Hilariously Ever After

by Penny Reid

  Oh, good, we're going to hit the ground running today. "May I help you with something, Gina? Like the number to a dating service? I'm sure one of them specializes in finding matches for trolls."

  "Cute, but save it for yourself. I have Luke." Her face is smug.

  "You don't." I shake my head. "You might have once, but you most definitely do not have him now. Because I do, and I'm not giving him up."

  Her eyes land on the book open facedown on the desk and I can see a hiccup of terror cross her face. "You're pregnant?" She's stunned. "I can't believe Luke would let this happen, he's so careful."

  I want to vomit into Luke's trash can at the knowledge that she knows anything about Luke, much less his proficiency at birth control, but suddenly things start falling into place.

  "You had an abortion, didn't you? When you dated Luke, you had an abortion." I don't even need her to confirm it. Everything finally adds up.

  "Luke doesn't want children, Sophie," Gina spits. "He's focused on his career, he doesn't have the time or desire for children to slow him down. He's going to dump you and you're going to be fat and alone."

  I know she's lying. There's a Wall of Baby with cherubic little faces and handwritten thank-yous from their parents that prove she is lying. The man made a career out of helping women become mothers, the pictures proudly documenting his success. I don't think for a second that he doesn't want that for himself. Yet her words sting, like shrapnel. Even lying words are hurtful.

  "I think," I say slowly, "you're a liar. I think Luke is careful with contraception because some troll from his past had an abortion he didn't want. I think Luke respects me and wanted the timing to be my choice. And finally, Gina, I know Luke wants this baby. Our baby. It's over, Gina. This pathetic attempt of yours to guilt Luke about a decision you made by having him treat you for infertility is over. Do you even have infertility issues or was it all a ploy to spend time with him?" I shake my head. "You need psychological help, not a gynecologist. Now get the hell out of Luke's office and my life."

  The door slams behind her and I dive back into the desk drawer, running my hand over the contents. I pull one out and run my fingers across the Christmas fabric. Christmas was a month ago—Luke didn't know I was pregnant until two weeks ago. I pull the drawer open farther and teeny-tiny turkeys peer up at me. Thanksgiving was two months ago. He's been collecting a stash of adorable baby socks for at least two months. The kind of socks I'd wear in miniature form. There’s a pink pair, covered in red hearts. Another pair covered in little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The tiny red and white striped elf socks still in my hands.

  That hot son of a bitch wants me to have his baby.

  I don't feel duped. I believe what I told Gina. I think he did want the timing to be my choice. I place the socks back in the drawer and slide it shut with a thump.

  I look at the six-hundred-page book in front of me and, feeling overwhelmed by everything I don't know, snap it shut and place it back on the shelf. Returning to Luke's chair, I tuck my feet up beside me and wrap my arms around my bent knees.

  I'm wondering how much longer I'll be able to sit like this before my stomach prevents such a configuration when Luke walks in. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, taking me in, sitting behind his desk.

  "Sophie," he says, looking relieved to see me, yet wary at the same time. He shuts the door behind him with a click and takes a seat across from me.

  "You bought a car that will accommodate car seats?"

  "Yes," he replies, his face giving away nothing at my random conversation starter. I expected some kind of denial, so I'm not sure what to do with this.

  "You got a baby car before telling me"—I point to myself—"that we're having a baby. That’s wrong, don’t you think?" I say with a hint of ire. "You're ridiculous. We won't even need it for another eight months."

  He smiles then, the biggest smile I think I've ever seen on this face. "Seven, actually."

  I pause and drop my hand. I don't even know how pregnant I am. I shake my head at him and turn my gaze away from him as Luke moves around to sit on the edge of the desk in front of me.

  "Why are you mad?" he asks, caressing my cheek with his thumb. "I know it's scary, Sophie, but everything's going to be fine. Perfect, even."

  "You're laughing at me," I protest.

  "I'm not." He shakes his head to emphasize it.

  "Then why are you smiling?"

  "Because you said we're having a baby."

  "Well, yeah," I answer, confused. "You already knew that."

  "I knew you were pregnant." He pauses, searching my eyes. "I didn't know if you'd want it."

  "I do want it. But I'm scared. This isn't what I'd planned."

  "I know you have plans that don't include a baby just yet, and I'm sorry I put you in this position. But if this is what you want, we can make it work." He stops and searches my face again. "I want it, Sophie. You, the baby, all of it."

  I nod. "We'll figure it out."

  "Together?"

  He holds out his hand and I take it.

  Epilogue

  Luke

  Sophie doesn’t know it, but today is our fifth anniversary. Five years ago today I took a wrong turn that changed my life. There was construction on Walnut. I detoured and missed my normal stop at Starbucks. I spotted Grind Me and stopped on a whim, desperate for a jolt of caffeine before the clinic.

  I had no reason to go back the next week. Or the week after that. Weeks of detours for no reason other than a glance at a barista named Sophie. I had to finish the coffee in my damn car every day since I wasn’t about to walk into a student clinic holding a cup stamped Grind Me.

