Baby For The Bear

Ruffling her hair—the way Kenneth Brecker had ruffled his hair in her morning vision—Samantha made for the shower. The next few hours would be among the most important of her life. She would face them with a clear mind.

Showered, dressed, and fed with a proper breakfast, Samantha still had a little bit of time left before she needed to call him with her “yea” or “nay.” She sat with the phone in front of her at the kitchen table, expecting someone else to call, the way someone—her mother, a friend from school—always seemed to call at the most inopportune time. If someone did, she would have to ignore it and let it go to voice mail. She couldn’t speak to anyone else now—not until after…

After she spoke to him.

Samantha’s heart beat hot and fast at the thought of the call she would soon have to make. The time of her last conversation with Kenneth Brecker was in her phone’s records. It was the twenty-third hour. What was he doing? Was he sitting in his office, doing some corporate-executive thing, waiting for her to call? She should call him now and tell him whatever she needed to tell him, and have done with it. All she had to do was hit the screen at the record of that last conversation. She would thus connect with Pamela, who would connect her to…him.

She thought of writer friends that she knew in school and how they always seemed able to find some way to procrastinate before sitting down to write. One of them had told her once that writing was one of the most wonderful things in the world to do, once one was actually doing it, but it was also strangely one of the most difficult things in the world to start. It was as if it took a supreme act of will to make oneself do that wonderful thing, which had never made any sense to Samantha until now. It now seemed to be taking her a supreme act of will to make herself tap her phone and make one call.

One call that could change her life completely, depending on what she said, for at least for the next nine months, and very likely a good deal longer, considering the time it would probably take to conceive. That was the reason she hesitated: knowing that it would probably take some time before it happened, and knowing everything that would follow when it did.

But then there was the money she would be earning just for periodic visits to a doctor’s office: the best, easiest money she could possibly make. Some people, she knew, would question a girl’s work ethic for a thing like this. Screw them; they don’t have bills to pay.

Setting her jaw, creasing her lips, and taking a hard breath, Samantha found herself hitting the number in the phone’s record. Oh my God, I’m actually doing it. I’m actually calling…

On the other end of the call came Pamela’s voice. “Brecker American; Mr. Brecker’s office. Is this Ms. Vance?”

Samantha gulped; the fix was in. “Y-yes, it’s me. May I…speak to Mr. Brecker, please?”

“Of course, Ms. Vance. Please hold.”

Well, here it was. Samantha licked her lips. Any second now, that voice—that voice that belonged to s*x in a suit—would meet her ears again and say…

“Ms. Vance? Good morning, this is Ken Brecker.”

Her heart jumped. There he was. She made herself speak up; this man was not someone with whom one hesitated. “Good morning…Mr. Brecker. This is…Samantha.” She was actually trembling. Why hadn’t she rehearsed something to say? She abruptly regretted her impulsive haste in making this call after wrestling with it for so long. She was going into this cold? What would she tell him? She hadn’t even really, finally made the decision. Did she dare to tell him she needed more time? What if he told her he hadn’t any more time. There would go the opportunity. And that realization lay at the back of what happened next.

“So, Ms. Vance,” said Ken. “I’ve been looking forward to hearing from you. I’ve been anxious to know what you decided. Are we going ahead?”

An unspoken I hope… lurked in his question. Samantha braced herself to answer before she went ahead. “Um…I just wanted to call and tell you…”

The next words in her mind were, …I appreciate the opportunity and your consideration, but I don’t really think this is for me after all. The answer is ‘No, thank you,’ Mr. Brecker.

However, the next words out of her mouth were, “Yes, I’d like to go ahead with it.”

And a bolt of pure shock went through her the moment she’d put the words into the air. Samantha Vance, are you out of your freaking MIND? Why did you TELL him that? Now he’s actually going to want to get you pregnant, you idiot!

She could feel the smile in his voice and see him sitting upright in his fancy office chair as Ken responded, “I was hoping you’d say that, Ms. Vance. That’s excellent. That’s wonderful. I’d like to have you come in right away and get all the paperwork done. We can be at the center by this time tomorrow.”

Samantha, trembling, thought but did not say, I’m surprised the center couldn’t squeeze you in today, being a freaking billionaire and everything. They should have a doctor standing by with whatever kind of medicine dropper or turkey baster these people use. But her reply aloud was, “Of…of course I can make it in today. What…what time?”

“Hold on just another second and I’ll have you back with Pamela. This is excellent news, Ms. Vance. Is it all right if I call you Samantha now?”

The question made her heart turn a somersault and her mouth almost go dry. She gulped and replied, “Um…yes. Sure, you can call me Samantha.” She was finding the moment positively surreal.

“Great. And I guess we’re at the point now that you can start calling me Ken. I’ll give you to Pamela now; hold on.”

“Thank you…Ken.” Samantha realized she had been sitting bolt upright through the whole brief conversation. At the realization that she’d just called him—probably the sexiest billionaire on Earth—by his first name, she fell back against the back of the chair. His name rang in her head: Ken.

Immediately she was talking to Pamela again, and Ken’s assistant set everything up with the speed and efficiency one would expect of the assistant to a billionaire CEO. Quickly it was done and courteous goodbyes were said. And that was that.

Feeling more like a robot than a person, Samantha ended the call and lowered the phone to the table. She had done it. She had actually done it—agreed to let a fantastically wealthy werebear have her artificially inseminated with his cub. She had actually agreed to this thing that would make her, if not wealthy, at least comfortable at first, and eventually affluent.

Why had she done this? Why had she told him that she would go through with this?

Samantha searched her mind and her heart for the rationale behind this insane decision. There was, she realized, only one reason for it. And it was both the most foolish and most natural reason in the world.

Getting pregnant with Ken Brecker would likely mean she would have to see him at regular intervals, or so she assumed. She assumed he would want to have regular contact with her, to get to know her as a person, to let her get to know him. She couldn’t imagine he would want to make this a detached, impersonal process. He must want to make it something more than just a cold, businesslike transaction, considering what she was undertaking to do for him. It would mean continuing to see him, to continue to be in the presence of this shape-changing embodiment of total s*x.

It was the stupidest reason in the world. And it was the only reason that made any sense.

Well, there, she had done it. And now that she had done it, Samantha came to another amazing realization.

She had no intention of backing out. She was going to go back down there again, to the tower that he owned, where he worked and lived. She was going to sit down with Ken Brecker in his office again. And she was going to fill out and sign the documents that would officially lease her body to him for however long it took.

Surprised that her resolve was now greater than her trepidation, Samantha got up from the table to get ready for her appointment.