“I assure you I’m not.”

“Half a million?”

“You have blue eyes, light hair. Like mine. It’s hard to tell now, but I’m taller than the average five feet eleven. We have similar genetic makeups, you and I. Similar enough anyway for a child you sire to be passed off as mine.”

Griff’s mind was spinning so fast it was hard to hang on to a thought. He was thinking dollar signs, Speakman was talking genes. “Those sperm banks have books.” He pantomimed leafing through pages. “You go through them and find what you want for your kid. You pick out eye color, hair color, height. All that.”

“I never buy anything sight unseen, Griff. I don’t shop from catalogs. Certainly not for my child and heir. And there’s still the risk of disclosure.”

“Those records are kept confidential,” Griff argued.

“Supposedly.”

Griff thought of the gate with the disembodied voice, the high wall surrounding the property. Apparently privacy was a real issue with this guy. Like neatness. The psychologist at Big Spring would have had a field day over the obsessive way Speakman had removed the drinking glasses from view, folded the towel, and replaced the coaster.

Intrigued in spite of himself, Griff studied the millionaire for a long moment, then said, “So how would it work? I’d go to a doctor’s office and jerk off into a jar and-”

“No office. If Laura was inseminated in a doctor’s office, there would be talk.”

“Who would talk?”

“The people who staff the office. Other patients who might see her there. People love to talk. Especially about celebrities.”

“I’m a fallen star.”

Laughing softly, Speakman said, “I was referring to Laura and me. But your involvement would certainly add another element to a delicious piece of gossip. It would be too tempting even for people bound by professional privilege.”

“Okay, so I don’t go to the doctor’s office with you. You could take my semen in and claim it as yours. Who’s to know?”

“You don’t understand, Griff. That still leaves room for speculation. My condition is obvious. A specimen I claimed as mine could have come from the pool boy. A skycap. Anybody.” He shook his head. “We’re emphatic about this. No nurses, no chatty receptionists, no office open to the public. At all.”

“So where? Here?” Griff envisioned taking a dirty magazine and a Dixie cup into one of the mansion’s bathrooms, the mute manservant standing outside the door, waiting for him to finish and deliver the specimen.

No way, José. Or rather, No way, Manuelo.

But for half a million bucks?

Everyone had their price. He’d proved he did. Five years had decreased it considerably, but if Speakman was willing to pay him five hundred grand for doing what he’d been doing for free for the past five years, he wasn’t going to let modesty stand in the way.

He’d walk away with six hundred thousand, counting the “signing bonus.” The Speakmans would get the kid they desperately wanted. It was win-win, and it wasn’t even against the law.

“I assume you’d have the doctor check me out first,” he said. “For all you know, I could’ve taken up with a lover in prison and have HIV.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Speakman said drily, “but, yes, I would require you to undergo a thorough physical examination and bring me back a clean bill of health, signed by a physician. You could say it was for medical insurance.”

It still seemed too easy. Griff wondered what he was overlooking. Where was the catch? “What if she doesn’t get pregnant? Do I have to return the first hundred grand?”

Speakman hesitated. Griff tilted his head as though to communicate that this could be a deal breaker. Speakman said, “No. That would be yours to keep.”

“Because if she doesn’t conceive, it might not be my fault. Your wife may not be fertile.”

“Who negotiated your contract with the Cowboys?”

“What? My former agent. Why?”

“A piece of advice, Griff. During a business negotiation, once you’ve won a point, drop it. Don’t mention it again. I’ve already conceded that you could keep the initial hundred thousand.”

“Okay.” They hadn’t covered that in the release preparation sessions.

Griff weighed his options, and they boiled down to this: he didn’t have any options, other than saying no and walking away from mega cash. To turn this down, he’d have to be crazy. Crazy as Speakman and his old lady.

He raised one shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Then if that’s all that’s required, we have a deal. One point, though. I want to do my thing in the privacy of my own bathroom. The doctor will have to come to my place to pick up the stuff. I think you can freeze it, so I could give him several samples at one whack.” He laughed at the inadvertent double entendre. “So to speak.”

Speakman laughed, too, but was serious as sin when he said, “There won’t be a doctor, Griff.”

Just when he thought he had this figured out, Speakman hit him with something like a linebacker coming around on his blind side and knocking him on his ass. “What do you mean, no doctor? Who’s gonna…” He made gentle thrusting motions with his hand. “Put it where it needs to go.”

“You are,” Speakman said quietly. “I’m sorry for not making this clear from the beginning. I insist on my child being conceived naturally. The way God intended.”

Griff stared at him for several seconds, then he began to laugh. Either somebody had set him up for a whopper of a practical joke or Speakman was out of his frigging mind.

Nobody in Griff’s life cared enough to play an elaborate joke on him. No one in his present life would go to the trouble. No one from his past would give him the time of day, much less invest the time it would take to set up this bizarre scenario and talk Speakman into going along.

No, he was betting that Speakman went beyond being an eccentric millionaire and neat freak and was, in fact, certifiable.

In any case, this was all one huge waste of time, and he’d lost patience with it. Flippantly, he said, “My job would be to fuck your wife?”

Speakman winced. “I don’t care much for the vernacular, especially in-”

“Cut the bullshit, okay? You’re hiring me to play stud. That’s basically it, right?”

Speakman hesitated, then said, “Basically? Yes.”

“And for half a mil, I guess you get to watch.”

“That’s insulting, Griff. To me. Certainly to Laura.”

“Yeah, well…” He didn’t apologize. Kinky sex was the least offensive factor of this whole interview. “About her, does she know your plan?”

“Of course.”

“Uh-huh. What does she think about it?”

Speakman rolled his chair toward an end table where a cordless phone stood in its charger. “You can ask her yourself.”

UPSTAIRS, IN HER HOME OFFICE, LAURA SPEAKMAN CHECKED the clock on her desk. Only half an hour had elapsed since Griff Burkett’s arrival. Punctual arrival. Being on time would definitely have won him marks with Foster. But of the other impressions he was making, were they good or bad?

For thirty minutes she’d been reading a new flight attendants’ contract proposed by their union. She retained none of it. Giving up the pretense of working, she left her desk and began pacing the width of the office. It was a bright and airy room. There were drapes on the windows, carpet on the floor, crown molding at the ceiling. It was designated an office only by the desk and the computer setup concealed in an eight-foot-tall French antique armoire.

What was being said downstairs in the library? Not knowing was driving her mad, but Foster had insisted on meeting with Burkett alone.

“Let me test the waters,” he’d said. “Once I get a sense of him, I’ll ask you to join us.”

“And if your sense of him isn’t good, if you don’t think he’s suitable, then what?”

“Then I’ll send him on his way, and you will have been spared an awkward and unproductive interview.”