ROMANCE: Billion Dollar Question (BWWM Billionaire Bad Boy Romance) (African American Alpha Mail Order Bride New Adult) (22 page)

Chapter 2: The Mix Up

Shareena Marcus was a school teacher who decided to have a child. She'd thought about this carefully and went to see her doctor who referred her to see a fertility specialist. After careful consideration, she'd picked a donor and today was the magic day.

She was ready.

She was ovulating. Today was the day when they would try to make her pregnant. She knew it was unique for a twenty-four year old woman to use a fertility clinic to get pregnant, but she didn't want to wait hoping the right man would find her. She wanted a baby now.

She laid on the medical bed with her legs spread wide in the stirrups and was embarrassed to be sitting here with her knees hanging apart waiting for the doctor to come in. She was covered in a pink paper sheet but it didn't really make her feel more covered. She felt exposed, and vulnerable, and sitting here waiting was hard. She was excited, but she wanted to get it over with.

“Good afternoon Ms. Marcus! How are you doing today?” the doctor asked her as he walked in and sat down in the chair with wheels and slid up between her legs.

Pulling out the speculum, he put some lube on the end of it and held it up for her to see.

“I'm doing good, excited, Dr. Adams,” Shareena answered him. “A little nervous too.”

“That's normal. You will feel a little coldness as I insert the speculum, and then a little pinch as the tube goes through the cervix to make the deposit. After I pull the stuff out you'll lay here for about twenty minutes, then you'll get dressed and go home. Take it easy the next two weeks. Avoid alcohol and prescription medications and overly hot baths,” he told her as he had his eyes stuck on what he was doing between her legs.

She felt the pinch he was talking about, it was almost like a scraping sting sensation and she flinched.

Then it was over. He pushed the plunger on the syringe and the sperm was implanted. It was done. Now they'd just have to wait a couple weeks to find out the results. Taking a deep breath, she wanted to believe this would work.

He pulled everything out and disposed of the equipment and his gloves, he paused in the doorway to look at Shareena.

“If you have any questions, let the nurse know and I'll give you a call.” He gave her a wave when she nodded her head and let the door shut with a soft click.

Shareena laid there and put her hand on her belly, she smiled. In two weeks, she'd know if it worked. Either because she had a period, or a positive pregnancy test. She'd picked a handsome professor who was mixed race. He was tall, intelligent, and had nice looking eyes. Being a physics professor didn't hurt either. She liked intelligent men.

A little while later the nurse came in and told her she could go home.

“Thank you,” Shareena said as she wiped the stuff off between her legs using the pink sheet and crumpling it up and throwing it into the trash. She slipped her panties and her skirt back on and picked up her sandals off the floor. Putting them on her feet she grabbed her purse and left.

She waved to the receptionist and nurse on her way out and got in her car to drive back to her small house. She lived in a small neighborhood about a block away from the school where she taught preschool.

Their school district had a special needs program and she was the head teacher for it. They worked mostly with kids who had speech delays so their day was planned around getting them ready for kindergarten and trying to get them talking more.

Shareena was the baby in the family, her sisters were all in their mid to late thirties. She'd been the oops surprise after her dad had a vasectomy. Her mother had found out at almost six months pregnant. The shock had almost given her dad a heart attack. They'd been getting close to retiring, her mother had been forty-six when she'd given birth, and they were elderly now.

Part of the reason she'd wanted to have a baby now, was so they could meet their grandchildren before they died. She wanted her children to know her parents. She had an inheritance when she turned thirty, but her parents believed in seeing their children be self sufficient and take care of themselves before handing them money. Her dad had played the stock market and her mom had been a real estate agent.

Between the two of them, they'd made a few million. They weren't the richest people in the world, but if Shareena didn't want to work in a few years, she wouldn't have to worry about it.

She wasn't the type who could handle idleness, she had figured she'd stay home for the first year or two with the baby, and then maybe work part time or find some work from home opportunities to keep her mind busy. She needed the mental stimulation and to feel like she was doing something that was important.

