1
I’m pregnant, woohoo! I’m pregnant, oh no.
My thoughts were at war with themselves as I drove through the Philadelphia traffic towards the apartment I used to share with my best friend, Natalie. I hoped she hadn’t found another roommate yet because I didn’t have any place else to go. Since I still had most of the million dollars Andrew had already paid me, I could have booked a room at the best hotel in town, if not just buying a place of my own.
But I didn’t want to use any of Andrew’s money. We’d had a terrible fight about the media possibly finding out about our arrangement of his paying me three million dollars to conceive and bear his child. I’d stormed away from him, vowing to have nothing else to do with him. As soon as I found a job, I would pay back the money of Andrew’s I’d already spent paying off my student loans and buying this car.
Who’s going to hire you now that you’re pregnant? My subconscious taunted. I’d had a job offer to work at NKL Laboratories as a chemical engineer. But a hiring freeze had been instituted shortly after my college graduation, leaving me in employment limbo.
At the time, Andrew’s offer seemed like a blessing. Get paid a ton of money to have a handsome and wealthy man’s baby. He’d even agreed I could be part of the child’s life, not cut out of it like some surrogates were.
But now that I’d gotten pregnant, I saw the arrangement for the ill- conceived lunacy it actually was. Part of it was my fault for falling for Andrew and believing maybe he was falling for me. However, our confrontation in his office at Rutledge Electronics, the company of which he was founder and CEO, exposed a truth I should have recognized all along.
Andrew loved Rutledge Electronics more than anything in the world. It would always be his top priority, with everything else, including his own
child, coming a distant second. The fact that my own privacy had been invaded and that the reporter who accosted me had called me a gold- digging whore meant nothing to him. All Andrew cared about was how the board of his company would react to the news if details of our arrangement became public.
I pulled into a parking garage a couple of blocks away from Natalie’s apartment. After I’d parked and began walking towards her place, my phone began buzzing again. A look at the screen showed the number belonged to Andrew’s private line.
He’d been calling me almost nonstop since I’d left his office, persisting even though I hadn’t responded to or answered any them. I could have turned off my phone so that his calls went directly to voicemail. But a small part of me got a thrill out of seeing how many times he’d try to get through. So far, he’d called twenty-two times and left fourteen messages.
Fortunately, I still had my key and I let myself into the empty apartment. I hadn’t expected Natalie to be there because she didn’t get off work until six or seven at the earliest. However, the dozens of designer bags that cluttered the living room did take me by surprise. Gucci, Tiffany, Ralph Lauren, Williams & Sonoma . . . it looked as if Natalie had gone a shopping spree and hit up every exclusive store on Walnut Street.
Out of curiosity, I picked up a shoebox labeled Manolo Blahnik to see if I could find a price tag. While the box itself held no clues, the receipt inside it said Natalie had paid seven hundred and forty dollars the shoes, and that was with a twenty percent discount! Apparently, there had been a sale.
I tried to make sense of all the designer swag in front of me. Almost a couple of weeks ago, Natalie had claimed she was broke. The roommate who was supposed to take over my half of the lease backed out at the last minute, leaving her on the hook for the whole month’s rent. She lived in West Philadelphia, which wasn’t as expensive as some areas of the city, but paying the entire month’s rent would still be a challenge. Natalie was still in the training program at the bank where she worked, not yet a full-fledged certified financial advisor. That’s why I offered to keep paying my half of the rent until she found another roommate.
Maybe she’d found someone to take over my half of the lease and all the extravagant purchases belonged to them. But when I checked the bedroom where I self, everything was the same as I left it. So if there was no rich shopaholic roommate, where did Natalie get the money to buy all that stuff? And if she had extra money, why didn’t she save it and put it in the bank? I couldn’t pay half of the rent forever, especially now when I needed every cent I had to support myself and the baby.
The baby. I rubbed my stomach, still not totally believing I was pregnant. I still had some pregnancy tests left over, so I could check again, just to be sure. But deep down, I know the stick would show the plus sign just like it did when I took the first pregnancy test over an hour ago. I was pregnant and my life was going to change forever.
