Moonlight Road (Virgin River #11)(33)

“Well, sweetheart,” he said. “What brings you to my office?”

Brie jumped up on a stool. “I was hoping we could talk,” she said.

“Sounds serious. Can I get you a drink to go with that expression?”

His sister didn’t answer. “Jack, there’s a pink elephant in the living room and it’s a surrogate pregnancy.” Jack’s chin dropped and he stared down at the bar. “Are we going to talk about it or keep pretending it’s not there?”

He lifted his chin. “What can I say?”

“Say something, Jack,” Brie insisted. “Because Mel has been asking me to contact her old fertility doctor in L.A., to get familiar with all the legal ramifications so that I’ll be ready to negotiate a contract. Meanwhile, she’s got an appointment set up for later this summer to have her eggs harvested. Where do you stand on this?”

He looked away uncomfortably. “I don’t want to,” he finally said.

“Why? What’s going on?”

Again he glanced away. Then he grabbed a glass and dish towel from under the bar and began to absently wipe out the water spots.

Brie closed a hand over his glass-and-towel action. “Put it down and talk to me. I’m all grown-up now and among other things, I’m your attorney.”

“Did Mel ask you to talk to me?”

“No. In fact, we were on the phone a little while ago and she said she had a patient at Valley Hospital, so I thought it was a good time to come over here. Let’s stop screwing around, Jack. It’s obvious you and Mel aren’t on the same page here—she’s hounding me to get moving on this and you haven’t even weighed in!”

“I’m worried about her,” he said softly. “I was hoping this would go away.”

“It’s not going away, it’s gaining momentum. Now, what’s going on?”

Jack shook his head. “We don’t need a baby. We’re having enough trouble hanging on to two little ones with our schedules and obligations. Three might really tip the scales, but that’s not it, Brie—if Mel hadn’t had a hysterectomy and another one happened along, we’d manage. It’s this idea she has that she has to beat the odds. Even a hysterectomy won’t make her vulnerable. If she wants another one, by God she’ll get one. Even if it costs thirty thousand dollars and involves a third party we’ve never met.”

“Is it the money?” Brie asked him.

“God, no! I’d buy her the moon, you know that! What do we need money for? Our family is priority. It’s just the whole idea. The way it happens.”

“People do it all the time, Jack,” Brie said softly. “It’s a great solution for people who can’t just have children the old-fashioned way. A growing number of people, by the way.”

“I know this,” he said. “I asked Preacher to look it up for me. He printed me off a lot of stuff from the Internet. Sometimes there’s an infertile husband or wife and donors are used. I guess that’s so people can grow their own rather than adopt. Whatever works, I say. This would be ours. Her eggs and my sperm would meet in a tube and then grow inside the body of some woman we’ve interviewed. Some woman we’ll pay to be the incubator.”

“Is that it, then? The idea that you don’t know the woman and you pay her to do the job?”

“Partly,” he said with a shrug. “That much is irregular, if you ask me. I mean, if we were a couple who met, fell in love and said to each other, ‘By God, we gotta have at least five kids to be happy,’ maybe I’d feel different. But we weren’t that couple, Brie. We were a couple who thought we were using birth control in the first place. Mel kept saying two was one more than she’d counted on. A couple years ago Mel almost died in a uterine hemorrhage. John did all he could, but taking the uterus saved her life. And he told me to be prepared for her to struggle with the loss—but not Mel. She bounced right back, just grateful we have each other and a couple of healthy kids. Now, all of a sudden, she’s hell-bent to have a third one, even though it’s not something we ever talked about.” He leaned his elbows on the bar. “Brie, she’s ready for you to draw up a contract and has an appointment to get her eggs harvested and I haven’t said I’d do it.”

“Could it be she knows you will if it’s important to her?”

“I’m afraid she’s trying to push back time,” he said. “I’m worried she’s not really okay with being a thirty-six-year-old woman whose childbearing is over. It’s like she’s not okay with us, the way we are.”

“No, Jack…”

“Do you know what I felt like when she got pregnant even though she wasn’t supposed to? I felt like Atlas, that’s what. I felt like a small god. Like an Olympian. Watching her get fat and moody, it was a miracle to me. My woman took me inside her body and created a life for us to share. Jerk off in a cup and watch it grow in someone I don’t know?” He shook his head. “We don’t need to do that, Brie. We just don’t need to.”

Brie’s mouth actually hung open for a moment. Then she said, “Whoa.”

He absently wiped the bar. “It’s not the process that bugs me,” he said. “Understand, it’s not the process. I think the fact that this can happen at all—this surrogate thing—this is a gift from God. If Mel came to me—you know, when we met—without that uterus, and wanted a baby bad enough to do it the surrogate way, oh, hell, yes, I’d do anything for her. You know that, right? That I’d do anything for her? But I don’t know if I’d be helping her much by going along with this. I’m not sure where this is coming from.”