Free Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 03 - Of Dark and Bright by Kate Sherwood Page B

look at your finances, in terms of what you’d be able to pay me. I get that you’d probably have trouble with a lump sum, but you could get him to give you, like, a monthly allowance, right? And you could just give a chunk of that to me.”
    “You want to sell your baby to me?” On some level, Dan had known that she was leading up to this, but he still couldn’t make himself believe it in his core. “What about all that ‘a mom’s job is to look out for her kid’ stuff?”
    “I am looking out for my kid,” she insisted, and for the first time there was a little heat in her voice. “I think you’d be a good dad. And I think Evan would be a good dad. So, what’s the problem?”
    “What about Jeff?” Dan had mentioned Jeff a few times, but he hadn’t made the nature of the relationship crystal clear. It was a bit cheap to do it now, but he wanted to get a genuine read on how sincere Krista was about all this. “He’s part of the relationship too. All of us. A threesome. Polyamory. ‘Johnny has Three Daddies’.”
    “Seriously?” Krista raised an eyebrow as she looked at him appraisingly, then tilted her glass and dunked her cookie again. “I guess you’d want to talk to the lawyer about that too. I mean… can three people even have custody of the same baby? I have no idea.”
“You haven’t even met Jeff, and you’re going to just give him your baby?”
    “I’ve met Evan, and I know you. I don’t think either of you would be with an asshole.” She frowned, then smiled, quick and sharp. “Is Jeff rich too? That’d be excellent—you could probably play them off against each other. Maybe you should keep custody of the baby for yourself, and then if things go south, they can fight over you and the kid.”
“Jesus, Krista! It’s going to be a human being! A little… a little person. Not a tool for keeping people interested in me.”
    “It’s easy to talk that way when you’re young and good-looking, Dan. But ask yourself—how much of Mom’s shit was because she was desperate to keep her man around? She hooked up with the asshole when she was looking good, and he treated her, and us, okay. But then she got sick, and less hot, and she didn’t have anything to hold over him.”
“ She had kids! If your whole argument is that I need a kid to keep my man, then why didn’t she have good luck with two kids?”
    “Yeah, she had kids.” Krista sounded like she couldn’t quite believe how stupid Dan was. “But he didn’t want kids. He could have gotten any woman knocked up if he wanted a kid. But your boys are gay. They’re not likely to get anyone pregnant, right? And—well, I haven’t met Jeff, but Evan definitely wants kids. He looks at my belly like it’s a candy buffet. Plus, even if he decides he doesn’t want the kid, in the long run, once you guys have been raising it together, I bet you’d be entitled to child support or something.” She sat back and drained the milk from her glass, then shrugged. “Like I said, you should talk to a lawyer. But don’t take too long—if you don’t want to pay for the baby, I need to find someone who will.”
    Dan stood up abruptly, his hip jarring the table. “No. I’m not buying my niece or nephew. That’s… it’s not right, Krista. You shouldn’t let—how can you give your baby to somebody just because they happen to be rich?”
    “Don’t preach at me.” Krista shook her head in disgust. “You think it’s easy being poor? Things were never all that bad, before you left. Sure, money was tight, but we got by. But when Mom got sick again, and the asshole lost his job… we didn’t have food sometimes, Dan. That’s not going to happen, not for my baby. So it’s going to be raised by people who have enough money to raise a kid and have a little left over for the mom.”
“‘A little left over’? How much are you looking for, Krista? What’s the price tag on your baby?”
    She must have heard the sarcasm in his tone, but she