The Surrogate

Abby Knickerbocker, an American, agrees to act as a surrogate and travels to England with a fixed plan: stay only until the baby is born, then go home. The child is conceived from the eggs of Britney, who died five years earlier, and fathered by her widower, Sigmund Benedictus, known as Sig.

The arrangement comes from Britney's parents. They say their daughter asked on her deathbed for a grandchild made with her eggs, on the condition that Sig be the father, and they insist on raising the baby themselves. Sig doubts it, agrees against his judgment, and resolves to treat the pregnancy as something happening to someone else.

Abby and Sig clash from the start. She finds him pretentious, and he suspects she is doing this for the money. Slowly, suspicion gives way to trust, then to protectiveness, and then to a heat neither of them planned for.

Sig is a broody man who has lived alone since his wife's death and is not looking for a partner. Abby knows her stay has an end date and that the older man she is drawn to could break her heart.

The romance alternates between Abby's voice and Sig's, and it moves from open hostility to love. The book stands alone. The tension rests on a pregnancy that belongs to neither of them and a deadline that is already counting down.