It was also possible she’d dropped an egg before she thought she would. Those ovulation predictor kits were iffy. They only told you your hormones were in the right place for you to ovulate, but not exactly when you would. So maybe, maybe, that snowy night when they’d made love right here in her bed, the circumstances had been right.
She had a pregnancy kit in her bathroom she’d bought after their last attempt failed. Her hands were actually shaking as she withdrew it from the medicine cabinet. And she didn’t think she took a single breath while she counted down the seconds it took for the indicator to produce the word Yes or No. Five times she had performed this ritual. Five times, it had ended with the word No. She waited a full minute longer than she needed to to check the results this morning. And she had one eye closed, and the other narrowed, when she finally picked up the indicator to look at it. So it was no wonder she was still doubtful when she saw that the answer this time was—
Yes.
Heat exploded inside her at those three little letters. She didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it until she took a second test. Which she didn’t have. So she yanked on some pants and threw her coat on over her pajama shirt, tugged snow boots on over her bare feet, grabbed her wallet and ran downstairs to the mercado below her apartment...only to find it closed for the holiday.
She knew a moment of panic. Until she remembered the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade two blocks up. She knew it was closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Oh, pleasepleaseplease, Pregnancy Gods and Goddesses, don’t let it be closed on New Year’s, too.
The gods and goddesses were good to Hannah that day because a half hour later she was counting down to see the results of the second test. The sample wouldn’t be nearly as strong as the first, because she’d been storing up that one all night, and this one was the result of two hastily consumed cups of coffee purchased along with the pregnancy test. But even with the weakened sample, when she picked up the wand, studying it with both eyes wide open this time, the word she saw was—
Yes.
No matter how many times Hannah looked at it, and no matter from what angle, the word she saw, again and again, was Yes.
Yes. Yes. YES. Yessssss!
Holy cow. She was going to have a baby. She and Yeager were going to have a baby. She was going to have a family. A real family. The way she’d always wanted. The way she’d never really thought she would.
She had to tell him. Immediately. In person. She could shower and change and be at his place by—
By never, because she realized in that moment that she didn’t even know where he lived. There had never been a reason to visit him at his place, and other than one vague mention of his having a condo in West Chelsea, the topic of where he lived had never come up in their conversations. Why should it? There had never been a reason for her to visit him at home, and there never would be, unless—until—they had a child together. Which had seemed less and less likely with every passing month.
They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, she reminded herself for perhaps the hundredth time since going into this venture with him. They weren’t even lovers, at least not on Yeager’s part. It didn’t matter that Hannah was battling some weird emotions on that front herself. Maybe she had grown to love him over the last six months—maybe—but she would fall out of love again, once the two of them weren’t so involved. Right? Of course.
They were partners. That was all. And they would always be partners, thanks to this baby. But it was more like a business arrangement than anything else. They’d even signed paperwork outlining their obligations to each other during the conception process and to the child once its conception was achieved. They had each gone into it with individual needs and goals, and this baby—they were going to have a baby!—would fulfill those needs and goals for each of them. Yes, that sounded kind of indifferent and calculating, but that was exactly what their agreement had been at first. Nothing personal. Everything planned. And now...
A wave of something that was in no way indifferent or calculating—or impersonal or unplanned—rolled through her midsection. Oh, God. Now it was so, so much more than any of those things. Now it was...it was...
She grabbed her phone to text Yeager, asking him only where he was. They hadn’t spoken since his return to New York—probably because neither of them had known what to say. He might not even be in New York at the moment. How did billionaire adventurers celebrate New Year’s Eve, anyway? For all she knew, he’d followed the holiday around the world, celebrating it a dozen times, starting in Samoa and ending in Pago Pago.
He texted back immediately, telling her he was at home. Why?
She didn’t want to announce something like this with a text. Or even a phone call. So her text back to him was simple, if vague. Would it be okay if I came over for a little while?
He again replied immediately. Sure. Everything ok?
Fine, she returned. Just want to talk. Then she backspaced over the last part before hitting Send and amended it to Just need to talk.
Yeager texted back his address on West 21st and said he’d be working at home all day. Hannah told him she’d be there in an hour or so. The 7 train on holidays never ran very efficiently, after all. Fortunately for Hannah, though, her body finally was.
Ten
Damn the 7 train, anyway, Yeager thought as he waited for Hannah’s arrival nearly two hours later. It never ran well on holidays.
He’d given up trying to work after she’d sent her last text, because he’d been too busy wondering what she needed to talk about. He’d at least showered and shaved and changed into a pair of jeans and an oatmeal-colored sweater, but that had only eaten up about thirty minutes. For the last—he glanced at the Bavarian clock on his mantel nestled between the Turkish Iznik bowl and a Puerto Rican vejigante mask—seventy-eight minutes, he’d done little more than pace from room to room trying to find something to occupy himself. He hadn’t even eaten lunch because his stomach was too full of apprehension.
