On two counts, he needed Patricia. | Expecting Ty's Baby @empibaryeh #Excerpt #Teaser #AAromance

Hello there and thanks for visiting. I'm sharing another excerpt from Chapter one of Expecting Ty's Baby. This is Chapter 1, Part 3, which follows from last week's post. If you missed you my first two excerpts, you might want to read them before embarking on part 3.

Chapter 1: Part 1

Chapter 1: Part 2

EXPECTING TY'S BABY © by Empi Baryeh 2019

(Chapter 1: Part 3)

It took thirty minutes of walking in circles and passing the same neighborhood shop three times before Ty Webber admitted it.

He was lost.

Gazing reflectively at the somewhat familiar surroundings, he took in a row of neem trees overhanging the white walls of a gated property and the roadside mechanic up ahead. He had to be in the right neighborhood. However, many streets around him were unmarked as was typical with non-major roads in the city—something he’d observed on his first visit to Ghana three months ago—and there were just so many landmarks a person could memorize.

Bringing his mind back to his predicament, he contemplated his options, the most logical being to catch a taxi back to his hotel. However, he was eager to see Patricia. It should have worried him just how much he wanted to see her, because it sure as hell wasn’t about the things they needed to do as best man and maid of honor of their best friends’ wedding.

No. There was just something about Patricia, something which evoked thoughts of her at the most inopportune times. Like a couple of weeks ago during dinner with a very beautiful woman, all he’d been able to think about was how his date approached the food with passionless indifference, as though eating were a mere formality. He’d only been half listening to her, while the other half of his mind had reminisced about dinners with Patricia—how she’d close her eyes and moan whenever she tasted something she particularly liked, how he’d thought they sounded erotic until he’d made love with her, and she’d moaned and whimpered in his ears, and he’d—

Damn. There he went again thinking about her when he needed to make a decision—find her or return. He thought about the best man’s to-do list in his jeans pocket: a pretty standard list, and having been best man three times already, he knew the drill. However, this being only his second visit to Ghana, he would need help finding his way around. So, on two counts, he needed Patricia.

Five minutes later, he’d retraced his steps back to the junction where he’d dropped from the communal taxi he’d picked up in front of the hotel. At a few minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon, temperatures were cooler than they’d been a few hours back. The Harmattan season prevailing in early-January had cast the atmosphere in a dry, dusty haze.

Despite the reduced humidity compared to what it had been on his first visit, he’d worked up a light sheen of perspiration from the short walk. However, having escaped from a harsh winter in New York, he wasn’t complaining. He found a shade in the shadow cast by a kiosk marked “Lotto.”

“Good afternoon,” he said to the young man inside.

It was another thing he’d noticed on his last trip. People greeted as they passed each other on the street. The friendliness strangers showed one another had staggered him. Though he’d only had two weeks to spare on his last visit, the experience had been intensely spiritual; one that had deepened his desire for a greater connection to Africa—his roots. He’d left knowing he’d return.

So, when Thane had called and asked him to be best man at his wedding, Ty hadn’t needed any convincing.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the young man answered, an eager gleam lighting in his eyes. “You want to stake some lotto?”

Ty chuckled. “Oh no, thank you.”

As a financial consultant, his job was to understand how money worked. He spent hours daily, advising clients on where to invest, whether a potential venture would be worthwhile, and a whole array of other financial issues. The outcome of lottery was just too random for him to put any stock in it.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t believe in luck or chances. Meeting Patricia had been purely accidental. A little over three months ago, he’d been contracted by Black & Black, a US advertising agency, in a merger with one of Ghana’s top agencies, Media Image Advertising—or MIA as it was generally called. Having spent two years in Britain obtaining an ACCA, the equivalent of a CPA in the British-based system, he was in a better position than most of his American counterparts to audit accounts on behalf of clients back home.

He’d been in one of a series of discussions with Thane, who at the time had been the International Account Director for Black & Black, on whose recommendation Ty had been hired. The meeting had been interrupted when Thane was called to an emergency conference call with a client. Normally, Ty would have remained in the boardroom and continued working on his own or used the break to check the latest headlines on CNN online. Yet something had drawn him out, beckoned him to get some fresh air.

I hope you enjoyed the read. Leave me a comment. 

Read Chapter 1, Part 4!

mP