Pulling into her driveway, she parked her car and got out. She lived off her salary and within her means, and never told anyone of the multi-million dollar inheritance she'd receive when she reached thirty.

Her oldest sister had made the mistake of telling her high school boyfriend, and he'd married her in college, only to divorce her right after she got her inheritance and had tried to take her for fifty percent of it.

Luckily, he'd been caught cheating, and the judge heard the whole story and hadn't ruled in his favor. Her kids were teenagers and had survived their parents' divorce okay. But Shareena had seen the damage it had caused their family and the hurt to the kids to realize their dad hadn't really loved their mom.

Her oldest sister was pretty bitter about men, and Shareena realized that she didn't want to find and marry a man who wanted her for her money that she'd get in a few years, nor did she want to lie to her husband about having money. It made her leery of dating. Her middle sister had gotten lucky and met a great guy in college who'd come from more money than she did, and their relationship seemed pretty good. They had two kids and had been married for almost twelve years.

Smiling as she walked inside, she realized that avoiding men altogether and having a baby was the best way to just get everything she wanted.

Who needed a man?

Chapter 3: Oops, Telling The Truth

“Mr. Mcdonald, we are so very, very sorry. This has never happened before, we are adding new procedures to make sure this never happens again,” the nurse apologized profusely on the phone to him. “The doctor assures me that if you'd like to try again, we can make sure this never happens in the future.”

He sat there in shock, trying to process the news she'd just given him.

“Archer? Are you still there?” The nurse asked him by his first name, shocking him out of his stunned silence.

“Explain to me again how this happened?” Archer asked quietly, though he was quietly holding his rage inside, a screw up like this was completely unacceptable.

“Your sperm sample was in the freezer with another. The samples use the initial of the first name, date, and the last name; you had a similar last name, date and first initial. He was A. Mcdonner, you were A. Mcdonald. It was a simple mistake, the technician thawed the wrong sample when we went to do an artificial insemination,” she said.

“Does she know?” Archer asked, rubbing his chin with his fingers, thinking. “Is she married? What exactly is the situation?”

“She is single. She came in to be artificially inseminated. She's young. I'm pretty sure she won't have any desire to give up the baby if she's pregnant. But, she may be willing to share custody if she understands what happened. We are trying to get a hold of her now so we can talk to her and explain. It was our screw up, and we will refund your money. We promise this won't happen again,” the nurse tried to reassure him, sounding desperate and scared.

Archer knew she was worried that the two of them would sue their fertility clinic, and rightly so. They made a huge mistake and now it was going to affect the lives of three people in a major way.

“I want the files, and I will contact her myself. At this point if you intervene or screw with anything else, I will sue. Let me talk to her first and work this out between us, since she's pregnant with my child,” Archer dictated to the nurse.

“I can't release the medical information of another patient Sir. I could lose my job, and our practice could lose its license. We also don't know if she's pregnant yet, we have another week to wait. It's possible it didn't even take, and there's nothing to worry about if she has to try again, we haven't told her yet because of it,” the nurse said, her voice going an octave higher, showing her distress over the situation.

“I want to talk to her myself. Get the doctor and tell him I want to be the one to tell her and talk to her. It may have been your screw up, but I will be the one to fix this. I no longer trust you. And losing your job is the least of your worries if you piss me off further, is that clear?” Archer growled into the phone, tempted to have their entire office shut down for this mistake, if this woman knew who he was, and they didn't have a custody or surrogacy agreement, she could take him for millions.

Stupid. This entire situation was a screw up and stupid. It never should have happened. He pounded his fist on his desk feeling frustrated and it knocked a folder from the fertility clinic onto the floor.

“I will talk to the doctor and see what he says. He will call you back,” the nurse said and quickly hung up, not wanting to be yelled at anymore by Archer.

Archer leaned back in his chair and felt livid. Not only did this screw up his plans to get a child, but now his child might be raised by some strange woman and he might not even get to be in its life. If he wanted a custody mess, he'd have knocked up some random stranger, not tried to go through a fertility clinic and gone about this the right way.

