A Xmas Gift: The Sperm Donor Read online

  A Xmas Gift: The Sperm Donor

  A Xmas Gift: The Sperm Donor

  Midpoint

  PROLOGUE

  A XMAS GIFT: THE SPERM DONOR

  By Aphrodite Hunt

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright 2012 by Aphrodite Hunt

  Cover art by Aphrodite Hunt

  A XMAS GIFT: THE SPERM DONOR

  1

  Elise Ratner looks wistfully out of the plane window from her cramped window seat. The clouds part to let the Airbus 380 descend, their wispy tendrils pierced by the plane’s sleek airframe. Somewhere down there, London sprawls like the glittering jewel of a former empire.

  Her eyes flit to the photograph in front of her. Her pulse quickens as she thinks of what she is about to do. After all, this is why she flew ten thousand miles across the Atlantic – to find out if this is the impossible dream.

  The fifty-something, auburn-haired woman in the seat beside her peers at the photo and says admiringly, “Lovely couple. Is that you in the picture?”

  She has an English accent, and Elise guesses she’s probably going home.

  “A much younger version of me. This is me at my high school prom.” Elise was wearing a flouncy pink number – all taffeta and ruffles. Her mother had bought that for her from Neiman Marcus. It was the prettiest thing she’d owned for a long time, until she started working and collecting her own paychecks to afford her own Neiman Marcus purchases, of course.

  “Who is the lucky guy in the picture? He is very handsome.”

  “Yes, he is.” Elise can’t help but feel a pang of regret.

  “You still together?”

  “No. We haven’t seen each other since college. He went to Princeton, and I stayed behind at Arizona State. Long distance relationships, you know.” Elise shrugs, as if that explains everything.

  It was one of those things. They had tried to keep it together, but absence just does not make the heart grow fonder. Not when you’re twenty-two and ambitious and horny. Sometimes not simultaneously.

  “Such a pity,” the woman says. She is bordering on being nosy, and she senses it. “I’m sorry. I’m asking a whole lot of questions, aren’t I?”

  Yes, you are, but I volunteered the answers, Elise thinks.

  “Not at all,” she says, smiling.

  “So what are you in London for?”

  “To visit an old friend.”

  It’s true. Except that the aforementioned old friend has no idea she is arriving.

  Oh, Elise is no fool. She has done her homework. He’s here in London all right. He isn’t travelling this month and as far as she knows, he’s still living alone. He’s extremely handsome, smart, successful and wealthy, and he is her age – thirty-three this year.

  Which makes him perfect to be her baby’s daddy.

  Too bad he doesn’t know it yet.

  2

  The phone on Justin Morgan’s massive office desk rings. The caller ID shows Ferngully, his male PA.

  He picks it up. “Yeah?”

  “Ms. Abigail Morton to see you, sir.”

  Justin sighs.

  He stares out for a moment at the view from twenty stories above. His employer, Thaddeus Morton, has relocated to the new financial district known as the City of London two years ago, and the part of London that surrounds him – with its skyscrapers and modern architecture – reminds him of Hong Kong. Thaddeus Morton is American and a member of the famed Morton family of Chicago, and he runs the London office of Morton Enterprises for his formidable uncle.

  He also has a daughter, who just happens to be half-English and very insistent. No blushing English rose, this.

  “Show her in,” Justin says into the phone. Really, as President of Operations in a particularly busy pre-Christmas period, he can scarcely take a leak – let alone eat lunch. But try telling that to Abigail Morton.

  Abigail breezes in with a flotilla of shopping bags.

  “Darling!” she shrieks explosively, holding out her arms – all threaded with bag handles.

  Justin winces. Whatever happened to English reserve? But Abigail has apparently been brought up to reinvent British stereotypes.

  He gets out from behind his desk and takes the kiss she proffers. He only meant it to be a light peck on the lips, but she transforms it into a full-blown smooch. Her arms tighten around him and he feels the scrunch of too much rustling paper.

  He tries to mask his minor irritation. He has no right to be irritated with her, of course. She’s merely being herself – a rich, spoilt princess with a heart as big as her voice, and who has never had to work a day in her life. She has no idea of what poor people do when they pack their briefcases in the morning and drive to the nearest Tube station with parking facilities to go to work. Of course, sometimes they walk, but he’d be damned if he’s going to walk in this freezing weather.

  But she’s a good person, he keeps telling himself. He can do far worse. Of course, there’s always that tacit ‘promise’ from her Daddy that if this union goes to plan, he will be COO of the company.

  Part of him is telling himself that he is not for sale. That he should be promoted based on merit and merit alone. And he has plenty of merit. He is widely known to be a brilliant rainmaker, the one who throws ideas out on the table. But real life never has a way of working out as intended, and there are always complications and roadblocks that are totally unforeseen.

  Which are not solely based on merit.

  Damn.

  As fate would have had it, the moment Abigail Morton saw him for the first time at his first company dinner, she inexplicably fell head-over-heels in love with him.

