by Dani Collins
“I’ll be here more.” He released her hand to lower the rail. He hitched his hip onto the bed beside her, then took up her hand again. “When I left to see my father, I was only thinking of how much you were doing for me—having our baby no matter what it cost you. How could I ever match that? I wanted to show you how much you matter.”
“What did you do?” she asked with a trace of apprehension.
“Nothing drastic. I canceled the aeronautics expansion and restructured so my cousin will take a large chunk of responsibility off my plate.”
“Oh, is that all,” she said with a bewildered laugh.
“I wanted you to know how much you and our son mean to me. Then I wasn’t here when you needed me. It will be a long time before I forgive myself for that.”
“I don’t remember any of it,” she assured him. “I’m guessing you wouldn’t have been able to do anything. I needed a doctor.” She gently palpated her belly through the bandages, discovering the tender spots. Her head was spinning as she tried to absorb all he was saying. “But... Jun Li, I don’t need gestures. I mean, I love that you’ll have more time with us, but words are enough. I know you wouldn’t say them unless they were true.”
“They are true, but they’re not enough.” He gave his head a solemn shake. “I love you in ways that are so new, so complex, I didn’t know what I was feeling. I fought examining it.” He caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “As if I could avoid the potential for pain if I didn’t acknowledge how much you meant to me. But these last hours... The thought of losing you is beyond what I can bear, Ivy. I love you with all my heart.” He leaned forward and kissed her in a soft benediction. A seal of the words scrolled across their hearts.
“I love you, too,” she said when he lifted his head. She set her hand against his unshaven cheek. His eyes were deeply set and bruised with lack of sleep. Lines of stress were scored next to his mouth. He was still preposterously beautiful. “I would like to circle back to this and kiss you a few thousand more times, but... Can I see our son first?”
* * *
Six weeks later, Ivy was about to rise and take Li Qiang back to his room when Jun Li came into their darkened bedroom.
“You’re home.” She hadn’t expected him until tomorrow afternoon.
“We finished early.” He spoke quietly as he came to steal Li Qiang. “And I missed you. Both of you,” he whispered and kissed the baby. “Were you taking him back to bed? I’ll do it.”
Ivy snuggled under the covers, drowsy since it was after midnight, but listening on the baby monitor as Jun Li briefly spoke to the nanny and settled their son with tender words for the boy.
When he came back, he dragged off his tie and shirt, throwing all his clothes to the floor as he undressed for bed. He’d been in Beijing for three days, finalizing the restructuring.
Ivy had stayed home because she had had a doctor’s appointment and a million other things to organize. They had spoken daily, mostly about Li Qiang and the various details for their upcoming travel and move. With Jun Li’s cousin taking over most of the operations based here in Shanghai, she and Jun Li were spending Christmas with Ivy’s father, who had put off his wedding until she could attend. Afterward, they would decamp to Singapore, where Jun Li would be closer to the port construction and other projects he would oversee for the next few years.
Ivy had agreed to chair the committee that organized the annual strategy meeting there. It was a good way to get to know more about the company and see where she might fit at some future point. She had also reached out to some of her contacts asking if there was work she might do piecemeal. She wasn’t in a hurry to go back to work, especially not full-time, but she wanted to keep her hand in.
Jun Li lifted the blankets and slid in, gathering her to his naked body.
“Oh,” she said with disappointment.
“I only want a kiss,” he said, drawing back. They had fooled around a little in the last few weeks but hadn’t made love since she’d been put on bed rest three months ago.
“No, um, I bought something. I should have changed into it while you were putting Li Qiang down. I didn’t think of it until I realized what I was wearing.”
“Something?” he prompted.
“Something better than a nursing nightgown and sleep bra. Something I was going to put on when we got to Vancouver, to see if I could improve your opinion of my hometown.” She lightly pinched his flat stomach, and he caught her hand.
