Baby For The Bear

Well, when one is terribly wealthy after all, one of the things one could most afford is high standards. Samantha supposed she should be flattered that Brecker thought she measured up. He was choosing his potential mothers-to-be the way they used to hire waitresses at the old Playboy Clubs that she remembered from her Media and Popular Culture elective class in college. She had the very distinct impression that the man she was now waiting to see in the inner office was a “playbear.” The whole thing just confirmed what she had thought before about his reasons for wanting to have his cub this way. He was looking for a woman who was up to his standards, who would be even more disposable than the ones he took to bed.

Glancing discreetly around the room, Samantha wondered if any of these other women were not just women but Ursine females. One could not usually tell who a metamorph was. There was usually no outward sign that a given person had two bodies. The other bear women might be any of them, or none of them. She certainly wasn’t about to ask for a show of hands. It was their own business. She plucked her phone from her purse and decided to while away the time waiting for her appointment checking E-mail and Facebook.

And there was another thought. She had not told anyone, on the phone or online, and certainly not in person, what she was doing today. What if she were the one that Brecker picked? Was this something she would put out on social media? A thing like this, being the surrogate mother to a two-bodied billionaire? Absolutely not! This was not the sort of thing that she wanted to put out to the public, even the people that she knew only virtually on the Internet. The idea of it made her turn pale. She would have to tell close friends, and of course her parents and certain very close members of her family. That brought her back to thinking of the way her parents would react, especially her mother. The things her mother would probably say began to ring in her mind’s ear again. And in the privacy of the space between her ears, Samantha said, Shut up, Mom. It made her feel guilty to speak to her mother that way, even in her imagination. But she did not need to hear those things just now, even that way. She was about to come face to face with a bear in his cave in the sky.

Over the next hour a couple of women went into the inner office and came back out, and a couple of others entered and sat down. Samantha had shown up early because she thought there might be an application to fill out, and those things were always so damned time-consuming. The other women present had no doubt had the same idea. Then the young man at the little desk picked up his phone, put it down again, and called out across the room, “Samantha Vance. You’re next.”

Rising, brushing a hand across her skirt, Samantha went to the door separating this outer reception area from the inner one. It was showtime and she was “on.”

______________

For the first time in all the years that he had been running the family enterprise, Ken Brecker was actually anxious about interviewing someone. It was a unique feeling. He had been as perfectly calm interviewing the other women as he’d been interviewing people for regular jobs, in spite of this being not a regular job he was trying to fill. But this one was going to be different. In just a few seconds, Samantha Vance was going to step into his office. Samantha Vance—who had been laid off in his reorganization of Metro Foods. He felt a bit as if he were not the CEO of a corporation, but a President about to meet a refugee from a country that he had ordered his troops to bomb. What injuries had this young woman sustained? What damage had the infrastructure of her life taken? In the minutes ahead, he might just find out in no uncertain terms. He fixed his eyes on his office door and waited.

At once, the door opened and Pamela ushered the young blonde inside. “Mr. Brecker,” Pamela announced, “this is Ms. Samantha Vance.”

And here she was. The photos of her that she had attached with her resume and cover letter did not really capture this young woman’s beauty. She must have taken them with her computer camera or her phone. The reality of Samantha was much lovelier than her pictures. “Hello, Mr. Brecker,” she greeted him.

He stood up behind his desk and offered her his hand. In a different circumstance he would offer her a great deal more than that, but this was not that kind of meeting. She stepped forward while Pamela withdrew back to her own station. Smiling softly, Samantha accepted his handshake and his own smile.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Vance. Please have a seat,” said Ken.

Samantha sat down in one of the very comfortable chairs facing Ken’s desk and studied Ken as he sat himself down again as well. So here he was, the corporate predator whose other body was that of a predator of the forest. Here was the roaring, mauling beast in man’s clothing, who had put her in the position of fearing for her apartment and her car and just about everything else in her life. If he were in his other body, for what he had done to her, Samantha would not have minded seeing him stood up on a pedestal, stuffed. Or his head mounted on one of the walls of this office that looked like an apartment in Architectural Digest. Or his hide stretched out as a rug on the floor. But in this body, in his human form, this Kenneth Brecker was a man to end all men. Fully dressed, he had to be the most gorgeous thing she had ever seen in her life. If he were naked… Lord, if this man were naked, she’d be inclined to strip, lie down on one of the sofas in this place, and offer herself up to him: Come on, big bear, and do to the rest of me what you’ve done to my life.

But this was not the time and the place, and he was certainly not the person, for that. Focus, Sammie. Focus…

“How are you doing today?” asked Ken.

Her unspoken answer was, Living on unemployment insurance and hoping I’m set up again before it runs out. Aloud, she replied, “I’m fine, thank you.”

“That’s good to know,” said Ken. “I see in your resume that you majored in Economics. Do you see yourself in a business someday?”