by Emerson Rose
No one has ever offered to bathe my son, other than my sister once when he fell in the mud at her house and my mother a time or two when he was an infant. It’s sweet, and I trust him with no real reason to—I just do.
As it turns out, Toby makes the decision for us when he drops his batman underwear and crawls over the side of the tub. We both look at him with surprise as the water around him slowly turns green.
“Ye-um bath,” he says and smacks his hands on the surface of the water, splashing water everywhere.
Liam and I laugh and wipe the green drops of water from our arms.
“I guess that’s that,” I say, and Liam tips his head to the side and regards me carefully. He reaches out to wipe a drop of water from my cheek but doesn’t remove his hand when it’s gone.
“Yes. That’s that.” He holds my gaze, and I sense there is a double meaning to his words.
He snaps out of his mini reverie and shoos me from the bathroom.
“Go, lie down. We have de-hulking to do in here, and the food should be here soon,” he says, turning me by my shoulders and gently swatting my behind. I hop away, covering my ass, and giggle, but I can’t help but to think that it’s odd how comfortable we are in each other’s lives after such a short time. And I also find it interesting that I quite liked having my behind swatted by Liam Wild.
It’s three in the afternoon, and we have stuffed ourselves full of the best chicken salad I’ve ever tasted. Liam put Toby down for a nap an hour ago. I have been lying on my side on top of my comforter, hugging my pillow and listening to Liam talk on the phone to someone at his club about tonight’s lineup of guest DJs and specialty alcohol deliveries. I’m not eavesdropping, it’s just that my apartment is so small there is nowhere you can go where someone else can’t hear you. When he disconnects the call, I hear him pad down the hall to my room. I’m facing away from the door with my back to him so he doesn’t know if I’m sleeping. I listen to him close the door halfway and toe off his blinding white Adidas tennis shoes. Every time I’ve seen him, he has on a pair of shoes that look like they have never been worn before.
I hold my breath, wondering what he’s planning on doing, until I feel the mattress dip behind me. He slides his arm under my pillow and the other around my waist and pulls me against him so that we are spooning. I think my heart may have skipped a beat, and I’m sure he knows I’m not asleep now, because it’s pounding wildly in my chest like a base drum. This is a pretty intimate position to be in with a married man with whom I am very smitten. Every sensible part of me is yelling move, but my heart and my soul and my body aren’t hearing any of that. They say stay. Majority wins . . . yeah.
I moan when he nuzzles against my neck. Shit. I actually moaned out loud.
“Lourdes?” he whispers.
“Yeah?”
“I know this is going to be difficult, but I want you to do something for me, okay?”
“Okay,” I answer, but I’m not at all sure I’m okay with doing something for him without knowing what it will be.
“Go to sleep,” he whispers.
I am fifty percent relieved that he simply wants me to sleep and fifty percent disappointed that he only wants me to sleep. But this feels so amazing being in his arms, and I’m so tired that I easily agree to his request.
“Okay,” I say and close my eyes. As keyed up as I am and as responsive as my body is to his, I don’t think it takes me long at all to fall asleep in his protective arms.
Chapter 19
Liam
This day turned out more perfect than I could have ever planned. All is forgiven between Kit and me after he called and gave me the heads up that Lourdes needed help.
I can hear Toby playing in his room. It’s five o’clock. I should wake his mother, but she’s sleeping so soundly in my arms that I can’t pry my body away from hers. Every soft curve of her fits perfectly against me like we are two pieces of a puzzle meant to be together. The familiar scent of cinnamon on her skin has been driving me crazy for two hours. I haven’t slept at all. I have the strange sensation that she might disappear at any moment, and I need to soak up every second of time with her before she does. We haven’t discussed my offer since yesterday, and I won’t rest easy until she says yes, because no is not an option.
I’m so hard against her ass that there’s no ignoring my arousal. If she wakes up and so much as moves, I’m not sure I can hold onto this thin thread of control. I slide my numb arm out from under her pillow and pull a body pillow down from the top of the bed to replace me behind her as I leave her warm side.
When I have my hand on the doorknob and I’ve pulled it open just enough to peek in on Toby, I hear Lourdes’s muffled voice.
“That pillow is no substitute for you, ya know.”
I smile to myself. “Yeah? How so?”
She rolls over and gazes at me with sleepy bedroom eyes and my cock twitches. Fuck, it’s hot in here all of a sudden. I want her so badly that I think my temperature just shot up to 102 degrees.
“It’s cold, and soft, and . . . boring.” The corner of her mouth curls up in a half-smile, and I grip the cheap doorknob so hard I’m pretty sure I’ve dented it.
“And I’m warm and hard and exciting?” I play along, because I know we have Toby as a buffer, and I think maybe she’s thinking the same thing too, because I haven’t seen her be quite so openly seductive.
She rolls over onto her back with one knee bent and pushes the body pillow away, leaving her arm stretched out and draped over it. She’s wearing a spaghetti-strapped tank top and cut-off shorts with shredded strings that feather over the sienna colored skin of her thighs. The thighs I wish I were between right this second, with no denim barriers separating us.
