by Simply BWWM
Table of Contents
Chapter1
chapter 8
chapter 12
chapter 13
THE BILLIONAIRE
FROM CHICAGO
UNITED STATES OF BILLIONAIRES BOOK 6 By..
LACEY LEGEND
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Summary
When Elizabeth Raleigh signed up to be a surrogate mother she was really in it for the $100k pay check and nothing more.
She knew her client was a “self made billionaire from Chicago” but nothing much more.
And quite frankly, she didn't want to know.
However, a twist of fate revealed his true identity and she could not believe it.
Her client was her childhood sweetheart Luke Johns.
At first it seemed as if this deal was a match made in heaven and the type of unbelievable story you only read about in romance novels.
However, complications arose when some of Luke's secrets came to light and the past began to catch up on both of them.
Could their possibly be a happy ending from such a complicated situation? Or was this set to end in heart break once again?
Download now and start enjoying this page turning billionaire romance. This is full of steamy scenes, intriguing drama and an ending that is sure to surprise you!
Copyright Notice
The Billionaire From Chicago © 2018, Lacey Legend
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
Contents
Chapter1
Chapter2
Chapter3
Chapter4
Chapter5
Chapter6
Chapter7
chapter 8
chapter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
Chapter1
Elizabeth looked at the email she’d gotten and felt a kind of hot and cold chill work through her body at the importance of it, at the news it brought her. When she’d signed up on the surrogacy website, she’d done it almost absently, almost the way she’d go about tackling a dare; she hadn’t really considered the possibility that someone would actually choose her.
At twenty-five, she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to have any children of her own--certainly, given the fact that she had been single, apart from a handful of dates, for the past two years, she didn’t think she would have children of her own anytime soon--but she knew that she was in the right age range to be a surrogate.
Then, too, there was the promise of the payoff: some of the offers that she’d read about on the website had been high indeed, and while Elizabeth’s web design business was starting to bear fruit, she couldn’t quite deny the allure of a paycheck as substantial as that, even as she realized that it was more likely to be much less than hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Even a payoff of ten thousand dollars would mean that she could take an actual vacation for once; with all of her medical expenses paid, she wouldn’t have to worry about that aspect, and she could work through most of the pregnancy and then take a month off after she gave birth.
But it was one thing to consider those aspects of the situation theoretically. It was another altogether to get a response to her profile. She’d nearly forgotten that she’d signed up; it had been over a week since she’d gotten the email confirming that her profile was approved, and she hadn’t gotten any responses. But just as she’d been drinking her coffee and starting to think of getting to work on her latest project, Elizabeth’s phone had buzzed to let her know that she had a new email.
She hadn’t thought anything of it at first, unlocking her screen and opening the email almost without looking at the sender or the subject line. But as she read the contents of the email, she’d almost frozen and then had to go back and look at both details before she could make sense of the message.
Hello, Elizabeth. I just finished looking over your profile, and I think that you and I could really help each other out. I’m seeking a surrogate mother to bear a child for me. I’m interested in being a father, but I haven’t had any luck in finding a wife or even a long-term girlfriend who I can start a family with, so I am hopeful that you can help me.
As for how he intended to help her, Elizabeth had been stunned as she came to the part of the message that outlined the basics of his offer to her: he would pay all of her medical expenses, of course, and on top of that, he would pay a monthly stipend of five thousand dollars plus rent on a modest apartment in the Chicago area where he lived. When she was delivered, he would pay her a lump sum of one hundred thousand dollars.
Of course, I know there are a lot of details that we will have to work out, and we would have to make sure that we can get along before we start. Would you be willing to let me fly you out to Chicago for a long weekend to see if we can come to terms?
Elizabeth realized that she had been staring at the email off and on for almost thirty minutes, too stunned to even think about replying--or, for that matter, to get down to work. She gave herself a shake, sipped her coffee, and made herself think about what she should do. There wouldn’t be any harm in at least meeting the guy, would there? The profiles on the surrogacy website only provided basic details: hair color, eye color, height, weight, and a genetic profile for compatibility--done via a cheek swab that Elizabeth had sent in the week before her profile had been approved.
She glanced over the man’s profile on the website; the whole point of the service was that both surrogates and potential parents could look each other over and decide--at least provisionally--that they were interested. The website earned money from membership fees from the parents, as well as from facilitating any payments between the parents and their surrogate.