Two hours and sixteen minutes after Hannah’s last text, there was finally a knock at his front door—Yeager had already notified Baxter, the doorman, that he was expecting her and to send her right up. He couldn’t believe how nervous he was when he went to answer the door. As he strode down the long gallery from the living room where he’d been pacing, it did that cinematic stretch thing where it seemed to quadruple in length.
It had just been too long since he’d seen her, that was all. Since July, they’d never gone more than a couple of weeks without contact. Then he realized it had only been a couple of weeks since he and Hannah had taken that carriage ride through Central Park. No different from most other months and hardly an eon. Even if it did feel like one.
He opened his front door to find her standing there in her red coat with the funny, different-colored buttons that she’d designed and made herself, her striped scarf tripled around her neck. Her hair was damp and glistening from the snow that had begun to fall not long after she’d texted. And her eyes...
Damn. Those eyes. Even after knowing her as long as he had, even after making love to her a dozen times, her eyes still seized something deep inside him and held fast. Yeager would always be startled by the clarity and depth of emotion in Hannah’s eyes.
“Hi,” she said.
Still feeling as nervous as a schoolboy at his first dance—even though he hadn’t even been this nervous as a schoolboy at his first dance—he replied, “Hi.”
He took a step backward and gestured her inside, and she strode past him slowly, almost cautiously, as if she weren’t sure of her reception here. Why was this the first time she’d ever been in his home? He should have invited her over a long time ago.
He closed the door behind her and followed her down the gallery, Hannah unwinding her scarf as she went. By the time they reached his living room with its panoramic
windows on both sides, she had shrugged it off, along with her coat. Beneath, she was wearing jeans and a fuzzy white sweater. She transferred her coat restlessly from one hand to the other.
“Let me take your coat,” Yeager said, reaching toward it.
She looked a little confused by the gesture at first, as if her thoughts were a million miles away. Then she awkwardly extended her coat to him. He awkwardly took it from her. Then he shifted it from one hand to the other a couple of times before tossing it onto the chair nearest him.
“So,” he began...then realized he had no idea what else to say. Finally he went with, “How’ve you been?”
And immediately regretted the question. How the hell did he think she’d been? She wasn’t going to have the family or the fortune that had been dangled in front of her for six months then cruelly yanked away from her to leave her with neither. He was going to go out on a limb and say she hadn’t been too great.
Instead of replying, she darted her gaze around his living room, from the travel trophies on his mantelpiece to the Russian mosaic on the wall above them to the Chilean pottery lining one windowsill to the Indonesian shadow puppets hanging above the door to his office. Her gaze seemed to light on every item he’d ever brought home with him from his adventures—and there were scores of them in this room alone.
Finally she looked at him again. “I didn’t think you’d be home,” she said softly.
“Why not?”
“I just figured you’d be somewhere else. I mean, look at this place, Yeager. It’s incredible. How many people can live the way you do? I just thought you’d be celebrating New Year’s somewhere besides New York, that’s all.”
He started to tell her he hadn’t felt like celebrating. The New Year or anything else. Instead he told her, “I have a lot that needs attention here right now.”
One of those things should have been Hannah. One of those things was Hannah. He just wasn’t sure yet what kind of attention to direct her way. He wasn’t sure he’d ever know.
“Hannah, is everything okay?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to reply then something over his shoulder caught her eye. She moved to the side of his living room that looked out onto the Hudson.
“You can see the Statue of Liberty from here,” she said.
Yeager had forgotten about that. He’d lived here long enough that he guessed he took it for granted. And why the hell wasn’t she answering his question?
She walked to the other side of the living room and looked out the windows there. “And you can see the Empire State Building from here,” she said.
Yeah, he’d forgotten about that, too. He’d honestly stopped seeing the views as anything other than New York City in general and Manhattan in particular. Not that he didn’t appreciate the view, he just hadn’t really given it much thought in the last few years. To someone like Hannah, though, who’d spent who knew how long in her cramped Sunnyside studio with one window that looked at the apartment building on the next street, his view of the city was doubtless pretty incredible.
Why had he forgotten about that when it was what had impressed him about the place so much the first time he’d looked at it? The minute he’d seen the views Hannah had just seen, the little boy from Peoria had surged up inside him and hadn’t been able to believe it was possible to see so much from one room. It was like looking at the whole, wide world in one swoop. And at night, when the city lights were on, it was like the world went on forever.
