BWWM Interracial Romance 8: Mutual Attraction by Elena Brown

Chapter One
    Barbara Woodward tapped the keyboard shortcut to undo her last action, and then leaned back to stare at the collection of lines and curves that were supposed to be a rendering of the penthouse balcony on the thirty floor live/work building she and her team had been working on for months. Her cubicle was lined with hand drawn sketches of how she’d originally conceptualized her part of the design, but try as she might, she just couldn’t translate those rough outlines to a final design that she knew would meet the rigorous standards she’d been hired to meet. AJ Cline and Associates was one of the top architectural firms in the city, and she’d had to fight tooth and nail to even get an interview, let alone convince the hiring panel to give her a job that she knew she well deserved.
    That, unfortunately, was the kind of thing she was used to dealing with. Barbara had been fortunate enough to have been raised by a mother who had planned for her future by saving enough to send her to a quality university, but her education and excellent references only went so far to make up for her gender and skin color. Being a woman in a male dominated industry was tough enough, but on top of that she was also the only African American person on staff at her firm. It wouldn’t be quite fair to her coworkers to say that she was held to a distinctly different standard, but there was no denying that the white boys club of the architecture world made her feel like she had something to prove every time she walked into the office and sat down to work.
    The gentle buzz of Barbara’s phone vibrating in her purse shook her from her thoughts. She reached into the bag to retrieve it, and frowned at the name on the screen. Rather than answer it, she clicked a button on the side of the phone to silence its insistent buzzing, letting the call go to voicemail.
    There was nothing Neil could possibly have to say that would make her feel better about tackling the mountain of work in front of her. Even though he was most likely calling to apologize for their bitter argument from the night before, Barbara didn’t want to hear it. What she wanted to do was to get home before midnight, and at this rate, she wasn’t even sure if that was a realistic possibility. Taking time out of her day to deal with Neil would do nothing to help that, and so she turned her phone off completely, hoping that Neil wouldn’t resort to calling her work line.
    Barbara set her mind back to her design task and wished desperately that she could make herself a cup of coffee. It just didn’t seem fair that she’d been impossibly tired for the last three months since discovering she was pregnant, while at the same time having to cut caffeine from her diet. On top of that was the cruel joke that she’d had a terrible appetite for most of that time, yet her already curvy body was now starting to show a little belly that made it uncomfortable to lean too far forward while wearing her favorite jeans.
    At least the nausea and exhaustion had started to wear off over the last few weeks, thought Barbara as she contemplated another night of eating delivery food at her desk. With all the long hours she’d been putting in, it had been difficult to keep others from noticing how run down she’d felt throughout her first trimester. The last thing she wanted was for her boss to learn of her pregnancy before this project was complete, and now that the first swell of her belly was beginning to show as a visible bump, that was going to become a real issue.
    Barbara cursed inwardly and tried to focus on the work in front of her. A particularly difficult section of the curved wall of windows had been holding her up all week, and she now regretted showing the initial concept sketches to her boss. Designing something that would be both structurally sound and possible to shape from glass was something she knew was possible, yet figuring out a way to bring it to reality seemed so far out