Fulfillment [NOOK Book]

Chapter One

I suspected my belly was beginning to look like origami. It tied itself into another knot as I watched Christian 'Chris' Jones weave his way to the bar for yet another drink. He wasn't a drinker, ordinarily, which made it abundantly clear that he was even more disturbed by our plans than I was.

Or maybe not. I was pretty stressed about it myself.

He was my best friend, but we hadn't exactly hit it off when I'd first gone to work for Mueller Enterprises the year before. Chris suffered from what I called optical-rectumitus--he had a shitty outlook on life--worse even than mine. I supposed, once I got to know him better, that he had every reason to. He was gay. Life had been hell for him just because he was 'different'. It didn't help that his life partner, whom he'd been with since college, had just recently dumped him for a younger man.

Oddly enough, it was his jaded view of people in general that had drawn me to him. He was critical of everyone and that just aroused a need in me for his approval. I supposed part of it was because he reminded me of my favorite uncle, the one person in the world I adored more than anyone else. A person had to be exceptional to earn his approval and I wanted to be exceptional.

Chris also had a viper tongue--another similarity to my uncle--and a rapier wit.

He could cut you to pieces without breaking a sweat and I admired that in a man--as long as it wasn't directed at me, which was another reason I desperately wanted his approval. I wanted to stand behind him and watch in admiration while he cut other people to the quick--not me.

Anyway, I did eventually earn his respect and once I had we'd become bestfriends. He was actually the best friend I'd ever had. I could talk to him about anything--anything--without worrying that he would look down on me. He might not always approve, but he always accepted me for what I was.

It was his willingness to listen that had led me, in a moment of weakness, to confess just how devastated I was that I'd never had children and how frightened I was that I'd missed my chance and never would.

I'd met my husband in college and fallen truly, madly, deeply--So truly, madly, and deeply that I was content for a long time just to worship and follow him around like a hopeful puppy. He didn't want children--not right away. He was ambitious. He wanted to build his career. He wanted to have me all to himself.

He didn't want to have to pay child support when he dumped me.

I don't think I ever tumbled to the fact that I was 'career building love slave' until I found myself staring at the divorce papers. I might not have wised up then except that Todd already had wife number two--younger and better connected--waiting in the wings for the ink to dry on the divorce papers. He threw the usual at me--I'd 'let myself go'. We'd grown apart. I didn't want the same things he did, etc., etc. but the unpalatable truth was that he'd never intended to do anything but use me to pay the bills, cook, clean, and provide sex on demand until something better came along, and he'd known better would just as soon as he had his career on track.

The prick had married a debutante fresh out of college.

She was already pregnant when they got married.

I thought about killing him for a while. I really wasn't a violent person per se, but he brought out the killer instinct in me like no one else. I finally decided, though, that I couldn't just throw my entire life away on the prick. I'd already wasted more time on him than I could afford. Spending the rest of my life in jail, or going to the electric chair, wasn't going to appease my need for revenge.

I had to show him that what he'd thrown away was better than what he'd ended up with.

As motivations went, it wasn't the healthiest I could've come up with, but it was all I could muster at first. I'd 'let myself go' because I was too busy working to support the bastard and slaving for him when I got home to spend time on myself. I ate on the run, and it stayed with me.

Picking my trampled pride up out of the dirt, I dusted it off and focused on 'showing' him. By the time I'd managed to get back in shape and gotten a start on my own career, which I'd neglected trying to support him, I'd managed to put most of my rage and hurt to the back of my mind and go on with my life.

There was one vital part of my goal that seemed out of reach, though. I was in my late twenties by the time Todd dumped me. That didn't give me much time to get on my feet financially--yes, the bastard got half of everything even though I'd actually paid for almost everything we had--find a new husband, and conceive. I tried marathon dating. I allowed anyone that would to try their hand at matchmaking.

None of it worked and I finally realized it was because I had developed a deep hatred and distrust of men in general because of what Todd had done. The right man could've knocked that wariness right out of me and I would've been just as gullible and vulnerable as I had been with Todd, but the right man didn't come along.

I didn't have time for the right man to come along!

