by Lili Valente
“So you’re pregnant?” Kara asks as my inner voice lets out a long, low fuuuuck me, and silently admits that Mandy was right.
This is complicated. Crazy complicated. Even assuming she and her baby-daddy aren’t together, I’m definitely not up for dating a soon-to-be mom. Relationships are hard enough when there aren’t any innocent lives on the line.
Mandy sucks in a breath, and her hand flies to her ever-so-slight baby bump. “Yes, I am. Is the baby okay? I remember I sat down when I started feeling dizzy so I shouldn’t have fallen far. And nothing hurts. But I shouldn’t have left the party alone.” Her eyes squeeze shut as she adds in a thick voice, “If she’s hurt I’m never going to forgive myself.”
“We’ll get you and baby checked out at the hospital.” Brunette motions to her partner, who makes a note in the paperwork he’s filling out. “But I’m sure you’ll both be fine. Do you know how many weeks along you are?”
“Twelve,” Mandy says, the word a swift and sudden shock to my system.
At my fancy boarding school, I excelled at hockey first, literature second—my grandmother’s tall tales from the old country had made me a lover of stories—and math fifth or sixth, somewhere behind music appreciation and study hall. But you don’t have to be a math genius to take today’s date, subtract twelve weeks, and come up with a hot night somewhere in mid-July, which Mandy and I passed in very close company.
I’m running up against the truth hard and fast when her gaze shifts my way, almost as if she can hear the gears screaming in my head as they begin to whirl faster than the wheels spinning beneath us.
Our eyes lock for the second time tonight, and her jaw drops. “You… Oh dear.”
Those three words are all it takes to transform my suspicion into certainty.
The baby is mine.
And “simple” is no longer an option.
Chapter 2
Amanda
*
For once in my life, I’m desperate to talk on the phone.
I usually have a strong aversion to phone-assisted discourse, but as I lie on my hard hospital bed, twisting the edge of my threadbare gown in my fingers, it’s taking every bit of willpower I possess not to call my best friend Diana and give her an earful of freak-out.
But the sign on the wall of my emergency room cubicle clearly states, “No Cell Phone Use Allowed,” and this is Diana’s wedding night. She’s probably already home in bed, celebrating her happily-ever-after with copious amounts of hot sexy times. I don’t want to ruin her once-in-a-lifetime evening with a panicked call from the ER. Dee is like a sister to me, and like a sister, she would drop everything to come sit by my hospital bed, no matter how vehemently I would beg her to stay home.
Besides, I’m fine, the baby is fine—I’m still waiting for the ultrasound tech, but I swear I can feel Baby in there, safe and strong—and the fact that the baby daddy I’ve been trying to track down for the past six weeks is Diana’s new husband’s teammate is a bombshell that can wait until after Dee’s back from her romantic weekend in the mountains.
Considering I haven’t even told her I’m pregnant, the combined explosiveness of all this news would be too much for my bestie to digest without a meltdown. I would ruin her wedding weekend, and I am determined not to ruin anything else.
I’ve already jabbed a stick into the spokes of the bicycle of my life, instigating a major wipe-out. The very least I can do is to refrain from raining on my oldest friend’s parade.
“Hello again!” The pink-cheeked nurse, Sunny, who’s been taking excellent care of me since my arrival, breezes back through the door, holding it open for the slim blond man behind her to wheel in a portable ultrasound machine. “Ed here is going to help us check on baby’s heartbeat. If you’ll pull the sheet down to your hips, lie back, and lift your gown?”
“Thanks so much.” I smile as I hurry to obey directions. Like most nurses I know, I would rather chew off my arm than be a difficult patient. “I’m so excited to see her. I haven’t had a peek since the day I found out I was pregnant. And that was just a tiny flashing light.”
“So you’re having a girl?” Ed asks as he squeezes a dollop of cool ultrasound gel on my lower abdomen.
