Shopping for a CEO's Baby (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 16)

Shopping for a CEO’s Baby (Shopping series #16)


Julia Kent


Copyright © 2020 by Julia Kent
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design: Yocla Designs
Editor: Elisa Reed


Contents
Shopping for a CEO's Baby
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue


Shopping for a CEO's Baby
It’s Andrew and Amanda’s turn… in duplicate
We’re having twins.
Twins.
Which means my shooters are stronger than my brother’s. I win.
Yeah, yeah, everyone can say it’s not a competition, but it is.
And we all know it.
Two babies at once means double the fun, and double the misery for my poor wife, Amanda. While I’m growing a Fortune 500 company, she’s growing two entire human beings out of nothing but orange cheese snacks and ice cream.
Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked during this pregnancy, tracking down orange smoothies for her?
Not to mention being forced to Facetime into a childbirth class on perineal massage, rescuing Chuckles the cat from being shaved bald by my two-year-old niece, and fighting with a wife who has named the twins Lefty and Righty.
By the time we hit the ninth month, my entire world revolves around pleasing — and protecting — her.
Even if it means humiliating myself in the name of love.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute, now.
Hold on.
Is she the one who’s winning?
Andrew and Amanda are BACK in the newest New York Times bestselling Shopping series book as they “beat” Declan and Shannon in the baby competition, but at what cost? As their future awaits them in the form of twins, Amanda and Andrew face ghosts from the past with wit, humor, and most of all — plenty of love.


1
Andrew
My wife is orange.
She is caked with orange dust, on her fingers, in her cuticles, and her lips are the color of a traffic cone. She's in the kitchen, standing in front of the blender, drinking something–
You guessed it.
Orange.
“Mmmmm,” she moans as she drinks straight from the blender itself. “Isss izz soooooo goooo.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Eeeto-eenie.”
“What?”
A swallow later and she says, “Cheeto-cini.” When my sister-in-law, Shannon, was pregnant with my niece, Amanda created a special orange smoothie for her out of Cheetos, marshmallow cream, and orange sherbet.
My wife has modified it to remove the sherbet and replace it with coconut milk, which does nothing to change the fact that it's vile to the core.
It's just slightly less gross now.
“Another one?”
“It's the only thing that stays down.”
“And the doctor really says this is okay?” I say, staying far away from the blender, knowing how territorial she is about her food. She's pregnant and still stuck deep in morning sickness.
For the last few weeks, all she's eaten is this.
Cheeto smoothie.
And nothing else.
“It's full-fat coconut milk. One big leaf of kale.” She makes a gagging sound. “Apple juice. One banana. And Cheetos. I freeze the fruit and it tastes like a milkshake.”
“Our babies are made up of that.” At least she added the kale, banana, and apple juice this time.
“I choke down a prenatal vitamin, too, Andrew.” Her eyes tear up and her chin quivers.
Damn.
“It's fine. Good. I'm so glad you can eat something. Really. Not judging you. I know you are doing everything possible for our babies.” I rub the spot between her shoulder blades, hoping I can calm her down before a full-blown meltdown kicks in.
“I am! Everything,” she says before gobbling down more of that candy corn-colored monstrosity. “I've lost two pounds. The doctor said the placenta looks fine and the babies are growing within range, but this morning sickness is horrible. If I drink water, I puke! If I drink this–” she points at the blender, “–I don't.”
“Then by all means, drink that.” I hold back a shudder. My trainer, Vince, would have an unexpected coronary if he saw Cheetos in a Vitamix.
“I–I know I'm not doing this the way another wife would. A better wife. A wife who is stronger and who...” Her lower lip begins to quiver.
Here we go again.
I come in for the hug before I wince, feeling like a jerk. Being supportive isn't hard. Not at all. Being pregnant with two babies–my babies–has to be impossibly hard. And poor Amanda has to shoulder that load. I can't do one bit of it for her.
But I could do without the drastic personality change. It's like someone swapped my wife out for the most insecure woman on the planet.
Ever.
The woman who could do anything, fix anything, mediate anything has become a sniffling puddle of overly apologetic goo, who makes insecure celebrities look like they invented arrogance.
And who has convinced herself that she's terrible at being pregnant.
“Amanda.” I kiss her, gently, tasting salt and cheese and sugar. “You're perfect.”
“I'm incompetent.”
“All you have to do is let cells divide inside your womb.”
“And grow a placenta. I'm terrible at this. I'm failing at basic biology!” Wide eyes, big and beautiful, tear up like someone's pumped her full of salt water.
“It's not a college course,” I joke. “It's just nature.”
She stiffens.
Uh oh.
“It's not 'just' anything.”
Declan warned me about this stage of pregnancy. The super-sensitive stage. The you-can't-say-anything-without-opening-the-portal-to-demonic-possession stage.
That's his phrase. Not mine. Don't pin that on me.
“Of course it's not 'just' anything,” I soothe. “I'm not trivializing it. I'm saying you're doing a great job.”
“If it's ‘just’ nature, how can I be doing a ‘great’ job at something I have no control over?”
She's got me there.
“You're the most loving woman I know,” I tell her. “Which means you'll be the most loving mother I know. Which makes me the luckiest man alive, because you're going through such a huge sacrifice to give me two children. Not just one. Two. At the same time.”
Uncertainty flickers across her face. Aha. Now