by Sierra Rose
The grin disappeared. “What—no!”
“Deal with it.” He picked up my purse and cocked his head toward the door with a smile. “Shall we?”
I tried to keep my composure, crossing my arms with stubborn hesitation. But after just a few seconds of hearing him hum Come Fly With Me, winking absurdly all the while, I cracked and followed him happily into my new room.
Celebratory sex was in order. It was the best ever. We lay in a heap in the mattress, grinning up at the ceiling and holding hands.
After a moment, I rolled up onto my elbow. “I’m big enough to admit it, you were right about the bed. Well worth the strain.”
He laughed and tugged me closer, running gentle fingers up and down my stomach. “I’ll make sure to keep it worth your while.” A slight frown creased his forehead as he lowered down and planted a kiss on my belly button. “I don’t get it. Where are you keeping this baby?”
“It’s insanely small, Marcus. We won’t be able to see him or her for a long time.”
He bit his lip and seemed to consider this as he continued stroking. “How soon until the baby can hear us?”
My head fell back against the mattress as my mind raced back through the literature from the clinic I’d been reading on the plane. “Some doctors say as early as sixteen weeks. We really need to get one of those baby books, so we know what to expect.”
He nodded seriously, keeping his eyes fixed on my flat stomach. “That’s perfect.”
My eyebrows shot up with a quirky smile. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m hosting a fundraiser gala for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in late March and I want to be sure the baby can hear it. Maybe I should push it back to April just to be sure.”
A huge smile spread across my face, and I pounced on him the next second, wrapping my arms around his neck as I perched on his back like a monkey. “You’re a real sweetheart, you know that, Marcus Taylor? Even if you do snore.”
“Nobody has ever said I snore.”
“It’s why I’m here, darling, to tell you the truth even when no one else will.”
“Is that right?”
Sensing trouble, I tried to crawl down, but his hands shot up, and he held me firmly in place, ignoring my squeals and shrieks of laughter as he got to his feet. I leaned back as far as I dared, hoping to just fall off his back, but he compensated easily, imprisoning me with a smile.
“Miss White, if you’re going to be living in this house, I think it’s time you learn some of the house rules.”
“All right.” I wrapped my legs tighter around his waist and held on for dear life. “Let me have them.”
“Rule number one: there’s no insulting the master of the house. If you find yourself wanting to make a snide comment, I kindly suggest you don’t.”
I buried my face in his neck and giggled. “Understood.”
He started walking us toward the bathroom, and I scrambled up to get higher on his back. “If you find yourself unable to keep such comments to yourself, you must face the consequences with silence and poise.”
“What? What consequences?”
I screamed aloud as he backed us into the shower, turning on a spray of water before it had the chance to heat up. He quickly turned around, using my body as a shield against the icy jets and laughed like a villain as I tried in vain to escape.
“Don’t worry, I heard that you’re immune to the cold! Just think of it as the beach in Washington!”
“Marcus! Come on!” I wriggled around and stretched out my fingers, but just before I could flip the dial to Hot, he took a step away, biting my thigh for good measure. “Hey!” I screamed, breathless with laughter. “You know, cold water is bad for the baby!”
“What?” He spun me around so I was facing him, still wrapped around his waist. “No, it’s not.” He flipped the water to Hot with a grin and stepped us backward into the steam.
I’d like to say that I staunchly refused sex as a form of protest, but what can I say—I’m not that strong. Blame it on the hormones.
Chapter 10
The only genuine problem I had with permanently leaving the apartment in East Hollywood behind was how to tell Amanda. Neither she nor I had really been living there anyway—I’d been spending all my time at the mansion, and she’d already quasi-moved in with Barry—but as long as we both continued paying the rent, it still felt like we hadn’t really said goodbye. That at any moment, we could come back together on the living room floor with a bottle of tequila, a handful of slasher films, and settle in for a night of best friend/roommate fun.
I paced back and forth, biting my lip anxiously as I dialed the phone and listened to it ring.
“Don’t be nervous,” Marcus said soothingly, perching on the edge of the bed. His hair was still damp from our impromptu shower, and he smelled like that delicious sandalwood I loved so much. “It’ll be fine. You’re pregnant now; she has to know this is coming.”
“Don’t tell me not to be nervous,” I said in a hushed voice. “You don’t know anything about it, Marcus. You don’t know anything about us.” My gesticulations grew increasingly wild the longer the phone rang, and before long, he was fighting back a smile. “You just swoop in here one day, with your karaoke skills, and all your money—hey, Amanda!”
There was a pause on the other end.
“What’s wrong? You sound weird.”
She never asked these things as questions. They were certainties. And without fail, they were always right.
“You sound weird—what a stupid thing to say to me,” I countered defensively. I’d have said it anyway, but to be honest, she did sound a little off. Pouncing on the opportunity to deflect, I homed in on whatever fault or weakness I might uncover. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she bristled back. “Grow up, Rebecca.”
