Baby For The Bear

“I see,” she said again.

“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” Ken asked.

“I don’t think there is.” She realized she sounded uncertain, and she was. But she had learned that in an interview she needed to sound as if she knew what she were about and knew what she wanted. Indecisiveness was taboo. But in a matter of moments Kenneth Brecker had gone from being the shape-changing monster who threw her out of a job that she was good at because he didn’t want to have to pay a lot of employees, to being a person with actual feelings—such as they were—and complexities. She had wondered before if she could carry the cub of someone that she resented. Now she asked herself if she could carry the cub of someone who was not at all who she thought he was. And she was damned if she knew the answer. But she at least had to appear that she knew. So she followed her first answer with, “No, I think everything’s pretty clear.” Even though it was not necessarily the case.

“And I believe everything’s clear on my end too,” said Ken. “I think we have a basic understanding. I think that if I asked you to be the one to be the mother of my cub, what I’d get would be exactly the way you described yourself. I think his mother—or her mother—would be someone strong and confident, and capable and committed and conscientious. And very, very smart. I think you’d be a good mother for any child, human or otherwise, whether as someone to raise a child or someone to be a surrogate. If I chose you, I’d do it knowing I’d done the right thing for my cub.”

Samantha found herself more moved than she ever expected to be to hear that. She felt almost as if some powerful, wild animal from the forest, some creature who in spite of his strength and power and ferocity knew better than to trust humans, had actually chosen to trust her. On some level, she actually felt honored that Kenneth Brecker would say that to her.

“Th-thank you,” she half-stammered.

“And thank you for coming to see me, and speaking so honestly,” said Ken. He stood up and offered her his hand.

She stood up and took the hand he offered. And this time it was different. The first time it was purely a business handshake. This time she actually felt the warmth, the strength, the pure sensuality in the grasp of what she still had to admit was the most breathtakingly beautiful man she had ever seen. This, in spite of the effect that he’d had on her life.

“Ms. Harrison will be in touch when the decision’s been made,” he said. And he stepped around the desk to join her, and see her to the door. They walked quietly across the office and he opened the door for her.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Vance,” he said, letting her out.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Brecker,” Samantha said, stepping outside.

Ken closed his office door and walked pensively back to his desk, with a curious and somewhat indescribable feeling. With the other candidates he’d seen today, he had simply let them see themselves out. Samantha Vance, however—he had actually walked her to the door. He was already back to his desk by the time he realized it.

The beautiful blonde had made an impression, that was for certain. Ken sat himself back down behind his desk and touched his intercom to let Pamela know he was ready for the next one. He stared across the room at the door through which Samantha had passed. There would be several more today—but none of them would be like the one who had just left.

Hardly noticing Pamela as the receptionist told her good afternoon and wished her to have a good rest of her day, Samantha made her way out of the inner reception area and was just as oblivious to the other people in the outer one. In a few steps she was back in the outer corridor and headed back to the elevator. She did not know what to make of the conversation she had just had in the CEO’s suite. She supposed that she had just as much of a chance as any of the other candidates to be the one selected to be impregnated with a Brecker cub. What if she got the call? What if he asked her to be his Mama Bear for real?

She could always tell him she’d had a change of heart and back out. It would be no fur off his hide; he would simply go to the first runner-up, who would likely jump at the chance. And that first runner-up would be the one to collect the stipend and the $75,000 and go through everything she would have to go through to bring the Brecker heir into the world. And Samantha’s life, uncertain as it was right now, would go on.

Walking slowly down the hall, pondering the whole thing, turning it over in her head again and again, Samantha just did not know. Odds were she should not even have to be concerned with any of this. The interview was over and done and she probably didn’t need to think about any of it ever again.

But she just didn’t know.