Authors: Mia Caldwell
But that wasn’t part of the deal
, my subconscious reminded me.
You’re to conceive and carry the baby. Just be grateful you two get along and he’s letting you be part of the child’s life
.
I knew it was advice I should take but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. I needed to know how Andrew felt about me and establish where we stood with each other. Otherwise, the sense of unease that hung over me, even while nestled in Andrew’s arms, would continue to linger.
The next morning, I awoke to the site of Andrew propped up on one elbow staring down at me and smiling. “Good morning, beautiful.”
“Good morning, yourself.” I yawned and stretched my arms, noticing how Andrew’s gaze drifted down my chest and rested on my naked breasts. “What time is it?”
“About half past five.”
“Ugh, way too early. Let me sleep another hour and then we can try again before you have to go to work.”
The words had already left my mouth before I realized they no longer applied. Andrew and I didn’t need to “try” anymore because I was already pregnant. And the fact we were lying closer together than we normally did reminded me that we weren’t in the king-plus size bed in his mansion. We were sleeping in a full size bed in a mid-price hotel.
Andrew seemed amused by my slip. I told him, “It’s probably going to be a minute before I change from trying-to-get-pregnant mode to remembering it’s already happened.”
“I know, I can hardly believe it myself. I keep pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.”
“If you’re dreaming, then so am I.” I pinched my forearm. “Ouch, this is real life all right.”
“Silly.” Andrew leaned over and placed a light kiss on my lips. “I know we’re not dreaming because I’ve been laying here, thinking and making plans for us.”
He had my full attention. “I hope those plans include breakfast because I’m hungry.”
“Let’s order something from room service. Surely this place has room service.” Andrew opened the drawers of the bedside table, then got up and looked through the bureau across from us. “Shit, I can’t find a menu.”
“No worries. I’d rather have that extra hour of sleep anyway.” Seeing Andrew’s naked form reminded me of something. “Hey, do you need to get going? Don’t you want to go back to the mansion and change before you go to work? You might want to think about taking off soon because you know what traffic will be like during morning rush hour.”
“That depends. Are you coming with me?”
“Not right now. I’m serious about wanting that extra hour of sleep.” I yawned, proving my point.
He smiled, but his eyes were serious as he climbed back into bed. “Then I’ll wait with you because I want us to return to my home together. Actually, that’s part of what I’ve been thinking about since I woke up. This scare with the reporter has clarified a few things about our arrangement. I think we ought to make a few changes.”
“What kind of changes?” My heart began to beat faster and my stomach twisted. The last twenty-four hours had been filled with nothing but drama. I hoped these “changes” wouldn’t bring more of the same.
“There’s no telling when another Natalie might pop up, especially once your pregnancy begins to show. I think I’ve found a way to protect our privacy as well Rutledge Electronics and my reputation with the board of directors. If you agree, it could be the perfect solution to our problems past, present, and future.”
“Sounds like a winner. What am I agreeing to?”
“Marrying me.” Andrew’s eyes lit up and a smile crossed his handsome face. “You see, Ryanna, we get married and we insulate ourselves from any outside scrutiny. It will be as if we’re just another couple who mixed up the order of love, marriage, and the baby carriage.”
I laid there in the bed, my body frozen while my thoughts swirled. A marriage proposal from Andrew exceeded my wildest dreams, but is that what this really was?
“What would be the order for you?” I asked him.
“Huh?” His face clouded as his brow furrowed in confusion.
“The order of love, marriage, and the baby carriage. The way you said it is the way I learned the rhyme as a child. What I’m asking now is how you would prioritize things.”
“I’m not sure what you mean . . .”
“It’s a simple enough question, but the way you’re responding is giving me the answers I need.” I tried to edge away from him, but it was difficult to do in a full size bed without falling out of it.
“I don’t understand, Ryanna ─”
“I’m not going to marry you,” I told him. “Not when you’re only proposing as part of a scheme to protect yourself and your company. I jumped into this baby arrangement without thinking it through but I won’t do the same with marriage.”
His jaw tightened. “So you’re saying no?”
I decided to respond to his question with one of my own. “Andrew, do you love me?”
Though the sun’s rays had just begun to peep through the hotel’s drapes, I could still see the way Andrew’s face paled and slackened. “I . . . I . . .I . . .”
“That’s what I thought.” I jumped out of the bed and began looking for my clothes and underwear which had been strewn about the night before.
