“Are you sure you don’t want to be involved in their lives?” he asked me for the thousandth time. But we had talked about this over and over again. It was even in our contract.

“Park, I just can’t. My job here is to give birth to your children, help you get acclimated for a few days after and walk away. I’ll see them. I’ll be Aunt Amelia.”

“And they’ll know you gave birth to them,” he added firmly.

“They’ll know,” I said. “Of course, they’ll know. I gave birth to them, but Greer is their mother.” I looked over at him, as he was looking out over the water. His cheeks were sun-kissed from the boat and his hair slightly disheveled. I loved him most like this, in an old pair of gym shorts and Summer Splash and Fish tournament T-shirt, his guard down. The Palm Beach man in the suit was powerful and sexy. But this man was vulnerable and kind. I squeezed his shoulder, and when he turned to look at me, I nearly melted. And I allowed myself to envision, just for a moment, what it would be like if I stayed.…

Now, postimplantation, I was back to being sure that the only option I had was to walk away. It was too complicated otherwise. After a soft knock at the door, Trina, who had been waiting on the front porch of the octagon house to help me when we got home, walked in carrying a tray of steaming soup, while Parker fluffed my pillow for the tenth time. Everyone was treating me like I was sick, not potentially pregnant.

The doctor had advised twenty-four hours of bed rest, and then I was supposed to somehow figure out how to wait two entire weeks to figure out whether I was pregnant. It would be the longest two weeks of my life, even longer than the two weeks that my parents had shipped me off to a camp where you actually camped. Like outside. In tents. With no bathrooms. It was full-on atrocious.

“Your shoulders feel tense,” Parker said, sitting down beside me on the bed, rubbing them, his strong, callused hands feeling manly and good through my thin cotton dress. I closed my eyes as his fingers ran up the back of my neck.

“This is my special, super-duper pregnancy soup,” Trina said, making me open my eyes again. She had had three boys in three years, so I meant it when I said, “Seems like it works!”

She laughed.

Anything that might help me not let Parker down was fine by me. So, the memory of his touch on my skin lingering, I sipped the fertility soup. I think it was just chicken noodle, but whatever.

“I hope this works out,” Trina said. “You would be such a good mom.”

Maybe I hadn’t been clear enough with Trina. “No, no,” I said uneasily. “Parker is their dad. I’m just the surrogate. Nine months and my job here is done.” I looked at Parker to make sure Trina’s comment hadn’t rattled him and saw a cloud pass over his face.