Page 40 of Billionaire Hunt

“Well, not at first, but Lacey and Oliver keep bringing it up.”

“Lacey? That’s surprising.”

“I think she just wants everyone to be pregnant with her. She even planned to ask you if you and Colin were planning to have another.”

Emmaline laughed dryly. “Well, that’s not going to happen. Like definitely not going to happen. As in, I took steps already to ensure no more babies pop out of me. And Colin’s going for the big snip too. We agreed that Theodora was going to be an only child.”

I laughed.

“But back to your problem...isn’t that a little awkward? Your client asking to borrow your uterus? Sounds weird.”

“Well,” I said hesitating, “he’s not just my client. We’ve been, uhhh, seeing each other for most of this year.”

“What! And why am I just hearing about this now?!”

“I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“But why not? That doesn’t make any sense. We just want you to be happy with whoever you’re with. You didn’t need to keep it a secret. I’m surprised that you would.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, when I said seeing each other...I actually just meant sex.” I decided to just spit it out. “We sort of have an arrangement.”

“What type of arrangement?” she asked suspiciously.

“We’re friends...who have sex with each other,” I said quickly. I then stuck my head in my shirt, embarrassed even though Emmaline couldn’t see me.

“So you’re sex buddies? Friends with benefits? I guess technically so were Colin and I before we stopped playing around and got serious. I don’t understand what the big deal is. Why would you keep that a secret?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you wouldn’t think it was a good idea, considering I’ve never done anything like this before and because I was recently divorced.”

“You deserve a little fun. Sex is fun. Your marriage was over. From what I can tell, Erik is a good guy. You’re not going to get any condemnation from me.”

And that was the root of the problem. No one else was judging me but me. Hadn’t Lacey encouraged me to date Erik? Hadn’t Oliver even pushed it? But what we were doing wasn’t dating. We were using each other, using each other for sex. It just felt a little sordid and that was the root of the problem. I was the one who deep down had a problem with our arrangement. No matter how much I told myself I wouldn’t feel guilty or bad for only being sexually involved with Erik, I actually did feel bad. I felt bad because I was selling myself short yet again. I wanted more than just sex now, but instead of standing up for what I wanted, I had done the same thing I had done with my marriage, settled for less and just went with the status quo.

I needed to start being honest with myself. I had started falling for Erik the moment I laid eyes on him. The sex had just been an extra bonus. I told Emmaline all this and she listened carefully.

“So what are you going to do?”

“About the surrogate issue?”

“No. About your feelings toward Erik?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing to do. I could break it off.”

“But that’s not what you really want.”

“No. That’s not what I want.”

“Just talk to him about how you feel. There’s a possibility that he feels the same way.”

“I doubt it. He always talks about how he doesn’t do relationships.”

“That’s bullcrap. Just because your relationship doesn’t fit under a neat label doesn’t take away from the fact that you guys are a couple, whether you guys acknowledge it or not. You spend all your free time together, you share things with each other, clearly you both care about each other. You guys might not have formally declared yourselves together, but your behavior states otherwise. Is he seeing anyone else?”

I thought of Candy, but didn’t really believe he was seeing her. “No, no. He’s not dating or seeing anyone else.”

“So whether you guys admit it or not...you’re in an exclusive, undefined relationship.”

Emmaline was right.