The Baby Pact (Babies and Billions #5) - Holly Rayner

Chapter 1

Rhea

Rhea Wilson crunched through the snow that coated the path leading up to Harris Hall. At the doorway, she stomped her feet a few times, ridding them of as much snow as possible before going inside.

She needn’t have bothered. The entryway of the dorm was soaking wet, puddles of water everywhere. Rhea sidestepped the biggest ones as she made her way to the stairs, then jogged up to the third floor. She pulled out the lanyard that hung around her neck from inside her coat, unlocked the door to her room, and let herself in.

Her roommate, Kaylie, was out, thank goodness—probably out with her boyfriend. She and Kaylie were friends, but tonight Rhea definitely didn’t want the company of someone who was so happily in love. Not after the date she’d just been on.

I’m cursed.

She toed off her shoes, tossed her coat over the back of her desk chair, and flopped down on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling. This had not been the way she was hoping to end this night. She had done her best to keep her expectations low—it wasn’t the first bad date she’d been burned by this term—but somehow, they never failed to surprise her.

With a sigh, she sat up and gathered her strawberry blond hair behind her head. She had spent such a long time styling it for tonight, first straightening her natural frizzy curls, then putting them back in one by one with a curling iron so that they would be soft and defined. Now, she wound her hair up into a messy bun on top of her head.

She should never have wasted her time. She should have expected that things would go the way they had.

I just need to stop letting people set me up! I don’t know why I keep falling into that trap!

Today’s setup had been courtesy of her project partner in Latin class, who had gathered from their few casual conversations that Rhea was single. She supposed she had gotten a bit swept up in all the excitement as her partner had described the guy she knew and how perfect he would be for Rhea.

It was so tempting to let herself believe that there was someone perfect for her out there!

She grabbed her makeup remover and went to work on her face. Rhea didn’t usually favor heavy makeup, but a night out on a date had felt like the right occasion to get a bit experimental. She’d wanted to play with her look a little bit, to try something different, and she had been happy with the results. But now she was eager to get back to being herself.

I wonder how Zach’s date went? she thought.

She smiled wryly, shaking her head. He was probably still on his date. She was home early, after all. They had agreed to touch base in the morning and share the details with one another, but now that Rhea’s evening had been cut short, she was eager to get down to the debrief.

I’ll text him, she decided. Maybe he won’t be home too late and we can get together and talk tonight.

It was worth a shot.

She reached for the purse she had carried all night. Ordinarily, she would have just stuffed the things she needed into the pockets of her jeans, but the pants she had chosen tonight were much more fitted than her usual pair—again, in an effort to impress her date.

She pulled out her phone and wrote a quick text to Zach.

“How was your evening?”

Before she could hit send, however, her phone flashed with an incoming text.

“I sure hope your date was better than mine!”

Rhea couldn’t help laughing aloud. I was just about to text you!

“You read my mind, I guess. Home already?”

“Yup.”

She set the phone down and stripped off the blouse she had been wearing, exchanging it for a cotton tank top and a hoodie. When she picked the phone up again, Zach had replied.

“Want to meet up and debrief? I could use someone to talk to.”

Rhea grinned. This was exactly what she wanted—a way to end the night on a high note, as opposed to sitting around and stewing about everything that hadn’t lived up to her expectations.

“Definitely,” she texted back. “Hill’s?”

“Meet you there in 20.”

She sprang up from the bed, totally reinvigorated, and checked herself briefly in the mirror. Her hair was a bit messy, but nothing that would make her embarrassed to be seen in public, and no streaks of makeup remained on her face. She debated