“Ryanna, be reasonable. You can’t just spring a question like that on me and expect an answer right off the top of my head.”
“Why not? It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. You do or you don’t.” I found my panties and slid into them. “How am I supposed to make a major commitment to you when you can’t even say how you truly feel about me.”
“You know how I feel about you. Let’s not make this more complicated than it has to be.”
I found my t-shirt and jeans and got dressed. Even though I still hadn’t found my bra, I felt better having a shield of clothes over me, especially since Andrew himself remained naked.
“You’re absolutely right, let’s not make this more complicated. Let’s just stick to the original agreement where I get pregnant and have your baby. Love and marriage stay completely out of it.”
He groaned and buried his face in the palms of his hands. “This isn’t how I envisioned this conversation taking place.”
I climbed back on the bed beside him, waiting for him to remove his hands so we could look each other in the eye. “You’re only trying to do the right thing by your company, me, and the baby I’m carrying. I see that, truly I do. But our getting married isn’t the magic bullet that will solve all your problems. It will only create new ones, especially if you aren’t sure how you feel about me.”
Andrew looked at me, his anguish apparent. “I know exactly how I feel about you. The problem lies with my not being able to demonstrate it or say it the way you want me to.”
I had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. Andrew and I had reached an impossible crossroads. Under normal circumstances, we’d break up, with him going his way while I went mine. However, we had a baby to consider so the separate paths we wanted to pursue were forced to converge.
More sun rays poured in, illuminating the room with its warm light. But Andrew’s and my situation remained cloudy and murky, with no easy answers or solutions in sight. I reached over to grasp his hand, entwining my fingers in his. He squeezed back, reassuring me not matter how far apart we were on the course of our future, we were still in this together. While I knew we’d eventually come to some resolution of our differences, I hoped it would be one that included the happiest future possible for our unborn child.
THE END
The split-level home where I grew up in Rushton, Pennsylvania was nowhere near as imposing or intimidating as the mansion on Andrew’s estate. Of course, the comparison was unfair since Andrew was a billionaire CEO who’d spared no expense when it came to constructing the luxury home of his dreams. When my mother bought this house, it had been the best she could afford as a divorced mother with a ten year old daughter. Yet, as I stood on the porch, my finger hovering near the doorbell, I felt more nervous about approaching my mother than I did the first time I visited Andrew at his office at the Rutledge Electronics headquarters.
My anxiety had to do with keeping my mother in the dark about what I’d been up to since she attended my college graduation. The last time she’d seen me, I’d been in my cap and gown with a job offer from NKL Laboratories under my belt.
“I’m so incredibly proud of you Ryanna,” she’d told me after the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony where I’d received a key to the prestigious academic honors society. “You have such a bright future ahead of you.”
That bright future dimmed considerably not more than a couple of weeks later. Financial setbacks at NKL Laboratories meant my job over had been “temporarily suspended.” The person who recruited me hadn’t been able to say whether the suspension would last one month or twelve. Since four months had passed since I’d even heard anything from NKL, I didn’t hold out much hope of ever working for them.
After graduating near the top of my class with a degree in chemical engineering, I didn’t think I’d have such a hard time finding another job. Yet there were no prospects on the horizon when I ‘met’ Andrew Rutledge. I’d saved his life by preventing him from walking into traffic. Shortly thereafter, he’d proposed an arrangement where I would conceive and carry his child for three million dollars. For an unemployed new college graduate who had racked up student loan debt in the high five figures, the offer seemed like a blessing. However, I knew my mother wouldn’t see it that way.
With a sigh, I turned around and went back to my car. I climbed into the driver’s seat and leaned my head against the steering wheel. A wave of nausea washed over me but I couldn’t tell whether it was morning sickness or anxiety over breaking the news of my pregnancy to my mother.
Andrew had offered to accompany me on this trip. “I should be there when you tell your mother about the baby,” he’d argued.
However, I turned him down, knowing I needed to talk to my mother on my own. Andrew’s presence would only add to the difficulty since the two of us weren’t in such a great place either. Ever since I turned down his proposal of marriage three weeks earlier, things had been strained between us.
Marrying Andrew, the man I loved and the father of my unborn child, should have been a dream come true. However, his proposal didn’t spring from a place of love and caring. Andrew wanted to marry me because it would preserve his reputation and secure his spot as CEO of Rutledge Electronics with his board of directors. When I confronted him point blank about whether he loved me or not, Andrew couldn’t answer me.
