The Billionaire From Chicago: A BWWM Billionaire Romance (United States Of Billionaires Book 6)

by Simply BWWM

  “I have no idea,” Elizabeth said with a shrug. She started getting dressed, pulling on a pair of panties and a bra that she’d brought with her, and Luke watched in fascination. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t even feel symptoms for another couple of days, and even then...from what I’ve read, the early symptoms of pregnancy feel like you’re coming down with a flu or something like that.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Luke said. “I’d heard about morning sickness, tenderness in the breasts, and all that.” Elizabeth shrugged again.

  “A lot of women, even before they get those, feel tired and rundown and achy,” Elizabeth explained. “But those are the same feelings you get when you start getting sick, so you don’t tend to notice.”

  “Well, if you start feeling like you’re coming down with something, maybe that’ll be a good time to take a pregnancy test,” Luke suggested.

  “You really want this baby ASAP,” Elizabeth said, pulling a dress over her head and smoothing it over her curves. Luke smiled.

  “I do,” he admitted. Elizabeth sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at him frankly for a moment.

  “You know, I have to wonder why you didn’t sign up instead for some kind of matchmaking service,” she said. “It seems like it would be a lot easier to find someone to be a good wife than someone to give birth to a kid for you.” Luke considered that for a moment.

  “I actually did try a matchmaking site a while back,” he said. “I’ve dated a lot of women. Don’t get me wrong; it isn’t like any of them were bad or anything like that. It was just that...I just never felt that thing. I never felt like I’d fallen in love with any of them.” He looked over Elizabeth’s body, covered as it was in the dress she’d thrown on.

  Deep down in the darkest depths of his mind, he had already started to wonder if that wasn’t changing; he had more of a feeling for Elizabeth than he’d had for any of the women he’d dated in the past five years. That’s probably just because you know she’s going to be carrying your child, he told himself. But that excuse didn’t seem to wash.

  “You’ve really never been in love with anyone?” Luke shrugged at the question.

  “The closest I think I came was with you, back in high school,” he said quietly. “But I don’t know--would you call what we felt for each other back then, love?” Elizabeth looked away, and Luke could see the thoughts flickering across her face.

  “I think it was a kind of love,” she said slowly. “I mean, we were kids. We never even got to the point of having sex. The last time we even saw each other was during winter break our freshman years.” She met his gaze. “We definitely had feelings for each other, though.”

  “We did,” Luke agreed. He wanted to ask if she felt the same way in that moment as she had with him in high school, but he knew it was a stupid question; it was one he didn’t even really want the answer to. If she didn’t feel the same way, then he knew it would bother him, though he couldn’t say why. If she did feel the same way, then Luke knew that it would just open up the dangerous question of how they were going to manage to disengage from each other at the end of their contract.

  “I think it’s okay to have feelings,” Elizabeth said, as if she’d divined something of where Luke’s thoughts were. “I mean, we’re making a baby together. I would feel gross and used if there were no feelings between us after having a bunch of sex.” She gave him a wry smile.

  “So, you do have feelings for me right now?” Elizabeth shrugged and nodded at the same time.

  “I like you,” she said. “I like being around you, and you are definitely great in bed.” She rose to her feet and moved a little closer to him on the bed. “Are you afraid of developing feelings for me or something?” Luke hesitated, not wanting to make Elizabeth alarmed at the possibility that he would back out; no matter what, he knew, he would still want the child they made.

  “I am a bit, I guess,” Luke admitted. “After all this time of not falling in love with anyone, to the point of just...giving up hope on it, I’m a little worried that things are going to get complicated between us.”

  “They don’t have to,” Elizabeth pointed out. “I mean, we can have feelings for each other and not let things get complicated. We know that the plan is for me to get pregnant and have a baby for you.”

  “But if we get feelings for each other, that’s going to make things complicated no matter what,” Luke countered. “I just think...maybe we should disengage a little bit. Keep things in perspective.”

  “I think that sounds a lot like running away from what’s going on,” Elizabeth countered. “I mean, feelings don’t just go away.”

  “I just don’t want this to turn into a thing where, at the end of the whole ordeal, we have regrets,” Luke said. “The point of this was to get a kid, someone I could form a bond with.”

  “And you’re still going to have that,” Elizabeth said. “Why would it be bad if you formed a bond with me too?”

  “Because you’re going to go back to Portland. And do you really think that you’re going to be fully willing to just go back to your old life when this is over if you have feelings for me still?”

  “Do you think it’s going to be easier for me to be pregnant and give birth with no emotional support?” Elizabeth gave him a wry smile. “I mean, if you don’t have feelings for me at all, that’s fine. I can deal with that.

  But if you’re deliberately pulling back from me emotionally just because you’re worried about what might happen between us at the end, then…” she sighed. “I don’t know if I can keep things going with that. And it would kind of suck to be stuck here in Chicago for a year by myself, because I signed a contract with you and left everything behind in Portland.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you,” Luke insisted firmly. “Look, we don’t even know if you’re going to catch this time. Let’s leave this issue to the side for right now. If you’re not pregnant this month, then next month we can talk about whether we want to keep going or whether we want to part ways, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to put you back in your regular life, if we decide to just call it quits.” Elizabeth’s eyes welled up, and she looked away for a moment.

