The Baby Package
Sarah J. Brooks
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Disclaimer
Special Invitation
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Damaged Love
The Billionaire’s Fake Marriage
The Deal
Bedroom Rodeo
About the Author
Copyright and Disclaimer
Copyright © 2018 by Sarah J. Brooks
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Chapter 1
Julia
“Are we going to Provoc?” I asked as we all piled into the cab.
“Oh, my God I love Provocateur,” Teddy said in his usual flamboyant draw.
“Yeah, it’s the only place to be seen right now,” Sarah added. “I’ve got to find a hot stockbroker to give me some tips.”
“Why do they need to be hot?” I teased.
“Technically they don’t, but if I’m going to pretend to be interested in the guy so I can get free financial advice, I’d prefer if they were hot.”
“You know you make enough money to actually pay for stock advice. You could date whoever you want,” I said.
I was finishing my makeup while we rode in the cab. Teddy was perpetually relegated to the front seat while Sarah, Kendra and I sat in the back. He hated that we always made him sit up there but as our only male friend who came out with us, he sucked it up and sat up there.
Going out dancing at the clubs in New York was one of my favorite things to do. This evening it was particularly exciting because I’d just landed a huge client for our hotel chain and Teddy, who was also my supervisor at work, offered to pay the alcohol tab for the evening. There was no way we were going to turn that down; drinking in New York was expensive business.
“I’m not paying someone to give me advice when these guys will give it for free. Plus, when have you known me to ever actually date someone? I’m not looking for that sort of commitment,” Sarah added.
“Right, who would want to have a guy for more than one night?” Kendra chimed in.
“I’m not opposed to more than one night. I just don’t like these clingy guys who want to come over all the time and start getting mushy. Short term is all I have time for.”
Sarah was perpetually single. She managed the marketing at King Hotels and was damn good at her job. The key was her ability to make anyone feel like they were wanted in both personal and professional environments. Sarah had the ability to walk into a meeting full of CEO’s and have the whole lot of them eating out of her hands in a matter of minutes. I envied her ability to connect in that way.
“Let’s remember this celebration is for Julia,” Teddy added. “Thank you for making me look so good to my bosses,” he laughed with his distinctive high-pitched cackle that made all of us smile too. Teddy was the first boss I had out of college and I was so lucky to have him. He was funny, supportive, and refreshing compared to what I’d heard about the hotel sales industry while I was in school.
“I’m just in it for the money,” I teased.
“You’ll get a huge commission check, girl. I’m telling you, this one is going to rattle your cage when it hits your account.”
“I can’t wait. I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead with the baby thing.”
“What? No!” Sarah blasted from the other side of the vehicle. “You are way too young. Come on Julia, you’re only twenty-five. This is something people my age do, not people your age.”
Sarah was forty years old and totally right. Women her age in New York were deciding to have babies on their own, but I didn’t want to wait until I was forty to have a baby. I’d always dreamed of a big family and nowadays blending families just wasn’t as big of a deal as it was in the past. If I had a baby now, I still expected that somewhere down the road I could have more children once I met the man of my dreams. But the cruel reality was that might be way down the road and I just didn’t want to wait.
“You know how I feel about it,” Kendra said under her breath.
Kendra didn’t like the idea at all. She and I were similar in age, she was only two years older than me but she didn’t have a problem waiting to start her family. I’d always planned to have my family young and in this day and age, I just didn’t need to wait for a husband in order to get started. Kendra and I had come to an agreement that I was going to do this and she was going to be supportive, even though she didn’t fully agree with my plan.
“I’m all for it,” Teddy said. “You know we offer maternity leave, and you can even work from home if you decide to.”
“I think I’ll just take a couple of weeks and then work from home. But hell, I haven’t gotten pregnant yet so who knows. I did make an appointment with that fertility clinic near the office. It had a six-month waiting list and my appointment should be coming up soon.”
“Did you pick a Daddy yet?” Sarah laughed. “Tall, dark, and handsome with an Ivy League degree?”
“Yeah, something like that. Anyways I don’t want to make this all about me,” I said as we pulled up to the club. I’d actually spent an exhaustive amount of time reviewing sperm donor profiles. I’d spent so much time looking at profiles and changing my mind about what I wanted that when I finally came across the perfect profile I still wasn’t sure that was what I really wanted to settle on.
