Shopping for a CEO's Baby (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 16), стр. 4
I breathe.
My mouth moistens.
“Shannon!” I call out. “This is working!”
Applause comes from the other side. “Yay! I wasn't sure.”
“She gonna be okay?” someone mumbles from the other side of the door.
“In the long run? Yes. She's in her second trimester, pregnant with twins.”
“TWINS?” Gray Hair shouts. “WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO, HONEY?”
Groans of recognition fill the bathroom, an echo chamber of interconnectedness.
It makes me feel better.
Like this stupid orange Tic Tac.
While the floor is nice and safe, I'll pick up a germ if I stay here, so I slide up the stall wall and stand, testing my balance. So far, so good. My palm goes to my stomach.
“Let Mommy finish lunch with Aunt Shannon, okay, kiddoes?”
“You say something, Amanda?” Shannon calls out.
I open the door, plastering on a smile, but a really sad one. “Just talking to the babies.”
“It'll get better, honey,” Gray Hair says as she washes her hands. “And if it gets really bad, grab a cigarette. Yeah, yeah, I know... my daughter and granddaughter want to tar and feather me, but one here and there to get rid of that sour stomach won't do you any harm.”
The thought of a cigarette sends me straight back to the bowl.
“I'll settle the bill,” Shannon says, bending down and calling under the door. “You do what you need to do.”
And I do.
Cursing Andrew the entire time.
3
Andrew
Vince grabs my hand before I can touch the forties I'm about to do curls with.
“What the hell is that?” He points to my orange cuticles.
“Cheeto stains.”
“You're eating Cheetos?” He sounds like I just told him I cooked my father's liver and ate it on a buttered croissant. Not sure whether he'd be more outraged at the patricide or the carb count.
“Not me. My wife.”
“Yeah, yeah. All my clients blame their partner. You're on a strict program, Andrew. No chemicals, no grains, no–”
“Flavor,” Declan mutters under his breath as Gerald smirks. We're working out at this shithole gym Vince likes, only this time is different.
Because I bought the place.
Declan's not the only McCormick who can go out on his own and buy a company. No one, other than Amanda, knows I did this.
And don't ask me why I did it.
Turns out, the guy who created this gym, old Jorg, is one of those under-the-radar types. Quiet, unassuming, scruffy, and curmudgeonly, but street smart.
Sharp.
And ancient.
The guy owns–owned–sixteen gyms across Boston, Lowell, Fitchburg, and Springfield, all of them gritty, intense places where guys like Vince and my old chauffeur/bodyguard, Gerald, like to get wrecked.
This place isn't trendy. It's not fancy. Nothing about it makes me feel seen or displayed, and Instagram can go screw itself if it thinks any of the customers here give a rat's ass about posting anything.
Which is why I bought the entire chain from old Jorg.
Because this is the future of gyms.
Not for everyone. But for plenty of guys like me. People want authenticity. They want to belong without being smothered. They want to be ignored but also welcomed.
With a nod. A chin jut.
Not an upsell or an ad push.
Starbucks became huge not from selling coffee, but from selling the emotion you could feel when you got coffee there.
Time to do the same with gyms.
Only instead of market testing to find the optimal emotional experience for the widest customer base that can deliver massive quarterly profits, I just want to build a bunch of places that appeal to me.
Why?
Because I can.
“Earth to Andrew,” Dec says, grunting through the words as he squats below parallel, staring up. Sweat coats him, from hair follicles to the elastic on the bands of his socks. Drenched and red, he's been busting a nut for the last two hours, clearly working through something more than muscle groups.
“Huh?”
“Vince is nagging you again. Pay attention.”
“No.”
Vince shrugs. “Fine. Pay me to ignore me. Best gig ever.”
Dec lifts up, locks the weight bar in place in the cage, and laughs. “You couldn't be paid to sit on your ass and do nothing, Vince. Within thirty minutes, you'd find a rattlesnake to wrestle, or invent cold fusion. You're one of those guys.”
“Those guys?” Vince crosses his arms over his enormous chest.
“You can't not work.” He thumbs my way. “Like him.”
“I can not work,” I argue, Vince folding in half laughing before the sentence is out of my mouth.
“But,” I continue, “I choose not to. It's like choosing not to have sex.”
“If you're comparing sex to work, you're doing it wrong.” Declan gives me his patented older-brother eye roll.
“Both involve being on top.” I smirk.
“You're a workaholic.”
“And a sexaholic.”
“And a hypocrite. I don't work nearly the hours you do. I stopped when Ellie was born. But I don't think you'll stop, baby bro.”
“Twins, Declan. I'm having twins.”
Vince looks at my belly. “Where? Out your butthole?”
“We. We're having twins,” I clarify.
“One out of your butthole, the other out your wife's–”
“Both of you can just shut up and let me lift,” I grouse as Vince checks something off a list on a clipboard.
“Stop eating your pregnant wife's Cheeto stash.”
“I'm not! If you have to know, my fingernails are stained because I was feeding her.”
“With your hands?”
“Yes. Some mornings, she wakes up so sick, it's the only thing that keeps her from puking. Her eyes open and I slowly move a Cheeto into her mouth. She sucks on it for a while, and then she can sit up.”
“That is the worst beginning to a porno ever,” Dec drawls as he tosses a medicine ball my way, the unexpected hit to my solar plexus making me laugh.
“I'm sure sex is the last thing on Amanda's mind these days,” Vince says, suddenly serious. He gives me a pitying look. “Hope you enjoyed your last time sleeping with her, because it'll be a while.”
“Says the man who has no kids.”
“True, true... but I know hormones. And we know what Declan's described. You shot your wife up with double the trouble, man.”
I shoot Dec a big