He reached down after slamming his cell phone onto his desk and grabbed the fertility folder with all his receipts and paperwork that had fallen onto the floor, and crumpled it up in his hands, angry.

How was he supposed to be a father if his sperm was used on someone else, who had no ties to him, and probably wouldn't give up the baby?

Sitting back, he tried to think of possible solutions to get out of this mess. All he knew is he couldn't let someone else raise his child and not have him involved.

Burying his face in his hands he started to laugh, but he wasn't amused. He knew laughter was the wrong emotion in this situation, but with his frustration, it's what came out right now.

Thinking quickly he grabbed his keys and phone off the desk and decided to go down to the fertility clinic and speak with the doctor in person. On his way there, he also planned on calling his lawyer to see what his legal options were in a situation like this.

Chapter 4: Shock

Shareena stared at the pink stick in her hands and they started to shake. It was real.

She did it. She was actually pregnant. She had her follow up appointment tomorrow at the fertility clinic, she'd gotten a new cell phone and number shortly after her last appointment and hadn't had time to update them with her most recent contact information, since she was seeing them so soon again, she hadn't worried about it.

She went to bed that night excited, and had trouble sleeping. She tossed and turned all night, planning on taking another test first thing in the morning to make sure the lines were still there before she went to the doctor for her first blood test.

Waking up before her alarm even went off, she went into the bathroom to pee, and grabbed the little foil package and opened the test. She held it in her urine stream for about ten seconds and then set it on the edge of the sink while she finished in the bathroom.

Grabbing it, the two pink lines were already there before the test was even dry. She hugged it to her chest before getting into the shower and getting ready to go. Today was a holiday for school, so she didn't have anything to do but go to the fertility clinic, and then celebrate!

She drove there; having a hard time containing her excitement, when she walked through the doors, the nurse and the receptionist both froze and stared at her. Shareena waved, and walked over to sign in.

“I'm pregnant! The two lines on my pregnancy test at home said so! I know we still need to do the blood test, but I think this is real. I'm so excited,” she gushed to them, not noticing the worry on their faces and exchanged glances as she told them. She signed in on the paper on the counter. “Oh, I got a new cell number when I got my new phone, here's the number.”

She wrote her number down for them and slid it across to the receptionist. The nurse nodded and had her follow her back to a room where she did a blood draw and then asked her to wait and the doctor needed to see her.

She waited patiently, and after an hour the wait started to get old. She got up and peeked her head out of the door, worried that something was wrong. The doctor had never made her wait this long to be seen.

“What is going on?” She flagged the nurse down who was coming back down the hallway.

“It won't be much longer, sorry. The doctor will be in, in just a few minutes,” the nurse reassured her.

Shareena nodded and went to sit back down, not understanding why it was taking so long.

A few minutes later, the doctor entered, along with a man she'd never seen before. Their eyes met and the hostile look on his face changed to one of confusion and interest when he saw her. She blushed and looked away, feeling self-conscious. He was an attractive man, and it was the wrong time to find a man attractive.

“Shareena, this is Archer Mcdonald. I need to speak with both of you, we've tried to get a hold of you for the last week, and this is going to come as a shock,” the doctor started to say and then hesitated as he looked over at Archer who was scowling at him.

Her brows knitted up in confusion as she looked at Dr. Adams and the man he called Archer. “Okay? I'm listening.”

“We had a mix up with the sperm samples, you were impregnated by Archer's sperm sample. He was making donations with the intention of finding a surrogate to carry a baby for him.”

Dr. Adams closed his eyes for a moment and then looked back at her.

"We are truly sorry for this mix up, but we are hoping the two of you can figure out an agreement that will work for both of you in regards to the baby you appear to be pregnant with. Your labs came back and you are officially pregnant.”

Shareena was sitting there in shock, and just stared at the two men. “Wait, are you telling me that the baby I'm pregnant with is coming with strings attached?”