It was like clockwork. Whenever the two of us felt sorry about something, we adapted by lashing out with bursts of irrational rage. If a stranger happened to walk by and hear us talking, they’d probably think one of us had just stabbed the other’s puppy. Already, Marcus was staring at me with a look of slight confusion, trying to follow the one-sided dialogue.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously, but I let it slide. “Whatever. I was actually just calling you to say that…well, I was heading to the apartment and—”
“The apartment?” she interrupted. “I’m already there.”
“You are?”
Marcus raised his eyebrows knowingly, and her meaning suddenly clicked.
“Amanda, are you by chance…moving out of the apartment?”
There was a much longer pause, before—
“Gotta go! Bye!”
The phone clicked dead and I hurled it to the bed in a rage. “Oh, that little deceptor! She’s over there right now—moving out! Can you believe that!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Marcus asked cautiously.
“A good thing?” I asked.
He looked at me and then the cell phone twice before nervously clearing his throat. “It’s just…you were about to go and do the same thing, right? So…if she’s already over there, then she can’t be angry with you for moving as well?”
I took a sudden step forward, and he flinched back. But I grabbed him on both sides of the head and planted a huge kiss on his wet hair. “Marcus—you’re a genius!”
He relaxed infinitesimally.
“We’ll go over there at once and head her off!”
Fifteen minutes later, we were pulling into the grimy parking structure behind my old apartment complex. The familiar putrid smell of the dumpster hit me the second I opened the door, and I smiled in anticipation. She would not be sneaking away so easily.
I thundered loudly up the stairs, Marcus following meekly behind, so distracted that I almost ran right into Barry as he crossed paths with us on the second floor, laden down with what looked like bags of shoes.
“Aha!” I cried, pointing a finger.
H
e dropped the bags in surprise and flushed guiltily beneath his glasses, peering behind me at Marcus for support. Marcus shook his head a fraction of an inch but dropped his eyes when he saw me looking.
“I should have known you were behind this!” I exclaimed, jabbing my finger into Barry’s chest. “It was probably your plan all along. You see two girls living in a happy home, in a delightful neighborhood”—a cockroach skittered across the wall, making the boys jump, though I was determined to ignore it—“and what does Barry do? Barry decides to rip it in half!”
“What the hell is going on here!”
Amanda stuck her head over the landing and then flew down the stairs when she saw what was happening. The boys backed discreetly against the wall as the two of us faced off in front of old Mr. Taft’s apartment.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bex?”
My face flamed. “I found this one”—angry pointy jab at Barry—“smuggling your Jimmy Choos out to freedom! Anything you’d like to tell me?”
She flushed as red as I felt. “Well, I was…I was about to…you got pregnant!”
I pulled in a noisy gasp as she put her hands on her hips. “How dare you blame my unborn baby!”
“Well, what did you think was going to happen?” she fumed. “It was just going to be me, you, and the baby—all living together in this dump? You’d basically moved out already anyway, Rebecca! I was only taking the next step!”
“So had you! And how dare you call me by my Christian name!”
Barry made the ridiculous mistake of taking a small step forward. “I’m just going to bring these down to the car,” he murmured frightfully, eying his escape.
The two of us turned on him as one.
“Not now, Barry!”
Still panting, we turned to each other with sudden tears in our eyes.
“I didn’t know how to tell you I was moving out,” she sobbed. “I’ve been putting it off, and putting it off, and then you got pregnant, so I thought—why not blame the baby?”
“No, that makes sense,” I wept. “I would have done the same thing. And in fact, I was calling you this morning to tell you that…well that I was moving out as well.”
Her face flooded with tears. “You were?”
“Yeah…”
We came together in the middle of the floor in a watery hug, sobbing without restraint into each other’s arms.
“I just didn’t want to say goodbye;” she hiccupped, “it’s like the end of an era!”
I pulled back with sudden passion. “No, it’s not—it’s just an upgrade! Fewer cockroaches and more sex! But we’ll still see each other all the time. Just like we have been doing!”
She sniffed and wiped her face. “You think?”
“Absolutely!”
Now that our emotional crisis had been effectively resolved, Amanda and I gazed up at the apartment with fresh conviction.
“You know,” she said suddenly, “it really was a piece of shit apartment.”
“Oh my gosh—and we won’t have to deal with Hamberg anymore!” I cried excitedly.
She flashed a wicked grin. “It will break his heart.”
Without another word, we hooked arms and skipped merrily up the stairs to start packing. The boys flashed each other a look and followed cautiously behind while poor Mr. Taft collapsed against his door in silent relief.
Chapter 11
Four hours, thirty boxes, and five Red Hot Chili Peppers albums later, we decided to give up on the entire enterprise and hire movers.
“We really should have just done this from the beginning,” I mused, perched atop our overturned couch, sucking on a popsicle.
“Yeah, like before we ripped the upholstery in my limo with your ice skate?” Marcus muttered petulantly. “Do you even skate?”
“No,” Amanda volunteered, sucking on a popsicle of her own, “she doesn’t.”
“But I like to encourage the habit in myself,” I added cheerfully.
The freezer door slammed shut, and Barry walked suddenly into the living room, his face a mask of bewilderment. “Do you guys know that you have like a wad of cash in a bag behind the ice cubes?”
