When we finished, I helped her back into her clothes. “I think I need to keep you pregnant for all time and eternity,” I whispered. “I fucking love you pregnant.”
She kissed me fully, slipping her tongue into my mouth. “You can knock me up as many times as you want as long as you don’t stop the nightly foot massages.”
“We have a deal, then.” I pulled her sweater down over her head as she wiggled her arms through the sleeves. “You know what would make those nightly foot massages even easier to administer?”
“What?” she asked, a challenging smile on her face.
“If you finally moved in with me.”
Her face fell. “I told you I’m not ready for that.”
I moved my hands down to her stomach. “Rach, we’re less than two months out; within two weeks it could be any day now. You really want to have a setup for twins at two houses?”
“You can come stay with me and Callie. I really don’t want to leave my sister yet. She’s looking forward to me being there with the girls. I know she’d love to have you.” She grabbed both of my hands in hers. “And besides that, I really don’t want to move in together until we’re married.”
A smile crept across my face and I made like I was going to get down on one knee.
Rachel laughed and pulled me up. “No, no proposing. I’m not ready for that yet, either. Let’s let the babies come and we’ll see where we are. I promise I’m not shutting you down. I’m just not there yet.”
She wandered out into the living room. My house phone rang. I answered the one next to my bed. “Zane,” I said simply.
“Mr. Reid, you have a follow up appointment with Dr. Malcolm two weeks from tomorrow. I wanted to remind you.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling my stomach drop. “I’ll be there.”
I hung up the phone and saw Rachel was standing in the doorway. “Roger’s already planned like half of the baby goods event. He’s got a space booked for two weeks from tomorrow. You should get out here before he starts spending even more of your money.” She saw the look of concern on my face and her expression fell. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah,” I said. I remembered that I had promised to tell her everything. “Everything’s just fine. I have a totally, utterly, entirely routine appointment with Dr. Malcolm that day but I can just run out and come back.” I walked over to her and gave her the deepest kiss I could muster.
I never knew when it might be the last one I would hand out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
RACHEL
“Okay, everybody, line up over here,” Roger yelled.
Roger, Zane, Callie, me, and a dozen other volunteers were huddled in the same ballroom where the Boiler Room episode had premiered. Over the last two weeks, Roger and Callie had been forces of nature in their separate homes, making phone calls to every one of their friends who knew a kid, had a kid, or was currently pregnant and drowning in excess baby gifts. We’d collected several thousand very gently used and brand new designer baby items.
Three hundred moms were showing up today to have the “shopping spree” of their lives.
Zane had told me he’d never seen Roger this involved in anything before. Roger was almost unrecognizable to me in his jeans and t-shirt.
Roger yelled over the crowd. “The women are probably only going to want to take one or two things. But we have a receipt checklist. Each woman must leave here with no less than one stroller of her choosing, one crib of her choosing, fifteen packages of diapers, ten things of wipes, three dozen onesies across six months of sizing, bottles, cans of formula, and one thing from the useless but shiny accessories table.” He gestured behind him toward the table that was covered in Tiffany baby rattles and heirloom pieces. We figured the moms could make some money selling them or find some sentimental use for the goods assembled there.
Zane stood up next to Roger. “You each have your section to patrol if the women need any help. They’re here for two hours and remember: no photos of anything. No social media. These women want their privacy and safety and we’re here to protect that. Understood?”
Everyone nodded. “Alright,” Roger said. “Doors open in five minutes.”
I felt a frisson of excitement as I walked over to Zane and Roger. Okay, I basically waddled. I was enormous and my back was killing me. Today marked one week until the “all-clear” day for the pregnancy. I shouldn’t be walking around but there was too much to do. Zane pulled a chair out of nowhere and nearly shoved me in it. “Sit,” he ordered.
“Yes, Mr. Reid,” I said, shooting him a flirty smile.
Callie was herding strollers into perfect lines, a ball cap pulled down, her long blonde ponytail hanging out the back. She was a woman on a mission.