“Yes to all three—one in particular.” She blinks slowly, and her knee sways a centimeter outward and then back in as if to tempt me with what’s waiting between her legs.
Toby bolts past me at that very second and crawls up onto the bed, right into the spot I would kill to be in right now. She wraps her legs around him and sits up, snuggling the little wild-haired moment killer against her chest. It’s in that moment that I learn that it’s possible to be jealous of a two-year-old.
She looks up at me with one of his wild curls sticking to her chin.
“What time is it anyway?”
“A little after four.”
“Four? I slept for two hours in the middle of the day? Shit, I can’t afford to go out anymore. I’ve wasted an entire day recovering from last night.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Toby chants, scooting off the bed and running past Liam into his bedroom.
Lourdes rolls her eyes and throws her hands up.
“See? He repeats everything, I swear,” she says.
“Yes, you did.”
“What?” she asks.
“Swear.”
Her forehead crinkles as she tries to catch up with my teasing.
“Oh, shut up,” she says with another eye roll when she’s there.
“Only if you promise to give me an answer to my offer. I have to go to work, but I’ll call and have somebody take my place if you haven’t decided. I can’t leave you alone, you see, because you might start thinking silly thoughts and end up making the wrong decision, and I can’t afford for that to happen.”
“So . . . there’s only one right decision?” she asks, cocking her head to the side.
“Yes there is.”
“So I may as well say yes, because if I say no, you’re never leaving my apartment, right?”
“Essentially.”
She slides her hands under her thighs. I’m starting to recognize her nervous tells.
“Okay.”
“Okay, yes, you’ll do it?”
“Yes, I’ll do it.” Her face is all screwed up like she can’t believe what she just said, and I’m a little shocked she didn’t put up more resistance. I want to hug her, spin her around, kiss her, fuck her, and kiss her some more, but all that has to wait.
>
I shove my hands in my pockets to keep them in check and open the bedroom door wide to remind myself there is a toddler in the next room building with blocks and pretending to read board books. I bite my lip through the massive smile on my face and watch as she grips the comforter on either side of her.
“You made the right decision. Are you sure you want to be a lawyer though? You didn’t argue much.”
Her mouth falls open and she reaches behind her for the closest throw pillow to hurl at my head. I duck and she misses, the pillow flies down the hall, and I see Toby look up out of the corner of my eye. I laugh when she huffs. Messing with Lourdes is fun.
“I can’t believe you just said that. I’m not argumentative by nature. I just want to help people!”
I hold up my hands, palms out, and surrender.
“I was simply making an observation.”
“Well, you’d better watch yourself, Mister. I can still change my mind, you know.” She crawls off the bed and slips past me into Toby’s room. When she passes, we lock eyes for a split second, but it feels like it’s happening in slow motion. An unspoken promise flows between us, and I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. This is the real deal. She’s special, and I will stop at nothing to make her mine.
Chapter 20
Lourdes
With all of the blood testing, physicals and ultrasounds already done for IVF, long before I said yes to Liam and Amira’s request to do artificial insemination instead, it didn’t take long to get the ball rolling. Only six weeks after meeting Liam, I’m sitting here waiting to confirm the home pregnancy test that I took two days ago. It was positive. I didn’t tell Liam. He’s so excited, and I couldn’t stand to get his hopes up. Blood tests are more accurate, so here we are together in the clinic, waiting to find out if I’m pregnant when I’m already pretty sure I am.
The whole experience is surreal. I don’t feel like I’m having a baby for someone else. I have to remind myself to act like a surrogate, but I don’t know what a surrogate acts like. I don’t know what to feel or what I’m allowed to feel. When I found out I was pregnant with Toby, I was young and surprised and scared, but when all of that fell away, deep down, I was happy to be having a baby with the man I loved.
I feel the same way now minus the surprise, but I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to be detached and think of this child as Liam and Amira’s when it’s not. This is our baby. We may not have gone about it the natural way, which God knows I would have preferred. But it’s made up of Liam and me—our DNA, not hers—and she’s thousands of miles away, hovering over her critically ill father, waiting to see if she’s still in his will.
I don’t understand how a father can be so awful to his own flesh and blood. How could he threaten her future when he’s been enabling her all of her life? He’s counting on her to fuck up and fall flat on her face so he can punish her for all the trouble she’s caused him over the years. Liam likes to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think Mr. Oni is an evil man. Anyone who would give his daughter an ultimatum like that, no matter how nasty a person she is, has a black heart. That last little shred of hope that having a baby is giving her is psychological torture. He set her up to fail so he could sit back and enjoy the show.
Liam is sitting next to me in a waiting room full of couples in various stages of pregnancy. I don’t know their stories and they don’t know ours, so it’s not surprising when a woman strikes up a conversation with him and asks about our baby.
“You two are such a beautiful couple. Is this your first baby?” she asks.
I slide my hands under my thighs and let Liam handle her, because I’m not sure what to say.
“Thank you, and yes, if we are pregnant—we’re finding out today,” he says with a beaming smile. God, how is he so happy when I’m so freaked out?