  Why him? He sighs again. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.

  Abigail finally lets him escape her bear hug.

  She gushes, “I thought we could go to the Metropolitan for lunch.” She wears an upper crust British accent like armor.

  “Abby, the Metropolitan is in Park Lane. That’s thirty minutes from here. I have a meeting at one thirty.”

  She pouts prettily. She’s a suicide blonde with eclectic taste in clothes. Which means she would rather go Bohemian or Paris chic instead of Burberry or Alexander McQueen. Except that unlike most students or artists, her version of Bohemian and Paris chic would probably cost thousands of pounds per breezy item.

  “Oh, Justin, you work too hard.”

  “Somebody has got to make a living.”

  “I already told you, Daddy will take care of everything when we are married.”

  “I can’t take anything from your Daddy, and we’re not even engaged, let alone married,” he reminds her.

  “You’re working for his company,” she points out.

  “Yeah, but this is a real job, for which I get paid for the hours I put in. Why don’t we just go downstairs and grab a sandwich from Pret A Manger’s?”

  “Ooooh.” She scrunches her nose up in distaste. Abigail doesn’t do mass market eateries.

  “They are pretty good,” he says, smiling lightly. “I can have the BLT and you can have the prawn mayo with avocado. Or would you prefer McDonald’s?”

  “I don’t eat carbs after eleven, you know that, darling.”

  “So have a salad. Put down your shopping bags here.” He gestures to the coffee table in front of the sofa.

  “Or maybe . . . ” She pauses suggestively, tugging at his tie, which just happens to be a present from her as well.

  He makes a mental note to stop her from giving him gifts which are not tied to a festive or birthday o
ccasion, but he might as well try to halt a tsunami.

  “Maybe what?”

  She loosens his tie as she moistens her lips. “We could do it right here on the sofa.”

  “I really do have a meeting at one thirty.”

  “What better than a workout to get those creative endorphins flowing?” She pulls him by the tie to the grey leather couch.

  “Abby, I can’t – ”

  The rest of his protests are lost in a haze of frantic kissing. Her arms let go of the shopping bags and they slide off to fall onto the floor in a profusion of plops. She grabs his body beneath his dove grey Armani suit, feeling the muscled and lean texture of him – the one that works out five times a week at the gym. A gym she insists on tagging along to.

  Is there any way she would leave him alone? He thinks not. She’s too insecure, and she masks that insecurity with brashness and loudness. She’s always afraid that his head would be turned by some gorgeous woman. He has tried telling her that she can’t be with him twenty-four seven, and that she really should have more faith in him.

  But he would have had better success shouting that to a brick wall.

  Although there has been no one else for him, he doesn’t really consider them to be having a real relationship. It just doesn’t . . . feel right. It’s sexual, yes, and filled with affection. But he doesn’t have that all-encompassing feeling of heady, mind-spinning abandon that he associates with love.

  He’s just trying to have a go at it because she is his boss’s daughter, and she is clearly in love with him. He’s hanging around her because underneath all that bluster and insecurity, she’s a good person who volunteers her time with orphanages and old people and the homeless. She’s a do-gooder, like her society matron mother.

  I will grow to love her, he vows to himself as he lets her undress him – pulling at his jacket and then working on the buttons of his shirt. She has already looped his tie off his head. She dives for his fly and unzips it.

  He’s not hard, but her persistent, probing hand soon gets him there while her mouth never leaves his face – covering his cheeks, chin and mouth with never-ending kisses, as though she’s afraid he might vanish if she doesn’t have contact with him with her lips.

  As she releases his upright cock from his trousers, she transfers those red, glistening lips of hers to his thick rod of flesh instead. He surrenders himself to the familiar pleasure while telling himself that the sex has always been good, no matter how long it was taking for him to love her in return.

  3

  Elise looks at the four walls of the hotel room she has commissioned. So this is what she would get for eighty pounds a night. If she takes two steps, she would have reached the bathroom. Two steps to the left, and she’s bumping against the hangers of an open closet. Two steps to the right, and her nose would be pressed to the window.

  It’s not really a hotel, of course, but an inn. In winter, the room rates have gone down. She was told that if this were summer, the rates would be twice as much. But this is London, and space in the city is a precious commodity.

  It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t plan on spending much time in her room anyway.

  She unpacks. The TV is set to some weather channel, and the temperature has dipped to -3 degrees Centigrade out there, with blowing rain and a wind chill factor. Super. She takes out her raincoat, her sturdy black boots and a windbreaker.

  She dons those three layers of clothing and heads out of the inn. The rain and cold immediately pelt her, spattering icy droplets onto her face. A few hard snowflakes whirl and fall onto the pavement.

  If she’s going to drop a bombshell of a request, better dress safely.

  4

  The phone on Justin Morgan’s desk in his office rings again. It has been ringing non-stop since morning. The usual pre-Christmas rush. Everyone has to get everything done before they go off on their Christmas vacation.

  It’s Ferngully, as expected.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, it’s reception. There’s a lady waiting to see you.”

