CEO'S Secret Baby: A Standalone Surprise Pregnancy Romance - Iona Rose (which ebook reader .txt) 📗

“How? How exactly is it different?”

“That’s permanent, or at least more perm… you know what I mean.”

“I moved, Leah, to find you. To work at building a life with you. How much more serious does it get?”

“But that’s between the both of us…”

Leaning against the counter, I folded my arms across my chest and watched her. “I don’t want to pretend to not know you personally at the office. We don’t have to fuck in front of everyone, but I would like to stop by your cubicle to see how your day is going when I'm on your floor for meetings. I would also love for you to head over to my office whenever you want, without having to creep around like we’re having an affair.”

“Carter…” She sighed. “What if we—?” She stopped herself in time. “I’m not saying that things will go bad, but life can be a bitch and—?”

“If we break up, I’ll either move to a different branch, or you search for another job.”

She stopped at my bluntness.

“Life is simple, Leah. Let’s try to keep it that way. If your performance at the office is lacking, your personal association with me will not in any way influence the incline or decline of your career.”

“I know that,” she said. “But other people won’t see it that way.”

“Why do you care what they think?”

Our gaze locked, then with a subtle, polite nod, she looked away.

I knew it wasn’t because of her acceptance of what I was saying, but just for the acknowledgement that she heard me.

She rose to her feet and headed towards her bedroom.

Chapter 33

Leah

“He left.”

The next morning, whatever rumors and gossip the office had managed to cook up was the furthest thing from my mind, as all I could think about was the fact that Carter had not come to bed the previous night. I’d waited for him, and then I left the room to check, only to see he had left the house altogether.

It made me nervous.

I stared at my computer screen, barely managing to get any work done. The moment the response came from our group chat, I turned my attention towards my phone.

‘He probably just wanted to give you some space,’ Tracy wrote.

‘I hope so,’ I texted back.

I truly hoped this was the case and not that he had been too unhappy with me, to even bear being in the same space. It had been the first night since we became official, that we had spent apart.

Suddenly, I wanted to see him, more than anything else, and almost didn’t even care what anyone thought about it.

Once again, he had been right.

Who cared what they thought? Our personal lives were no one else’s concern, and if they chose to adjudge otherwise, then that would be their problem and not ours.

I began to work on my perspective, and a few hours later, I believed I was now somewhat on the same page with him. But I still didn’t have the confidence to completely embrace it.

I wanted to go up to his office to see him, but my legs refused to move from the chair, so I remained glued to it, and continued on with my day. Another text came into my phone and I saw that it was from Jeremy.

‘Heading to the break room,’ he wrote. ‘I’m sure you need some coffee too.’

I hesitated, but then reasoned that talking to someone in the office who didn’t seem to have suddenly lost all feeling whatsoever towards me in the light of the recent revelation, would be a much needed reprieve.

I rose from my chair, and strolled over.

When I arrived, he handed me a mug of steaming hot coffee doused with cream.

I took a much needed sip. When I reopened my eyes, I found him watching me with interest and knew that the questions were coming.

“First of all,” he began. “Is it true?”

“The entire office believes it is,” I replied. “Why do you still have doubts?”

“Because, there’s no way that you would be able to so thoroughly hide it, especially from me.”

“I wasn’t hiding anything,” I refuted. “It just hadn’t come up.”

He seemed truly surprised then. “So it is true. You’re dating the CEO.”

When I truly didn’t deny it, his face fell with disappointment. “I thought I had a fucking chance,” he swore.

Coffee almost spurted from my nose in amusement.

He raised a hostile gaze to me “You’re laughing?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, patting the liquid from the corner of my lips. “I just didn’t expect that to be your comment. I thought that you’d push me away too, the way every other person seems to have.”

“You can say that again,” he said. “Even I am wondering why everyone is so butt hurt about this. One would think that you had an affair or something with someone else’s man.” He cocked his head in thought. “Well in a way, you kind of did.”

I was doubly amused. “What?”

“We all secretly set our eyes on him, some of us with more hope than others, but yesterday all of that was crushed. How did you do it? And you move fast. He hasn’t even been here that long.”

“Jeremy,” I said. “I didn’t meet him here. We met in Alanya, when I was still on vacation.”

His gaze widened, as things finally started to make more sense to him. We were interrupted then by my cubicle neighbor as she walked past. “Leah… Jeremy? Have you both seen the announcement that the VP just put out on the portal?”

My brows furrowed. “What announcement?”

“Your team’s Vita500 project, Leah,” she said. “It seems your client is being an asshole so the VP has made it an open brief and given until Thursday next week for any employee to come up with a good campaign strategy. The top three will be picked based on general popularity to present to the client on Friday, and whomever he goes with will be the winner.”

“What?” Jeremy asked.

“What exactly does general popularity mean?” I asked.

“It means,” she