The Baby Shower

by Tasha Blue et al.

  Allen spoke proudly, but without boasting. "Well, I've been talking to Senator Johnson and he is really interested in the boat, but your wife just won't quit bothering him and Carmen, and it's sort of driving an awkward wedge into our sale to them.

  “They don't like her, and they feel that if they buy the boat, they might be putting themselves too close to her through you. As if they might be expected to have you both out on the yacht with them and be friends with her. They don't want that."

  Roman sighed heavily and covered his eyes with his hand. "I was worried that she might do something like that. She's so set on being socially admirable. She's the very definition of a social climber. Denise is dead-set on being friends with them so everyone else will be impressed with who she is and who she hangs out with, but she isn't actually interested in being friends with them for their own sake or for their own merit."

  Allen tried to be nice, Roman could hear it, but it was tricky to do. "Well, she needs to back off the Senator, or he's going to go buy a yacht somewhere else."

  Roman nodded. "I understand. I almost don't even blame him." He rubbed his forefinger over his chin thoughtfully and said, "Allen, do you know what it is in particular that they don't like?"

  "They think she's exactly what she is; a social climber who has no real depth in her own self or any interest in anyone else for any good reason." He coughed lightly. "They really like you and me, and Edward just loves Captain Heatherwick. They just don't want to be around her at all. They feel that if they buy the yacht from you, then they may be obligated to be with her for social events and neither of them wants that."

  It had been weighing on Roman's mind, and he decided to discuss it at least a little, with Allen. "I'm not sure I'm going to stay with her, Allen."

  Allen didn't sound surprised at all. "Really, Roman? Why not?"

  Roman looked out of the window at the small part of the city that he could see from his hospital room. "Well, for a lot of reasons; we're really not that much in love anymore, she had an affair and I caught her in it red-handed, and she says she wants to fix our marriage and work on it with me, but I just haven't seen any commitment from her toward that end at all.

  “Granted, I've been laid up in a hospital bed, but you'd think that she could at least come by and see me."

  Again, Allen did not sound surprised. "She hasn't been there to see you?"

  Roman shook his head. "No, she hasn't. She came once the day that I was admitted and that was it."

  "Oh yes... the day she found out about Cami."

  Roman was startled. "How do you know about Cami?"

  "Janine. She told me about Cami and little Emma the day that they first came to see you. To be honest, I was really glad to hear it. I've thought for a long time that you need someone good and positive in your life, and I think you got a shot at it, Roman; I think you have a real shot at happiness with those two, but I understand that you are married and committed to Denise.

  “I'm really sorry to find out about her affair. I always wondered, but I had hoped that I was wrong about her that way."

  Roman sighed. "I wish I hadn't walked in on them. I may never get that moment out of my head. I know that Janine feels the same way you do about Cami. I guess since I've been out of it here at the hospital, they've become good friends. You know, Janine can't stand Denise.

  “But right now, Cami and I have decided to just be friends and be there for each other and raise Emma together. I feel like I have to at least give my marriage one more chance; like a last shot before I give up on anything."

  Allen's voice sounded like he didn't think Roman should do any such thing, but he didn't say it. "Well Roman, do what's right for you, no matter what anyone else says. That's the best you can hope to do.

  “In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on the Senator and try to convince him that Denise isn't part of the yacht package."

  "Thank you, Allen. It’s a huge relief to me to know that you're there, and that if anything should happen, you will be well able to handle it. I'll be back as soon as I can be. Thanks again." Roman smiled a little and hung up the phone.

  His mind had been so full of tangled worries; his work, his wife, Cami and little Emma, and needing some peace to consider all of them had led to his being in the boat wreck. Now he was sitting in a hospital bed, still wrestling with his worries and problems

  Roman gave himself the best thing he could give himself, and that was time. There was no rush to work through anything just then, and no need to hurry any decisions. He decided that as long as he was in the hospital to rest, he would take full advantage of it and think about everything else when he got home.

  The only thought that crossed his mind was whether or not he should call Denise, but when he mentioned it to Janine, she said she had let 'The Wife' know that he had woken up and that was all there was. She knew he was awake and she still had not come back to the hospital. He saw Cami and Janine, he got to watch them with Emma, and the day that the doctors said he would be leaving to go home, he got to meet Cicely.

  Cami walked through the door with a big smile and their daughter, and she was followed by a well-dressed woman; thick bodied but not overweight, heavy chested, with black hair down to her shoulders. She had wide brown eyes and full lips, and an air about her that commanded respect and radiated strength and love.

  Cami stood at the foot of his bed while Emma squealed at him and cooed, and Cicely walked to his bedside and took his hand in hers.

