Baby in the Making

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Hannah had thought it would take the entirety of their trip this time—and then some—to uncover what it was that made Yeager tick. But in less time than it took to drink a glass of champagne, she was beginning to understand exactly why he’d become the traveler and risk-taker he was. It was clear he’d been very close to his parents, and that they’d been a loving family. A family he’d lost while he was still a kid and whom he missed terribly. A part of him might even still be looking for that family, in his own way.

  Maybe, deep down, she and Yeager weren’t quite so different as she’d first thought. But where her way to deal with that loss was to stay put in one place to try to a build a life there, his was to escape any reminder of what he’d once had.

  He lifted his glass, drained its contents, then gazed at the bay again. Hannah sipped her champagne carefully—the way she did everything—and studied him in silence. After a moment he almost physically shook off his sober mood and looked at her again. He even smiled. Kind of.

  Evidently heartened by having overcome the most difficult hurdle she could throw in front of him, he asked, “So what else do you want to know about me?”

  She smiled back. “Favorite color?” Even though she already knew it was blue.

  “Blue.”

  “Favorite food?”

  “Anything from the ocean that’s been blackened and grilled.”

  And on it went until she knew his favorite movie was High Noon and his favorite band was whatever happened to be streaming that didn’t suck. That he was, ironically, a Virgo. That he even knew how to drive—and actually preferred—a stick shift. That he thought ghosts were a lot of hooey and that, of all the animals in the world, he’d choose to be not a lone wolf but a Komodo dragon because, hey, dragon.

  By the time Hannah finished her interrogation, Yeager was pouring the last of the champagne into their glasses, and she was feeling mellower than she’d ever felt in her life. In North Carolina, they’d scarcely had a single minute when they weren’t doing something adventurous. Including the sex, which, even though they’d had a perfectly good bed in their glamping tent, had happened that last time on a blanket in a clearing in the woods, under the stars, surrounded by fireflies. They’d been stargazing at the time, then one thing had led to another and, suddenly, Hannah had been naked, and then Yeager had been naked, and then she’d been on all fours with him behind her, thrusting into her again and again and again, and, well... It had just been, you know, super, super adventurous the whole time.

  Anyway.

  This time felt a lot less demanding. A lot less needful. A lot less urgent.

  Until she looked at Yeager again and realized that, somehow, he was thinking about the exact same things she’d just been thinking about. Right down to the nakedness, the all fours and the thrusting again and again and again.

  “You know,” he said softly, “we can always cancel our dinner reservation.”

  Heat erupted in Hannah’s belly at the suggestion. “But I thought you said it was one of your favorite places to eat in the whole, wide world.”

  His gaze turned incandescent. “I can think of other places I like better.”

  “How do you always know what I’m thinking?” she asked, her voice scarcely a whisper.

  “I don’t,” he told her. “Except when you’re thinking about sex. It’s your eyes. They get darker. And there’s something there that’s just...wild. You have the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen in a human being. At least, they are when it comes to wanting something.”

  “Or someone,” she said before she could stop herself.

  He took her glass from her hand and set it with his on the balcony railing. “We should definitely cancel our dinner reservation,” he said decisively.

  “Okay,” Hannah agreed readily. Although she was certainly hungry, dinner was the last thing on her mind. “If we have to.”

  Yeager took her hand in his and tugged her to him. Then he dipped his head and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, with none of the heat and urgency she knew was surging through both of them. He brushed his lips over hers, once, twice, three times, four, then covered her mouth completely with his, tasting her long and hard and deep.

  Oh. Okay. There was the heat. There was the urgency. There was the...

  He skimmed one hand over her bare shoulder and down her arm, settling it on her waist to pull her closer.

  Hannah went willingly, looping her arms around his neck, tangling the fingers of one hand in his still-damp hair. His heat surrounded her, pulling her into him, until she wasn’t sure where her body ended and his began. Slowly he began moving them backward, into their suite. He paused long enough to switch off the single lamp that had been illuminated, and then they were bathed in the pale light of the moon and the golden city outside.

  Yeager continued to kiss her as he guided them toward the bed, his tongue tangling with hers, his mouth hot against her skin. He reached for the tie of her halter at the same moment she reached for the button of his trousers. As she unzipped his pants, he unzipped her dress, until the garment fell into a pool around her feet. She felt his member surge against her fingers, hard and heavy against the soft silk of his boxers. So she tucked her hand inside to cover him, bare skin to bare skin. He was so... Oh. And she could scarcely wait to have him inside her again.

  As she stroked him, he bent his head and tasted her breast over the fabric of her bra, laving her with the flat of his tongue until her nipple strained against the damp fabric. His hand at her waist crept lower, his fingers dipping into the waistband of her panties, then lower still, between her legs. Somehow, Hannah managed to take a small step to the side to open herself wider to him, and he threaded his fingers into the damp folds of her flesh. She gasped at the contact, gripping his shoulder tight when her legs threatened to buckle beneath her, her caressing of his erection growing slower and more irregular.

