Not My Neighbor: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance
Page 13
Our first kiss as husband and wife.
Later that night, after all the hugs and well wishes from people I should know but hardly do, and way too much food we finally settle back in bed.
The bridal suite at her favorite hotel, and just for the night because tomorrow we fly out for Europe. Krystal’s passport only reaching us just in time before securing the first-class tickets.
She seems more nervous than tired, and I remind her that there’s nothing we could do on our wedding night that we haven’t done already.
Except maybe just a peck on the cheek and straight to sleep. That’s never happened before.
“Honey, what is it?” I ask her, sensing her shift in mood and wondering if she’s nervous about the flight tomorrow.
Going overseas for the first time can be intimidating, but I’m here. I’ll be with her every minute of every day from now on.
“Is the trip away your present, a wedding present, I mean?” she asks and I frown a little.
“Do we even do presents?” I ask, knowing she can have anything she wants and every minute she’s with me is all I could hope for and more.
“Let’s say it is though,” she says quietly, fidgeting with the sheet and gnawing at her lip.
“Okay, but it’s not much of a surprise. We’ve been planning it for weeks,” I muse aloud, wondering what’s gotten into her all of a sudden.
“Well, I kinda have a surprise,” she says so quietly I can hardly hear her, feeling her shiver under the covers I tell her she’s scaring me.
“Baby, what is it?” I ask, hoping she’s not sick. Hoping she’s as happy as we both were on our first night together.
“Happy three month anniversary,” she tells me, taking my hand and kissing it gently before placing it under the covers over her belly.
It is a surprise, and I feel bad for not remembering.
It’s three months to the day that we met, and here we are on our wedding night about to head off on a three month...
It hits me in a flash, and she smiles up at me, her lip trembling with tears of happiness.
“We’re gonna be mommy and daddy, Blake. Not just husband and wife,” she manages to tell me before being overcome with emotion.
I keep my hand on her belly, and holding her closer with my other arm I let it sink in as I stroke her hair, kiss her lips.
Telling her I love her.
Telling our baby I love her or him too.
“It’s the best surprise ever,” I sniff. Feeling the pride and affection I understand better than ever now. My first glimpse of a father’s love as well as a husband’s undying love for his wife.
My family. My wife and child.
Mine.
Extended Epilogue
Six Months Later
Krystal
Blake suggested we cancel our extended honeymoon at least a dozen times while we were away.
Every time I’d throw up or get dizzy, need to sit down, or just plain lose my shit with him, he’d rush me off to the nearest doctor and have me fully checked out.
“There’s no way I’m missing this trip for the world,” I’d tell him because that’s the truth. I’ve never had such a great time, with him or any other time.
“It’s the trip of a lifetime, Blake. Can’t you just accept the fact that pregnant women throw up occasionally and get grouchy?” I’d ask him, but he seemed more determined than ever to dote on me.
Fussing over every little thing and sometimes making me feel like he’d rather wrap me in cotton and put me in a carrier himself.
“If this is how you treat pregnant me, god help our child,” I almost shouted at him one day in a Paris coffee shop. Crying at first and then laughing as my own emotions took their regular roller coaster ride.
It did take him a while, but he gradually eased up, just a little. So much so that by the time we do make it home and absolutely nothing’s wrong with either mommy-to-be or the baby inside me, it’s no big issue when I make an appointment to check in with our family doctor once we get back home stateside.
I’m booked in for an ultrasound, which is something I avoided looking at while overseas. Not sure if we wanted to know the baby’s gender, but our doctor wants a look at my latest blood test.
“Just routine,” Dr. Fitzgibbon explains to Blake and me. Daddy to be is more wound up than I’ll ever be because I know everything’s fine inside me but he likes to worry.
Planning for the ‘what if’s’ that we both know can never really be planned for.
Even though I have a female doctor, Blake insists on being at every single appointment, holding my hand, and being right there for every single thing it seems.
Except when I fill a cup or have blood taken.
Blake would kill me for saying so, but his kryptonite, the one thing the big guy can’t handle is the sight of blood and needles.
“You’ll be okay at the birth though?” He’s been asked a dozen times, every time setting his jaw firmly, playing the boss.
“Of course, it’s just the needle in the arm thing. I’ll be fine. Just fine,” he’s assured everyone, but he can’t fool me.
I’ll be sure and let them know closer to the time that they might have a fainter on their hands. But they didn’t hear it from me.
Today though, it’s nothing so dramatic, and as Blake makes a face, complaining about the resolution of the imaging, our doctor gives a loud and clinical sounding “uh oh.”
My heart freezes and I feel Blake’s hand grip mine even tighter.
“What is it doc? Give it to us straight,” he demands with his trademark intensity, but she only laughs softly to herself.
Must be a Doctor joke thing.
“I mean ‘uh oh’ spoiler alert,” she chimes. “Look away now because junior here is about to flash you his or her gender,” she says with a huge smile, looking adoringly at the grainy image as I feel my baby shift inside me.