  "I'm Cicely, it's nice to meet you. Roman. I wish it was under better circumstances." She smiled down at him and put her warm hands over his. It made him think suddenly of his own mother who had passed away years before. Her gentle touch was comforting to him, and he could see in a minute that she was a woman who loved and defended fiercely.

  "Hello Cicely, it's so good to meet you. Thank you for coming in here!" He smiled at her. "It's easy to see where Cami gets her beauty and her strong character."

  Cicely laughed quietly and said, "So, they tell us that they are letting you go today. How do you feel?"

  Roman shrugged. "I feel better than I did when I woke up, and I feel alive, so that's the most important thing. They've taken good care of me in here, and I can't ask for much more than that."

  "How long will your recovery period be?" She looked at him with kind eyes.

  He tilted his head. "Well, it's supposed to take six weeks, and we're already coming to the end of the first week, so we've got a way to go. But it will happen. I come back for checkups a few times, so those benchmarks will tell us how I'm really doing. I have high hopes."

  The corners of his mouth turned up a bit. "I've had good company here in the hospital, and a great staff. I think it's been the key to my recovery." He smiled at Cami, and thought again for the umpteenth time how beautiful she really was.

  Cicely patted his hand and let it go. "I hope you heal soon. If there is anything that I can do for you, please let me know."

  He knew that she meant it and he was grateful for her thoughtfulness. The doctors and nurses came bustling in around him, unhooking him from everything and getting him ready to be released. An hour later, he had been signed out of the hospital and was being driven home by Janine. He'd said goodbye to Cami, Emma, and Cicely at the hospital and it hurt his heart to know that he wasn't going to be seeing them more than once a day, now that he was going back to the house with Denise.

  He wondered what he would find when he went home, and deep down, he wasn't looking forward to it.

  When he went through the doors of the huge house, it was quiet. No one was there to greet him. Janine looked around and scowled.

  "I told her you'd be coming home, and I expected her to be here to help you." She gave one sweeping dirty look to the empty space where his wife should have been and then turned and smiled at him. "No matter. We'll get you set up in the guest room downstairs here. I don't want you trying to go up and down the stairs to your bedroom while you're still on crutches," she sai
d and then walked toward the guest bedroom beside the library.

  Roman followed her. He knew she was right; it would be much easier to navigate the downstairs rooms than it would be to try to get up to the second or third floor with crutches. For all the richness and convenience of his massive home, he had not put in an elevator, so he hobbled into the guest room and took a look around.

  He hadn't been in it for a while, and it wasn't as big as his room, of course, but it was quite clean and it looked really comfortable. Janine got him all set up and then looked at him as she was leaving.

  "You let me know if you need anything, and you’d better tell me if Denise gives you any grief. I know you can take care of yourself, but if she isn't an absolute angel to you while you're healing, she is going to catch hell from me." Then she smiled at him, hugged him, and walked out, leaving him to rest.

  He laid back in his bed, worn out from the trip home and the excitement of the day, and before he knew it, he was sleeping.

  It was hours before he woke, and when he did, the house still seemed quiet. He got out of bed and hobbled into the kitchen for a meal and some water to take his medication, and he was surprised to see Denise and her mother sitting at the table, talking in low tones.

  They both looked up at him and Agnes narrowed her eyes at him and glared. "Well, look who it is. The wandering philanderer back from the grave."

  He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she knew her daughter had been having an affair, and took a deep breath. "Hello, Agnes."

  He turned and headed toward the sink. He was stunned when Denise hopped up and rushed over to help him. She pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water, and then handed it to him.

  He stared at her for a second. "Thank you," he said quietly, and that was all he said because he didn't know what else to say to her. She wasn't really a deeply compassionate person, or terribly thoughtful.

  She seemed somewhat agitated, and she twisted her fingers round and about each other as she looked at him, almost in desperation.

  "We need to talk," she said thinly. He looked at her face and saw worry in her eyes, and something like panic, but not quite as dramatic. He nodded.

  "Alright. Can we go somewhere private or does your mother need to be in on this conversation?" He wasn't sure what she needed to talk to him about, but he knew better than to suppose that it would be just the two of them without checking.

  She looked over her shoulder at her mother, who was still shooting daggers at Roman, and then she turned her eyes back to him. "It'll just be the two of us. Let's go." she walked beside him as they made it back to his room downstairs and he climbed into bed with a sigh.

  He got comfortable and looked up at her. "What is it?" he asked in a tired voice.

  Denise shifted uncomfortably and then sat on his bed beside him and laid her hand on his leg. "I found out about your kid," she said quietly.

  Roman nodded. "I know. I heard about it when I woke up at the hospital."

  She leaned forward, moving closer to him. "I'm sorry I didn't come see you, but I just couldn't stand that place, or stand being around that woman you were with. It was just too hard for me, and I knew that if anything bad happened, then they'd call me and of course, I would have come to you, but I knew that as long as I didn't hear anything, then you were okay, and I didn't have to worry about you.