  I never intended to start up anything with her. I knew she was young. I assumed she was a grad student at the very least, but that was still too young for me. It was nothing more than a harmless ego boost at first - watching her pupils dilate when I spoke, her cheeks flush when she handed me coffee. Seeing her eyes follow me in the reflection of the glass every morning as I strode out of the cafe.

  Slowly I began to question, Why not her? I could take her out to dinner. Fuck her. Get her out of my system. But hell, she looked like the kind of girl who’d need to be called the next day. She looked like the kind of girl who had baby names picked out and would practice writing Mrs. Miller on scraps of paper. She looked terrifying.

  But I didn’t have any idea what terrifying actually felt like until I realized that I was the one who wanted all those things, and I wasn’t sure she did. That maybe the past was repeating itself. That maybe Sophie might be more interested in a career than a husband and children, with no faith that she could have both.

  I glance at her, sleeping next to me. She’s stirring with the morning sun filtering in. We don’t have long before the girls will be awake and the day begins. I reach over and trace kisses down her jaw to her chest.

  "Mmm, good morning to you too, Dr. Miller. Tell me you locked the door?" she pleads.

  I release a nipple from my teeth before replying. "Locked, and they’re both still asleep." I part her legs and move between them as I kiss her stomach. "Based on the time we should have at least twenty minutes."

  She laughs. "Remember when we had all day?"

  "I do." I grin at her.

  "I miss the marathons, but I do enjoy seeing how creative you can be on a deadline."

  "Do you?" I ask and drop her ankles over my shoulders.

  "Uh-huh."

  "I enjoy it when you visit me at work after dropping the girls off at the hospital daycare."

  "Do you think we're bad parents? Are the other parents using daycare to slip in a middle-of-the-day fuck?"

  "If they're not, they should be."

  "It was one thing when they couldn't walk, but they're little terrors now."

  I pause and raise my head. "You don't want another one?"

  "We have two!" she exclaims. "Under five! I just got Christine off to pre-school and I finally have Alessandra out of diapers."

>   "Well, maybe you'll change your mind?" I raise an eyebrow at her.

  "Wait a minute." She sits up and scoots away from me. "Wait, wait, wait." She eyes me, scowling. "Do you think I'm pregnant now?"

  "You're three days late."

  "You're three days annoying."

  "I love the way your insults don't even make sense when you're flustered." I reach for her calf to pull her back to me, but she dodges me and grabs her phone from the nightstand.

  I wait patiently while she thumbs through looking for her period-tracker app.

  “How do you do that?” She scowls. “You don’t even have the app!”

  "Pregnancy tests under the sink," I call out as she stomps off to the bathroom. "I can get a blood draw this week when you stop in for office sex."

  "Thanks, babe, that's convenient," she replies sarcastically, and I just laugh.

  I hear the stick hit the trash can before she appears from the bathroom with a sigh she doesn’t mean. I smile and crook my finger, beckoning her back to bed to finish what we started.

  Something thumps against the bedroom door and the handle shakes back and forth. "Mommy?"

  She sags. "There goes morning sex. For the next decade."

  "Just a minute," I call out to whichever kid is in the hallway. "You," I say to her, "get back in bed. Give me five minutes, I'll set them up with a snack and a Disney movie and be right back."

  She bites back a smirk. "You're going to distract our children with a movie so we can have sex? You’re so wrong."

  - THE END -

  I hope you enjoyed WRONG! If you’d like to read more about Sophie’s friend Everly, you’re in luck! Her story is the next novel in this series. It’s called RIGHT and you can find it here:

  Amazon➜ http://bit.ly/AMZRight

  Apple➜ http://bit.ly/AppleRight

  B&N➜ http://bit.ly/NookRight

  Kobo➜ http://bit.ly/KoboRight

  My childhood was perfect.

  I’ve led a charmed life, and I’m not going to blow it now by picking the wrong guy.

  I’ve got my sights set on my brother’s best friend.

  He’s known my family for years. He’s reliable and kind and handsome.

  Sure, he’s been avoiding me since I was six.

  I’m a bit aggressive for him, maybe.

  But he’s the one… right?

  Read ➜ RIGHT!

  If you want to see what I’m up to, here’s a few good places to find me:

  Instagram: http://bit.ly/JanaInstagram

  Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/GrindMeCafe

  Newsletter: http://bit.ly/NewsletterJana

  If you’d like a quick text from me when I have a new release or a sale, sign up by texting Jana to 474747

  My next release is titled Plan B. Look for that summer 2019

  ➜ Add it on Goodreads: http://bit.ly/GRPlanB

  Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancee

  Julia Kent

  All of our best dates end up in the emergency room....

  I planned the perfect proposal. Plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. The perfect setting. The perfect woman.

  The perfect everything.

  Dad gave me my late mother’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore. Shannon wouldn’t care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond designed to impress.

  But my future mother-in-law, Marie, will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked backside on the internet.

  I was going to make it perfect, from the color of the tablecloth to the freshness of the roses.

  And it was perfect.

  Until Shannon swallowed the ring.

  Chapter 1

  Shannon has no idea how many layers of beauty she has. And that’s exactly why she’s so exquisite.