We’d had that confrontation in a hotel where I’d been staying after another fight the two of us had. I’d wanted to continue staying in the hotel to try and get my head together, but Andrew pleaded with me to return to his mansion.
“Ryanna, I’ll go out of my mind thinking about you in this dingy place. Please come back home with me. You better than anyone know how much space it is there. I won’t bother you so you can have all the privacy you want. We’ll both feel much more comfortable if you stay with me.”
While I returned to his estate, I held Andrew to his word. However, I didn’t return to his bedroom and stayed in the suite of rooms he’d originally prepared for me. His shock and disappointment were evident, especially after the first night I spent in my bedroom and not in his. It was the first time we’d slept under the same roof and not shared a bed.
“How did you sleep last night?” he’d asked the next morning. “Was everything comfortable?”
“Yes, very. I had no idea the bed in my suite was so cozy. I should have started sleeping in it a long time ago.”
Andrew had glared at me, but didn’t respond to the barb. Since then, we’d been co-existing as polite strangers, sharing meals but not much more. Part of the distance between us had to with a business crisis at Rutledge Electronics. Andrew had spent almost all of his time at the office overseeing the acquisition of some other microsystems company. Some of the members of his board of directors didn’t approve of the deal, so Andrew had put in even longer hours than usual to convince them of the deal’s merits.
“Once I overcome these latest hurdles the board has put in front of me, I’ll be able to focus on us and the baby,” Andrew told me over breakfast last week.
“I completely understand. Rutledge Electronics is your entire world and takes up all your time and attention. You should devote everything you have to it.”
His eyes blazed with anger and he’d opened his mouth to say something, but fortunately a maid appeared to clear our plates. After she left, I watched as he made a visible effort to try and stifle his temper.
“Rutledge Electronics means a lot to me. I’ve always been clear about that and never lied or misled you otherwise. But that doesn’t mean you and our child don’t hold equally important places in my life.”
“I know,” I said, less out of conviction than wanting to avoid another argument or deep discussion. Morning sickness hadn’t been a huge issue so far in my first trimester, but tension with Andrew seemed to trigger it.
As if he understood the reason I didn’t want to pursue the conversation, Andrew dropped the matter too. For the last few days, we’d mainly stuck to superficial topics like the weather, until I lowered the boom last night during dinner ─ I wanted to visit my mother and tell her about the pregnancy. I’d caught him so off guard, he dropped his knife and fork.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” he’d asked.
“If you’re worried about my mother going to the press, don’t be. If anything, she’ll probably want to ship me to Siberia or outer Mongolia so family and friends won’t find out I’ll be giving birth out of wedlock.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Yes, it does if you won’t say you love me
. But I remained silent, taking my frustration out on the roasted fingerling potatoes on my plate by mashing them with my fork until they were mush. “Regardless, my mother will want to keep the news of my pregnancy just as private and secret as you do. But this scare with Natalie has made me realize I need to tell her, and my father. I don’t want them to learn they will be grandparents from a tabloid headline.”
“Fine, give me a couple of weeks to put out some of these fires at work. Then we can both tell your parents the good news together.”
Sometimes it felt like Andrew didn’t listen to a word I said. “Stay at work for as long as you please. I’m driving to Rushton tomorrow morning to talk to my mother. It will be an easier conversation if I go alone.”
From the way Andrew’s jaw tightened, I could tell he didn’t agree and wanted to put up a fight. But maybe he saw from the way I’d pummeled the potatoes and then gave the haricot verts the same treatment that I wasn’t in the mood to argue. He didn’t say anything further, except this morning when he told me to drive safe as I made my way ninety miles north to Rushton.
Last night, getting to my mother’s house to tell her about the pregnancy seemed like an all-important major priority. But now that I’d arrived, I was too scared to go inside and break the news to her. Probably because I knew she would be so disappointed. She still thought I was a newly minted college graduate with a high-paying chemical engineering job. Now I had to tell her I was an unemployed baby mama.
I sat there in the car trying to come up with the best way to break the news when I heard a car pull up behind mine in the driveway. A look into the rearview mirror made me groan. I saw my mother’s younger sister, Aileen, getting out of her Audi. While I loved my aunt, she had a way of making everything about herself. Telling my mother about the baby would be ten times more difficult with Aileen there. If Aileen hadn’t blocked me in with her car, I would have driven away and gone back to Philadelphia.
My aunt rapped her knuckles on the driver’s side window. “Ryanna, is that you? What are you doing here?”
