Decidedly With Baby

by Stina Lindenblatt

  The best part about the fifteen-hour flight here was that it had given Josh and I plenty of time to come up with our story.

  “Because I didn’t think there was any point to it,” I said. “Not until we knew for sure where things were going between us.” Fortunately, the sky was cloud-free. No lightning bolts would be striking me for that lie. “And then one thing led to another, and Josh proposed to me on our first anniversary together. But I decided to wait until the right moment to announce it.”

  Right. If I had been a more skilled liar, I could’ve come up with something better. Something more creative. Something that didn’t involve me being engaged to a friend turned one-night stand.

  But when had I ever claimed that creativity was my strong suit?

  Mum turned her gaze to Josh.

  Remember those thirty nannies I mentioned? Remember how some of them could’ve been close cousins to Hitler? Even those nannies couldn’t handle The Gaze. It was sharper than a steak knife dipped in lemon juice—and just as uncomfortable.

  “And what is it you do?” she asked him.

  “Christ, Mum,” Simon said, “What’s with the interrogation?”

  I almost laughed out loud at that. Each of our boyfriends and girlfriends in the past had gone through the same interrogation—at least those we dared to introduce to our parents. It was as predictable as stores having Christmas decorations up right after Halloween. It was tradition.

  “Language!” was her only response to Simon’s question.

  “I play defense for the San Francisco NHL team,” Josh bravely said.

  “That’s all you do?” she asked as if he spent his days playing video games. I knew for a fact she had no idea what the NHL was.

  I laced my fingers with Josh’s and give them a light squeeze—only for the ache between my legs to get the wrong idea. I did my best to ignore it again. “The NHL is the North American professional hockey league. Only the best of the best play in it. And his team was in the playoffs this year.” Could you tell I was proud of him? Well, I was.

  Simon and Drew definitely looked more impressed than my mother.

  “This is my cue to get back to work,” Drew said, even though it was five p.m. I guess that was something he and I had in common. “I’ll see you all at the funeral.”

  Once he and his BMW were headed toward the main gates, I turned to my betrothed. “How about I show you my room, so we can rest up before dinner?”

  And then maybe I could Google suggestions on how to deal with the ache between my legs. The ache that was bound to get achier with Josh and I sharing the same room for the next six nights.

  Oh, boy.

  8

  Josh

  “So…how are we doing this?” I asked, standing in Holly’s bedroom. The size of it alone was bigger than my apartment living room…and that didn’t count her walk-in closet.

  The problem? There was only one bed—and not a big one at that. But at least it wasn’t a twin.

  “Well, we have three choices. You can sleep on the floor. Or there’s the day bed.” She pointed to a short, wrought iron sofa covered with a mound of pillows.

  That’s a bed? Maybe for a gnome.

  “What’s the third option?”

  Chewing her lip, she glanced at the bed. “We’re adults. I’m sure we can sleep in the same bed and keep our hands to ourselves.” Her gaze swung back to me and her eyes narrowed. “You can keep your hands to yourself, right?”

  “Sure I can, sweetheart. The question is, can you?” I winked at her and she rolled her eyes.

  Yes, this was going to be a very interesting six days—especially when said hands craved to touch her soft skin, to tangle in her silky hair, and yank her head back while I kissed her deeply, to make her cry out my name.

  Hell, my cock wanted in on the last part too.

  Holly and I studied the bed as if expecting it to magically get bigger. When that didn’t happen, Holly grabbed a pile of cushions from the sofa and created a barrier down the middle of the bed.

  A smirk twitched at the corner of my mouth. “That doesn’t exactly leave us much room. Is that your way of saying you don’t trust yourself around me?”

  “You wish!” she bit out.

  Yes, I do.

  She stalked to her suitcase and unzipped it. “I’m going to unpack and then have a shower. You can use the bathroom first if you want.” She gestured at a different door from the one we had entered through.

  “Teenage you had a bathroom in your bedroom?” It was a toss up on whether I should laugh or not be too surprised.

  She shrugged her slim shoulders, a slight blush appearing on her cheeks. “I know, it’s kind of excessive. Maybe that’s why I love my apartment back home. It’s normal.”

  “And you prefer normal?”

  Smiling, she nodded. “Normal is great. Normal is what I missed out on growing up.”

  That, I could relate to, but for different reasons. Until my grandparents had taken me in, I had missed out on normal too. It was the reason I didn’t see kids in my future. When your father played in the NHL, normal was not part of your life—far from it.

  I know what you’re thinking. Plenty of players in the NHL have had kids, and not all of them turned into mini car wrecks. But you know what they say about the apple and the tree….

  Naturally, my cock got the apple and the tree analogy all wrong. It threw in Adam and Eve into the mix—and somehow came up with me naked in the shower with Holly.

  “So…about that shower,” I said. “You planning on joining me?”

  Holly flicked her teeth against her lower lip.

  She was considering it.

  Wait for it…

  “Definitely not,” she said. “Remember our rule?”

  Ah, yes. The idiot no-sex rule I had sadly agreed to. But in my defense, I’d agreed to it while dealing with a hangover. That alone should’ve made it null and void.

