by Sian Ceinwen
The Baby
Sian Ceinwen
Copyright © 2020 by Sian Ceinwen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ISBN: 978-0-6488400-5-3 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-0-6488400-7-7 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-6488400-9-1 (Hardcover)
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Front cover image by Mark Reid at authorpackages.com.
Book design by Lorna Reid at authorpackages.com.
Contents
Preface
1. LEVEL 1.5 – First Class, Baby
2. LEVEL 1.6 – A Challenge Has Presented Itself
3. LEVEL 1.6 – Pool Sharks
4. LEVEL 1.6 – Sexual Healing
5. LEVEL 2 – The Morning After
6. LEVEL 5.1 – A Happy Event
7. LEVEL 6 – Decisions
8. LEVEL 7.1 – Sleep with A Rock Star
9. LEVEL 8.5 – A Proposal
10. LEVEL 10.5 – Hearts Beat
11. LEVEL 11.6 – Brass Tacks
12. LEVEL 11.6 – The Perfect Match
13. LEVEL 12.6 – The Best Laid Plans
14. LEVEL 15.5 – Differing Opinions
15. LEVEL 15.6 – Revelations
16. LEVEL 16 – Discovery
17. LEVEL 16 – Negotiations
18. LEVEL 16.1 – Pressure
19. LEVEL 16.6 – Ti amo
20. LEVEL 17 – Classy, Like Ariana
21. LEVEL 17.1 – Goldilocks and the Three Apartments
22. LEVEL 17.6 – Feisty McGee
23. LEVEL 18 – Sleep Tight
24. LEVEL 18 – The Second Wedding
25. LEVEL 19.1 – Conversations
26. LEVEL 20.4 – Boy or Girl?
27. LEVEL 21.2 – Silenzio
28. LEVEL 23.4 – Happy Birthday to You
29. LEVEL 23.4 – A Balloon Says A Thousand Words
30. LEVEL 23.5 – Another Day, Another Doctor
31. LEVEL 23.6 – Happy Birthday Part Deux
32. LEVEL 24.3 – Nobody Looks Good in A Tent
33. LEVEL 25.2 – Fashion Distraction
34. LEVEL 26.5 – The Good Doctor
35. LEVEL 29.5 – My Kung Fu Is Stronger
36. LEVEL 29.6 – The Gift
37. LEVEL 34.6 – Family Dinner
38. LEVEL 35.5 – Cruise Control Bingo
39. LEVEL 40.1 – Srećan Trideset Prvi Rođendan, Gabrijele
Epilogue
Italian To English Dictionary
Sneak Peek For The Stalker - Available October 23rd 2021
Sneak Peek For Sebastian’s Baby - Available November 18th 2021
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This book was going to be dedicated to Daena, but then she gave me Sebastian. So, I don’t have to do that anymore. This book is therefore dedicated to me for creating the sexiest character in the history of characters. Sorry not sorry, Daena.
However, it’s really dedicated to Kit and Damien, who are the inspiration for Lita. You show me that differences should be celebrated. Thank you for lending your lived experiences and for giving up your spoons to assist me when I needed it.
Preface
This book has some phrases in Italian. I have included an Italian to English dictionary at the end for the relevant phrases.
1
LEVEL 1.5 – First Class, Baby
On a 28-day cycle, at the end of this week, you will ovulate, and it will mark your third week of pregnancy.
Lita was looking through the packing list she had on her phone, making sure she had absolutely everything she needed for her trip to Chicago. It was still utterly surreal that she was going to meet her favorite band, Cruise Control.
The four weeks since she’d received the call to tell her she’d won the competition on their website had flown by. Her best friend, Becky, was coming to Chicago with her, and they’d be flying out from Tacoma International Airport today.
Lita had been shocked when she’d found out they were booked on a first-class flight to Chicago; she’d been expecting to be flown economy. Apparently, they were being given the VIP treatment, as they’d also been booked into a five-star hotel in the city.
She didn’t know if she was ready for this. Lita had been on the Cruise Control subreddit and had gotten feedback from other fans who had met the band. Apparently, they were nice to their fans in person, but Lita was still mildly concerned they would turn out to be massive assholes.
Lita had been a fan of the band for years now. She’d come across them on Spotify shortly after Cards Have Been Dealt had been released, and they had hooked her from the first song. Every lyric, every musical note, every beat on the drums felt as though it had purpose and meaning. Their music had become the soundtrack to her life, and Heart Wide Open had gotten her through a pretty terrible break up last year after she’d found out her ex had been cheating on her.
It had been interesting to follow the band’s journey over the last year; they’d been through some pretty rough stuff. Lita had been suspicious of the rumors that the recently wed Mrs. Heather Fletcher had been cheating on her then-fiancé, Harrison Fletcher, with the band’s lead guitarist, Sebastian Fox. Then there really was a cheating scandal when Harrison had been caught in bed with another woman.
