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Maggie doesn’t look at her.

That tells me more than anything Petra says.

Maggie’s shoulders have tightened since the woman stepped closer. Not much. Not enough for Alester to notice, maybe. But I notice it. Maggie keeps her eyes on the folder in Petra’s hands, and the set of her mouth changes by a fraction. She doesn’t like the woman.

Alester looks at me. “This is why I asked you to come tonight.”

I make my voice even. “This is why you hired me?”

A flicker crosses Maggie’s face.

Alester hears the edge I didn’t quite remove, but he doesn’t react to it.

“In part,” he says. “The pregnancy will require consistent medical oversight. I prefer someone I trust involved from the beginning.”

I hadn’t known the beginning had already happened.

When Alester first came to me about taking on the formal role, I had assumed what anyone would assume when a man I have known for years speaks carefully about a young woman and a pregnancy.

I thought he had made a woman pregnant.

It lasted only a moment, but I remember it clearly.

His office. Late afternoon. A glass of water untouched on his desk. Alester standing by the window, looking down at the city like it had been assembled for his review.

“I need a physician attached to a private matter,” he had said.

“What kind of private matter?”

“A reproductive arrangement.”

I looked at him then.

He turned from the window. “Not what you’re thinking,” he said.

“I’m thinking several things.”

“I have entered into a surrogacy agreement.”

That stopped me. Alester Chandler, who handled family obligation like a legal instrument, who spoke of legacy without ever making it sound sentimental, telling me he had contracted for a child.

“The surrogate is already medically cleared,” he had continued. “The agency and fertility specialist are handling the primary process. I want independent medical continuity.”

“You want a family physician.”

“I want you.”

I almost told him that was not how this worked. But Alester and I have known each other too long for either of us to pretend this was only medical.

His father had trusted me. Too much, Alester would say if pressed. I had managed the old man through the last ugly years, and in that time I learned the Chandler family did not do illness, inheritance, or affection without structure.

Still, the arrangement sounded wild even from him.

Cold, legal, possible. But wild.

“You understand this is not my specialty,” I said.

“I understand the limits of specialty.”