“Describe it.” He brought her hand to his mouth and scraped his teeth against the heel of her palm. “In detail.”
“I should start with the price, because it was outrageous considering what little I got.”
“Less is more. Everyone knows that. Expense approved. Keep talking.”
“There’s no garter belt. I hope that doesn’t upset you. I got the kind of stockings that stay up on their own so I could keep them on... Mmm.”
He rolled her beneath him as he covered her mouth, kissing her hungrily.
Oh, it felt good to feel his weight, his skin, his hardness. She scraped her nails lightly against his buttocks, and he groaned and nibbled at her chin.
“Color?” he asked against her throat.
“Purple. I got the size wrong and the bra cup is too small.”
“An understandable mistake to make.” He gathered her breast, gently massaging through the layers of cotton she wore. “You’re forgiven.”
“The panties are barely a fig leaf on a satin thread.”
“Maybe better suited to tangling around your wrists?” He caught her hands and swept them under the pillow.
A streak of excitement hit her belly, thrilling and hot.
“Tell me there are slippers with a four-inch heel and feathery pom-poms on the toe.”
“I’ll buy some,” she assured him. “There’s a sheer nightgown that goes over it. It’s very short.”
“Good, because this one is too long and has to come off.” He gathered a handful and started to tug it up.
She wiggled to help, and he flung it away while she wrestled herself free of her bra and plain cotton underpants.
“There is one more thing we have to talk about,” she said as their naked bodies brushed deliciously against one another’s.
“If you tell me there’s some sort of elbow-length gloves, I may not last to finish what we’re starting. I have really missed this, blossom. Really. Really.”
She could tell. She smiled into the dark and opened her legs so he nestled his erection against her soft, damp folds. She draped her arms around his shoulders and caressed the back of his neck.
“I made a decision without your input,” she informed him. And she was aware he could make his own decisions without her having a say, but she hoped he agreed with hers. “I asked the doctor to give me an IUD. I know you said you would have another vasectomy and didn’t want to put me through another pregnancy, but I don’t want to close the door on having another baby. Not yet.”
“Your body, your choice,” he said promptly. Then kissed her. “I wasn’t ready to close that door, either. Thank you for leaving it open for both of us.”
“For all we know, it’s wide-open.” She twined her legs up to his waist. “Does birth control even work for us?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“I guess we will.”
EPILOGUE
“PLEASE, MAMA?” LI Qiang placed a hand on her knee and tilted his head appealingly. “I really want a sleepover.”
He had only learned the word three seconds ago, but he was deeply sincere and, unbeknownst to him, breaking his parents’ hearts by appearing so willing to have a night apart from them.
“I think we’ll play until bedtime, then go back to our hotel.” Ivy stroked his hair to cushion the blow. “You and Mimi have time to finish your puzzle.” She nodded at the giant floor
puzzle Li Qiang was assembling with Kevin and Carla’s daughter.
Mimi had been conceived on the couple’s honeymoon and had been born only a few months after Li Qiang. The pair got on like a house on fire.
“But why?” He turned to his father and tilted his head. “Bàba, please?”
Why was Li Qiang’s favorite word these days, but that wasn’t what made Carla and Kevin bite back grins. Li Qiang, their late talker, had spent a full three years pointing and grunting and only using a handful of words. As a preemie, certain delays were to be expected, but the speech therapist had said he was also probably confused.
Initially, Ivy and Jun Li had made the decision that Ivy would read to him in English while Jun Li read the stories in Mandarin. They spoke to each other in whichever language the words came to them but decided to focus strictly on Mandarin until he started to speak.
The day Ivy had picked up a Mandarin book, Li Qiang had said clear as day, in English, “That one is Bàba’s. I get Goodnight Moon.”
From then on, he had been speaking nonstop. The funny part was, he spoke to Ivy in English and Jun Li in Mandarin. Her father always greeted Li Qiang in Cantonese over the tablet, so now that was “their talk.”