“Who’s the hottie?” Roger asked Zane loudly. Callie heard him. She shot him a look that withered. Roger grasped his heart dramatically. “She wounds me with her stare alone. Seriously, who is she?”
“Rachel’s sister. I wouldn’t fuck with her if I were you,” Zane replied. He checked his watch. “I’ve got that appointment thing today, okay?” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way. I’ll be no more than two hours and I’ll be back here to help clean up.”
I nodded and squeezed his hand. Zane turned to Roger. “If she moves out of this chair, call me and I’m coming right back over here.” He turned back to me. “And you: no standing up. At all.”
“I’ve got it. I promise. Scout’s honor,” I replied, holding up three fingers.
Zane trotted out of the ballroom just as the main doors opened and the women started pouring in, wide-eyed at the selection. Volunteers at the door handed out checklists and Callie herded them into each section. I bemusedly watched as Roger educated one pregnant woman on the benefits of a particularly pricey stroller. He looked like a new person to me.
I nodded off in the corner in my comfy little chair, waking up to my phone vibrating. I slid my finger across the screen. “Hey,” I said. “Are you done with your appointment?”
I heard monitors beeping in the background. My stomach dropped through my feet. “First off, do not panic,” Zane said. “I don’t need my pregnant girlfriend panicking.”
“Zane, where are you?” I tried to push myself into a standing position but I saw Roger’s face from across the room and I sat back down.
“They found a full-formed aneurysm in my brain and I need to go in for surgery for them to clip it. It’s small, really small. They caught it early. It’s a quick surgery, just a few hours, but the doctor wants me in today.”
“I am going to kill you, Zane,” I hissed into the phone. “If you die on me, I’m going to kill you.”
Zane laughed. “I’ve already called Michael to come pick you up. I go into surgery in about an hour,” Zane said. “Please breathe, please do not walk to the curb by yourself. Get Roger to help you, alright?” He told me the name of the hospital and his room number. I hung up with a string of hurried I love yous and waved Roger over.
He walked me to the curb and sent me off with Michael. I was silent and nibbling my fingers the entire drive. Michael insisted pushing me in a wheelchair all the way upstairs. Several nurses asked me if I was looking for labor and delivery, panic crossing their faces at my enormous size. “I’m not in labor,” I replied.
“Not yet, honey, but those babies look like they’re about to slide out any second.”
I waved them away. “Ugh,” I hissed when we made it to the elevator.
Michael patted my shoulder. “You’ll miss the attention when these girls make their way into the world.”
I looked up at him to see if he was joking. He wore a wry smile and I realized with relief that he was giving me a hard time.
I gasped when I saw Zane. There were tubes and wires coming out of him and the nurse was finishing up shaving his entire head. It was bald and shone under the hospital lights. “Oh God, I’m dating Lex Luthor,” I said, shocked.
He laughed and grabbed my hand
, kissing it. “I told her to just take it all off. It’ll grow back in a few months. Better to be entirely bald instead of just have one section missing, I think.”
I rubbed his clean scalp as the nurse wiped off the rest of the shaving cream. “I kind of like it,” I replied. “You sort of look like a really pale version of The Rock.”
Zane beamed and wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Considering he’s top of your list of celebrities you’d leave me for, I think I’ll never grow my hair back.”
The nurse finished up. Michael waited quietly in the corner of the room. The doctor appeared a few minutes later. “You ready, Zane?”
“Oh God, is this your surgeon?” I whispered from my wheelchair. “He’s an infant, Zane!”
The round-faced doctor smiled at me. “I assure you I’m a resident,” he replied. “I’ve done this many, many times. It’s a straight-forward procedure.”
Zane grabbed my hand as the nurses began to prep the gurney for transport. Fear flashed through his eyes, which made me more nervous than anything else. I’d never seen that look on his face before. “Rachel, I need to tell you something. I made you sign that ridiculous contract because I was afraid you wouldn’t love me otherwise. I wanted to keep you close to me. I didn’t want you to run away. But I’m sorry I did it.”
