Baby In The Making

Oh, boy. There went her stomach again. “Well, I could be a billionaire,” she told him.

“Could be?” he echoed. “You said your grandfather bequeathed his entire estate to you. What are they waiting on? A DNA test?”

“Mr. Fiver took a sample of my saliva while we were talking,” she said. “But that’s just a formality for the courts. There’s no question I’m Amanda. I didn’t just inherit my father’s unique eye color. I also have a crescent-shaped birthmark on my right shoulder blade that shows up with some regularity in the Linden line. And, yes, my grandfather wants his entire estate to go to me. But there are certain...terms...of his will that need to be met before I can inherit.”

“What kind of terms?”

Hannah threw back the rest of her drink in one long gulp. Before her glass even hit the table, Yeager was lifting a hand to alert the bartender that they wanted another round. He even pointed at Hannah and added, “Make hers a double.”

Hannah started to tell him that wouldn’t be necessary. Then she remembered her grandfather’s demands again and grabbed Yeager’s drink, downing what was left of it, too. She would need all the false courage she could get if she was going to actually talk about this. Especially with someone like Yeager.

Once the whiskey settled in her stomach—woo, that warmth was starting to feel really good—she did her best to gather her thoughts, even though they all suddenly wanted to go wandering off in different directions. And she did her best to explain.

“Okay, so, as rich as the Lindens have always been,” she said, “they weren’t particularly, um, fruitful. I’m the last of the line. My father was an only child, and he didn’t remarry before his death. My grandfather’s sister never married or had children. Their father had twin brothers, but they both died from influenza before they were even teenagers. The Linden family tree prior to that had been growing sparser and sparser with each ensuing generation, so I’m all that’s left of them.”

Her thoughts were starting to get a little fuzzy, so Hannah drew in another long breath and let it go. There. That was better. Kind of. Where was she? Besides about to have a panic attack? Oh, right. The dried-up Linden family tree.

“Anyway...” She started again. “I guess my grandfather was sort of horrified by the idea that the world would no longer be graced with the Linden family presence—we were, I have learned, some of the best fat cats and exploiters of the proletariat out there—so he tied some strings to my inheritance.”

“What kind of strings?” Yeager asked.

“Well, actually it’s only one string,” she told him. “A string that’s more like a rope. A rope that’s tied into a noose.”

He was starting to look confused. She felt his pain.

“Hannah, I think I can safely say that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She tried again. “My grandfather included a condition I’ll have to meet before I can inherit the family fortune. He wanted to make sure that I, um, further the Linden line.”

“Further the line?”

She nodded. Then nodded some more. And then some more. Why couldn’t she stop nodding? And why did her head feel like it was beginning to disconnect from her body? With great effort, she stilled and tried to think of the most tactful way to tell Yeager how her grandfather had stipulated that, before she could inherit the piles and piles and piles of Linden moolah, she’d have to become a Linden baby factory.

Finally she decided on, “My grandfather has stipulated that, before I can inherit the piles and piles and piles of Linden moolah, I have to become a Linden baby factory.”

Yeager’s eyebrows shot up to nearly his hairline. “He wants you to procreate in order to inherit?”

Yeah, that would have been a much more tactful way to say it. Oh, well. “That’s exactly what he wants,” she said. “It’s what he demands. In order to inherit the family fortune, I have to either already be a mother or on my way to becoming one.”

“Can he do that?”

“Apparently so. The wording of his will was something along the lines of, if, when I was located after his death, I had a child or children, then no problem, here’s more money than you could have ever imagined having, don’t spend it all in one place.”

“But you don’t have a child or children,” Yeager pointed out.

“Nope.”

“So what happens in that case?”

“In that case, I have six months to get pregnant.”

Yeager’s eyebrows shot back up. “And what happens if you don’t get pregnant in six months?”

“Then aaaallllll the Linden money will go to charity and I’ll get a small severance package of fifty grand for my troubles, thanks so much for playing. Which, don’t get me wrong, would be great, and I’d be most appreciative, but...”