Picking a man based on his identifiable features and education wasn’t exactly a romantic way to have a child. I’d chosen the hair color, eye color, and height as if this person was some doll I was ordering to fit predefined criteria. In real life, finding a mate was so much more involved yet in some aspect it was easier because you knew you loved the person. When you were in love I imagined that the specific looks of your partner wouldn’t be an issue.
“Girl, tonight is all about you and if you’re going to be having a baby soon then you should be partying like a rock star tonight!” Teddy said as we all climbed out of the cab.
Teddy knew the bouncer and we quickly made our way past the long line and into the club. He liked partying more than anyone I knew at King Hotels. It always surprised me that he managed to make it to work on time even after staying up until three or four in the morning on some n
ights. I definitely couldn’t party that hard or that often. Once a week was about all I could handle and only on Saturdays so I could still sleep in and recover all day on Sundays.
My red sequined mini dress had been sitting in my closet for months just waiting for this night on the town. The fall weather was warm enough to handle the hurried rush into the club and not freeze my butt off.
We followed Teddy to a reserved couch he had near the main dance floor. He was never the sort who wanted to sit off in the VIP area or in a back corner. If we were coming to Provoc then we were going to be seen. It was fun to be friends with someone who was so outgoing because I certainly wasn’t that way. I could fake my way through a sales meeting or even a night on the town, but the truth was that I always preferred an evening on my couch watching movies.
Ordering bottle service was a requirement for most clubs if you wanted your own assigned area and this club was no different. Teddy had pre-ordered mixers, red bull, bottles of water, and Grey Goose for our group and the waitress brought it over to us as soon as we sat down. There was something so exhilarating about being with Teddy when he was splurging like this; it wasn’t at all what our night was like when we paid for our own drinks and Kendra and Sarah knew it.
“Thank you, Teddy, for making this night amazing,” I toasted as soon as we had all put together our drinks.
“Cheers,” everyone said and tapped our glasses together.
“Let’s make a pass around the club,” Sarah ordered as she pulled me up from the couch. “I need to get my sights on a few options.”
“Okay.”
Being Sarah’s sidekick was normal for me. I didn’t have trouble with finding decent men to talk to for the evening but my issue was making any sort of connection that would last longer than just one night. The men in New York were more finicky than the women. Not many of them wanted a real relationship and instead were typically looking to get laid as quickly as possible and then drop the girl. I’d seen it so many times that I totally understood Sarah’s outlook on casual dating, I just wasn’t sure I could manage that much longer. I really did want to find someone who I could have more with and was willing to wait it out and find them somewhere down the road.
“Him?” Sarah asked as she pointed to a very young looking guy standing with a group of women.
“The one holding court with the bevy of twenty-somethings?”
“Yeah, I think he looks like a stockbroker. What do you think?”
“Maybe, but that’s a large group of ladies to fight off. Are you really up for that?” I laughed.
“No problem,” she pulled me with her toward the group. “Let’s do a server-distraction,” she laughed.
I had no chance to make a run for it. No chance to stop the madness before it began. This was going down whether I agreed with it or not. Sarah slipped me a hundred dollar bill and pushed me right into the middle of the group before I could protest at all.
“Hey, we’d like a bottle of Grey Goose. Keep the change,” I said and handed the sexy looking guy in a suit the hundred dollars that Sarah had given me. This move worked for Sarah a lot and she had only recently started making me do the initial contact. I’d agreed the first time and then been roped into doing it ever since. I walked away right after handing him the money and joined Sarah a few feet away.
Just as planned, the guy quickly caught up to me and handed me back the money. “I’m not a server here,” he said with an annoying look on his face.
“Oh, my gosh, Julia he seriously doesn’t even look like the servers. Wow, I’m so sorry,” Sarah said and I slipped her the hundred dollars as I got ready to walk away and leave her to her man hunting.
“It’s okay, I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm.”
“Now that I’ve gotten you away from the girls, how do you feel about buying a real woman a drink?” I heard Sarah say as I gave her a glance and headed back toward our table.
When I rejoined the table there was a group of guys talking Kendra up and Teddy just rolled his eyes at the commotion. Kendra was a goddess, that was the best way I could describe how she looked in her tight black mini dress. Her ebony skin glowed and her long black hair was curled and looking especially lovely that night.
Often I’d found that men just couldn’t resist hitting on her when we were out. It usually felt like she was the primary target of affection and I was a secondary target. Not that I didn’t look amazing in my red dress, but she just had that sexual vibe that radiated off of her. My vibe said something a bit different, or at least that was what I chalked it up to when the men picked her over me.