I stood up to kiss his forehead and rub his smooth, bald scalp. “I’m not sorry,” I said, grabbing my stomach and patting it lightly. “Think of all the condomless sex we wouldn’t have had without that damn contract!”
Zane laughed uproariously and I joined in, tears streaming down my face. They were from a potent mixture of fear and laughter. Suddenly my bladder let loose. “Oh God,” I said. “I think I just wet myself laughing.” I looked down at the water stain on my jeans. It was enormous. “Oh no. Oh not now. No, not now.”
“What’s wrong?” Zane sat upright. Then he saw my pants. “Nurse! We need a nurse. My wife- my girlfriend is going into labor.”
The doctor replied calmly. “We can’t postpone the surgery, Mr. Reid. You need to go now.”
Tears stung my eyes but I held them back for Zane. There was no way he would go if I was crying. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine. It will probably take forever anyway. My mom was in labor with me and Callie for like a day apiece. And this is two babies so basically this will take forever. Go. Go.”
“I love you, Rachel,” Zane said.
“I love you, too.” I tried to breathe as they wheeled us away from each other; him on a gurney and me in a wheelchair. Everything would be alright.
It had to be.
***
“You both have impeccable timing, I’ll give you that,” Roger quipped, bursting through the hospital room door with balloons and flowers and – to my surprise – Callie.
Callie ran over to me and squeezed my hand. “You’re getting the epidural, right?”
I chortled. “First thing I asked for after the fuzzy socks. The epidural guy should be here in a minute.” There were so many stickers and wires attached to me I felt like a robot.
“Is the pain okay?” she asked, as a contraction hit me and I nearly vomited on myself. I screwed up my face and squeezed her hand as hard as I possibly could. When I opened my eyes, I saw that Michael had put down his crossword puzzle, his eyebrows knitted in concern.
“Ms. Rachel, are you sure there’s not something I can do for you?” he asked kindly.
“You didn’t call mom, did you?” I screamed to Callie as the next contraction hit me. They were awfully close together. I tried not to think about what that meant. It had only been an hour.
“I would have only done that if I still hated you for dating my husband,” she joked. “Mom doesn’t have to know until the girls are like, eighteen and out of her grasp.”
The laughter was what I needed as I came down from the contraction. “Hells bells that was a big one.”
“Your accent’s back,” Callie said, wiping my sweating forehead. “Imagine that.”
Dr. Fuentes walked in and tapped his fingers on my chart. “Everybody out or behind the curtain, please.” He pulled on gloves as I put my feet into the stirrups. A moment later he was snapping his gloves off with urgency. “Rachel, you’re too far along for an epidural. But the babies are in a good position and I see no reason you won’t be delivering these girls within the next half hour or so.”
Another contraction hit, this time even harder than the last. I couldn’t hold back my screams. Dr. Fuentes actually flinched from the volume. When it passed, I was panting hard. “You’re joking about the epidural, right? My water only broke like an hour ago.”
He shrugged. “Some women’s labor just moves right along on its own. This is good. That means this will all be over really, really soon.” He zipped open the curtain to reveal Callie, Roger, and Michael shooting furtive looks at one another. “Where’s Zane?” he asked.
I burst into tears at the mention of his name.
Callie stepped up to answer for me. “He’s in emergency surgery for an aneurysm clip.” She held onto my hand as I cried.
Dr. Fuentes nodded. “We can’t stop this, Rachel. You’ve gotta do it. But it looks like you won’t be alone.” He acknowledged the unlikely crowd gathered around my bedside. “I’ll give you just a few minutes. Remember: breathe.” He walked out and shut the door.
Panic rose up in my chest. I felt like breathing was the last thing I was capable of doing at the moment.