I had no choice but to climb out of the car and tried not to wince as she engulfed me in a bone-crushing embrace. “Hi, Aunt Aileen. Still working out with all those weights?”
She beamed and flexed her arms, showing off her biceps. “Four nights a week at the gym gives me arms that rival Michelle Obama’s, don’t you think?”
“Yes, they are very nice.” Only someone with an ego as big as my aunt’s would think about comparing herself to the First Lady, but I let it slide. I had bigger fish to fry.
“You mother didn’t say anything about you coming up for a visit. Are you coming with us to the Rushton Springs Outlet Mall? J. Crew is having a giant sale.”
“No, I came up here on an impulse. If you and Mom already have plans, I won’t interfere. In fact, I think I’ll go on back to Philly now.”
I opened the door to climb back into the car when Aileen placed her hand on my shoulder. “Wait, hold up! Why are you in such a rush to leave? Have you even let your mama know you’re here?”
“No, but that’s okay. I’ll call back later.” I attempted to get into the car again but Aileen’s grasp on me tightened. She squeezed so hard, I had no choice but to look at her. Once our gazes met, her eyes widened in shock.
“Ryanna! You’re pregnant, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here, to tell your mama, right? That’s why you’re so nervous.”
My heart pounded. “How do you know? How can you tell?”
Aileen hugged me again, but this time with a lot more gentleness. “Well, you’re glowing for one thing. Besides that, you look scared to death. And since you’ve always been about those books and never been in trouble a day in your life, a baby is the only thing you’d be afraid to tell your mama about.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, but I wiped them away before they could fall. “Mom is going to kill me.”
“No, she won’t.” Aileen gave me a sympathetic smile. “She’ll be surprised, but I’ll remind her that these things happen. Now let’s go on into the house and get this over with.”
For the first time, I felt a sense of relief as my aunt linked her arms in mine and we walked up to the porch.
Maybe this will be okay
, I thought as my aunt rang the doorbell.
With Aileen by my side, Mom will stay calm and not get too upset
.
Mom opened the door, a wide smile spreading across her face at the sight of me. “Ryanna, what a surprise! What are you doing here?”
She took me in her arms and we hugged. We stayed like that a whole five seconds before Aileen said, “Rachelle, your girl is knocked up.”
My mother’s arms dropped to her side while I turned and glared at my aunt, who merely shrugged her shoulders. “I thought the best thing to do would be to just get it out there. No use in pussy-footing around. Sometimes you just have to rip the band-aid right off and jump into the deep end of the pool.”
I didn’t know which offended me more ─ the careless way Aileen announced my pregnancy or her abusive mixing of metaphors. But I focused on my mother, who appeared to be frozen in place.
“Is this true, Ryanna?” she asked, barely moving her lips.
I nodded and her shoulders sagged, as if her entire body would give way. She let me lead her into the living room, where I settled her on the loveseat and sat in a chair facing opposite. Aileen took a seat next to my mother, and if suddenly felt like I was going to be interrogated by a pair of executioners.
My mother un-clamped and re-clamped the barrette holding her ponytail, something she did when she felt stressed. “I don’t even know where to begin. How far along are you? Who’s the father? How long have you been dating? Are you getting married? Are you going through with the pregnancy? How could you let this happen? Weren’t you using protection? How are you going to manage? You’re only twenty-one, you’re too young.”
The barrage of questions hit me faster than I could come up with the answers. I cracked my knuckles as I tried to remember which question she asked first. “Um, I’m seven weeks along ─”
“Too late for one of those Plan B pills, but there’s still time for an abortion,” Aileen interjected.
I shook my head rapidly from side to side. “I’m not getting rid of the baby. I have to go through with the pregnancy.”
“
Have to?
” My mother leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean,
have to?
”
“The baby’s father is paying me three million dollars to conceive, carry and bear his child. I received one million dollars after we signed the contracts spelling out the terms of the agreement. I’ll receive another million once the doctor confirms I’m pregnant and I’ll get the final million once the baby is born.”
My mother and Aileen looked at each other and burst out laughing. Mom laughed so hard, her entire body shook and tears ran down her face. My aunt stopped cackling like a hyena long enough to say, “That’s a good one, Ryanna. I never knew you had such a vivid imagination. And who is this baby daddy of yours that’s paying three million dollars for women to have his baby? I know it’s a guy who’s never heard of Craig’s List because there are crazies on that site who’ll do whatever you tell them to do for a couple of bucks.”