The Tycoon's Convenient Baby: A BWWM Pregnancy Romance (2 page)

Chapter2

On the other side of the city, standing in front of a counter covered in chocolate truffles, were two women. One was short, round and very sassy. She was helping box up several of the chocolates while nipping a few to taste as she worked. Her name was Sarah, and she was the best friend, soul sister and confidante of the woman she was working with. The other woman, several inches taller, several inches slimmer, and a bit more reserved than her friend, owned the little café and chocolate store they were working in; her name was Elise.

They had been boxing chocolates for a few hours and Elise hadn’t said anything about Sarah popping a few of them into her mouth, but as the afternoon wore on, she realized she might have to say something.

“Honey, you can’t keep eating those like that. They’re not good for you,” she warned in a friendly tone.

Sarah smiled and winked. “I know they aren’t good for me. That’s why I like them so much. Anyway, I’m helping you for free, so a few chocolates here and there is a good payment. I’ll take it and you need the help anyway.” She held one up to Elise. “You want one, too?” she offered.

Elise shook her head and kept setting the little truffles into the boxes before her. “No, I try not to eat too many of those. Once in a while I’ll have one, but not all the time.”

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “Alright, I’ll have to eat it for the both of us, then. These are the sacrifices I make for our friendship. I just want you to know that.” She popped it in her mouth and went back to working. Elise just laughed at her.

“I talked to the bank today about opening up another store.” She spoke with a quiet voice, and one that indicated that it hadn’t gone quite as she might have hoped it would.

Sarah looked up at her and folded boxes. “You did? What did they say?”

Elise pouted a little. “They said I don’t have enough equity in this place to open up any others. They said I have to run this shop for a few more years so they can see a more solid history with me.”

Sarah frowned. “You sell tons of coffee and chocolates. In fact, there’s practically a line out of the door every time I come over here. Why wouldn’t they want more of that?”

Elise sighed and looked down. “Well, they love the money I’m making, they just want to see the shop earn consistently like that for years to come. Then they will talk with me about a loan to open more shops.”

Her friend frowned and scowled. “That’s just stupid. Think how much money you would lose in the years they want you to wait, when you could have a few of these places up and going and making money all over town instead of just here in this one spot. It’s just silly.”

Elise nodded. “I know. I tried to tell them that but they wouldn’t listen. I’ll just have to work on it some other way.” She bit her lip and sighed. “I just want this so much, Sarah. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it would mean to me to be able to see this grow! I’ve worked so hard to get this shop off of the ground and it’s doing so well! I wish the bank could see the potential here that I see. I had to hire another girl to work here on weekends, did I tell you that?”

Sarah grinned and shook her head. “No, you didn’t. That’s wonderful, Elise!” She looked at her friend proudly.

Elise continued with lines of frustration crossing her brow. “I could do more than this. I could make this so successful if I just had the financial backing to do it. It’s so hard to see it come so close and then be held back. It drives me up a wall. I worked night and day to make this place a success and here it is, thriving on its own and ready to burst at the seams but no one will help me take it to the next level and it’s ready to go there!”

Sarah nodded empathetically. “I know. I’ve watched you do it all these years. I have seen how this place has grown. I know you could really make something of it if you had the chance to.”

Elise sighed. “Well, the bank might not be too far off, I guess. I’m still paying on everything here, and while I’m making really good money, I certainly don’t get to keep any of it. There are some months when I just barely get by. Everything and everyone is paid but there’s just not that much left at the end of the month for me.” She looked up at her friend. “I’ve even considered trying to find a way to make a little more money just to get me by until everything is squared away here. I’m really close to having a lot of this paid off, and when that happens, my profit margin is going to explode. I just need a little more money and time to get myself and the shop to that point. It’s hard being so close to the next goal and not being able to just reach out and grab it.”

Sarah nodded and slipped a caramel into her mouth. “You work so hard in here. I wish somehow you could get a break. What else you got going on? You still on any of those dating websites?”

Elise had been hoping to meet a man she liked for a long time, years in fact, but she had never met anyone who she would want to spend the rest of her life with. “No, I gave up on that a while back. There just wasn’t anyone out there that wasn’t crazy or possessive or controlling. You wouldn’t believe some of the guys that I met. It was kind of nuts.”

Sarah shook her head. “I told you not to get mixed up in online dating. There are some good stories, but for the most part, it’s not the way to find someone.”

Elise put a stack of several boxes of chocolates into a cardboard packing box and sealed it, then returned to the counter to fill more chocolate boxes. “I still want the family, though, you know? I still want to have kids and someday maybe have grandkids. I just don’t think I want the man to go with it anymore.” She laughed a little and tilted her head. “I wish there could be a whole family, you know, a good man and kids and the whole white picket fence picture, but I’ve seen what’s out there, and I’m positive that all I want to do is just have the baby and make my own family.”

Sarah’s hand paused in midair over the box of chocolates she was filling and she stared at Elise. “You’re kidding,” she said quietly.

Elise shook her head and smiled a little with a quick glance to her friend, and then she focused intently on the chocolates she was placing in a box. “No, I’m really not. I was thinking, as soon as the store is paid off, I’ll use all that extra money to get artificially inseminated.”

She had given the decision several weeks of thought and had determined that it was the right course of action for her. She knew her best friend would be surprised, and she knew that no matter what path she chose to take, her friend would be there for her, just as she had always been there for her all of the years they had shared together.

Sarah stared at her. “You must be out of your mind! What are you thinking about doing something like that? You can’t raise a baby on your own and run a business!”