Roger grabbed my hand. “Rachel, look at me.” I was so surprised by his touch I did as he asked, my tears drying up in an instant. “You’ve got this. You once stood up to Scott Friend. I’ve never seen anyone do that, remember? That hasn’t changed. Pushing two babies out of a very, very narrow channel?” He went green and tapered off his enthusiastic speech.
Callie rolled her eyes and stepped in. “Disregarding that last bit of poetic description, he’s right. Rachel, you’re the strongest person I know. You can do this. Look at that clock. It’s just like when we went to parties, remember? Pretend like you’ll be reading a book and when it’s three o’clock, this will all be over. The pain will be done.”
I nodded and breathed. Another wave of pain rolled over me, and Michael stepped up; he grabbed a tennis ball to rub my back. “The three wise men,” I said groggily. What a strange trio they made.
This was my team. We were going to do this together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ZANE
I remembered fuzzy, foggy voices coming in and out of earshot. I remembered white lights. I remembered a nurse telling me that the surgery went well. And then I remembered the thing that I was missing.
I sat upright but was pushed back to the gurney at once by a slim hand. “Lay back down, Mr. Reid,” said the feminine voice.
“My girlfriend. She was in labor. I need to help her.” I reached to my arm to rip out the IV but realized my arms were restrained.
“You’ve been trying to get up for the last two hours, Mr. Reid. We had to restrain you for a while. If you just wait for another half an hour, we can wheel you to your girlfriend and your baby girls.”
My eyes pricked with tears. “They’re here already? How long was my surgery?”
The nurse patted my arm. “Your surgery was quick, but those girls were ready to be here, Mr. Reid. They weren’t planning on letting a little thing like brain surgery stop them.”
It was the longest thirty minutes of my life, but finally, the wait was over. Michael had pulled some strings and the orderly wheeled me into a joint private room with Rachel. She cried when she saw me. The orderly pushed our beds as close together as they would go. “Hey,” she said.
“Are you alright? You look incredible.” She did. She was glowing and peaceful. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I wanted to be here.”
She squeezed my hand. “I had backup. It’s alright.” She motioned to the corner where Roger was snoring, fast asleep while sitting upright. “He’s gotten more sleep than I have.”
“Where are Michael
and Callie?” I asked.
“They’re downstairs in the cafeteria,” she replied.
“And the girls?”
“In the ICU,” she said quietly.
My heartrate monitor started beeping rapidly. “What?”
She hushed me. “They’re fine. They’re here just a few days early and they’re a little small, a little jaundiced. But Dr. Fuentes said they’d only have to be here for about a week.”
I sighed with relief. “That’s how long I’m here for, so I’d say that works out well.”
“Roger did say we have impeccable timing,” Rachel quipped. She looked at the clock on the wall. “They’ll be bringing the girls in here to feed in a few minutes. You’ll get to meet our daughters.”
I beamed at her. “You still love me with no hair and part of my skull missing?”
She nodded. “Of course I do.”
I squeezed her hand harder. “Rachel. Will you marry me? Again?”
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut and a few tears rolled down her perfect cheeks. “Yes. Of course I will.”
“Oh thank fuck,” I said, my heart finally slowing down. “I hope I remember this later. I think I’m on some pretty heavy painkillers.” My eyelids fluttered shut as I said those words. The last thing I remember was Rachel laughing.
***
The girls – my girls, our girls - were perfect. A little yellow and mottled, but perfect. I held one of them while Rachel held the other in our dueling gurneys. “Their fingers are so tiny,” I said quietly.
“We should probably name them soon,” Rachel pointed out.
“You mean Baby Girl One Reid and Baby Girl Two Reid aren’t good enough?” I said jokingly.
“Well, they might hold it against us when they can finally talk,” Rachel said, tracing her finger along baby girl one’s cheek.
“How about Emma and Sophie?” I offered.
Rachel smiled. “I love those. Emma Charlotte and Sophie Elizabeth, after their real aunt and their honorary aunt.”
“Liz is totally going to cry. And so is Callie,” I said.
Baby Love: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 18