“I don’t know for sure,” I confess. “But all the women in my family have girls, so…”
“Twelve weeks might be too early to make a definitive call.” Ed squints at the monitor as he swirls the wand through the gel, applying light pressure. “But we’ll see if we can get a pink or blue read while we’re at it. Let’s see here…”
I press my lips together, an anxious, metallic taste filling my mouth as Ed hunts for the heartbeat.
Yes, deep in my bones, I feel certain that my daughter is fine. But sometimes my bones lie. Sometimes my bones tell me that my beloved Blue Jays are going to win the World Series this year, even though Toronto hasn’t made it to the playoffs since I was in kindergarten. Sometimes my bones insist that the promotion I’ve been gunning for is in the bag, only to learn that I’ve been laid off, the latest victim of nationwide healthcare cutbacks.
And sometimes, my bones swear that the man I love is going to stop playing games with my heart and make a long-term commitment, when, unbeknownst to me, he’s already married to someone else. In fact, he has been married to this woman for ten years, six years longer than he and I have been dating.
“Hmm…” Ed makes an unhappy sound low in his throat, pulling my thoughts back to the present.
“Is everything okay?” My pulse throbs heavily in my throat, trapped between my neck and clenched jaw. Please don’t let me be wrong about Baby, I silently plead. Let my stupid bones get at least this one, oh-so-important thing right.
“Everything’s fine,” Ed murmurs, still scowling. “But the cord is in the way. I can’t get a good angle. Looks like we’re not going to be able to tell the sex this time.”
Sunny and I exhale audibly at the same moment, and she laughs.
“Jesus, Ed,” she says, slapping the tech lightly on the arm. “You’re supposed to be reassuring her, not giving her a heart attack to go with the fainting spell.”
Ed grins sheepishly as he pushes his glasses up his nose. “Sorry. I’m at the end of a ten-hour shift. My people skills go south after hour nine. But yeah, everything looks fine. Let me turn up the sound so you can hear the heartbeat.”
He does, and I hold my breath, my chest swelling with wonder the way it did the first time I heard the steady beat of my daughter’s tiny heart. Each whoosh, whoosh, whoosh is a gift, an inspiration, a miracle.
Yes, she was unplanned, and there are times when I lie awake at night, fretting about how I’m going to make it work as a single mom. But if a genie breezed into the ER and offered me three wishes, undoing this pregnancy wouldn’t be one of them.
I’m already in love with this little one, so in love that by the time Ed packs up his equipment to leave the room, my eyes are misty with emotion.
“I’ll let the doctor know all the tests are in and you’re shipshape and ready to head home,” Sunny says, smiling from the doorway. “We’ll have you out of here in no time. If you need to call someone to drive you, go right ahead. I won’t tell.”
“Thank you.” I smile as she closes the door, but my grin drops away the second I’m alone.
I moved to Portland exactly three weeks ago. Diana is my only close friend in the area. I barely know the staff at the pediatric office where I’ve been temping until I find a permanent position, and I don’t want to alienate the potential friends I met at prenatal yoga by calling one of them at midnight to ask for a ride. I could, of course, wait until I’m discharged and call for a car, even though the doc said I shouldn’t be alone until I’m safe in my apartment, just in case I have another dizzy spell.
But then, I probably don’t need to worry about calling someone to help me get home. I have a strong feeling that a certain tall, dark, and dangerously sexy someone is going to be waiting for me when I walk out.
We di
dn’t have a chance to talk before I’d been whisked away to the treatment area, but a few beats of eye contact were worth a thousand words. Alexi knows the baby is his. And he isn’t happy about being kept in the dark.
The thought makes me shiver, and that anxious, just-chewed-a-handful-of-nails taste floods my mouth all over again.
For weeks, I’ve been cruising Portland after work, searching for the house where I passed a mind-blowing night of irresponsible passion, with zero luck. I found exactly no signs of my drop-dead-gorgeous one-night stand, his long and woodsy driveway, or the Russian nesting doll mailbox that was the only landmark I could remember from my early morning walk of shame.
I’d finally been forced to admit that I was never going to find Alex, or Lexi, or whatever the hell his name was, and it was time to move on with my life—and my pregnancy—without notifying the other contributor to Baby’s existence that she does, in fact, exist.