That had completely and utterly shocked the fans. Everyone was split into camps, Team Harrison, Team Sebastian, and Team They’re Both Scumbags. Team Harrison thought he’d cheated because Heather had been cheating on him with Sebastian. Team Sebastian thought he was a god who could do no wrong and was jealous of Heather for getting to be with him. Lita had landed in the last camp.
She couldn’t stand cheating, and she’d felt awful after it was revealed that Harrison and the woman he’d cheated with had both been drugged. They’d done an interview back in April to give the whole world the truth. It had rocked the fandom to its core, and they were all still talking about it pretty regularly almost three months later.
There was a knock at the door, and when Lita went over to open it, she found her best friend Becky standing on the other side with a massive smile on her face.
“Bitch, we’re going to meet Cruise Control tomorrow!” Becky announced.
“I know; I can’t believe it.” Lita stepped aside and held the door open for Becky to walk through. “It’s so insane.”
Becky walked into the room, wheeling her suitcase and carry-on next to her. “What do you think the chances are that Gabriel will leave Ariana for me?”
“About as good as my chances are that Hayden will give me a second look,” Lita laughed.
“Well, you know, there’s always Sebastian…” she trailed off, looking mischievously at Lita.
Becky knew Lita had very little time for Sebastian Fox. From the stories they’d heard, the man was a tragic womanizer. He slept with pretty much every woman who crossed his path, and seemed to get away with it, all because he was mildly attractive.
“I know you want me to rant about him, but I refuse to take the bait, madam.” Lita tossed her hair and flipped Becky the bird.
“Now that we’re going to meet them, I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t know th
at I would turn him down. I mean, he is probably the sexiest one of them all.” Becky looked thoughtful.
“Not even close. Hayden is a thousand times sexier,” Lita disagreed.
“Are you sure you’re not letting your opinion of him as a person prevent you from being objective about this?” Becky raised an eyebrow at her.
Lita gave it some thought. If she saw all four men in a lineup with no knowledge of any of their personalities and had no prior conceptions about what they might be like, which band member would she pick out as the hottest?
“Okay, Sebastian is sexier than sin; that is the truth,” she laughed. “But I still don’t think he’s necessarily the hottest. I think personality counts for so much more than just looks.”
“I like how we’re here talking about them as though either of us stands a chance with any of them anyway,” Becky said.
“I wonder what we get to do on our ‘night out’?” Lita said. “Stephanie wasn’t clear on the details, just that we’d be meeting the band in the hotel lobby at seven tomorrow night.”
“Maybe we get to go to a club with them or something,” Becky offered. “Ooh, what if we get to go to one of their houses?”
“Surely not!”
Not long after, a limousine arrived to take them to the airport. Lita had been told they’d be picked up by a car service, but she’d been expecting some kind of taxi, not a limo. This lifestyle must be crazy to experience day in and day out. The driver put their luggage in the trunk, and they got into the fancy car.
“Can you even believe this, dude?” Lita asked Becky.
“Oh, you’re impressed by this?” Becky tilted her nose in the air. “I ride around in cars like this all the time.”
Lita laughed at her friend. “Bitch, you drive a Corolla. You’re the second least fancy person I know.”
“Who’s first?” Becky looked genuinely curious, then laughed as Lita pointed to herself.
Once at the airport, because they were being flown first-class, they were afforded the privilege of skipping the long queue to check-in and drop off their bags. Again, they found there was a priority queue for making their way through security.
“I could get used to this,” Becky laughed.
“Me too. How do we go back to being plebs after living the high life?” Lita grinned.
Once they were through security, they headed to the airline’s first-class lounge. After showing their boarding passes, they were granted admission and headed through to a quiet area with plush sofa seating. There was also another area with tables for those who wanted to eat from the complimentary buffet.
Next to the buffet was a barista preparing coffees at the request of any passengers who asked him for one. It was all so elegant—a world away from Lita’s usual airport experiences when she traveled.
“Whoa,” she said quietly to Becky.
“So, this is how the other half lives, I guess,” Becky replied.
“Yup, no crying babies, no pushing and shoving—heck, there’s even plenty of places to charge your devices,” Lita said, noting that nearly every table had USB ports for plugging chargers into and quite a few had power outlets as well.
They had some lunch from the buffet. Both women had taken today off work so they could catch the afternoon flight to Chicago. They would probably get food on the plane as well, but both of them were hungry. Eventually, a boarding call for their flight came over the speakers.
“Well, time to go experience the best four hours of our lives, I guess,” Becky announced.
“I don’t think so, we’re going to meet Cruise Control tomorrow,” Lita laughed. “Or had you forgotten?”
