sink and take a few calming breaths. Then I smooth out my dress, running my hand over my flat stomach, wondering if in a few months, it will be a distant memory.

I reach up and tighten my dark-blonde ponytail, wondering if I should let my hair down. Wearing my long, wavy hair up makes me look severe, like a bookish librarian. But when I work in the kitchen, it’s easier to put it in a hairnet or tuck it under a cap. In the end, I keep it tied up. If they don’t like me the way I am, screw them. I’ll just find someone else’s spawn to grow. My green eyes stare back at me in a silent pep talk before I walk out into the restaurant.

Mindy grabs me and pulls me aside. “They’re here,” she says. My heart races and my eyes dart around quickly assessing the couples seated in the main room. “In the bar. He’s totally hot. She looks like she just stepped off a fashion runway. She’s nice. She came up to me asking where she could find the most amazing woman who ever walked the face of the earth.”