Amanda and I shared a look and burst out laughing. She hopped down off the kitchen counter and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Oh, honey,” she grinned, “have we got a story to tell you.”
As soon as we’d instructed the movers, the four of us headed down the street for a final pizza at our favorite spot. Every pie was roughly the size of our bathtub, and as the waiter set it in the middle of the table, we each pushed our chair an inch or two back.
“I just can’t believe it!” Barry exclaimed for the seventh time. It was the most animated I’d ever seen him, and I watched him and Amanda cuddling with a grin. “This whole time, everything you guys have done up until now? It was all fake?”
“Keep your voice down, sweetie,” she chided gently. “The whole point of a secret is to keep it that way.”
“Not everything was fake,” Marcus added. He squeezed my hand with a smile. “We just got off to a bumpy start, that’s all.”
Barry shook his head. “So the wedding, the engagement—all of that is real? You’re actually pregnant, right?”
I laughed and slipped a hand automatically over my stomach. “Yes, that’s all real. And yes, I’m actually pregnant.”
“With baby Olivia,” Amanda added.
“Ooh,” I turned to her with delight. “I love Olivia.”
“I knew you would,” she said importantly. “Olivia for a girl, and maybe…Cameron if it’s a boy?”
I frowned. “Didn’t you date a Cameron? He was a real asshole?”
“Oh that’s right,” she shuddered, “we’ll have to come up with a replacement.”
“Or I could have just told you that I’m not naming my son Cameron,” Marcus said sweetly.
Amanda stared at him cautiously, before turning to me. “Have you guys had the talk yet where you tell him that since you’re pregnant, you’re naming the baby? And…by you, you mean, you and me?”
“Isaac and Rosemary,” Barry announced with sudden flair.
The three of us turned to him, and Amanda paled in horror. “Rosemary? As in…Rosemary’s Baby?”
“I think it’s perfect!” Marcus snorted mischievously.
Amanda’s eyes locked on Barry. “I can’t tell if you’re serious.”
He flushed immediately and looked down at his plate. “…of course I wasn’t serious.”
I tuned them out, hand still resting on my stomach as I considered my options. “Maybe I’ll name him Alexander. I’ve always loved that name.”
We left soon afterward, heading our separate ways after fierce hugs and plans to meet for lunch on the following day. It was a little sad; I’m not going to lie. I twisted around in the limo and gazed after Barry’s car until I lost it in the traffic. I liked to imagine that Amanda was out there doing the same thing.
“Hey,” Marcus squeezed my knee and gave me a warm smile. “You going to be okay?”
“I think so.” I snuggled back into him with a sleepy grin. “I’m leaving with the prospect of starting a family, on a billion-dollar estate, with the man of my dreams. I think I’ll be okay.”
He kissed the top of my forehead. “That’s good to hear.”
The driver sped along up out of the traffic into the green hills, and before long, I could see the very top of my new home peeking out from amongst the trees.
“I’m going to really miss Deevus,” I said.
“You have a pet peacock waiting to be petted.”
I laughed.
And when we got back, Marcus insisted I go with him to go feed his pet peacock.
Eduardo walked over near me and I clung to Marcus.
“See? He likes you.”
“You don’t keep him in a cage,” I said. “What if he runs away?”
“He’s too territorial.”
“I would never think that,” I
said sarcastically.
Marcus laughed. “He likes to roam but he never leaves the premises. Once a home is established, he comes back to roost.”
“I know what his problem is,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s lonely. He needs a female peacock. That would make him happy.”
Marcus chuckled. “He could be bad tempered during mating season.”
“And he has no lady to show those beautiful feathers too. Just imagine Eduardo strutting around with his bright blue chest, all puffed out, and showing off his larger than life tail with all the colors of the rainbow. Now, that’s a shame.”
“No girl would say no to him.”
I threw down some grapes, and he came over and gobbled them up. “He’s a beautiful bird.”
“I didn’t get him for his beauty,” Marcus teased. “I got him because he’s better than a watchdog. He defends this place better than swans, who are the best yard/home defense pets. Nothing will get past the watchful eye of a peacock. They’ll shriek something fierce over anything they deem a threat to their property.”
I threw down some more grapes. “He scared me more than a Rottweiler ever would.”
We both laughed.
“But seriously,” Marcus said. “I didn’t really get him to be a security system. I just like him. And I think he really likes me. We’re friends.”
“I’ve never seen this in any of the articles I’ve read about you.”
“I don’t tell the public everything about me. It’s good to keep a little mystery.”
“Yeah, it keeps them guessing.”
Chapter 12
I came up to bed early because I was so beat.
I felt a connection to the little life growing inside of me and poured out some of my most private thoughts and fears. I felt my belly and began to talk to my baby. “Dear little angel, I hope you can hear my voice. Though we haven’t met, I love you more than anything. You’ll be joining our family soon, and I can’t wait to see your beautiful face and hold those little fingers and feet. I eagerly await seeing your smile, hearing your tiny giggles. Will you look like me or Daddy? You are loved, wanted, and cherished. I’ve never felt such love for a person I’ve never met before, but even now, my love for you is unconditional, eternal, and pure.”