“Actually, between all of this craziness here, I kind of had.” Becky laughed as well.
They made their way to the gate for their flight and once again got priority boarding onto the plane. Once they were seated in seats 4A and 4B, they strapped themselves in. Each seat was its own little pod compartment.
A screen was still built into the back of the seat in front. However, they each had their own storage area, with a USB port, noise-canceling headphones, and a remote control allowing them to manage everything, from the air conditioning for their area to the massage function of the seat, and about a million things in between. From the look of the diagrams on the remote, the seats laid flat as well.
“Becky, there’s a massage function,” Lita said as she pressed the button and enjoyed the feature.
“This is insane,” Becky said for what felt like the fiftieth time.
“Waiting for your flight to take off is far more enjoyable when your seat massages you, I’ve decided,” Lita grinned at Becky.
“Agreed. I don’t know why every seat in the world doesn’t massage you!”
Once the plane had reached altitude, and the fasten seatbelts sign was switched off, Lita pressed a button for her chair, allowing her to lay completely flat. She started watching a movie, then returned to a seated position as the flight attendant came by to ask them what they wanted to eat.
“Dude, we get real cutlery!” Becky whispered to her, and Lita laughed.
The food was restaurant quality, they were given linen napkins, and the champagne they’d been offered was served to them in glass flutes. It was an experience like nothing Lita had ever been exposed to before. By the time they’d touched down in Chicago, Lita felt so relaxed; it was as though she’d spent the last four hours in some kind of fancy day spa, rather than on an airplane.
Once they’d deboarded and retrieved their luggage from the baggage carousel, they found someone with a sign saying ‘LITA CICCONE,’ and he took them to a limousine with blacked-out windows, in which he drove them to their hotel in the center of the city. They went inside, and even the lobby was probably the fanciest place Lita had ever been in her life.
She and Becky made their way over to the check-in desk, and Lita said, “Hi, we’ve got a reservation for Lita Ciccone.”
“Lovely,” the hotel staff member said with a smile. “My name is Phoebe; let me look that up for you.”
She tapped on the keyboard in front of her and, after a few seconds, grinned at Lita.
“Here we go…the booking for your suite has been paid for in advance, I see. We also have a credit card on file for any charges you make in the hotel. There’s a note saying you’re welcome to make use of any of the facilities in the building, and they will all be covered.”
Lita’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely, Miss Ciccone,” she replied, still smiling. “Were you not expecting that?”
“Not even close,” Lita laughed. “We won a competition to meet Cruise Control!”
This information was enough for Phoebe to drop her professional demeanor. “Are you serious?”
Lita laughed at the way Phoebe had repeated her question. “I know, right! I couldn’t believe it when I got the call. I’ve been a fan for ages; I can’t wait to meet them.”
“I’m so jealous, that’s so cool!” Phoebe exclaimed, then must have realized what she was doing, because she quickly handed Lita a small cardboard folder and said, “Here are your room keys. You’re in room seventeen-eleven. I hope you enjoy meeting the band.”
“Thanks, me too,” Lita smiled at her as she took the keys to the room.
They got into the elevator, and Lita pressed the button for the seventeenth floor, but nothing happened. Confused, she tried again before realizing she needed to swipe the key card to get up to their level.
“Goddamn fancy as fuck hotels,” Becky laughed.
When they got to their room, Lita swiped the card to get into the room and gasped. “This isn’t a hotel room; it’s an apartment.”
“Holy shit.” Becky followed her inside.
Lita had been expecting a regular hotel room, but what she’d entered was a small living area. Over to their right were two doors, and, when they opened them, they discovered two bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom attached to it.
Both ro
oms had a sweeping view of Chicago, and Lita chose the one which had two walls of windows so she could see two different aspects of the city. Through one, she could see Lake Michigan stretched out in front of her, and the other showed her downtown Chicago, the lights just now starting to come on in some buildings.
“Let’s drink some of those little bottles of alcohol,” Becky said with a grin as she walked into Lita’s room.
“Should we?” Lita asked her as she raised an eyebrow at her. “Or should we go down to some fancy-ass hotel restaurant and order cocktails all night?”
“Ooh, I like your idea better!”
They made their way downstairs and found a steakhouse restaurant where Lita desperately wanted to order a Kobe beef steak for her main course but refrained and got a filet mignon instead. She didn’t know who was paying, but she was reasonably sure they hadn’t intended for her to go spending hundreds of dollars on a main course for herself.
Their first round of cocktails arrived while they were waiting for their food, and Lita lifted her glass to Becky. “To the best weekend of our lives, where we get to pretend we’re fancy-ass celebrities!”
“Don’t forget we’ll actually be meeting some fancy-ass celebrities, tomorrow,” Becky grinned.
“Oh my god, we’re going to meet Cruise Control!” Lita said in response to her comment.
