The Billionaire's Baby Bargain novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Deadline
Night clerk Hanna hears the hospital's last call, then hears her billionaire boss shamed on the loading dock; she climbs to his office and offers herself, and he answers with three terms.
The call came at 2:10 on a Tuesday morning, while I was counting frozen pork shoulders.
I knew it was the hospital before I looked, because nobody else ever called me that late.
"Ms. Sobczak, this is the financial office at Halsted," said a woman who sounded kind and tired.
"The trial committee has approved your sister. Her slot closes Friday at noon."
I put my scanner down on a pallet.
"What's the deposit?"
"Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Your insurer has denied the claim twice."
"I know. I've read both letters."
"If the deposit isn't received by Friday, the slot goes to the next patient on the list."
"Is there a next patient?"
"There always is, Ms. Sobczak."
I thanked her, because my mother raised me to thank people even when they were ruining my life.
Then I walked into the walk-in freezer and stood among the boxes of bacon with the door closed.
Ania was twenty-two.
Her leukemia had come back in August, and the doctors had used the word "months" once, very softly.
I had eleven hundred dollars in checking and a car with a cracked head gasket.
I stayed in there until my eyelashes froze.
At 3:30 I came out, and the whole night crew was standing at the loading dock windows.
Somebody was shouting outside.
I walked over, still holding my scanner, and looked through the glass.
Matthias Reinhardt stood on the dock under the floodlights, in a charcoal overcoat, with his hands in his pockets.
He owned the building, the trucks, and the paycheck in my account.
He was six foot four and built like a loading door, and I had never heard him raise his voice.
The man yelling at him was shorter, tanned, with white hair combed back like a news anchor.
"Dieter," somebody whispered. "The uncle."
"Your grandmother is eighty-one," Dieter said, loud enough for the whole shift to hear.
"She told me herself. Her vote goes to a married man with a child on the way."
"I know what she said," Matthias said.
"You have twelve weeks. You've never had a girlfriend longer than a quarter."
"That's none of your business."
"It's every worker's business. Nineteen hundred jobs, standing on a bachelor."
Dieter smiled and spread his hands for the audience at the windows.
"Take my offer, nephew. Lakeline pays a premium and everybody keeps a paycheck."
"Or find a wife by January, and a baby to put in her."
He walked to a black car and left.
Matthias stayed under the lights.
He didn't look angry.
He looked like a man who had just been told what a thing cost and had already counted the money.
Then he looked up at the windows, at forty people pretending they hadn't watched.
I stepped back too late.
His eyes landed on mine for one second, and then he went inside.
The crew started whispering.
"Poor guy."
"Poor guy? He's worth four billion dollars."
"His uncle's a snake."
"Gerhard would never have said that to him."
I went back to my pork shoulders and counted the same row three times.
Four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
A wife by January.
A child on the way.
At 4:40 I put my scanner on the charger and took the freight elevator to the fifth floor, where I had never once been invited.
The lights were on in the corner office.
His assistant's desk was empty.
I knocked on the open door because it was the polite thing to do.
Matthias was at the window with his coat off, looking at the dock.
"Mr. Reinhardt."
"Yes." He didn't turn around. "You're the night clerk who saw that."
"I'm Hanna Sobczak. I'm one of forty people who saw that."
"What do you want, Ms. Sobczak?"
"I need four hundred and eighty thousand dollars by Friday at noon."
That turned him around.
He looked at me, at my grey fleece and my steel-toed boots and the scanner strap still around my wrist.
"If this is a request for an advance," he said, "the answer goes through HR."
"It's not an advance."
I took a breath that hurt.
"My sister has leukemia. A trial in Chicago will take her, and it costs that much to start."
"I'm sorry."
"You need a wife by January and a baby on the way."
His face went very still.
"I'll be the wife," I said. "I'll have the baby."
Nobody spoke for a long moment.
The building hummed under our feet, nineteen hundred jobs' worth of compressors.
Matthias crossed the office and stopped an arm's length from me.
Up close he smelled like cold air and cedar, and he had a small pale scar peeking out above his shirt collar.
"Sit down," he said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Then stand." He opened a drawer and took out a thick folder. "I have three terms. You won't like any of them."
"Try me."
"Marry me Saturday. Have my baby by winter."
He set the folder on the desk between us.
"And never touch me."
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