“Fuck you,” she muttered out loud, though she wasn’t sure if it was meant for her mother or Jude. The tears were coming again, blurring her vision until everything beyond her windshield was a smear, an Impressionist’s representation of the dismal outlook she had for her future.
“Daddy,” she murmured, sitting up and once again wiping her eyes, though far more carefully this time. Her stepfather could fix this—she knew it. Her mother had told her when she left to never bother returning again, but she was sure that Thomas could find some way to change that. He might have been soft-spoken compared to her mom, but he was shrewd, cunning, and present when it mattered. He could figure something out to fix all of this. He had to.
Nicole bit her lip, choosing his number from her contacts list. It was near the top by the list of her recent calls. She supposed she did speak to her stepfather a lot, maybe more than other girls would, but Thomas had to fill the void her mother had left, and relying on him was the only thing that made her feel like she had any parents at all.
She waited as the phone rang, hoping he would pick up. She needed to hear his voice. She needed him to tell her it was all going to be okay.
A small surge of elation jolted through her when she heard his voice on the other end of the line. “Hello?”
“Daddy,” she began, “it’s Nicole.”
He chuckled softly. His voice was warm and smooth like honeyed silk. “I know that, sweetheart. I saw it on the caller ID.” Then he paused, as if sensing the nature of her call. “Is everything all right?”
Nicole shook her head. “No. Not really.” She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “God, not at all. Jude, he… he left me.” Shame burned in her cheeks as she added: “And he took all my money with him.”
Her stepfather didn’t say anything right away, and Nicole felt compelled to continue. “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she whispered, closing her eyes tight to stem the tide of tears threatening to overwhelm her once again. “I know it was stupid to give him access to the account, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea, and…”
“It’s not your fault,” he said abruptly, shattering the illusion of blame she’d wrapped herself in. “There’s nothing wrong with trusting someone you love. The only thing that’s wrong about that is that Jude betrayed that trust.” He was quiet for a moment, as if contemplating the matter, before he said: “Do you need me to wire you some money?”
Nicole sucked her lip hard. “Will Mom let you?”
She could almost hear Thomas smirk. To anyone who didn’t know him, it looked like he let his wife run the show, but the reality was that Thomas always had everything under control. Even when she’d cut Nicole off, he’d found ways of padding her funds here and there, usually with regular gifts that sometimes didn’t even fall on actual holidays.
“Leave your mother to me,” he told her. “I can take care of her. Now, tell me what you need, and I’ll make it happen.”
She knew money was no object. Her stepfather was literally a billionaire, a real estate mogul. Not the “fix and flip” home-buyer, Thomas was the kind of man who owned skyscrapers in Manhattan. He’d always ensured Nicole and her mother had never wanted for anything. Still, she remembered the hard times they’d had when she was growing up, and she felt weird asking for too much all at once. Gifts were one thing, but begging was another.
She sighed, running a hand through her auburn hair. “Um… I dunno, exactly,” she admitted, trying to think through the fog gathering in her mind. “He cleaned me out. I had about sixty-thousand in there. And then there’s the apartment…” She groaned, covering her eyes and shielding them from the oppressive sun. “I have no idea what kind of state it’s in, Daddy, and honestly, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to go back there—ever.”
“If you don’t, you’ll need money to cover breaking your lease, money for a new place, and money to replace all your things,” her stepfather mused. His buttery voice slipped inside her, quelling the anxiety rattling her bones. She was so thankful he’d picked up when she’d called him. He always knew what to do. “You’ll need… probably a hundred thousand, maybe more, yes?”
Nicole winced. Now that he’d put a number to it, it seemed like so much, more than she felt comfortable asking him for. “I-I mean… that’s a lot, but… Yes. If I wanted to recover everything Jude took, I’d need about that much to do it. I don’t expect this for free,” she added quickly, the words practically spilling out of her mouth. “I don’t expect a handout. I know you and Mom never liked him, and I didn’t listen to your warnings. I could work for it, provide some kind of service to earn that money, or maybe…”
She trailed off, realizing how stupid she sounded. What could she possibly offer her stepfather to justify taking a hundred thousand dollars from him?
But Thomas was quick to reply. “Actually, there might be something. But I can’t talk about it here. Come home, Nicole. I’ll sort things out with your mother.”
Nicole blinked. Those were words she’d never thought she’d hear. “Are you sure…?”
“Trust me,” her stepfather told her, “I’ll get it all figured out. You just come on home, sweetheart. Let Daddy take care of you.”
Nicole blushed all the way up to her ears as she ended the call. For some reason, her stepfather’s words had struck a chord in her—one that was a little darker than she would have liked. He was the only man who’d ever really been there for her in her life, and some part of her responded to that not only with gratitude, but something bordering on attraction, desire.
She shook her head, laughing. That was insane. It was just some errant, inappropriate thought formed by the delirious magnitude of her grief. She didn’t think that way about her stepfather. That would have been wrong.
But her protestations didn’t explain the wetness in her panties as she put her car into drive, nor the way her heart had skipped a beat when he had called himself “Daddy.”
A few hours later, Nicole was sitting in her stepfather’s study, her eyes wide as she stared at him across his desk.
“You… you want me to do what?” she whispered to him.
Thomas smiled. He was a very handsome man with a strong, square jaw, champagne-colored eyes, and hair as dark as the mahogany desk that separated them. Little flecks of gray had begun to streak away from his temples, but even so, it only made him look more distinguished, especially with the five o’clock shadow he was now sporting. Nicole didn’t remember him wearing his facial hair like that back when she was living at home, and part of her thanked God for that. It would have been strange finding Thomas any sexier than he already was.
“You don’t have to say ‘yes,’?” he assured her, his Cheshire grin only serving to make her more anxious, and yet soothe her all at once. “It was a just a thought. Given your circumstances, it seemed like the perfect way to pull our family back together.”
Nicole leaned back in the tufted leather seat, mulling it over. Out of all the things she’d anticipated her stepfather asking her to do in exchange for the hundred thousand dollars she needed to get her life back on track, acting as a surrogate hadn’t been one of them.
Especially when the child inside of her would be his and her mother’s baby.
“I’m just… surprised,” she said, peering up at him through her thick lashes. “It’s not what I expected to hear.”
>
Her stepfather laughed, his pearly white teeth flashing in the light from the chandelier above them. “I bet!” he said. “But you offered, remember?”
Nicole nodded slowly. “I guess. But how will this affect school? And, I mean, my body…”
She looked down at her taut little tummy. She’d always been in good shape, even without trying, the kind of girl who could scarf down an entire pizza without gaining a single pound. She was the envy of all the girls on campus. Would carrying a baby change that?
She looked into her stepfather’s eyes. He smiled warmly at her, leaning across his desk, his muscles straining through his prim, button-down shirt.
“I’ll take care of everything,” he assured her. “Your mother has wanted a baby for some time now, but given our age differences, conceiving has been… difficult. We’ve talked about surrogacy before, but finding someone we trust has also proved a challenge.” His eyes roamed over her body in a way that made her face flush. “You’d be the perfect fit, Nicole. You’re young. You’re fertile. I’m sure the fertilized eggs would take without any problems. All you’d have to do is put up with a few months of swollen feet and a beach ball for a belly, after which time, all your troubles go away.