“It’s not billions.”

“Right.”

He opened his mouth to say something then closed it again. For another moment he studied her in silence. Then he said, “Well, that sucks.”

“Yeah.”

The bartender arrived with their drinks and Hannah immediately enjoyed a healthy swallow of hers.

“See, though,” she said afterward, “the problem isn’t with me having children. I’ve always planned on having kids someday. I want to have kids. I love kids. I wouldn’t even mind being a single mother, as long as I had the time and money to make sure I could do it right. Which, of course, I would, with billions of dollars. But to only have six months to make the decision and put it into action?”

“Actually, you don’t even have six months, if that’s the deadline,” Yeager said oh, so helpfully. “I mean, I’m no expert in baby-making—and thank God for that—but even I know it doesn’t always happen the first time. Or the second. Or the third. You’re going to need all the time you can get.”

Hannah closed her eyes at the reminder of what she already knew. “Thanks a lot, Grandpa. There’s nothing like the pressure of a ticking clock to bring a girl’s egg delivery to a crawl.”

She snapped her eyes open again. Oh, God, did she actually just say that out loud? When she heard Yeager chuckle, she realized she had. Then again, this whole situation was kind of comical. In an over-the-top, stranger-than-fiction, absolutely surreal kind of way.

She leaned forward and banged her head lightly against the table. In some part of her brain, she’d already realized that, if she wanted to inherit this money—and she very much wanted to inherit this money, since it would enable her to realize every dream she’d ever dreamed—she was going to have to make a decision fast and get herself in the family way as soon as possible.

But now that the rest of her brain was getting in on the action, she knew the prospects weren’t looking great. She had nothing remotely resembling a boyfriend. She didn’t even have a boy who was her friend. And only one attempt at in vitro was way beyond her financial means. She’d already checked that out, too.

Which left visits to a sperm bank, something she’d also been researching online tonight. If necessary, she could afford a few of those—barely—but if none of the efforts took, and she didn’t conceive by the six-month deadline, she would have drained what little savings she had. And fifty grand, although an impressive sum, wasn’t going to go far in New York City. These things came with no guarantees, especially if her anxiety about everything really did turn her eggs into the same kind of shrinking violets she was.

What Hannah needed was something that could counter her potentially diminished fertility. A super-tricked-out, ultra-souped-up, hypermasculine testosterone machine that could fairly guarantee to knock her up. And where the hell was she supposed to find a guy like—

She sat back up and looked at Yeager—and the super-tricked-out, ultra-souped-up, hypermasculine body that housed him. Talk about testosterone overload. The guy flew MiG 29s over the Russian tundra for kicks. He’d climbed Mt. Everest. Twice. He served himself up as shark bait on purpose, for God’s sake. The man probably produced enough testosterone for ten men. If he couldn’t put a woman in the family way, nobody could.

Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was the wine followed by the whiskey. Or maybe it was just the unmitigated terror of having finally discovered who she was and where she belonged and everything she could attain. It wasn’t just the reclaiming of a life that had been denied her, but the promise of a happiness she never thought she would have—and realizing she could lose it all in the blink of an eye or the shrink of an egg.

And she heard herself saying, “So, Mr. Novak. Have you ever thought about donating your sperm to a good cause?”

* * *

Before he could stop himself, Yeager spat back into his glass a mouthful of whiskey, something that had never happened to him before. Then again, no one had ever asked him about his intentions for his sperm before, either, so he guessed he was entitled to this one social lapse.

As he wiped his chin with his napkin, he tried to tell himself he’d misheard Hannah’s question. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“Your sperm,” she said, enunciating the word more clearly this time. “Have you ever thought about donating it?”

So much for having misheard her. “Uh...no,” he said decisively.

She eyed him intently, her gaze never wavering from his. For a minute he thought she was going to drop it. Then she asked, “Well, would you think about it now?”