  My lips twitched up to one side. “So you’re saying no shower sex?”

  She looked as though she was about to answer, but not with the one I was hoping for. She didn’t have a chance. She yawned instead. Twice.

  “Why don’t you have your shower first,” I said. “I can wait till you’re finished. You look ready to fall asleep on your feet.”

  Before she could argue otherwise, I turned her around by the shoulders and gave her mouth-watering ass a little pat to send her in the right direction.

  Without another word, she entered the bathroom.

  She re-emerged twenty minutes later, wearing nothing but a white bathrobe. Her face was free of makeup and her shiny red waves spilled down her back. She was like the angel and devil on my shoulder, all wrapped up into one erotic fantasy.

  She peered at my open suitcase on the floor by the sofa, the contents a jumbled mess. “You didn’t unpack?”

  I shrugged. “Never do. I’m used to living out of my suitcase while on the road.”

  She gave a small nod and walked to hers. Then I watched with amusement as she awkwardly crouched next to her highly organized luggage, her hand clutching her robe shut.

  I chuckled. “Are you done with the bathroom?”

  “Yes, I can get dressed in the closet while you’re showering.”

  Exhaustion suddenly steamrolled over me, and it was my turn to yawn. I grabbed a pair of briefs and my toiletries and headed for the bathroom.

  All I had on when I returned to the bedroom following my shower were the briefs.

  Was Holly impressed that I was practically naked?

  It was hard to tell—given she was fast asleep.

  Her arm and leg were slung across the cushions on the bed. Careful not to disturb her, I climbed under the covers and lay down in what little space had been left for me.

  Before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.

  “Oh, Jesus, baby,” I said to the gorgeous redhead straddling my hips and riding me like I was a prize-winning bronco. Yahoo.

  “I take it you like having
the naughty with me?” Holly said in the accent that had me hard in record time. Well, harder, given that I was already hard inside her.

  A light rapping on wood intruded on the moment. We ignored it.

  “I very much love having the naughty with you.”

  “Having the naughty” had become my new favorite phrase. Maybe I could record it for my voicemail message. “Hey, I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m busy having the naughty.”

  I reached up to squeeze Holly’s bouncing tits as the knocking sound interrupted us once more. Only this time the vision straddling me, who was an inch from making me see stars, vanished—and I groaned.

  Mother fucking, cock blocking asshole.

  Grunting my displeasure, I shifted…and fell off the bed with a thud. “Shit.”

  The insistent knocking came again. This time Holly—the real Holly, not my erotic dream Holly—stirred awake. Sunlight spilled through the window, much like when we had fallen asleep.

  “Who is it?” she asked, her sleepy voice making me that much harder. God really hated me, didn’t he?

  “Simon,” her brother said as I climbed back into bed. “Can I come in?”

  Holly’s gaze slid to me, her eyes wide. “Hold on a second.” Before he could reply, she was snatching up the pillows between us and tossing them to the floor.

  “Cuddle me,” she whispered to me, her voice rough with panic.

  I choked back a laugh. Whatever the lady wanted…

  I pulled her against me so that her sweet ass pressed against my morning…well, afternoon wood. She gasped.

  Yep, she hadn’t failed to notice my dilemma either.

  My thumb rasped against her nipple, hidden under her tank top. Her gasp became a moan. “Come in?”

  The door opened and Simon strolled in. “Hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.” His expression and tone didn’t mirror the apology in his words. Amusement was a better description. “Mum sent me to tell you dinner’s ready.”

  “You couldn’t have told us that through the door?” Holly grumbled.

  “What? And miss out on seeing you two looking utterly in love? Not bloody likely.”

  And with that, he walked out of the room, chuckling.

  Before Holly had time to react to his comment, I rubbed my cock against her ass, reminding her of my situation. “You sure about this no-sex rule of yours?” I murmured hotly against her ear.

  For a second, her body melted against me. But then she jerked away and scrambled out of bed. “Yes, Josh. I’m very sure. Us having sex again is a big mistake.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because one—I don’t want to do the friends-with-benefits thing. With a few exceptions, they usually don’t work. Someone ends up hoping for more emotionally than the other person can give. And two—we’re in my parents’ house. Them hearing us have sex is just plain icky.”

  A smirk formed on my face. “Because they’ve never had sex before?”

  She shoved me on the shoulder. “Ohmigod, we’re so not having this conversation!”

  “So, how about we have sex where they can’t overhear us?” Did I mention it was fun to watch Holly get flustered?

  “Not happening.” She turned around, grabbed her phone from the nightstand, and tapped away on it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Checking my schedule for the next few days.”

  “Schedule?”

  “You know, when you figure out what you’re going to do that day, week, month, or year, and write it in your calendar. I don’t have to explain what a calendar is, right?” Now it was her turn to smirk.

  I snorted a laugh. “Other than your grandmother’s funeral, you’re pretty much on vacation. So unless you’re scheduling in us having sex, what do you need a fucking schedule for?”

  The horrified expression on her face was priceless—not to mention adorable and an utter turn on.

  Right. Who was I kidding? Everything about her was an utter turn on.