  “I knew you were being taken care of and that was all that mattered to me. I just wanted to know you were alright without having to get into any weird fights or arguments with that woman."

  Roman could understand her point, but he still felt like he had been deserted. He felt like she should have been there, no matter what.

  Denise inched even closer to him, sliding her hand up his leg a bit further. "I had some time to think about it while I was waiting for you to come home, and I wanted you to know that I've accepted what you did, and we've both made mistakes, and I still want us to work on things together. I still want to try to fix our marriage. I'm going to be a step-mom to that kid, and I will do my best to try to be a nice one."

  Roman was shocked. "You are willing to take on the role of a step-mother? You're ready for that?"

  She shrugged and leaned close to him, just over his chest. "It's what I have to do to keep you and help fix our marriage, so yeah, I can give it a try. I don't want anyone thinking that I'm trash because I let you down. If I become the kid's stepmother, then everyone will think I'm a saint for taking in your bastard child, and it will look better for me, and it will help our relationship because then we can stay together as a... a family."

  She almost stuttered over the word family. He stared at her. "My child is no such thing, and if you do want to stay in this house, you will never refer to her as that again. Her name is Emma. You may call her Emma, and that is all you may call her, other than my daughter."

  Denise shrugged and nodded her head. "Sure, no problem. I can do that. I'll call her Emma. Let's just try to work this out together. Let's fix everything together," she said, smiling at him and leaning down so that her face was close to his.

  Roman couldn't remember the last time she had been that close to him. Her hand slid from his leg over to his groin and she began to massage him. His eyes widened in surprise as she lowered her head to his and kissed his mouth softly.

  "See? We can work this out." She kissed him again and he just looked at her for a long moment as she brought her lips to his again and opened his mouth with her tongue, moving her hand more firmly along the length of him that was growing stiff with arousal. She smiled sensually and whispered against his mouth, "There we go... isn't that nice? Isn't that what it's supposed to be like for us, my husband?"

  She opened his robe and slid his shorts off of him as he laid there and looked at her with uncertainty and a growing ache in his loins. Denise kissed him softly from his mouth down his chest to his stomach, and then looked up at him playfully from his thighs.

  "I'll have you feeling better in no time. You'll see," she said with a sultry voice. She kissed the tip of his erection and worked her lips down the shaft of it, flicking her tongue over it until she opened her mouth wide and enveloped him in it, sucking at him softly at first, and then with more voracity as she got more excited.

  Pleasure burned through him and he closed his eyes, letting it wash over him. Roman tentatively lowered his hands to her head and slipped his fingers into her red curls, feeling their silkiness and bending his fingers in their thickness. She worked away at him, making his breath grow short as he began to gasp and pant, his eyes closed and his heart pounding wildly against his chest. Just before he could climax, she pulled her lips from him and straddled him there in the bed, plunging him into the depths of her and riding him hard as he grasped her hips and held her tightly to him.

  "I've missed you," she whispered as she leaned over him and kissed him firmly, crushing her lips against his. He opened his eyes and looked at her for a moment, and she took his hands and lifted them to her voluptuous breasts.

  The feel of her flesh beneath his hands had once been as familiar to him as breathing, but now it seemed foreign, it seemed strange, and as she rocked her hips over his, his mind turned to the one who he wished was with him in his bed, one who had felt better in his arms and connected to his body than anyone had ever felt to him, and his pleasure skyrocketed.

  He pushed himself into her over and over, his hands clasped tightly to her breasts, listening to her moan and cry out in pleasure, and all the while, his eyes were closed and his mind had taken him back to the night on the yacht with another woman, a dark skinned woman who had loved him as he had never been loved. His body tensed and arced as his orgasm rushed at him full force and he came like an explosion inside her body... inside..."Cami... my Cami..." he cried out in his powerful release.

  Denise stopped short and looked down at him with wide eyes.

  "What did you say?" she asked in horror.

  He opened his eyes in realization and looked back at her. "I'
m sorry... I.... it must be the medication I don't know what I was thinking." He almost whispered it.

  Denise yanked her body from his and climbed off the bed, pulling her clothes back on. "I know what you were thinking, and it's something you can't ever think of again. That's what it means when we say we are going to fix our marriage. It's just you and me and no one else."

  With that, she turned and stomped out of the room and Roman closed his eyes, wondering what on earth he had been doing, thinking about Cami at a moment like that. Cami was his friend... she had been a lover once, and he admitted to himself that things had gotten hot with her when he had kissed her at the hotel, but he had to stay focused.

  She was his friend and nothing more. He was married, and he could not use Cami or try to make her his mistress. That wasn't the life he wanted for himself or anyone else, including Cami and Emma. They all deserved better.