Pregnant and Spoiled by the Billionaire – Episode 12
Amelia left the campus clinic with one hand pressed over the folded report in her bag. Students hurried past her beneath the afternoon sun, complaining about deadlines and weekend plans, while she struggled to understand how the world could continue so normally. Eight weeks pregnant. Two words had divided her life into everything before Leo Preston and everything that would come after him.
She found an empty bench and forced herself to breathe. Fear offered a dozen reasons to keep the truth hidden: Leo’s contempt that morning, the black card, and the humiliating certainty that he believed she had sold herself to him. Yet the baby was his as surely as it was hers, and Amelia refused to build her child’s future on a secret.
Her phone showed Leo’s number exactly where she had saved it after their interview. She hovered over the call button but could not press it. News this important should not be reduced to a voicemail or a conversation he could end with one cold sentence. Whether he accepted the child or rejected them both, Amelia needed to see his face when she told him.
Across the city, Leo sat through a financial briefing without hearing half of it. Amelia had been gone for weeks, but the memory of her wounded expression remained sharper than every figure on the screen. He had told himself she was a calculated stranger, yet nothing about the explanation satisfied the man who had watched her risk everything to escape Jason Wallis.
His private banker placed a routine account statement on the table. “There was one charge on the card you authorized,” he said. “Three thousand dollars for university housing. The remaining balance has not been touched.” Leo looked up so abruptly that the banker stopped speaking.
“Three thousand?” Leo repeated. Not three million. Three grand. Amelia’s nervous voice returned with perfect clarity, followed by her promise to repay him and her insistence that the money was for dorm fees. He had heard what suspicion expected to hear, then punished her for a demand she had never made.
Shame settled heavily in his chest. A gold digger would have emptied the card or tested its limits; Amelia had taken the exact amount she named and not a dollar more. He remembered the cheap canvas bag, the declined dignity in her eyes, and the fury with which she said she would pay him back. Every detail he had ignored now condemned him.
Leo ended the meeting and called her. The first attempt rang unanswered. So did the second. On the third, voicemail received an apology he could not bring himself to leave in a recording. He disconnected and ordered his assistant to clear the rest of his afternoon.
“Find out where Amelia Gates is,” he said. The command sounded like business, but urgency stripped it of his usual calm. His assistant hesitated only long enough to confirm her university, then began making calls. Leo grabbed his jacket, unwilling to sit behind a desk while someone else repaired the damage he had caused.
Amelia reached Preston Group before he could leave. The marble lobby looked exactly as it had during her eight visits, but she no longer carried a reporter’s notebook or the fearless certainty that persistence would win. This time, she carried a medical report and a truth capable of changing the Preston family forever.
The receptionist recognized her and brightened before noticing Amelia’s pale face. “Ms. Gates, are you all right?” she asked. Amelia managed a weak smile. “I need to see Mr. Preston. It’s personal, and it’s urgent.”
Security no longer treated her as an inconvenience. Leo had placed her name on a private access list after their interview, an order Amelia knew nothing about. The receptionist called upstairs, then directed her toward the executive elevator without making her plead for five minutes.
As the elevator climbed, Amelia rehearsed the sentence. I’m pregnant. The baby is yours. I don’t want your money. Each version sounded either accusing or desperate, and none expressed the chaos inside her. When the doors opened, her courage felt as fragile as the paper in her bag.
Leo stepped out of his office at the same moment, car keys in hand. He stopped when he saw her. For several heartbeats, neither moved, separated by the corridor where their flirtation had begun and by every cruel word spoken since.
Amelia noticed the surprise in his eyes, followed by something that looked dangerously close to relief. Leo saw the shadows beneath hers and the way one hand protected the bag at her side. He had imagined finding her on campus; he had not expected her to walk willingly back into the place where he held every advantage.
“Amelia.” Her first name emerged without the distance of Ms. Gates. He approached carefully, as though any sudden movement might send her away. “I was coming to find you.”
“Why?” she asked. The question was quieter than anger and far harder to answer. Leo could have explained the bank statement, his mistake, and the regret that had followed him for weeks, but the guarded set of her shoulders made excuses feel inadequate.
“Because I was wrong.” He said it without qualification. “You asked me for three thousand dollars, and I heard three million. You used the card for your dorm and nothing else. I should have listened before I judged you.”
The apology struck Amelia at the worst possible moment. Part of the wall she had built against him cracked, exposing all the feelings she had tried to bury. She wanted to believe him, but the report in her bag made forgiveness more complicated than either of them understood.
“I came because I have something to tell you,” she said. Leo opened his office door and asked her to come inside, but Amelia remained rooted in the corridor. Her fingers closed around the medical report as she met his eyes. “Something happened after that night, Leo—and neither of our lives is going to stay the same.”
