Page 1 of Somebody To Love

CHAPTER 1

“You can do this, Penny. Go in there and ask him.” Penny stared into her tense reflection in her car’s rear-view mirror. “Friends ask each other for favors all the time.”

Hazel eyes she stared at every day in the mirror gazed back with a dubious expression. “It’s not a big deal. Go in there and say ‘BJ, I’m trying to get pregnant, and I would like to use your sperm. Please’”

Please was a nice touch. Always go with a please. Particularly if you were going to ask your best friend for his baby-making material. She would add a please onto the teeny tiny favor she requested of him.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” A groan that sounded suspiciously more like a sob escaped her as she banged her forehead against the steering wheel. “This is an epic favor of world proportions.”

Her world, to be exact. The world she currently wanted to change and needed her best friend to do so.

Okay, maybe she didn’t need him per se, but his little swimmers. And honestly, it was all his idea in the first place. It was a month ago, during one of their lunch meet ups, she’d told BJ about wanting to be a mom. Since she was a disaster in the dating department, she’d decided to go the solo route. After looking into adoption and being told as a single autistic woman she’d have a better shot at being the first person on Mars than getting approved to adopt, she’d researched artificial insemination.

BJ had been supportive of her decision, evening offering his help if she wanted. Sure, he’d been making an offhand comment, but once the idea rooted, she hadn’t been able to let it go…

She’d booked an appointment with her OBGYN where they discussed her plan and options. Penny decided to forgo the sperm bank. Yes, she knew they tested the samples, vetted the donors, dotted all their i’s and crossed their t’s. But a binder full of height, eye color, and family medical history couldn’t tell her the things she really wanted to know.

What were they like as a child? Kind, shy, awkward…the class bully?

She knew a lot of a child’s personality came from their upbringing, but some kids had mean in their genes. Nature versus nurture, the eternal debate. None of the thick, thorough binders she scrutinized had given her any indication of the male donor’s personality. She didn’t want help raising her child, but she wanted to know her child came from a kind and loving gene pool. On both sides. That meant she needed to procure the sample from a known source.

Luckily, she knew someone with a healthy family medical history, a strong sense of fairness and kindness, and good genes. Great genes, more like. There was more than one reason the women of Kismet dubbed Jacks their favorite hang-out. Spoiler, it wasn’t because of their finely distilled spirits. The Jackson men were the very definition of eye candy.

Yes, the Jacksons had fantastic genes. It put a check in her win column for baby daddy donations. That fact that she didn’t know any other men well enough to ask for such a complicated favor was beside the point.

BJ was it. Her perfect donor.

Now she had to work up the nerve to ask him.

“Shit or get off the pot, Penny,” she gave herself a hard glare in the mirror, using her father’s favorite phrase for her when she’d waffled on decisions as a teen.

With one more determined look, she reached for the door handle, exiting her car, and hurrying into Jacks. The tasting room sat empty. Jacks served as more of a bar than the fancy tasting rooms distilleries in other states, thanks to some nifty Colorado liquor laws allowing distilleries to serve full drinks as long as they used their own liquor. A glance at the clock revealed the time to be slightly after four in the afternoon. The after-work crowd hadn’t arrived yet. Good. She’d get some privacy to talk to BJ.

“Hey, Penny.”

She turned her head to the bar where Kelley Raheja, the part-time bartender, stood polishing glasses. “Did you know that eighty-sex percent of dish rags contain yeast and mold, seventy-seven percent contain coliform bacteria, and eighteen percent contain staph bacteria. It’s recommended to replace them every thirty days.”

Oh goody, her brain decided to short circuit and let her mouth run loose with a plethora of facts she knew Kelley neither needed nor wanted.

Kelley smiled. Her dark brown eyes lit with humor. “Thanks for the, um, health lesson, but this is a dry rag. I’m wiping off the glasses. Clean and sanitized from the dishwasher. I promise.”

Right. She should have known that. Jacks had an A+ rating from the health department. The Jackson family knew how to keep their business clean. She was just nervous and when she got nervous, she blurted out random facts.

“Need a drink?” Kelley asked.

“No thank you. I’m here to see BJ. Is he around?”

Kelley tilted her head to the side. “In the restaurant going over menus or something. They’re all freaking out because the opening is a few weeks away and they still don’t have everything set.”

“All of them are worried?” Odd. The Jacksons were a fairly cool bunch. Most of them, anyway.

Kelley grinned. “Okay, Ace is freaking out and the rest are taking bets on when he’ll have an aneurysm.”

Ah, yes, that sounded about right. Though they were twins, BJ was much more laid-back than Ace. The elder twin—by five minutes—took his role as big brother seriously. Some might say too seriously, but never to his face.

“Thank you, Kelley.”

With a wave, she headed through the swinging door connecting Jacks to the new restaurant set to open soon. Her body vibrated with nerves, mind reeling with the enormity of what she was about to ask.

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