  Yeager didn’t seem to mind. As he fingered her with one hand, he moved the other to her back, expertly unfastening her bra until it fell to the floor, too. Then he pulled as much of her breast as he could into his mouth, the pressure of his tongue against her nipple coupled with his hand between her legs bringing her near orgasm. When he realized how close she was, he moved his hand away, dragging his wet fingers up over her torso to cradle her breast in his palm.

  He lifted his head again and covered her mouth with his, kissing her deeply. His member twitched beneath her hand, and she knew a keen desire to have him inside her now. With trembling fingers, she freed him long enough to unbutton his shirt and shove it from his shoulders. Then she tugged his trousers and his boxers down over his hips, kneeling before him to skim them off his legs completely. When he stood in front of her, towering over her, his member straight and stiff, Hannah couldn’t help herself. She wrapped her fingers around him and guided him toward her mouth.

  He groaned his approval at her gesture, tangling his fingers in her hair. She ran her tongue down the length of him, back up again, then covered the head of his shaft completely, pulling him deep inside. Eagerly, she consumed him, taking her time to pleasure them both until she knew he was close to his breaking point. Only then did she rise again, dragging her fingers up along his thighs and taut buttocks, over the ropes of sinew and muscle on his torso, pushing herself up on tiptoe to kiss him as hungrily as he had her.

  He reached for her panties and pushed them down over her hips, and she pulled them the rest of the way off. Then he lifted her up off the floor and, after one more fierce kiss, threw her playfully to the center of the bed. She landed on her fanny with a laugh, until he joined her, spreading her legs wide to bury his head between them.

  Now Hannah was the one to gasp—and moan and purr—as he devoured her, drawing circles with the tip of his tongue, nibbling the sensitive nub of her clitoris until she thought she would come apart at the seams. Then he was turning their bod
ies so that he was sitting on the edge of the mattress again, with her astride him, facing him. Gripping her hips, he lowered her over his shaft, bucking his hips upward as he entered her, long and hard and deep. Hannah did cry out then, so filled was she by him. He moved her up, then down, then up again, until she picked up his rhythm fluently. Over and over their bodies joined, until they seemed to become one. And then they were climaxing together, Yeager surging hotly inside her.

  Immediately he turned them again, so that Hannah was on her back and he was atop her, bracing himself on his strong forearms. He murmured something about staying inside her until he was sure she was pregnant this time—because he was sure she would be pregnant this time—then kissed her again for a very long time.

  All Hannah could do was open her hands over the hot, slick skin of his back and return the kiss, and hope like hell he was right.

  Eight

  It was raining in New York the second time Hannah came to see Yeager at his office. Since undertaking this...this...this whatever it was with her—since deal didn’t seem like the right word anymore—he’d been trying to stay close to his home base as much as he could. That way, when Hannah had good news to tell him, she could do so in person.

  But he knew the moment she stepped into his office—he’d told Amira weeks ago to send Hannah back anytime she showed up—that she didn’t have good news. Her dark expression was completely at odds with the bright pink-and-orange dress she was wearing, and she didn’t look as if she’d slept for days.

  Something cold and unpleasant settled in Yeager’s midsection. He’d been disappointed last month when she’d told him she wasn’t pregnant, but this... What he was feeling now went beyond disappointment. It went beyond sadness. He wasn’t even sure there was a word to cover the emotions swirling inside him at the moment.

  Hannah, though, looked even worse than he felt. So he rose and rounded his desk, ushering her to the same chair she’d sat in before, drawing his up alongside hers. As he had before, he took her hand in his and wove their fingers together.

  And he did his best to inject a lightness he didn’t feel into his voice when he said, “Another miss, huh?”

  She nodded silently.

  “It’s okay, Hannah,” he told her, just as he had the first time. And, just like the first time, it didn’t feel okay at all. “There’s still plenty of time before the deadline.” Even though he sincerely doubted it was the deadline she was worrying about right now.

  Her reply was a heavy sigh, followed by a soft, “I know.”

  Still forcing his cheerfulness, trying not to choke on it, he added, “And, hey, bonus, we’ll get to spend more time together.”

  It wasn’t until he said it that he realized that actually would be a bonus. He’d enjoyed his two trips with Hannah more than he’d thought he would. He liked being around her. She brought an aspect to his travels he’d never had before—the newness of the experience. He’d forgotten how much fun going someplace for the first time could be. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d gone someplace for the first time. Watching Hannah’s exuberance rafting down the Chattanooga River and seeing her euphoria in the underwater caves of Gozo, he’d felt like he was seeing it all for the first time, too.

  He supposed, in a way, he had been. Because he didn’t think he’d ever approached adventuring the way she did. For Yeager, going someplace else in the world felt like an escape. Hell, it was an escape. For Hannah, it was a discovery. Which, maybe, was what an adventure was supposed to be about in the first place.

