Chapter 69: Shopping for Baby
Moana
One night, I was reading a bedtime story to Ella when I found myself nodding off in the chair by her bed. I didn’t wake up until a couple of hours later. She was fast asleep and I didn’t want to wake her, so I quietly got up and slipped back into my room to go back to sleep.
When I walked back into my room, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, seeing as how tired I was. I moved my sketchbook aside and climbed into the covers, and quickly fell asleep.
The next morning, I woke up with a headache. I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes, and as I did so I noticed something sitting on my bedside table that I hadn’t noticed the night before: a glass of brown liquid.
Furrowing my brow, I picked up the glass and inspected it. It was certainly one of Edrick’s whiskey glasses from his minibar, and when I sniffed its contents, I quickly realized that it was, in fact, whiskey.
I frowned. Why was there a glass of whiskey on my bedside table? I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary the night before; had Edrick come into my room looking for me?
I decided that I would ask him about it later, and got up to start getting ready for the day.
…
When I came out of my room and walked over to the dining room, Edrick was already awake and was sitting at the dining room table with a plate of toast, a coffee, and a stack of financial reports in front of him. He looked up when I entered, and immediately I could tell that he was guilty when his eyes flickered to the now-empty whiskey glass that I’d dumped out into my bathroom sink.
“Were you in my room last night?” I asked, setting the glass down on the table in front of him.
He paused, then finally nodded his head. “Yes. I saw that your light was on, so I went to shut it off. I guess I set my drink down.”
I frowned and opened my mouth to tell him that he shouldn’t have been drinking so much in the middle of the night that he would forget a whiskey glass on my bedside table, but before I could, he suddenly spoke.
“Get dressed,” he said, taking a nonchalant sip of his coffee. “I’m going to the baby supply store while Ella is in training. You should come with me. Afterwards, we’ll pick Ella up and I’ll take you both out for dinner.”
I felt a little surprised by this sudden proposal. Already he was looking into buying baby supplies? And, even more surprising than that, he was going out in public with me and was even planning on taking me for dinner? I didn’t protest, however, and simply turned around to go back to my room and put on a nicer outfit. I opted for the same blue dress I bought at the farmers’ market. As I put it on, I looked in the mirror and noticed that it seemed to hug my slightly growing belly well, and I even found myself running my hands along my belly with a smile on my face as I looked in the mirror. I couldn’t wait to watch my belly grow over the coming months.
Once I was dressed, Edrick and I took Ella to training and dropped her off. Then, he drove just the two of us to a local strip of expensive outlet stores. As we pulled into the parking lot, I was a bit taken aback by all of the luxury sports cars that were parked outside. Happy families dressed in designer clothes roamed around outside as they walked from store to store, and there was a large marble fountain with a statue in the center surrounded by a small park with benches. I’d never been to outlet stores that were this nice, and even though I felt good in my dress, I still felt a little out of place.
Before we got out of the car, Edrick put on his face mask again to hide his identity.
“Wait,” he said sternly before I opened my car door. I watched as he climbed out and then jogged around to my side of the car. He opened the car door for me and even held out his hand to help me out. As I felt my hand in his large palm, my heart started to pound and I felt my face getting hot.
“Thank you,” I murmured, staring at the ground. There was a moment of silence, during which time I felt his eyes wander down to my dress, then linger on my belly.
But, just as quickly as it came, his gentlemanly nature faded. “Come on,” he said, turning on his heel and starting to walk toward the stores, “we’ve got a lot to do before Ella gets out of training.”
I followed as he walked briskly toward the baby supply store, and by the time we arrived, I was already a little out of breath from trying to keep up with his long strides.
The store was full of other expecting parents, as well as parents with infants and toddlers. We began to walk around the store and look at all of the supplies, but as we did, I also looked around a bit at the other customers. I couldn’t help but notice that many of the parents with young children also seemed to have human nannies with them that were doing all of the work to take care of the children. Admittedly, it bothered me a little bit that some couples were ignoring their children while their nannies did all of the work. I was a bit grateful that Edrick never acted like that, despite his cold and indifferent demeanor.
Not long after we began shopping, an attendant came to us with a smile on her face.
“Looking for newborn supplies?” she asked, nodding her head toward my belly. I hadn’t realized it, but I was rubbing my belly as I walked around. I almost went to take my hand away, but then I remembered that I could be open with my pregnancy now, which filled me with an immense amount of joy.
“Yes,” Edrick replied with a nod.
The attendant’s smile widened. She then pulled out a handheld scanner and handed it to me. “If you’d like, you can walk around the store and use this to scan anything you want. Then, once you pay at the register, one of our employees will gather everything and we can either have it delivered to your home or help you bring it out to your car.”
“Thank you,” I replied. Edrick and I walked away and continued to look. My jaw dropped when I spotted a lovely display with a cream-colored wicker bassinet. As I walked up to it and ran my hand along the fabric that was lined on the inside, it felt softer than anything I’d ever touched…
But it cost almost a thousand dollars.
“Do you want that?” Edrick asked, walking up to me.
I hesitated, biting my lip, before shaking my head. “No. It’s too expensive.”
“Nonsense,” Edrick said. He grabbed the scanner out of my hand and immediately scanned the barcode on the bassinet before I could stop him.
“Edrick!” I said, grabbing the scanner back. “That bassinet is almost a thousand dollars! It’s too expensive for something that will only be used for the first few months of the baby’s life.”
Edrick merely shrugged in response. “So?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest. “I have the money. I want this baby to have the best of everything.”
“Even so,” I replied, “it’s wasteful to spend so much. It’s pretty, sure, but there’s no real need for such an expensive bassinet.”
Just then, another couple passed as we argued over the bassinet. The wife chuckled, and the husband leaned over toward Edrick with a playful smirk on his face. “The first rule of being an expecting father is to never argue with the baby’s mother,” the husband said with a wink before walking away.
Edrick, who had his mouth open already to speak, suddenly shut it.
I couldn’t help it; the fact that the other man’s words somehow managed to shut up the Alpha CEO made me laugh.
