Bought For A Baby, Kept For A Lifetime-Chapter 194: Being A Husband

"Mr Sterling?" Stella Langton was one of the executive members present at the meeting, she called quietly to Andrew when everyone had waited for him to react for a long time.

"Felix has finished his presentation, do you have any thoughts?"

Andrew’s attention snapped back to the present. His gaze focused and he realized he’d missed a big chunk of the meeting, but that didn’t mean he was entirely clueless as to what was being discussed even at the time he wasn’t paying attention. The particular strategy being discussed was a foolproof method that was guaranteed to triple the company’s sales for the coming year, something he’d personally discussed with some of his acquaintances at the worldwide business conference that took place in Switzerland.

"Felix, I think your proposals are rather safe." Andrew suddenly made this comment in fluent German.

Many of the executives exchanged glances of bewilderment.

Safe?

Felix Keller was Switzerland’s greatest genius when it came to market analysis, his theories had built up a broken company into a multi billion dollar empire.

His strategies have been described so many times to be world changing and the new age of marketing, not safe.

"What do you mean Mr Sterling?" Felix Keller who had been the one to bring forth this year’s greatest strategy in the business market didn’t look offended by Andrew’s comment, instead he looked intrigued.

A man with a knowledgeable mind knew that feeling offended by outside criticism was the perfect formula for failure, hence he’d long forgotten what it felt like to feel bad just because someone else didn’t agree with his work.

It was one of the things Andrew liked about the young man, which was why they’d been working well together for a long time.

"Your analysis is indeed clever, but by my estimate, yields will at most bring a twenty to thirty percent growth by the end of this year."

Thirty percent?

The executives looked at each other with pleasant surprise.

Many of Felix’s analyses usually brought at least a ten percent growth, twenty to thirty percent was already very good, especially because of the fact that the year was slowly coming to an end which was around the time growth usually remained stagnant.

"But Mr Sterling, twenty to thirty percent is far from decent don’t you think?" Felix asked.

Many companies would die happily if they manged to gain a five percent growth in the span of a few months. Especially big companies that had already reached great heights, scaling even higher usually became difficult as time passed by.

Andrew merely smiled calmly, "Twenty to thirty percent is decent, but if you know me, you would know I don’t settle for decent. I’m not just seeking growth Felix, I’m seeking to redefine the industry at large."

"Then what do you propose?"

It was no surprise Sterling Enterprises had made such a dramatic growth in the past years, it wasn’t because of any other thing but this man making the right decisions for the company.

Felix looked on with a light shining in his eyes as Andrew picked up a tablet in front of him, with a flick of his wrist a new schematic appeared on the main screen within the meeting room. A complex web of interconnected nodes appeared on the screen. Though many of the executives didn’t understand the complex schematic they were currently seeing, Felix did, his eyes slowly lit up as he studied the whole plan in just a few minutes.

This was...

This wasn’t just an analysis, it was a revolutionary yet detailed plan that could skyrocket Sterling Enterprises to far more greater heights.

Felix could only turn a flabbergasted gaze in Andrew’s direction, the latter merely leaned back with a smirk playing on his lips,

"Do you understand my vision now?"

Murmurs of excitement began to radiate across the meeting room.

Several minutes later, after Felix excitedly discussed Andrew’s personally made plan with a lot of energy like a kid asked to talk about his favorite candy, the meeting finally came to an end.

Many of the executives stayed back despite the meeting being wrapped up, after work had been discussed, many began to bring up their personal lives.

"My wife is very close to her due date, it’s not an easy job having a pregnant wife. She demands so much on a daily basis that most times I’d rather go home very late after she must have gone to sleep, but guess what...this woman still wakes up at two AM just to make me get up and grab her snacks which she very conveniently kept in the other room." One of the younger members was discussing with so much frustration in his voice.

Usually at this point, Andrew would have left the meeting room, something he usually did immediately every meeting was concluded. Even if many stayed back to catch up, their personal lives weren’t something he was interested in, but for some reason, everyone noticed he lingered today. As the man continued with his story, someone tapped him making him stop talking, all their eyes settled on Andrew who seemed to be listening to the conversation with a straight face.

When his surroundings fell silent, only then did Andrew seem to notice that they’d stopped talking.

He noticed how they had their eyes full of surprise staring in his direction but their shock wasn’t what he cared about, what he cared about was hearing what this particular man was saying because it just so happened that his own wife was pregnant as well.

Why was it that she never made any demands from him?

Instead of reacting to their shock, Andrew shot a question specifically at the man talking about his wife. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Are all pregnant wives like that with their husbands?"

His question went on to further shock the people present in the room.

The man who had suddenly been questioned didn’t know exactly how to reply to this person who had never personally spoken to him before, so he stuttered a bit as he started talking,

"Y...yes, all wives are like that."

Andrew seemed thoughtful for a while before saying again,

"Hmm, tell me more."

The man was even more taken aback, he looked to some of the others for help and they urged him to continue talking.

"Women when pregnant... tend to become more sensitive, anything could make them cry, they become more needy and clingy but then sometimes they don’t want their husbands anywhere around them at all, they like to keep their distance and come back to the man whenever they feel like it. They can’t be made to do difficult work, so the husband has to take the reigns, a man’s responsibility is to make sure his wife is not only comfortable but well cared for, but that can become a bit troublesome sometimes, the wife’s emotions can get overwhelming for a man, and her cravings are so unreasonable. It gets tiring sometimes."

Andrew pondered over the man’s words for a while.

Was he doing too little for his wife?

He didn’t know anything about marriage, heck he didn’t know what a man’s responsibilities were supposed to be in a marriage.

It seemed there were a lot of things he needed to study on.

As this topic of conversation seemed to have opened, many men present in the room began to talk about their own personal experiences since Andrew didn’t seem to mind, in fact seemed interested in that particular topic.

"I agree, no one talks about how frustrating it gets for the man. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was very excited at the beginning but as the months went on, I wished there was somewhere I could hide away. We had a lot of household staff, but she always clung to me. Hubby, I want that special soup you made me on our honeymoon. Hubby, I want that special barbeque your Mom made at that backyard party. Can someone tell me how I’m supposed to get my late mom’s barbeque recipe for a relentless pregnant woman that can either get what she wants or cry about it?" A man narrated, his voice filled with reminiscence and a bit of frustration at the same time.

Everyone laughed at his own experience and another one went on to talk about his specific experience.

"The first few months of pregnancy, I actually thought my wife was an angel, but when we passed the six months mark, I really couldn’t wait for the baby to be out already. It was my fault if she could not bend down well to pick something up from the floor, it was still my fault if she eats and doesn’t like the taste of it, it’s my fault if hormones make her emotional and it’s still my fault if the baby kicks too aggressively."

Listening to all these things didn’t make him feel repulsed by the idea. In the past, hearing talks like these would usually make him want to leave the room, it was a waste of time, but now...it suddenly felt like he had learned how to live again all because of Anne, because she made him want to experience these everyday things in life.

Being a husband now felt like an interesting thing he also wanted to experience.

"Mr Sterling, are you planning to get married anytime soon?"

Someone asked curiously seeing as he seemed quite interested in this particular topic.

Him and marriage couldn’t be associated in everyone’s eyes, however at this moment since he seemed a little bit friendlier than he usually was, all the executives looked in his direction curiously waiting for the answer he would give.