  He pushed the thought away. He pushed all his thoughts away and focused on Hannah. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said she had the most expressive eyes he’d ever seen on a human being. He had been lying when he’d told her they were only expressive when it came to sex. He’d said that in Malta because he’d wanted sex at the moment, and so had she, and it had been the perfect segue to it—not that either of them had really needed one. Her eyes really were the proverbial window onto her soul. He always knew what Hannah was thinking lately, no matter what she was thinking about. Just by looking into her eyes.

  And what she was thinking now was that she was never going to get pregnant. Yeager begged to differ. They’d tried twice. Big damn deal. He knew people who had tried for years to get pregnant, then had two or three rug rats in a row. Not that he and Hannah had years—although, he had to admit, the idea of that wasn’t as off-putting to him as it might have been a couple of months ago—but they did still have time. The clock on her inheritance had started ticking in July. That meant she had until January to get pregnant. It was only October. Including this month, they had three more shots. So to speak. Was it crazy that Yeager was suddenly kind of hoping they’d have to use up them all?

  Hannah still hadn’t replied to his last comment about how getting to spend more time together would be a bonus. Maybe she didn’t think of it that way. Maybe what no longer felt like a deal to him was still very much a deal to her. Maybe she wasn’t enjoying this as much as he was. Maybe she was just going through the motions and—

  Yeah, right. As though the way the two of them had come together in Valletta, and before that, in North Carolina, was going through the motions. Hannah Robinson might be circumspect and careful when it came to living her life, but when it came to sex, she’d been surprisingly, gratifyingly adventurous.

  An idea suddenly struck him. “Hey,” he said, “if you could go anywhere in the world you wanted, where would you go?”

  She gazed at him questioningly. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the two trips we’ve taken so far have been ones I’ve put together. I’d still like to honor Tommy’s spirit and leave my legacy through an adventure, but maybe the secret to this baby-making is to go someplace you want to go. Do something you want to do. What do you think?”

  Although the question seemed to stump her, it also seemed to pull her out of her funk. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never really thought about it.” Then she braved a soft smile. “Jones Beach?”

  He smiled back. But there was no way he was going to let her get away with a day trip she could take anytime she wanted to when he could take her anywhere in the world.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “When you were a kid, there had to be someplace you dreamed about going. Something you dreamed about doing.”

  “Yeager, I’ve spent my whole life imagining being able to stay in one place and not move around.”

  He didn’t buy it. “There’s not a kid in the world who hasn’t wanted to go someplace far away at some point and do something they’ve never done before. Think about it for a minute.”

  For a minute, she did. Then she smiled again. A better smile this time. One that did something to Yeager’s insides he’d never felt before. Weird.

  “Okay, so when I was about six or seven,” she said, “I read this book. Stellaluna. Are you familiar with it?”

  He shook his head. He’d never been a huge reader growing up and what little reading he had done was always about sports or superheroes.

  She continued. “It’s about a baby fruit bat named Stellaluna who gets separated from her mother and is taken in by a family of birds. She has to live by the birds’ rules, which are totally counter to her own bat instincts, but they become a family. All the while, though, Stellaluna’s mother is looking for her. In the end, she finds her and they live happily ever after. So you can see why I read the book a million times when I was a kid and why I identified so much with a fruit bat.”

  “I can absolutely see that,” Yeager agreed. And he absolutely could.

  “For a while,” she went on, “I got onto this fruit bat kick. I read a lot about them, and I decided that, even though the book never mentions where Stellaluna lives, she lived in a rainforest in Madagascar. And I thought Madagascar sounded like a really cool place.”

  �
��So you want to go to Madagascar,” he said.

  Hannah nodded. “Either that or Hogwarts.”

  He laughed. He was still disappointed that Hannah wasn’t pregnant. But there was something about the prospect of trying again that made him feel better. He told himself it was because he hadn’t been to Madagascar for a long time. But it was probably more because, this time, he’d be seeing it with Hannah.

  “I can’t help you with Hogwarts,” he said. “But we can definitely go to Madagascar. Did you know there are treehouses there that you can rent?”

  At this, Hannah lit up in a way he hadn’t seen from her in months. Not since that night in North Carolina when she’d seen her first fireflies.

  “We could really live like Stellaluna?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  And if living out her childhood dream didn’t put Hannah in the family way, Yeager didn’t know what would.

  Then another thought struck him. “Will it be a problem to take time off from work again?”

  She sighed. “Yeah. But I’ll handle it. I may have to finally explain to Mr. Cathcart and Mr. Quinn about my grandfather’s will, which was something I really didn’t want to share with anyone until I got pregnant, since I may nev—”

  “Yes, you will,” Yeager cut her off. And before she could say anything else, he added, “I’ll have Amira clear my morning. You and I can make the plans together.”

  The light in Hannah dimmed some at that. “I can’t,” she said. “I have to be at work in a half hour.”

  “Right,” he said. “But you have an hour for lunch, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “So I’ll meet you at one at Cathcart and Quinn. I’ll bring lunch and my tablet with me. We’ll make the arrangements then.”

  “Are you sure you have the time for all that?”

  Was she nuts? Yeager Novak not have time for the mother of his offspring?

  “Of course I have time. I’ll see you at one.”