Elise’s eyes shot up to look directly at her friend. She loved Sarah with all of her heart, but they knew each other so well that there was rarely a time when either of them would hold back their true thoughts and speak them.

“I absolutely could raise a child on my own. I have enough help here at the shop, it’s just a matter of being able to afford to get pregnant and raise the baby. Doing it on my own would be no problem at all.” The offended tone she spoke with softened and the corner of her mouth turned upward a little. “Besides, I’d have you here to help me.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yes you would, you crazy woman, you know I’ll always be around here for you.” She began to smile a little herself and her face stilled as she gave way to thoughts about the subject. “I’d be Auntie Sarah.” Her grin widened. “I like the sound of that.”

“Well, Auntie Sarah,” Elise said with a sigh, “it’s not going to happen anytime real soon, so don’t get too excited about it yet. First, I have to pay everything off here at this store, then I want to open a few other stores, or at least one, just to get the ball rolling, and then I want the baby.”

Sarah was still grinning and thinking about it. “And then I’ll be the Auntie!” she almost sang in delight.

“And then you’ll be the Auntie,” Elise said and shook her head, chuckling at her friend.

They finished filling boxes with chocolates and Sarah hugged her goodnight and headed out of the door. Elise locked it behind her and headed to the back office in her chocolate shop.

It was a fairly decent-sized shop, not too small, but not big enough to hold all of the business she was doing, and it had begun to feel crowded to her. Shiny glass display cabinets were set around the main room, and a few tables offered patrons brightly colored seats to sit at while enjoying their coffee and the varying kinds of chocolates she served. There were enormous windows on three sides of the shop, so light poured in during the day, giving it a warm, sunny, pleasant feel. She had a few girls who worked for her selling her coffee and chocolates while she made the chocolates and ran her business.

It had been a dream of hers for years to own her own shop, and she had grown up learning about chocolate in her grandmother’s kitchen, so it came as no surprise to anyone that when she did open up her own business, it was a café and chocolate shop offering everything from latte’s and truffles to hot cocoa and all that came in between. It was a hit right away in the neighborhood she lived in. She was close enough to the touristy spots off of Fisherman’s Wharf that she got a lot of tourism business without being affected by the giant chocolate company down the road from her.

She entered her office and paused a moment before the full length mirror that hung on the opposite side of her desk. There was a sign above it that read, ‘Smile and the world will smile with you!’ She hung it there to remind herself that no matter what was going on in the office, whenever she walked out of her office door into her shop, she needed to be wearing a smile for the world outside.

Her eyes moved from the sign to her reflection. Her slender body was rounded out with curves that some women paid good money for. Her long curly hair was pulled up away from her face, adding to the high angled lines of her cheeks and jaw. Some people said she looked like a black version of Angelina Jolie, but with misty sea green eyes and fuller lips. She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, watching it fall past her shoulders, almost to her elbows. She liked the way she looked, but it was her smile that made her shine most, she thought. She looked up at the sign over the mirror and then back at her reflection, giving herself a smile, and it had a warming effect on her heart. Love yourself, she thought. Always love yourself.

She turned to her desk and sat down with a sigh, looking at the stack of mail that had been delivered that day, which she hadn’t touched. She picked it up and began to go through all of it. She paid the bills and with each one done, she felt ironically torn; happy that she was able to pay them but disappointed that in doing so, she drained her account almost entirely.

She thought about the conversation she’d had at the bank with the loan officer. She had even brought them a box of her chocolates to show them how good her product was, and they were even impressed with her sales, but they weren’t impressed enough to approve a loan for her to get out of the tight spot she was in.

Sarah’s reaction to her decision to have a child on her own came back to her mind and she laughed a little and then pursed her lips. She didn’t know how long it would really take for her to get to a point where she was financially stable enough to have a baby, and it haunted her that her biological clock was ticking away faster and faster as each day went by.

Elise leaned back in her chair and covered her face with her hands, and then slid her hands over her curls, trying to somehow pull the tension from her mind and ease her thoughts. There had to be a way. There had to be some kind of option or avenue that she hadn’t yet explored that would enable her to reach all of her dreams that were just out of her reach. They weren’t unrealistic dreams, but they would be unattainable if she didn’t get to them soon.

She took a deep breath and sat back up, clearing away the last of the mail and turning on her computer. She entered the days sales and updated all of her accounting files, and then she sat there looking at the almost blank page of the search engine, the little cursor flashing expectantly in the box just waiting for her command. Waiting for her to go anywhere and do anything. Her hands hovered over the keyboard, and then she typed in the command for a job search, and a second later she was looking at pages and pages of jobs available in her area. She applied filters and skimmed through the ads, not finding much of anything. She had hoped for work she could do from her computer, so she would still have energy for her shop. She couldn’t really have a job that took any of her time or ability away from her own priorities.

She had just about reached the end of her patience when one unusual ad caught her eye. It read, ‘Be paid to become a mother’. She blinked and smiled a little, clicking on it to open it up.

Searching for the right woman to carry and give birth to a child for me. This is a contracted position with a six figure payout. Applicant must be healthy, single, educated, have no prior children and be African-American. Only serious applicants need apply. Please send photograph and bio.

She laughed out loud. It couldn’t be serious; it had to be some kind of joke. She saw other ads for surrogate mothers around it and wondered if perhaps it wasn’t a joke. She shrugged her shoulders and thought, why not? It wouldn’t hurt to send in an application and see what might come of it. She wrote out her information in an email, attached her best photo and sent it off.