  “If that’s what you want to do, then that’s what we’ll do,” she said, her voice tight. “But I think you’re making a huge mistake.” She rose to her feet and turned away from him, walking out of the bedroom. Luke wanted to go after her, but at the same time, he knew that if they tried to talk it out just then that there would be no way for them to find any kind of agreement. They would both be stuck in their positions, and it would be even more likely for him to end up agreeing to something that would only hurt Elizabeth’s feelings worse.

  He let her leave, following her downstairs at a distance, saying a quick goodbye in response to her offhand comment about catching the train back to her apartment. He didn’t even offer her his driver, knowing she would turn it down and that it would just make things worse between them.

  Did I do the wrong thing? The question loomed hugely in his mind as the silence of the townhouse settled around him. Luke knew that the feelings he had already started to have towards Elizabeth were dangerous, but he couldn’t understand how she couldn’t see it. There was the temptation--obvious as it was--to give into what she’d pointed out, about her need for emotional support when it came to actually being pregnant and delivering the baby.

  He’d fully intended on being present for all of the doctor’s visits and for the delivery of the child when that time came, but if he was emotionally distant from her, trying to keep his feelings contained, would he just be making more stress for the woman carrying his child, whom he already knew he had feelings for?

  Luke went into the kitchen and started to make a desultory breakfast for himself, thinking that it would be easier to figure out what to do about the situation if his stomach wasn’t empty. Why hadn’t he offered Elizabeth breakfast too? It was one of a few meals that he could make on his own; they’d ended up having takeout for most
of the past forty-eight hours, though Elizabeth had insisted on making pasta the night before.

  It had been one of those moments where Luke could actually imagine what it would be like to have not just a child but the full picture: the loving wife, the warmth of a shared home, a family. It had been that, as much as anything else, that had led him to try and push the feelings out of the picture that morning.

  As Luke sat down in the living room with his eggs and toast and sausage, he thought to himself that, ultimately, Elizabeth was right. If they’d been total strangers, and if he’d been committed to using in vitro fertilization to get her pregnant, that would be a whole separate situation. If he had had no feelings for her whatsoever, it would have been easy for him to offer her emotional support--it would have been totally impersonal.

  But knowing that he already had feelings for her made it hard for Luke to know where the line should be. He didn’t know if he would be able to disengage at the end of their contract, once his child was in his hands. He didn’t know if he even would be willing to, and he couldn’t make Elizabeth abandon her old life completely.

  He couldn’t ask that of her, and he also knew that he wouldn’t be willing to move to Portland. He had too much going on in Chicago; too much of his life was there. It seemed like there was no way for the situation to end except for poorly.

  “Well, maybe she won’t get pregnant,” he said. “Maybe she’ll get her period in a couple of weeks, and we can discuss how to fix this next month.” The thought comforted him, but it stung at the same time. As much as he’d wanted to push Elizabeth out of his life to make things less complicated--and maybe even find another surrogate, one he definitely didn’t know, to carry the child he sought--imagining his life without even the prospect of Elizabeth in it hurt.

  It was insane to him; how could he already have such strong feelings for someone he’d only spent a few weeks with? You have history. But that didn’t explain it. There was just something about the way Elizabeth was, about who she was, that appealed to him in a way that none of the other women he’d dated since they split up had done.

  “Hell of a time to finally catch feelings,” Luke muttered to himself. The irony wasn’t lost on him at all, but the humor in it was bitter. He turned back to his breakfast and told himself that he would find a way to make things right between himself and Elizabeth. He didn’t know how he would do it--but with billions of dollars to his name, there had to be a way to mend fences with her.

  Maybe they could even come to some kind of agreement about the eventual pregnancy and how they would strike the balance between being there for each other and getting uncomfortably close. It didn’t have to be complicated, did it?

  Chapter13

  Elizabeth sat down on the edge of her tub and started the timer on her phone. She had told Luke that she wasn’t going to try a pregnancy test until the time came for her next doctor’s appointment--the one where they would check her hormones again--but after the conversation they’d had just before she’d left his home, she couldn’t resist the temptation. It had been about a week since their marathon of sex, and Elizabeth needed to know whether she even needed to worry about the situation between them and any complications that might arise.

  She took a deep breath and watched as the seconds on the timer counted down. Elizabeth knew that she might not get a definitive answer from the test, but it would be a start--and if it was positive, she could start preparing herself mentally for what would happen next between her and Luke.

  In the week since she’d left his townhouse, they’d talked via text message a few times, but Elizabeth had mostly thrown herself into work, and Luke hadn’t invited her to any kind of outings or events. It was clear to her--at least for the time being--that he intended to go through with the idea of backing off a bit emotionally.