“Our server disappeared, I need some cranberry juice,” Teddy said. “Want to walk with me to the bar?”
“Yep,” I laughed as I looked at the three men talking to Kendra.
If I had wanted any of them I easily could have joined the conversation, but I wasn’t feeling the vibe from them. I was looking for a fun guy to bring home for the night, but just for the night. With my newly found commitment to becoming a mother, I definitely didn’t want to get involved in more than a short fling.
“No gay guys here at all tonight.”
“Teddy, I bet there are more than you think. You’ve got to get out there and socialize. Sitting with the three of us might be clouding your gaydar.”
“I know, but it’s not that easy to pick up dudes here. This is a sausage fest for hetero women.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be walking around with me then,” I laughed. “You look straight as a board.”
We both knew that was a complete lie. Teddy had on a decorative purple button up shirt and some fantastic Versace shoes; he was dressed to impress. As we waited for our turn at the bar I glanced up at a tall guy standing to my right. He was a remarkable-looking man, beautiful really. He towered over me, even with my Jimmy Choos on. I was staring at him as he looked over and caught me right in the act. He looked familiar although I wasn’t exactly sure until he started to talk.
“It’s busy tonight,” he said with a boyish grin.
I knew right away who he was. Mike Cooper, a friend of one of my older brothers and some sort of doctor, although I wasn’t sure what type of medicine he had gone into. For a minute I thought he might have recognized me.
“Yeah, it’s always wild here.”
“Do you come here often?” he asked and then laughed at his own line. “Wow, that was as generic as they come.”
“Actually, I don’t come here very often.”
Teddy moved up ahead of me in line and I saw Mike look at him and then at me. He seemed to realize we weren’t together rather quickly and continued his pursuit of me. Or perhaps he just didn’t care if I was with Teddy or not and was going to flirt with me anyways.
“That’s an amazing dress. Would you mind if I bought you a drink? I’m Mike, by the way.”
“Hi, Mike. I’m Julia,” I said in anticipation that he might actually realize who I was once I told him my name.
Mike and my brother Rob had been fairly close friends growing up. Rob was seven years older than me and I was very much a child when Mike had been to our home. The last time I remembered seeing him was when he came home for Christmas break during my Junior year in high school. I’d tried to find reasons to be in the same room as him and Rob and my other brothers but I was always relegated to leaving the room. I was pretty sure Mike Cooper didn’t even know I existed. And as I waited for him to recognize me, it was clear he did not.
“Well that’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl,” Mike said as he shook my hand lightly. “How about I get you a drink and you come sit with me at my table for a little bit?”
“Still pretty generic,” I teased him.
“It is, but the problem is that I would really like to talk with you and we certainly can’t keep standing here in this mess of people.”
“I’m heading back to the couch,” Teddy busted right between the two of us. “Yeah, I’ll catch up to you later.” He winked at me and then looked at Mike.
“Good catch.”
“Well, you have his approval so I guess I have no other choice but to say yes,” I shrugged and walked up to the bar beside Mike. I was about to tell him what I wanted to drink when he leaned into the bartender and placed the order himself.
I had no idea what he had told the man but we left the bar without our drinks. Mike slipped his hand down to hold mine and I followed him to the far back corner of the club where he had a private table.
Holding hands in a club like this wasn’t exactly the same as holding hand normally. It was a necessity to ensure you didn’t lose the person you were following. But, his hand was strong and firm while also being extremely soft. He didn’t act like the surgeons I’d met in clubs before; they typically had an attitude about them that was fairly distinctive. I wracked my brain trying to remember what type of doctor Mike had become, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what my brother had said. In all fairness, it had been several years since we had talked about Mike. When I first moved to New York Rob had brought up that his friend also lived there.
“Our drinks are on their way,” Mike said and held his hand out for me to slide into the small booth.
Mike sat down right beside me instead of across from me. At this point, it didn’t seem romantic; more a little pushy. If he really didn’t recognize who I was, then he was basically just sitting with a stranger and trying to get laid.
Guys in New York weren’t all jerks. I’d met plenty of decent guys, the problem was finding any decent guys who I also found attractive and had a connection with. In the twenty-first century women no longer had to settle for a man who was only half of what she was looking for and I just didn’t feel like dating around with men I knew weren’t a good match.
A few guys here and there seemed promising, but the spark fizzled quickly and I jumped back into concentrating on my career. So far, there was a definite spark with Mike, but nothing too outrageous and a lot of my emotions about him were probably just a girlhood crush that I still carried over.
The Baby Package Page 1