Blake looks away from the small screen and holding a hand over my not-so-small baby bump he looks into my eyes instead.
“You can look if you want to, mommy,” he tells me. “It’s our baby, but I know you’re doing all the work. I don’t mind if you want to know,” he tells me, leaning over to kiss me and I can tell he’s just itching to know, but he loves a good surprise as much as I do.
Dr. Fitzgibbon asks me if I want to see, and I nod eagerly.
Blake squeezes my hand again and keeps his eyes on me as I watch our baby turn to face me for the first time, making me cry straight away.
The doctor raises her brow in a question and although I think I can see, I nod before she mouths the gender of our baby so only I can see.
It wouldn’t matter. It doesn’t make any difference to how I feel, but knowing I was right. Knowing I already do know my little girl a little is all the confirmation I need.
Forty-five minutes later…
“I know I said I wanted it to be a surprise. But that was ages ago. You got to find out and now you won’t tell? I think we need a second opinion. It feels like you and that doctor are ganging up on me,” Blake pouts.
I’m not sure if he’s genuine or just trying to cheer me up, but he’s been nagging me, begging me to tell him if it’s a boy or a girl the whole ride home.
I remind him of his own decision when he was asked, but he just keeps on about it.
I put up with it until just before bed.
“Okay fine, you really wanna know?” I growl, blowing what feels like a puff of steam out through my swollen cheeks.
“It’s a...”
“No, no! Don’t,” he says suddenly, leaning over and kissing me so I can’t tell him.
He tells me he’s sorry for acting so crazy, but being a first time daddy is doing things to him he never expected.
You’re telling me.
The next morning, at around three twelve A.M. Blake’s officially banned from even asking because he’s changed his mind yet again, begging me to tell him if it’s a boy or a girl.
�
��Which do you think it is?” I ask him sleepily, too tired to argue or want to talk about it anymore for one day.
“I think it’s a boy,” he says excitedly, nuzzling my neck with his stubble and making me groan in reply.
“Then congratulations, it’s a boy,” I murmur, drifting off again almost instantly.
“Or it could be a girl,” he says not long after, shaking me awake to tell me the painfully obvious chances of it being one or the other.
“Goodnight, Blake,” I moan, pulling the pillow over my head.
“Goodnight girls,” he whispers knowingly, kissing my shoulder tenderly and gently rubbing his huge hand on my belly.
Pressing a kiss from his lips with it for our unborn baby daughter.
“Goodnight daddy,” I mumble, smiling as I drift back to sleep.
We love you.
Extended Epilogue
One Year Later
Blake
Carter, Mason & Mason Holdings, my one-time solo empire has become a family business. A bigger business than one person could come up with on their own too.
Krystal’s dad is the Carter in the title, an official partner now as well as a financial wizard, with Momma and Papa Mason as we like to call ourselves picking up the slack.
Actually, it’s Krystal who’s done it all really. We kept everything I’d set up running because it wasn’t broken so it needed no fixing.
It pays the bills and gives us the life I want for her and our family, leaving plenty of room to expand if we want.
And Krystal wanted some input. Not content to just be barefoot and pregnant for the rest of her days, she ordered me to put her to work, not long after little Ellie came into the world either.
“If you really want to work. Come up with something you love doing that you can charge people for, and then we’ll talk,” I told her.
“But I won’t have you doing some BS job or taking orders from me or anyone else, no way. Come up with what you want to do and the business will back it,” I said.
And not a day goes by when I don’t marvel at her, or her work since that day not so very long ago.
With Ellie on her hip most days, and with another one almost fully cooked inside her, my darling wife runs as well as works at Baby-Booth. The countries newest and fastest growing baby photo franchise.
I kind of, maybe by accident left an article in a financial magazine one morning, the one showing a national photography chain about to go under, desperate for a buyer when she had the idea.
Something she loves and something she’s good at. Plus, something she could charge money for.
And who doesn’t love or need high-quality baby photos?
We ran it past accounting, her dad, Jack. His say is as important as any because he’s a third partner.
He crunched the numbers and honestly? He said the odds were stacked against it, but if it made Krystal happy, he’d forfeit his share of everything if it went belly up.
Well, we all learned something, and fast.
My wife isn’t just a pretty face, and nor is our baby girl Ellie.
Ellie’s become the face of Baby Booth, and a little bit of a celebrity with TV ads and newsprint, that sort of thing.
Having a new mom with a baby of her own taking your baby photos? It’s taken off like nothing else could, with the original company wanting their business back soon after.
Sorry, not for sale.
And although Baby Booth is open for anyone to get involved, it encourages recent moms and mom’s-to-be to get started in business for themselves, with Krystal personally overseeing a franchise group in the thousands after just a few months.
Jack’s eaten humble pie and suggested going public with the company. Krystal made a face and Ellie blew a raspberry then needed changing, so that was the end of that corporate meeting.
I find myself offering to help when I think Krystal needs it, glad to do anything when she asks. And I always remind her to take it easy, not to overwork herself or to take on too much.