Yes, I was so inebriated at the time of my child’s conception that I didn’t remember her father’s name. And yes, I am completely ashamed of myself. But no amount of shame or wishful thinking or swearing off margaritas for all eternity is going to change the course of fate or magically make me run into my sexy stranger on the street.
Or so I thought…
And then he walked into the skybox tonight—Alexi Petrov, star defender for the Portland Badgers—dressed in a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans that left absolutely nothing about his stunning, athlete’s body to the imagination, and all my preconceived notions about the man who fathered my child did a swan dive out the window to shatter on the ice below.
Running into him was the answer to a prayer, but it was also flipping terrifying.
The entire time I was searching for Sexy Stranger, I was looking for a shadow person. A mirage. A creature made as much of margarita and imagination as flesh and blood.
Yes, I remember sharing pleasure and laughs with this man and feeling oddly safe as I drifted to sleep in his arms, but the details of the evening we passed together, and Alexi himself, are fuzzy around the edges. In my weaker moments, when I’m feeling lonely and sad and wondering if I let a truly glorious man slip through my fingers that steamy summer night, I chock it up to wishful thinking and breakup blues, then force my thoughts back to more practical avenues.
There is no way, I reasoned, that the first (and only) man I slept with after my ugly split from my boyfriend was as incredible as my alcohol-soaked brain alleged him to be. My brain was looking for something hopeful to cling to in the face of heartbreak. So, it had taken the outline of Sexy Stranger, filled him in with vivid, dream-come-true colors, and decided he was all the proof it needed to believe in a better, brighter future waiting on the other side of grief.
And then Alexi walked into my best friend’s wedding with shoulders even broader than I remembered, magnetic gray eyes the color of the sea after a storm, and a sex vibe so intense simply breathing the same air as His Unholy Hotness was enough to make my ovaries melt into quivering puddles of lust.
Which is how I got into this single-mom situation in the first place…
As Alexi smoldered at me across the aisle, clearly up for another no-holds-barred bang-a-thon as soon as our friends were finished saying their vows, I knew there was no way I could have the “Surprise, I’m knocked up, and you’re the lucky knocker-upper!” conversation tonight. I’d been woozy all afternoon, I didn’t have time to grab the nap I so desperately needed before heading to the arena, and I was it’s-my-best-friend’s-wedding emotional. Add in the discovery that Alexi was so closely connected to my support system, and I was soon feeling completely overwhelmed.
How are we going to explain this to our friends? Our family? These people who will be a part of our daughter’s life, even if Alexi decides he would prefer to have nothing to do with her, or me, or moving forward as functional co-parental units?
I’m committed to giving my child the best life possible, no matter what, which means connecting her with people who want to love her. My father is as good as dead to me, and I can’t remember the last time I had contact with his side of the family. It’s just my mom and me, and has been for a long time. And though I know Mom will adore her grandbaby enough for three grandmothers, I want more for my child than I had growing up. I want her to be surrounded by friends who are as close as family and have a shot at a second set of grandparents, cousins, and a connection to the paternal side of her family tree.
Which means talking to her father, genius.
“Yes, I realize this, inner voice,” I mutter. But I’m not ready. I’m not even close to ready, and everything I planned to say to “Sexy Stranger” seems ridiculous and/or crazy now that I know who Alexi is.
I just wish I could hit the pause button on my life until I’ve had three days of sleep and a long chat with Diana to help me untangle my knotted thoughts. But as my mom always says—wish in one hand and spit in the other, and see which one fills up first.
Spoiler—it’s the spit hand.
Spoiler Number Two—that saying wasn’t originally about spit.
Sadly, however, life doesn’t have a pause button, the shit is already on a collision course with the fan, and shit and fans wait for no woman, no matter how tired and pregnant and confused she might be.
So as soon as the doctor gives me the all-clear to head home, urging me to continue taking my supplements and contact my OB if the dizziness doesn’t improve in the next seven to ten days, I wiggle back into my maid-of-honor dress, screw up my courage, and head into battle.