Every time I managed to convince myself I'd just take what I could get and get what I really wanted--a baby--I realized I just couldn't stomach marrying someone I didn't care two cents about. I looked at every man that I dated like someone shopping on the sales rack--trying him on for size, but none of them 'fit'--in bed or outside of it. This one was great in the sack--everybody said so because he'd already fucked everybody and was still looking for new territory to conquer. That one was steady and reliable but stunk in the bedroom. This one had a seriously weak chin that I didn't want to pass on to my offspring. That one had a name that would bring torment down on any child we had. This one kissed like a vacuum cleaner and I didn't think I could stand much of that, and on and on.

Deciding I was being too picky, I tried harder, but I finally realized that if I couldn't stand to date them I sure as hell couldn't live with them.

Option number two came to mind--artificial insemination.

That was a bust because I just couldn't afford it.

It was along about the time I reached an all time low--and had a few too many drinks--that I finally wept all over Chris and told him I was never going to be a mother and my life was meaningless.

That was when Chris, who'd also had a few too many drinks, decided to be my very best friend and offered to be my gene donor.

Drunk or not, I immediately saw a LOT of problems with that very kind and sympathetic offer. Next to my uncle, I loved him better than anybody else in the world, but it would be like screwing my sister. Alright, my brother. I didn't love him that way. He snorted his mixed drink through his nose when I pointed out that I didn't think I could get a 'hard on' for him, told me I didn't need to. I could just lay there and 'receive'.

The second problem was that Chris was gay. He wasn't the kind of guy that went both ways. He was strictly gay. He didn't 'do' females.

The third problem was that we worked together and aside from the fact that I didn't want to wreck the best friendship I'd ever had, I also didn't want to have problems with a fellow worker--particularly since Mueller Enterprises was very strict about inner office relationships. Becoming intimate with Chris could, potentially, wreck both of our careers, especially if it got out, and things had a way of doing that in the office.

Contrary to what I'd expected, Chris didn't pretend amnesia about the discussion once he'd sobered up. It seemed, in point of fact, to have planted a seed in his mind that had taken root and grown like wild fire. He reminded me of a movie where two friends, a gay guy and a straight woman, had had a child together. I reminded him that it had not only ruined their friendship, but it turned out that it wasn't the gay guy's baby at all.

He dismissed the small details. That wouldn't happen to us because we wouldn't let it. He actually liked the idea of fathering a child, but he didn't consider himself parent material. He'd continue to be my buddy and be content to let me be the parent all by myself. Changing diapers and wiping snotty noses just weren't his 'thing'.

He got so 'in' to the project, he was following my cycle more closely than I was, had developed his own chart of my peak fertility periods by stuffing a thermometer in my mouth whenever he got the chance.

This was when he'd come up with the wild scheme that was currently driving him to drink and tying my stomach in knots.

'Fate', he decided, was smiling upon us. My peak fertility period coincided with the conference we were both scheduled to attend and that would be the time to shoot for the goal. Everyone, he assured me, would be so busy with their own rendezvous they wouldn't notice us. We could do 'it' away from the office, pretend we were just two strangers scratching an itch, and then go about our business.

We hadn't discussed what we would do if it didn't 'take'.

I wasn't sure what the conference had to do with it, but I'd begun to realize that what appealed to Chris about it was that he could pretend it wasn't me in his bed, and he thought he could go through with it.

I wasn't sure I could. It was all very well to say we could pretend, but once it got down to business, could we really?

The scheme was crazy--and right up Chris' alley.

He'd given me his room number. The two of us had split the additional expense to pay for him to have a room all to himself--a bungalow actually, which was a good bit more expensive than a room in the hotel proper, which was what the company had paid for. We would attend the welcome mixer and then he would leave after an appropriate amount of time and go back to wait for me. I would stay long enough to lull suspicions and then follow.

I'd thought it was an insane plan when Chris hatched it. The more I watched him, the more certain I was that it wasn't going to work.

If nothing else, he was going to be too drunk to perform.

How the hell was I supposed to just 'lay there' and receive when he could hardly walk already?

"Your boss?"

I glanced distractedly at the woman who'd walked up to me. "I beg your pardon?"