“You said to do what you love, right?” she away says, and I agree.
“That’s what I’m doing, Blake and it doesn’t even feel like work. I get to have you and Ellie, even my dad around most of the time. It’s like hanging out with family, not work,” she tells me with confidence.
“I’m proud of you, Krystal. I really am,” I tell her, not surprised when she waves it off but I can see the color in her cheeks.
That quiet satisfaction an artist has when they see their work coming to life. That glow a mother gets when she sees her children growing up.
The look in her eyes when she tells me she loves me, and the way her look shifts when I tell her I love her more.
Not a day goes by when I don’t give thanks for Nate Macy either.
If he’d gotten straight off his flight, and if Krystal had been running on schedule to pick him up, we might never have met.
A thought I can’t hold in my mind because it seems impossible now to even live and breathe without her, without our babies, and without our family.
“Just make sure I don’t get so wrapped up in this I forget about us,” she reminds me one night.
Ellie fast asleep in her crib by our own bed and me resting my head gently on baby number two inside her belly.
I can hear both heartbeats, mommy, and baby. It never ceases to amaze me, the whole miracle of life.
“This is us though,” I tell her, remembering what she said about doing what she loves never being work.
“Yes,” she sighs. “I just never want to lose sight of us,” she says, emphasizing the word.
Widening her eyes as she traces her hand across my cheek as I look up at her.
She takes my hand and cups it to her chest.
“Don’t get tired of this,” she says with a pleading tone in her voice, making me prop myself up on one elbow, our eyes level with each other.
“How could I get tired of the one thing that keeps me going?” I ask her, taking her hand in mine and kissing it.
“How could I get tired of my best friend, my business partner. The mother of my children?”
“Even when I’m bigger than I am now, after our fourth or fifth?” she asks, and it’s my turn for my eyes to widen.
“Promise me that many and I’ll spoon feed you myself,” I reply, kissing her lips tenderly.
“I love you, Krystal. Loved you the minute I saw you and I’ll keep loving you no matter what you think you look like or how many babies we have together.” I remind her. “I love you for you, for us.”
“And I love you, Blake. Don’t know what I did to deserve you, to deserve all this,” she adds, running a hand over her belly and eyeing the crib next to us.
“You did good, that’s what you did,” I tell her. “Gave me more than I could ever want and these babies something nobody else ever could, a momma’s love.”
“Tell me you won’t just go to sleep now,” she whispers. “I’m still wide awake and I think I need a Blake-sized sleeping pill inside me.”
“You know Ellie sleeps like a log and the nearest neighbors are what, a half a mile away?” she adds.
“Just the way you like it?” I ask, suddenly feeling my smile broaden in time with something else standing to full attention.
“You know just how I like it,” she coos, turning onto her side, letting me feel just how ready she’s been the whole time we’ve been talking.
“I might take tomorrow off,” she gasps as my hands gently grip her from behind.
“I might have to supervise,” I growl in a low tone, making her giggle before she gasps again.
“Maybe the day after too,” she adds. “You think things will manage without me for a day or two?”
“I think a couple of days’ bedrest is just what the doctor ordered,” I whisper, running my hands across her belly.
Sure I can feel two sets of legs kicking.
“Anything else you wanna talk about?” I ask her innocently, feeling a flutter in my chest.<
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That feeling a man gets.
The moment he’s aware he’s gonna be a daddy.
“Later,” Krystal murmurs. “Right now, Mommy needs her medicine.”
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A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS
Book 1: Baby Lust
Book 2: Veteran
Book 3: Built
Book 4: Bambino
Book 5: Rescued
Book 6: Leader
Book 7: Professor
Book 8: Burned
Book 9: Worldly
Book 10: Pistol
Book 11: Policed
Book 12: Driven
Book 13: Lucky 13
Book 14: Lumberjacked
Book 15: Protector
Book 16: Carpenter
Book 17: Italian Stallion
Book 18: Gardener
Book 19: Budapest Billionaire’s Virgin
Book 20: Billionaire’s Babysitter
Book 21: Cocky CFO
Book 22: Fireman’s Filthy 4th
Book 23: Mechanic
Book 24: SEAL’s Secret
Book 25: Police, Pooch, and Smooch
Book 26: Fireman’s Fake Fiancée
Book 27: Billionaire’s Virgin Ballerina
Book 28: Bitcoin Billionaire’s Babysitter
Book 29: Veterans Day Daddy
Book 30: Cowboy’s Christmas Carol
Book 31: Police Officer’s Princess
Book 32: Statham
Book 33: Bodyguard
Book 34: Greek God
Book 35: Billionaire Single Dad's Babysitter
Book 36: Mountain Man
Book 37: SEAL’s Justice
Book 38: Royal Romance
Book 39: Doctor Mountain Man’s Special Delivery
Book 40: Crocodile Dan D
Book 41: Mountain Man’s Secret Baby
Book 42: Doctor Bad Boy’s Secret Baby