“I'm willing to pay you for the baby and let you try again with the sperm donation as you wish, or we could terminate, but if you carry my baby, I want to be involved,” Archer told her.

He was admiring how beautiful she was, and he had this niggling feeling he'd seen her before, but he couldn't place it. Her dark skin was flawless and she was the exact type of woman he would have chosen to be his surrogate. Deciding he didn't want her to end the pregnancy he prepared to talk her into keeping it.

“I will not terminate my pregnancy. I'm keeping this baby. I'm really sorry this happened, but I don't need a father involved. I'll let you sign over your rights,” Shareena reassured him, trying not to feel resentful that he even suggested a termination.

“I won't sign over my rights. If you have this baby, I want to be involved,” Archer told her, crossing his arms and staring at her.

“I'm going to let you two talk. I can't really fix this between you too, working out how you plan on going forward from this point,” Dr. Adams excused himself and left the two of them staring at each other alone in the room.

Archer stared at her for a moment, and then it clicked where he knew her from.

“Have you ever done any modeling?” He asked her, wanting to confirm his suspicions.

“Yes, I did a onetime modeling shoot about two years ago after I got out of college,” she said, wondering he'd recognized her.

“Pink bikini?” he asked her raising a brow.

“Yes....” she said and then turned her head feeling embarrassed. She should have known that would come back to haunt her later. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, and the agency had approached her. She'd done one shoot and then had decided it wasn't for her.

“Aha! I thought you looked familiar,” Archer said, but didn't want to admit she was the one he'd wanked too when he'd made his sperm deposit, but here was his fantasy dream girl sitting in front of him, pregnant with his child.

“I promise that one time modeling thing won't impact my child. I'm a teacher, not a porn star,” she told him defensively.

“I'm not interested in that, or rather, I'm not offended you did a modeling job.” He grinned at her. “Go out with me tonight? We can have dinner and talk. I think we need to figure out how to handle this pregnancy situation and the future of our baby, and I'd rather do it on more neutral territory.”

Shareena looked at him and hesitated, she found him attractive, but he was a stranger.

“I don't know…” she started to say and then looked up at the eager expression on his face and almost felt bad for him. He was planning on using a surrogate, and instead, they had a screw up and she was pregnant with his child. A child he had wanted, not just an anonymous donor. She couldn't just completely walk away from him without talking to him. “Okay, dinner.”

“Do you want to meet me there, or can I pick you up?” He asked her, not wanting to scare her off. Now he just had to figure out how to seduce her and get her to give a relationship between them a chance. He didn't have to tell her who he really was, or how rich he was, but he could definitely win her heart and a place in her life for his child and then get it in writing.

Or maybe it could lead to something more. He knew he was attracted to her, and if she was as intelligent as she was beautiful, maybe there could be something more between them. He just had to make sure she wasn't a gold digger first.

“I don't really want to discuss this in public, how about you come to my house for dinner. I'll cook and we can discuss it privately,” she suggested, she didn't know this man, but she felt like she could trust him, he just had that kind of face and her gut instincts were usually right. Most of the time.

“Okay,” He pulled out his cell phone. “Give me your number and I'll text you, and you can text me the address and time.”

Shareena rattled off her number and he texted her, she texted him back and gave him her address.

“I need to talk to my lawyer, I hope you understand. I'll call them before our dinner so I know what all my options are too. I wasn't planning on having a father involved, but since this is the situation and you wanted a baby, we can figure out how to make this work. I'm just not sure being bounced around between two homes will be good for the baby,” Shareena admitted to him.

His cell phone started to buzz over and over again and he looked at his text messages.

“I agree, and we can talk about this more tonight. I need to get back to work, but talk to your lawyer and then we'll talk over dinner. I have no intention of trying to take your baby away from you, but I won't give up my child,” he told her giving her a firm look.

Shareena realized he would be a formidable foe if she pissed him off and underneath that pleasant exterior, a man with an iron will lurked. She needed to be careful.

“Tonight then,” she told him and didn't say anything else as he nodded and then walked out of the room.