“Oh. Well good luck. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” She pats his knee, and he turns to see if I’m catching all of this. He winks at me, and I roll my eyes before looking away. He notices my hands tucked under my legs and pulls the one closest to him out, lacing his fingers with mine to give it a reassuring squeeze.
Should I be letting him hold my hand in public? He should have corrected her when she assumed we were a couple. I lean closer into his side and whisper in his ear.
“You should let go of my hand. It looks like we’re together.”
He jerks his head away from me in surprise.
“You don’t want to hold my hand?” His voice is too loud, and everyone in the waiting room is looking at us. A red-hot blush creeps up my neck, and for the first time in over a year, I miss having long hair. If it were still long, I could just tip my head forward and hide behind it. But since my stylist convinced me I needed something short and sleek when I started college, I’m sitting here exposed and blushing like crazy.
“Liam . . .”
“We’re having a baby together, honey, and you don’t want to hold my hand in public?” he says with fake shock, as if I’ve deeply wounded him with my rejection. He is so gonna get it later for messing with me. I should have known he would pull something like this. The past few weeks have been full of cracks and pranks about our pretend, not so pretend relationship.
I’ve been taking mental notes, though, so this time I pull it together just enough to give him a little taste of his own medicine.
“I think we should find out if you’re the father first, shouldn’t we, honey?”
The nosy woman gasps, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Liam just goes with the flow. He doesn’t miss a beat, and he drops my hand like I have cooties.
“You told me we had nothing to worry about.”
I’m about to sling some more sarcastic crap at him when a nurse opens the door to the reception area and calls my name.
“Saved by the bell,” I whisper.
“It’s cool. There will be other opportunities. You’re fun to fluster.”
“Yeah, well you keep it up, and the student will become the teacher.”
“I can’t wait for you to teach me a thing or two,” he says, bending down and delivering that innuendo-filled message straight into my ear—a little trick he learned that drives me crazy. His sexy, gravelly voice travels at light speed from my ear to my core, melting me from the inside out, and he’s very aware of its effect.
I punch him in the arm as we greet the nurse and follow her back to the physician’s office. One side of his mouth lifts in a satisfying smirk, and if I thought my insides were melting before, now they are downright volcanic.
Liam follows the nurse, guiding me with his hand on the small of my back. The combination of his hand on my skin and the pending test results have butterflies fluttering in my tummy. I’ve been so tired this past week that I can hardly function by three o’clock in the afternoon. Toby is getting used to Mommy’s naptime. He brings books and toys and a snack into the bed with me and entertains himself for about forty-five minutes. Thank God he’s such a good boy.
Dr. Clover has been the physician handling our case. I like her a lot. She’s warm and kind and compassionate, and she has nice hands. I have a thing for hands. Hands are the portal to a person’s deepest longings. They welcome and soothe, comfort and stimulate. A simple touch can set you on fire or settle your nerves. Dr. Clover has the hands that I want to welcome my baby into the world.
Shit. I have to stop thinking of this baby as my own. Liam wants to divorce Amira and raise the baby with me, but our relationship isn’t even an actual relationship yet. We haven’t kissed or dated—well, not officially, anyway—and we’ve only begun to get to know each other. Things are happening backward, and it’s got my brain on pause while I try to figure out what to do next.
Liam seems so sure that Amira won’t want a baby once she’s gotten a load of how much work and responsibility they are. From what little I know about her, I would have to agree, but you never know what a woman will do to keep her man—especially since she went to such extremes to get him in the first
place.
My worst nightmare is that I hand over our baby to that wicked woman and she refuses to divorce Liam. What if she decides to fight for what she believes is hers? She could easily use her trust fund to make it impossible for me to see our baby again. I’m five minutes pregnant, and already I feel the same fierce protectiveness that I do for Toby.
Liam and I take our seats on the opposite side of Dr. Clover’s desk. Liam is looking around at the doctor’s family photographs and diplomas on the wall. I’m trying to push away the anxiety and worry about the future and focus on right now.
“Checking to see if she’s qualified?” I tease, but he doesn’t take the bait. His eyes slowly trail over the desk. He’s thinking.
I was kidding, but maybe he’s actually concerned about the physician’s credentials. One thing I have learned about him is that he questions things that your average person wouldn’t think twice about.
“Do you think she’s a good doctor?”
“Of course I do. You’re going to like her too. I promise. I’ve seen her several times.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, you were a little busy providing a sample during our last appointment.”
He smiles and reaches out to take my hand.
“Good point. Okay, I trust your judgment.”
Something about that comment and the crystal clear conviction in his eyes shoos all the butterflies out of my tummy and replaces them with a warm calm.
Dr. Clover opens the door, and Liam and I instinctively release each other’s hand, but not before she catches it. It’s no one’s business what’s going on in our crazy dynamic, but as far as anyone knows, we are just two people helping each other out by trying to have a baby.
“Good Morning, Mr. Wild and Ms. Kennedy,” she says, reaching out to shake our hands. We both stand to greet her and take our seats again.
“You have a beautiful family,” Liam says, gesturing to the photographs on her desk and the wall.
“Thank you. They keep me busy, that’s for sure,” she says with a warm smile. “So I have the test results here. Are we waiting for one more?” she asks.