When Hannah turned to look at him again, she had tears in her eyes. The only other times Yeager had seen her cry were the night he’d initially turned down her request that he be the father of her child and that first time she’d come to his office to tell him she wasn’t pregnant. Both times she’d been in a position where she thought she would miss out on inheriting her family’s fortune—or, at least, that was why he’d thought she was crying at the time. He knew now that the money wasn’t the primary reason Hannah had wanted to get pregnant—she genuinely wanted to start the family she’d never thought she might have. But, come on—who wouldn’t cry at the prospect of losing billions of dollars? Yeager almost felt like crying himself.
Even so, it had been weeks since they’d realized they wouldn’t make the deadline for the terms of her grandfather’s will. Why was she crying now?
“Hannah?” He tried again. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, wiping at each eye. “Yeah, I am. It’s just that standing here, looking at your place... It’s just... It’s huge, Yeager. And it’s gorgeous. It embodies everything good that money can make happen. All morning, I’ve only been thinking about what it will be like to finally have a family. I’m just now remembering I’ll have enough money to live the way you do. I’d actually forgotten about that. Isn’t that weird? When I realized this morning that I’m pregnant, I didn’t even think about the Linden fortune. All I could think about was the baby and you.”
Yeager had pretty much stopped hearing what she said after the words I’m pregnant. Probably because the roar of adrenaline that started rushing through him made it impossible to register anything else.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his breath shallow.
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded again. “I took two tests. They were both positive. I mean, I need to see the doctor for a blood test, too, I guess, but those home tests are pretty freaking accurate.”
Yeager still couldn’t believe it. “But how? I was in Alberta.”
Hannah laughed. “It didn’t happen when you were in Alberta, obviously. It happened here in New York. That night we went to the Russian Tea Room and took the carriage ride through Central Park.”
He shook his head. “So all those times we planned down to the minute, all those adventures, all those exotic places...”
She shrugged. “Turns out I just needed some spontaneity in familiar surroundings to be at my most, um, fertile.”
Hey, whatever worked. That night at the Russian Tea Room and riding around Central Park with Hannah had still been an adventure, Yeager realized. He’d done things that night he’d never done before, and he’d felt as exhilarated by them as he had by any other risk he’d ever taken. Hell, any time he spent with Hannah was an adventure. They’d still be doing his legacy—and Tommy—proud.
“We’re going to have a baby?” Yeager asked. Because he still couldn’t believe he’d heard her correctly.
“Yeah, Yeager. We’re going to have a baby.”
They were going to have a baby. Even though they’d been working toward the goal for months, he had no idea what to say or how to act. He’d been so certain the first time they’d tried that it would happen immediately. He and Hannah could pat each other on the back and say, Job well done. Then they’d see each other again in a year or so—after she’d had a few months to get used to the whole motherhood thing—to arrange a visitation schedule. When he’d initially envisioned the arrangement, he hadn’t seen much point in visiting the baby when he or she was still an infant, since babies couldn’t communicate or interact or do much of anything but lie there and stare at you. They sure as hell couldn’t travel or have adventures. But by the time the child was three or four, it would be a good time to get to know his progeny and gradually start introducing him or her to the world. Now, however...
He’d been such an idiot.
Because now, after months of disappointment and fear that he would never become a father, Yeager realized he wanted a lot more than to just put a miniature version of himself on the planet to be his legacy after he was gone. He couldn’t just settle for visiting his child a couple of times a year and taking him or her on age-appropriate adventures. Sending an exotic gift and having a Skype conversation from the other side of the world on birthdays and holidays wouldn’t be enough. Yeager wanted...
He wanted
to be a father.
“So, pretty cool, huh?” Hannah said, her voice sounding like it was coming through an echo chamber on the other side of the planet.
Cool? Yeah, it was cool. Among other things. A million, billion other things that Yeager would be able to identify if his brain wasn’t trying to light on every single one of them at the same time.
When he still didn’t say anything—because he honestly couldn’t figure out yet what to say—Hannah continued, less enthusiastically. “I mean, it’s what we both wanted, right?”
Yeager nodded. But he still couldn’t find his voice.
“I’ll get my family and my family fortune,” she said, “and you’ll get your legacy to carry on after you’re gone.”
He still couldn’t believe it was that easy. Then again, he knew it hadn’t been easy. On either of them. But it had probably been tougher on Hannah than on him. With or without a child, his life—or, at least, his lifestyle—wasn’t going to change all that much. But hers...
Now she could live her life any way she wanted to. She would have everything she’d ever hoped for, everything she’d ever wanted. A family. Financial freedom. A business empire she built all by herself. Yeager knew how gratifying all of those things could be. He was happy for Hannah. He was. It just felt kind of weird that she’d have all those things without him.
She was still looking at him expectantly, her eyes full of joy and wonder and relief, but also apprehension and fear and a host of other emotions that cut right to his soul. And then he felt the joy and wonder, too, and he realized it didn’t matter that he couldn’t find the words. He didn’t need words. He crossed the room to where she was standing and swept her into his arms.
Baby in the Making Page 14