His profile showed that he had a verified income of over five billion dollars, that he lived in Chicago, and that he was genetically compatible. He had brown eyes and dark blond or light brown hair and was half a foot taller than her. The weight Elizabeth ignored; she didn’t think it would really give her any kind of idea of who she was talking to and how he looked.
An idea of how to solve her particular quandary popped into her mind, and she closed out the website and the email she’d had up on her phone and opened up her contact list to find her friend Natasha’s phone number. Before committing to the call, Elizabeth checked the time; it was ten-thirty, definitely a time of day when her friend would be available to talk.
Natasha picked up after two rings. “What’s up? You never make phone calls this early,” she said. El
izabeth laughed.
“I just got the weirdest email, and I need you to help me figure out what to do about it,” she told her friend.
“Okay, sounds like it’s more interesting than what I’ve got going on over here--tell me everything,” Natasha said. She worked as a graphic designer in a semi-freelance capacity, taking on contracts for a couple of months at a time and then moving onto another project before she could get tired of the work she was doing on the first one.
“So, you remember I signed up to that surrogacy site, right?” Elizabeth explained about the email, reading it almost word-for-word to her friend.
“I mean, if he’s willing to commit to a contract, then why not? If you were willing to carry someone’s baby for ten thousand dollars, there is no reason under the sun not to do it for over a hundred thousand.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes and chuckled.
“Yeah, but I’d have the fee for breaking my lease here and the whole thing of moving to Chicago for almost a year--or maybe a full year or more,” she pointed out. After years of living in Portland, she couldn’t really imagine living anywhere else.
“So, make him pay to relocate you; he can obviously afford it,” Natasha pointed out. Elizabeth considered that, worrying at her bottom lip.
“I don’t know,” she said. She heard Natasha groan.
“Look: just take the trip to Chicago, and if he turns out to be an asshole, you had a trip to Chicago. If he seems likely, then get him to agree to a contract so that you can take his ass to court if he tries to back out of paying you, and get him to relocate you. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“I guess I could at least see what he’s like,” Elizabeth said. It was true; it wouldn’t be much of an investment on her part to spend a long weekend in Chicago. She could get some work done--if she needed to--during the time she was there, and if it didn’t work out, then she would at least have a decent story to tell.
Elizabeth chatted with her friend for a few minutes, finished her coffee, and went into the kitchen of her apartment to get a refill before she settled into her work for the day. She decided that she would write back to the prospective father of the child she would be carrying and let him know that she was still available and interested.
“Just remember: you don’t owe him a damn thing,” Natasha told her as their conversation wound down, with both of them needing to get back into the work of the day.
“I know that,” Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes.
“No, I mean it; even if he puts you up in the most expensive hotel you can imagine and takes you out for an incredible meal or two, you don’t have to say yes to him. Make your own terms, and if he won’t adhere to them, then don’t back down.” Elizabeth nodded her agreement to her friend’s idea, even if she thought the fact that Natasha was stressing it was a little over-the-top.
“Same speech moms give their daughters for their first big, fancy-restaurant date; got it,” she said, smiling to herself.
“Just remember it, okay?”
Elizabeth promised to do just that and ended the call as she poured her second cup of coffee. She added milk and sugar and went back into the living room to reply to the message she’d gotten.
She sipped the hot coffee and composed what she wanted to say: Thank you for reaching out to me. I’m definitely available--and I am interested in finding out more details from you about how you expect this to play out. Elizabeth added a few polite sentences and finished with a question about what information he would need to fly her out; she knew--from a few very lucky project opportunities--that it shouldn’t be much more than her name and the airport she would be flying out of, but she wanted to see what he would say. It was almost a little test for the man to see how legitimate he was.
Tapping send, Elizabeth pushed the thoughts of what could come of the meeting out of her mind and focused on her work. While a hundred thousand dollars to her name would be a very big boon, and she couldn’t help--for just a moment--thinking about the real vacation she could take and the cushion she would have against slow months, a cushion that could--if she was smart--last her more than a year, she couldn’t consider it a real thing. Not yet. Not until she knew that it was not only actually being offered and not a scam, but also that she would be able to actually deal with the man.
As she opened up her web design projects, Elizabeth idly wondered what kind of man would want kids without a wife or at least a girlfriend to help him care for them? If he was able to afford to hire a surrogate and pay one as handsomely as he was offering to, then he should have no problem attracting someone to be a mother to his children, should he? Then again, Elizabeth thought, he might be the kind of man who just didn’t want to bother with the trouble and drama that came with romance but did want the affection of a family.