Kevin was highly amused by it and had tried to confuse Li Qiang by throwing out the little Hokkien he knew. The joke was on him—that was the nanny’s first language, and Li Qiang knew more than Kevin did.
“Come.” Jun Li invited Li Qiang into his lap. “What happens if you need us in the night? We don’t want to be so far away.” To the adults, Jun Li added, “I’ve never understood the North American obsession with sleepovers.”
Kevin barked out a laugh. “This from the man who let me sleep over for two years?”
“It was your home,” Jun Li corrected with a small frown of annoyance. “We were roommates.”
“Well, my home is your home, and we’ll always have a bed for you here. You can all stay the night. How’s that?” Kevin asked. “We could do calculus homework like old times.”
“Tempting,” Jun Li said dryly and looked to Ivy.
“The children are playing so nicely,” she pointed out.
Jun Li put Li Qiang onto his feet and said, “We will all have a sleepover, then.”
Li Qiang and Mimi ran back to their puzzle, giddy with excitement.
“The appeal of sleepovers,” Kevin said as though explaining it to a simpleton, “is that you get your child out of your bed for a night so you can make another one.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Jun Li said blandly while Ivy looked into her soda water with lime.
They were ahead of the curve on that one. A month ago, after much discussion, she’d had her device removed. She’d fallen pregnant laughably fast, so they’d booked this trip. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any complications this time around, but they were putting a plan in place in case she was put on bed rest again and were getting all their overseas visiting done early.
Some hours later, when Ivy was spooned into her husband’s body, replete from their lovemaking, she sensed a lingering tension that wasn’t allowing him to fall asleep.
“He’s across the hall,” she murmured. “Go check on him if it will make you feel better.”
“I just want to hear him if he calls out.”
Just then, little feet padded up to the door and the latch rattled. “Mama?”
Jun Li rose before she could and stepped into his boxers while she sat up to pull on her nightgown. He unlocked the door and picked up Li Qiang.
“What’s wrong? Bad dream?”
“I missed you.”
“You did? Well, it’s a good thing we’re here, then.” He closed the door and brought their son to bed. “Your feet are freezing. You missed putting them on me, didn’t you?”
There was some giggling and wiggling as they all made themselves comfortable.
Jun Li reached across their son to set his hand on her hip. “Now I can sleep,” he said around a big yawn.
Ivy smiled in the dark. “I love you, you know.”
“I love you, too.”
“And me,” Li Qiang said.
“And you too.”
Life wasn’t perfect. Both she and Jun Li knew that. He was off his medication, but he might need it again sometime. Her pregnancy could be difficult, and any of their parents could suffer a downturn in health.
That’s why they had agreed that when a moment was as blissfully perfect as this one, they had to acknowledge and treasure it.
“Thank you for what we have,” she said, searching out his face in the dark so she could caress his cheek. “I’m really happy right now.”
“Me too, blossom.” He kissed the inside of her wrist. “Me too.”
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781488073496
Her Impossible Baby Bombshell
Copyright © 2021 by Dani Collins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Clare sighed, knowing that she was doing a horrible job of this. “Not stranded with you in a romantic setting but more stranded on an island where mob bosses and their cheerful thugs can’t get to me. I heard you say during the party that you were going to be sailing around, or whatever the hell you call it, for the next couple of weeks or so. That’s the reason I stowed away.”
That distrustful look was back in his eyes again. Not that she could blame him. Frustration and that familiar resentment sat like a boulder on Clare’s chest. She’d slogged for so many years, carefully building her life so that she didn’t need anyone in it. With one move, her father had negated everything she’d achieved. She was going to sound ridiculous for saying what she was about to say.
“Explain, now,” Dev said, in a hard tone that did wonders for the quagmire of self-pity that was threatening to engulf her. “And no more beating about the bush. Give it to me straight.”
“Straight, right. Here goes... I’d like you to kidnap me.”
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