As if on cue, my phone began to buzz again. Though still upset, I decided to answer it this time. Perhaps thinking about the growing life inside of me softened me up a little. “Hello, Andrew.”
“Ryanna!” I heard him let out a sigh of relief on the other end of the phone. “You finally answered! Where are you? Edwin said he saw you leaving with two suitcases.”
Edwin was the head servant of Andrew’s estate and not much got past him. I thought I’d made my getaway sight unseen but should have known Edwin’s eagle eye caught me. “I told you I wouldn’t be there when you got home. I’ve moved out.”
“Ryanna.” This time when he said my name, it sounded like a mixture of pain and irritation. “Don’t be so overdramatic and immature. Come back home and let’s talk this out like reasonable people.”
“You call me overdramatic and immature while in the same breath ask me to return to your home?” I let out a bitter laugh. “You may be a genius when it comes to business, but you know nothing about dealing with women. Especially this woman.”
“You’re right,” Andrew said, his admission catching me off guard. “I know nothing about women but I’ve enjoyed getting to know you. It’s been over three months since we met, yet I realize I’ve only begun to scratch the
surface of your depths. I apologize for what I said just now and for how I treated you earlier. I shouldn’t have been so insensitive and you had every right to be angry.”
While he said everything I wanted to hear, I still wasn’t ready to return to the fold. “Thank you, Andrew, I really needed to hear that from you. But I also need some time on my own to sort out some things.”
“What things? You still want to have my child, don’t you?”
“Yes . . .” I started, on the verge of telling him I’d already conceived when he continued.
“Then you need to come back to my mansion and let’s pick up where we left off. It’s as simple as that.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I told him, mimicking his callous tone. “I didn’t like how that reporter called me a gold-digging whore and I didn’t appreciate you minimizing my reaction to it. That reporter hurt me, but you hurt me more. I’m not coming back to the mansion so we can jump in the bed and pretend like none of this ever happened.”
“Ryanna.” The way he kept repeating my name began to irritate me.
This time, his tone was condescendingly patient, like the way ignorant people spoke to the developmentally disabled. “We aren’t getting anywhere by discussing this on the phone. If you come back home, we can hash this out face to face, like mature, reasonable people.”
“I am home. This is the home I had before I met you and this is the home where I plan to stay for the foreseeable future.”
“You’re being a stubborn child!”
“And you’re being an insensitive jerk!”
Neither one of us said anything for the next few moments, a cold silence falling between us. To be fair, I’d been told by family and friends my stubborn streak was one of my worst qualities. But that didn’t mean I was going to give in now. Andrew may have had all the money and power, but maybe I could win this battle of wills against him.
As if he’d heard my unspoken declaration of war, Andrew said, “Fine, Ryanna. You don’t have to come back to my place, I’ll come to you. I have some things to wrap up here, but I should be at your apartment in a few hours.”
While thrilled to have claimed victory, however minor, I said, “Andrew, don’t. When I said I wouldn’t come back to your mansion, that meant I didn’t want to see you. At least not right now.”
“You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that.”
“I do,” I told him, my voice sounding weak even to my own ears. “I need some time to myself.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know.” I bit my lip to keep from adding, Not that much. I’m pregnant so we’ll be dealing with each other real soon.
“Okay, I’ll give you some space and time,” Andrew said, his tone heavy with reluctance. “But just because I’m giving in for now doesn’t mean I’m giving up on us. What we have is special. I know it and I’m sure you do too. Just because we’ve come to a bump in the road doesn’t mean we have to end things.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
We said our goodbyes and I ended the call feeling uneasy. Not telling Andrew I was pregnant seemed wrong. But if I had, he might have sent his security guards to take me back to his mansion immediately. I’d seen the loving, tender side of Andrew but now I’d seen the cold, calculating side of him too. The latter is what made me want to keep my distance for now.
However, I wouldn’t be able to keep away from him forever, especially now that I carried his child. Once Andrew learned of my pregnancy, he wouldn’t allow any distance between us. That wouldn’t be a problem if I could be sure the caring, sexy Andrew would always be the man I could rely upon. What scared me was if the unfeeling Andrew I’d just discovered was the man with whom I’d conceived a child and that the other side of him I’d fallen for had just been a mask.