  Justin sighs. “I told Abby I won’t be able to make it for lunch today.”

  Really, you’d think after that bout of lovemaking they had last night, she would be contented to leave him to his own devices. He hates to admit it, but such fanatical attention is getting to be cloying.

  “It’s not Ms. Abigail Morton, sir,” Ferngully says rather pointedly. “It’s a Ms. Elise Ratner. She insists on seeing you without an appointment. She says she’s an old friend from America.”

  Justin almost drops the receiver.

  Elise?

  He’s stunned. OK, he’s more than stunned. He’s gobsmacked/(insert whatever British term appropriate). What the hell is she doing in London? Has she moved here or is she merely a tourist? And how did she manage to find him?

  The last memory he has of her was in their sophomore year in college. He had come home for Christmas, and they sat under her father’s porch. It was cold but dry, not wet and wintry like England. Still, it was freezing, and they huddled together on the wooden bench for warmth. Inside the house, her family was getting drunk on eggnog and brandy.

  He could hear her father’s voice, singing a very tipsy rendition of ‘White Christmas’. He winced. He wondered if her old man knew they had been making out upstairs on her pretty white-and-blue bed, with all the sheets entangled around their sweaty naked bodies.

  But tonight, she wanted to tell him something important. Their fingers were interlaced, and she was trying to avoid looking at his face.

  His heart sank. He thought he knew where this was heading.

  It wasn’t unexpected, but it still hurt.

  He took the offensive. He said lightly, “Let me guess, you found someone else.”

  She was still for a moment.

  “No. But this is not working out . . . you and me.”

  Of course it wasn’t. He only got to come home for occasions like Thanksgiving, Christmas and summer break. It wasn’t fair to ask her to wait for him, just as it wasn’t fair for her to ask him to wait for her. These things happened. The most wondrous of high school relationships might not survive a protracted separation, especially at that age.

  And Elise was an attractive and vivacious young woman. She was bound to have a lot of boyfriends in college.

  His chest was heavy. Intellectually, he knew it was the right thing to do, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. He felt as though a part of him were defragmenting – physically wrenched away.

  “So you don’t want to wait for me,” he said, still in that light tone of his, as though he were talking about the weather.

  “Do you want to wait for me?” she countered.

  Truth be told, he had been so busy with coursework that it hardly occurred to him to have a girlfriend on campus. Being in an Ivy League school did that to you. He had worked hard to get into Princeton. He had won that academic scholarship on his own merit. This was not to say girls didn’t throw themselves at him. Back in high school, Elise kept them off. But he was fair game to everyone in college.

  He kept telling them he had a girlfriend back west, but they weren’t buying it, going as far as to call him gay.

  “I thought that was what we agreed to do. Wait for each other,” he argued.

  “I thought so too,” she admitted, “but then . . . what’s the point? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over these past two years while you were away. I didn’t want to be the one who stopped you from realizing your dreams – ”

  “You weren’t, and you never did. You pushed me to take that scholarship.”

  “ – and I’ve grown up in the past two years. I’m not wide-eyed and giddy anymore.”

  “You never were wide-eyed and giddy.” Elise was born grown-up, he thought. And sexually aware.

  She was contemplative. “I just don’t want to wait forever, Justin.”

  He opened his mouth to say something like ‘It’s not forever . . . it’s only two more years’, but he realize
d he would be making a promise he couldn’t keep. It would be Harvard MBA for him next. Internship in a New York firm. Then wherever his job might take him.

  She was right. She saw the writing on the wall long before he did.

  “I love you,” he said with feeling. He could feel the rush of painful emotion now, spearing his gut and weighing down his chest like a two-ton anvil.

  “I love you too.” She clasped his hands. “But sometimes, love just isn’t enough.”

  It was enough for me, he thought, but he didn’t say it.

  Looking back, he understood it now. They were both young. They hadn’t really lived yet, and they were far too ambitious to be tied down to a first love they barely understood. He didn’t regret loving Elise. She was a rite of passage. A first girlfriend to whom he had given his virginity, and taken hers in return.

  They never kept in touch with each other. There wasn’t a point in dredging up old memories.

  So in the present, Elise Ratner showing up in his office in London twelve years later is nothing short of a phenomenon. His pulse rises to a tappity-tap in his neck, and he clenches his fists to control the rush of emotions.

  No, she doesn’t want you back. She just popped in for a visit.

  Of course. What else could it be?

  He tries to suppress the tumultuous feelings – of anticipation, of excitement, of their last painful memory together – from overwhelming him.

  “Of course, Ferngully,” he says with studied calm. “Show her in.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The connection clicks off.

  Justin stares at the door. He is as composed as he can be outwardly – even though inside, he feels like a little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the dike, a one man army who is trying to stem the entire ocean from spilling in.

  5

  Elise is glad she freshened up in the restroom before striding into Justin’s office. She resembled a drowned rat after going through that maelstrom. Gad, was London weather always like this? It hadn’t stopped raining – not even once.