Free Expecting The CEO's Baby - The Complete Series: BWWM Interracial Billionaire Pregnancy Romance by Mia Caldwell Page B

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