CEO'S Secret Baby: A Standalone Surprise Pregnancy Romance by Iona Rose (books for 5 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

“No sir- Daniel,” I quickly corrected myself.

He rose up from his seat then and placed a hand on my shoulder.

It seemed somewhat innocent, but I could tell when someone was expressing some kind of interest in me that bordered on romance. And this did not seem so pure, or maybe he was just friendly?

Either way, I remained very still.

“You can leave early,” he said. “Hope you get a good rest before tomorrow. There’s a lot of work to be done on this proposal and I’ll be expecting significant contributions from you.”

“I’ll do my best, and thank you.”

He left me.

I watched as he went over to some members of our team who stood in the corner with drinks in their hands.

I immediately finished what I could of my meal, and was out of the door in no time.

Chapter 16

Carter

“You won’t believe what just happened.”

At the unexpected and somewhat unwelcome intrusion into my office, I looked up from the reports I had been reading.

My Chief Financial Officer, Mark Garrity was beaming, his hands hooked on the straps of his burgundy suspenders that somewhat constrained his slightly protruded belly.

“Surprise me,” I said.

He took his seat opposite me. “As of ten minutes ago, David just bagged his first major account for the agency. It's not even been up to a month since we acquired Media Hive and the returns are already pouring in. I told you it was a great deal.”

I shook my head and returned to my report.

“Wait, let me guess,” he said. “Meredith already informed you.”

“I found out twenty minutes ago,” I said. “She has eyes and ears in David’s department.”

“Wow,” he said, in a tone filled with disappointment and irritation. “That secretary of yours is quite aggravating.”

His gripe made me smile. “What did she do wrong? She’s aggravating because she’s great at her job?”

“I’m great at my job too, but you don’t see me overdoing things and stealing the wind out of everyone’s sails.”

“She’s on top of everything that goes on around here.” I shrugged. “I pay her heavily for that.”

“Thankfully, she’s on everything except you,” he said. “Yet.”

I cocked my head at the blunt comment from the older man, and met his gaze.

He nodded. “I see the way she looks at you and cares for you. She’s like a tigress manning the cave and affairs of her cub. Never get involved with her. In fact, never get involved with any woman, especially now that we’re scaling so rapidly. They’ll make you soft… throw you off your game. Ruin everything.”

“You’re still not over Bethany, huh,” I said, understanding the bitterness that stemmed from his experiences with his now ex-wife.

“Will I ever be? Can you believe I'm still paying her spousal support? It's been fifteen years. We were married for only seven. Curse her. Greatest mistake I ever made.”

I smiled, my thoughts bringing up the memory of a certain pair of hazel eyes. I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “If you had to do it all over again, would you still fall in love with her? Get married to her?”

He grunted then and looked away in contemplation. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “She was a mistake but the five years when things were good between us, were the best of my damn life. I don’t think that anything will ever come close to topping that. Nevertheless, I’m still fucking bitter that I'm the one paying her bills. I also suspect that she’s refused to get remarried because of my incoming checks. I wonder how much of it she’ll want to save before she cuts me off from her life and decides to fully move on. And why the hell are we talking about Bethany?”

“You brought the subject up,” I said. “You were warning me against women in the near future.”

“Heed it. You’ll save your money and your sanity.”

He definitely wasn’t going to like what I intended to ask him next then. “I need you to handle something for me,” I said, just as he rose to his feet. “There’s this marketing agency in Indianapolis.”

“Okay…” he said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I picked up the file that I had concluded my analysis on and passed it over to him.

He took it and started to flip through it.

“Pivot Marketing. I want you to look into how we can have them on board.”

He took a moment to properly process what I was asking as he read through their reports and assets. “You want to acquire them? Why? They’re a small marketing agency and although they do seem to be doing fine, we don’t need to have them as part of our portfolio. I thought you were more interested in digital marketing and technological advancement for our next purchase?”

I smiled at him. “I know that we don’t need them, but it will be good to have them. And since they’re small, we have just the right resources and reach that’s well able to entice them enough to become a part of our company. That way, they can move up the ladder.”

He took his seat again, shaking his head slightly to clear it. “I’m confused. Why are you even thinking about this? We just concluded the deal on Media Hive, and if we want to bring another agency on board then my department has a list of five game changers that we could pursue right now. Why are we talking about a small marketing agency in Indianapolis? And so soon after our purchase. We can’t scale too fast or we won’t be able to milk these investments properly. We’ll crash.”

“Let’s take this as a more personal investment then,” I told him. “Whatever it’ll cost, I'll personally finance fifty percent of it, and I'll be in direct control of it for a couple of months. I want to incorporate an advertising department into it to expand its scope of services. It’ll do great.”

He was even more baffled. “You’ll be going to Indiana for a