  She hadn’t anticipated how much it would sting for Luke to propose that. Of course, Elizabeth thought, she hadn’t anticipated having any feelings towards Luke either. She’d d just sort of fallen into them, and she hadn’t questioned how complicated it would make things until Luke had brought it up. As far as Elizabeth had been concerned, they would have a semi-romantic fling, and then it would be over by the time she had the child for him, and she would go back to her life.

  But now, waiting to find out if she was potentially pregnant, Elizabeth realized that it had the potential to be much more than that. How would she really feel if, after carrying a child for nine months and then delivering it, she had to stay out of Luke’s life forever? She had known--intellectually--that it would be different with him versus a total stranger. She hadn’t realized until after their discussion a week before that it would be so emotional.

  The timer on her phone went off, and for a moment, Elizabeth continued to sit on the edge of the tub, staring at the screen. “It’s not that big of a deal,” she said. “If I’m not pregnant, then Luke and I can work this out between us for next month. If I am pregnant…” she didn’t really know how to end that sentence. She didn’t know how it would play out between them.

  But somehow, knowing that she was pregnant--or could be pregnant--would change things. It would put her in a different position or, at the very least, she would be prepared for the next stage in their contract.

  Just look at the test. Elizabeth rose to her feet and shut off the alarm on her timer before stepping to the sink where she’d left the pregnancy test to develop. She took a deep breath and looked down. Pregnant.

  It was stunning and not at all surprising, all at the same time. Elizabeth stared at the result on the test for a long moment, absorbing the impact of the information. If she’d gotten a negative result, it would be a little more suspenseful; after all, it would be possible for it to be a false negative, that she had taken the test too soon. The fact that it was positive was a little less controversial. She could be fairly certain that it wasn’t wrong.

  Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the tub again and tried to think of how to react to what she now could be fairly certain was the truth: they had managed to get her pregnant in the marathon of sex, and she and Luke were going to have a baby together.

  In nine months--barring any kind of accident or something bad happening otherwise--she would give birth and hand over the baby, and then things would, in theory, be done between her and Luke. She would be over a hundred thousand dollars richer, and while Elizabeth thought that she was more than capable of getting over any kind of grief through a long vacation, she wasn’t sure if that was even what she wanted to do anymore.

  “Well, now you know,” she said. The bigger question that loomed in her mind was whether to keep that information to herself until the date of her next doctor’s appointment--which Luke would be going to with her--or if she should tell him outright that she’d taken a pregnancy test and it had come up positive.

  The test at the doctor’s office would prove it conclusively, and Elizabeth didn’t think that she would have to worry about a false positive; she had, after all, actually had sex while ovulating, and she had definitely done everything she could to make sure she would conceive.

  Of course, the fact that she was pregnant already would mean that the sex would likely end, and that was a frustration on its own. To have had such good sex already and know that it was no longer going to be any part of her routine--especially if Luke stuck with his idea of disengaging a bit, of pulling back so that their emotions wouldn’t complicate things too much--was disappointing.

  Elizabeth felt restless. She got up and threw the pregnancy test in the trash in her bathroom before going into the living room of her apartment and looking around. It was already starting to feel like home, and the knowledge that she was going to definitely be leaving it within a year--probably less--made her even more uncomfortable. “It’s fine. It’s going to be fine,” she murmured to herself.

  She found herself wandering around the living room, not really with any task in mind, almost pacing, and forced herself to stop “You need to get out of the hou
se. That’s what you need. Just get out of here and do something for a few hours, and then when you get back, you can make up your mind about what you want to do.”

  Elizabeth went back into the bathroom and grabbed her phone. She realized she had no shoes on--and that she’d taken her bra off earlier when it had been uncomfortable--and took care of both of those issues quickly, mentally going over the rest of her list: she needed her purse, she needed her keys, but she wouldn’t take her laptop with her because she knew she wasn’t going to get any work done.

  Just as she went to the door to leave the house, a knock cut through Elizabeth’s distraction. She frowned, confused. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and in almost a month of living in Chicago, she hadn’t had many people coming to her door without any notice. “If it’s a Jehovah’s Witness, they have picked the wrong time,” she muttered to herself. She opened the door, unsure of what to expect on the other side of it.

  Of all the things she could have imagined seeing, the actual result was staggering: Luke stood, a bouquet of daisies in his hands, waiting patiently for her. “I wanted to say that I was wrong and stupid,” he told her, almost before Elizabeth could even wrap her mind around the fact that he was even there at all.

  “What?” She blinked and stepped back from the door, feeling weakness in her knees. Of all the people to show up on her doorstep at random, Luke was potentially the least welcome, in spite of the way something inside of her--deeply physical, beyond the realm of reason--relaxed just at the sight of him.

  “It took me a week, but I realized I was being a stupid idiot, and I should try and make things right,” Luke replied. “So, I was hoping you’d let me take you to the Lincoln Park Zoo, and we can go to dinner after and talk about what this is going to look like for us.” Elizabeth had to sit down. She shook her head--not rejecting the offer--and moved towards her living room, sinking onto the couch. “What’s wrong?”