She pushed all consideration of the situation out of her mind again, turning to her work and telling herself not to even wait for the email response from the prospective father. She might not even get a response at all, and if she did, she might not decide to go through with the trip to Chicago to meet him--especially if he asked for more information up front than she was willing to share. She might as well focus on her real life and her real work until there was any kind of change.
Chapter2
Luke looked out through the window of his hired car, impatient for the driver to get them to the hotel. They’d passed the Lyric Opera a few minutes before, which meant that they had to be close; the Allegro would be coming up soon, where he’d agreed to put up the woman who was willing to hear him out about having his child for him.
He could feel the curiosity tingling through him and had to remind himself more than once to keep his expectations low. The surrogacy website never provided any pictures, just basic details of hair color and eye color, height and weight, so he didn’t really know what to expect, but he had to hope that the woman who’d seemed--from her profile--to be such a good fit for him would end up being attractive. He wanted his future child--or potentially children, if it worked out well--to be good-looking as well as generally smart and healthy.
The car finally turned onto Randolph Street, and Luke reminded himself to be patient once again. There were only a few blocks to go, and then he would step into the hotel, have the front desk person call up to Elizabeth’s room, and then wait for her to come down, so he could take her to dinner.
Then, hopefully they would go over the details of what their contract would include, and they would come to a basic agreement and get all of that out of the way the first night she was in town; and with that done, he could get down to getting to know the future mother of his child.
Luke knew that what he had in mind for the surrogate was a little out of the ordinary; he didn’t have fertilized eggs to be implanted into her, because he’d never had a wife or someone he wanted to plan that kind of future with. All of his relationships had been more or less for show, for the sake of being seen with women in public, rather than the kind of deep connection he would want to have with someone that he would raise a child with.
After years of waiting to find that kind of woman, Luke had decided about six months before to give up; and three months before, he’d made the decision to find a surrogate who would be willing to be inseminated by him and give up her rights to the resulting child, so that at least he would have some element of the family he craved. If he couldn’t have the loving wife, he would at least have a child--or, if he was lucky, children--to raise.
Then, too, he had reached a point of wealth where he wanted to make sure there was someone to follow him after he died. He could, Luke knew, just bequeath the billions he’d managed to acquire as much by luck as by talent to various charities--and he fully intended to get rid of the majority of his wealth if and when he died.
But he had distant family who he was fairly sure would want a piece of his growing empire if he suddenly left the world; and if he had children to leave it to instead, there would be no real way for them to argue the point.
“We�
��re here, Mr. Johns,” the driver said.
“I keep telling you to just call me Luke,” Luke countered, but he nodded to accept the man’s point.
“You’re my employer, man,” the driver, Alex, told him. “I am not calling you Luke unless you’re dead drunk and not likely to remember it tomorrow.” Luke laughed.
“Why? I mean--you know I’d prefer it.” The man shrugged.
“You’re not my friend; we have to maintain some of the rules of order or whatever you want to call it,” Alex said.
“If you’ll wait for me up one block or so, I should be out in about twenty minutes on the outside,” Luke told the driver. Alex nodded, and Luke climbed out of the back seat. He had other cars--a Tesla and a high-end BMW--that he drove himself in, but for the situation at hand, Luke thought that having Alex take care of the transportation would be the better plan.
He stepped out of the car, across the sidewalk, and through the doors into the Allegro. It was the first hotel that he had stayed in when he came to Chicago, before he’d really established himself and his empire, and in spite of the fact that there were more expensive hotels in the city, it was still one of his favorites. Modeled on the grand, older style, the lobby was all brass and marble and sleek design vaguely reminiscent of the 1920s, the kind of place that a person could expect to see a fedoraed gangster visiting.
It lacked the shabbiness of some of the other old hotels, though; constantly updated, the Allegro had gone the route of becoming a boutique experience: enormous, luxurious beds and beautiful bathrooms, in-room spa services and high-end cocktails in the lobby.
Luke approached the front desk and waited patiently, looking around. There were a few guests milling about, waiting for social hour or skimming the newspapers available in the lobby, but it wasn’t as busy as it would be in another hour or so when things would be in full swing. Finally, it was his turn, and Luke put on the most pleasant expression that he could.