  “Do you even know how to survive a few days without a schedule?” I asked, but I might as well have asked if she knew how to blow fire out of her ass. “Have you ever done anything impulsive before?”

  She sniffed at that. “I asked you to pretend to be my fiancé. I’d say that’s pretty impulsive.”

  I shook my head. “That wasn’t impulsive. That was you panicking when you found out your mother was planning to marry you off to Wilfred the friggin’ Third.”

  “What about when I had sex with you?” she shot back.

  “Doesn’t count.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “You were drunk.”

  She couldn’t argue against that. “Just because I’m not impulsive like you doesn’t mean I’m not capable of being impulsive.…I just prefer to know what I’m doing next. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. Suffice to say we’re complete opposites.”

  That wasn’t completely true, but instead of pointing that out, I went with, “And we know what they say about opposites…they’re explosive between the sheets.”

  “I guess we’ll never find out,” she fired back, either forgetting we already had found out, or ignoring the truth—that the one night between us had been more than explosive.

  At least from what I remembered.

  A thoughtful expression crossed her face. “All right, I’ll recant the no-sex rule—but only while we’re here. As soon as we return to San Francisco, we go back to just being friends.”

  Works for me.

  9

  Holly

  There were so many things to love about Australia. The not-so-great thing about the country? It was nearly impossible to have outdoor sex.

  And who wanted to have sex with the possibility of a tarantula looming close by?

  So that was why on the day of Nanna’s funeral, while everyone was in the living room celebrating her life, Josh and I were heading toward the staircase. Destination? My private bathroom.

  “Holly,” Aunt Sarah said, walking toward us across the polished tile floor in the foyer. And more importantly, blocking our escape route. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “And so am I,” my cousin Lia added.

  “Thank you,” I said. “She’ll be greatly missed.” How I kept from sounding like a recorded message after hearing so many wishes of condolences was beyond me.

  “And you must be Josh, Holly’s fiancé,” Aunt Sarah said to the poor man who’d heard this enough times today to last him more than a lifetime.

  When I’d come up with the idea of pretending he was my fiancé, did I expect my mother to tell everyone?

  Hardly.

  And she hadn’t.

  It had been Dad who spilled the proverbial beans—much to Mum’s chagrin.

  Why wasn’t she happy about that? Because she was still hoping for a union between Drew and me.

  Ring-a-ding-ding.

  What did my father think about all of this? I got the impression he couldn’t care less if I got married or not—as long as I was happy.

  And as long as it didn’t interrupt any of his business meetings.

  “Congratulations to you both. When’s the big day?” Aunt Sarah asked.

  “Not until next summer,” I said. “All the good locations were booked until then, plus I’m so busy with work, I couldn’t possibly begin planning the wedding sooner than that. And then Josh will be extremely busy once hockey season begins.” Well, the latter parts weren’t a lie, and I was pretty sure the first part was true too.

  Or at least that was what a woman at the office had said a few weeks ago when she announced her engagement.

  Lia grinned. It wasn’t just a happy grin. It was a grin that warned me I was in big trouble. Like when we were fourteen and she convinced me I would look amazing with green streaks in my hair—and offered to color it.

  Did I look amazing?

  Sure—if you liked the seaweed-stuck-in-your-hair look.

  So it wasn’t a big surprise that I was bra
cing for something worse.

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Lia said, “but I started a company that organizes special events, and I specialize in weddings. So I can plan the wedding for you, and I happen to know of a great location available this August.”

  Of course she did.

  With a smile plastered on my face, I wrapped my arms around Josh’s arm. “Oh, that’s so nice of you to offer,” I said, tone sweeter than honey but far from real. “But Josh’s eighty-year-old grandmother is looking forward to the wedding. Unfortunately, she’s extremely afraid of flying. She would never survive such a long flight. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” I glanced at Josh.

  He patted my hand, still wrapped around his arm. “That’s right, babe.”

  “Excuse us for a few minutes,” I said to the two women, “I have something in my eye and Josh was going to help me remove it.”

  Hey, I never claimed to be a good liar.

  Before they could say anything, I tugged him away from the pair. “I need something to get me through this day,” I told him, voice low. “And mind-blowing sex is on the agenda.”

  Josh laughed under his breath. Was this the first time we’d had sex in the shower since I agreed to his friends-with-benefits arrangement while we were here?

  There might have been at least one other occasion.

  But it was totally justified.

  Sex with Josh was a great stress reliever.

  We had barely entered my bathroom before I was unbuttoning Josh’s white shirt, and he had the back of my sleeveless black dress unzipped. His gaze took in my green satin bra and matching thong, and his eyes darkened like I was the feast he’d been starving for.

  He didn’t kiss me right away. After I stepped out of my dress, he peeled the thong down my legs, then tossed it to the side to join his shirt on the floor.

  Next off? My bra. While I might not have known much about hockey, I did know he was extremely talented at removing bras.

  “The caterer’s food was good,” he murmured in my ear, “but I’ve been craving the taste of something much better. Something much hotter.” Before I had a chance to digest what he had said, he lifted me onto the bathroom counter. “Now open your legs and let me see you.”