But of course, it’s not battle. It’s just a conversation—a conversation with someone who came to my rescue tonight and who was very, very nice to me the first time we met. Not many men will go down on a woman at all, let alone for close to an hour, and from what I recall, Alexi was exceedingly generous with his time, talent, and tongue, which did wicked, wonderful things to me, again and again.
And again…
And maybe again…
As I said, the details are fuzzy.
“Don’t think about sex,” I chastise myself as I sign the discharge forms. “Just don’t do it. That’s only going to make things even more awkward and weird.”
“Excuse me?” The heavyset woman behind the desk arches a dramatically penciled-in brow, making it clear the glass between us isn’t as soundproof as I thought.
“Oh, um…” My breath rushes out with a nervous laugh. “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” Cheeks burning, I force a smile. “Thanks so much for your help. Everyone on the staff was wonderful.”
Still watching me with a look that infers I should be checking into the psych ward, not walking out the doors to contribute to making Portland even weirder than it is already, she nods. “Take care of yourself, honey.”
“I will,” I promise, taking the directive seriously.
I will take care. I will carefully approach Alexi and carefully explain the situation and carefully suggest that we get together at a later date to discuss the consequences of our unprotected banging while under the influence of nuclear-strong margaritas. I will remain calm and focused and ensure this potentially unpleasant conversation is as painless as possible for both of us.
I’ve got my head on straight, and I’m ready to deal with the consequences of my actions. I am a grown-up wearing grown-up panties.
And then I step out into the waiting room and lock eyes with the man by the door, the one with the dark, brooding stare and the powerful body overflowing the narrow pink chair he’s somehow leveraged himself into, and my calm evaporates in a puff of smoke. The expression on his face leaves no doubt how not-at-all-amusing he’s finding the evening’s festivities, and the stubborn jut of his chin makes it clear he’s not letting me walk out of this hospital without having words. Probably fairly strong words, if that ticking muscle beneath his eye is anything to judge by.
Foreboding shimmies down my spine, and a panicked voice in my head urges me to run back into the ER and hide under the cranky disc
harge nurse’s desk if that’s what it takes to avoid the impending confrontation. Maybe she’ll decide to lock me in the psych ward, and I’ll get those three days of sleep I was hoping for, after all.
But before I can reverse direction, Alexi is across the room, closing the distance between us with a speed and grace that makes it clear he’s the deadly bird of prey and I’m the prairie dog who took too long to leap back into her burrow.
“Dumb prairie dog,” I mutter, bracing myself for the storm rushing in fast. “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”
Chapter 3
Amanda
*
“Hi there.” My heart hammers faster as I look up, up, up to meet Alexi’s dark eyes.
How could I have forgotten how flipping tall he is? And broad? And so bulgy with muscles that he would have no problem tossing me into the next time zone with one arm tied behind his back?
“I guess we should t-talk?” I stammer, my throat going tight with a mixture of anxiety and attraction.
Yes, he’s huge and intimidating. Yes, he’s got eyes so dark they’re almost black and a scowl that could put fear into the devil himself. But he also smells like a cross between a redwood forest and homemade frosting, moves like a sexy beast who is completely comfortable in his powerful body, and emits a furnace-like heat that makes me want to snuggle into the crook of his arm and purr until he pets me the way he petted me the last time we were this close.
But the last time we were close, we weren’t pregnant, and he didn’t think I was a lying liar who lies.
“Is everything all right?” he asks, the canyon of disapproval between his eyebrows deepening. “What did the doctors say? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” My fingers tangle awkwardly together—I never know what to do with my hands when I’m nervous. “I just need to be vigilant with my iron supplements and take it easy when I start to feel run down.”
He nods, still scowling. “And the baby?”
“Also fine. Totally fine.” I search his face for a clue as to how he’s feeling about the baby bombshell. Judging from the guarded expression, persistent eyebrow furrow, and clenched jaw, I guess the answer is “freaked out with a side of terrified.” Considering how stressed and scared I’ve been since I found out I was going to be a mom, I can empathize, but at least Alexi has the option to walk away.