  When I was sixteen, the year before my mother died, Mom took me and my little brother, Andrew, to New York City for a long weekend. Pulled us out of school over the objections of the headmaster at our academy. Mom didn’t care. We spent three nights at the Waldorf Astoria, skated at Rockefeller Center, had the best seats at the top Broadway musicals, and dined on the finest footlongs you could get for $3. Loaded with mustard and sauerkraut, plus a cream soda or two.

  (Do you have something against footlongs? Too bad. Two teenagers can only handle so much caviar and lobster.)

  What I remember most about that trip, and what Shannon reminds me of every moment I look at her, was our trip to the Museum of Modern Art. Mom insisted we go, and Andrew and I rolled our eyes like sets of dice at a craps table.

  And then.

  And then I got it, right there in front of a Vincent van Gogh masterpiece. In art history class we’d covered this painting in detail. We were taught the biography of van Gogh, how he came to create the series of paintings, his motivation, and his flaws. We’d dissected the meaning so thoroughly that I felt like I could recreate the art by automation, our elite prep school instruction clinical and impeccable.

  Standing in front of the painting, a few feet away, with my eyes trailing the curve of brush strokes, my mind taking in the nuance of color, my senses dazzled by the sheer essence of the whole, I halted. Froze. Was completely in the painting’s spell.

  You can study something in the abstract. Know it’s real somewhere out there in the world, and understand intellectually that what you read in a book or what you’re told by someone else is true.

  You have to stand in front of it and have it stare back at you, though, to really know it.

  That’s how I feel when I look at Shannon. Every single time my eyes find her. Shannon’s smile is warm and sweet, yet better every time she flashes it at me. Her honey-colored hair shines in the sunlight but looks richer when it’s tangled, in bed, highlighted by the moon and messed by me. Those warm eyes see only me when we’re together. That luscious body craves my touch. My hands. My...all of it.

  When I’m with her, the world is more nuanced. Deeper. Authentic. Real.

  She’s a work of art, one of a kind. And one I get to hold next to my body, tuck away in my heart, and...grow old with.

  I have planned the perfect proposal. No footlongs and sauerkraut, unfortunately, but plenty of lobster, caviar, champagne and—her favorite—tiramisu. (What is it with women and tiramisu? It’s cream, cheese, sugar, cake and rum, not some magic potion that generates mouth orgasms. My Y chromosome scratches its head in confusion, but hey, if it’s her favorite...I give my woman what she wants.)

  Dad gave me Mom’s engagement ring, platinum and diamonds galore, a monstrosity he’d bought for her nearly four decades ago as his business took off. The ring is designed to impress. I doubt Shannon would care if I slid a giant hard-candy ring on her finger instead of a three-carat diamond.

  And, frankly, I don’t care, either. But the thought of my Shannon sharing such an important part of my mother’s life makes my chest swell. Only Shannon—and my mom—can do that. Only love can do that.

  Plus, Marie will pass out when she sets eyes on that rock, and that will give us two minutes of blessed silence. That woman talks more than Kim Kardashian flashes her naked ass on the internet.

  “It’s not as if your brothers are planning to tie themselves down to one woman anytime soon, if ever,” Dad had said when he gave it to me. He’s about as sentimental as a pet rock. After having it resized to fit my future fiancée, it was ready to rest on yet another McCormick woman’s finger.

  It was going to be calculatedly perfect, down to the color of the tablecloth and the freshness of the roses.

  And it was perfect.

  Until Shannon swallowed the ring.

  Why do all our best dates end up at the ER?

  And who the hell called her mother?

  Chapter 2

  One week before the proposal...

  Grace taps her knuckles on my doorway. For some reason, the d
oor is ajar, the muffled sounds of copiers buzzing and people talking to each other a dull roar in the distance. They all annoy me.

  “Declan? The jeweler called. The ring is ready.”

  My blank stare is all I can muster.

  She smiles. “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Ready.” Grace looks like she could get into a catfight with Honey Boo Boo’s mom and come out the winner. When she frowns, something deep and primal in me clenches.

  That’s why she’s the best damned admin a guy could have. No worries about office sex (Grace is a lesbian married to a rugby player) and in a pinch, she can act as a bodyguard.

  “Ready for a meeting?” Based on the look she gives me, I am not with the program this morning. Frankly, I am not on the planet this morning. Between a helicopter ride from New York that was so choppy I might as well have been riding a bucking bronco, and no sex at all from Shannon for three entire days (due to business meetings in NYC), I am lucky I can read a basic stock report and tie my shoes.

  “Ready to get married.”

  Oh. Yeah. And then there’s that.

  Did I mention the no sex part? Because that’s really occupying my addled brain more than the whole pick-one-woman-for-the-rest-of-your-life thing.

  And only one woman.

  It’s not so hard to pick one woman to be with for all eternity, right? Grace did it, so I can, too. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  “You look sick. Not ‘ready’.” Grace steps in my office all the way and gently closes the door, holding the doorknob like it’s a ticking time bomb, waiting for the gentle click before turning to me with that look.

  You know that look. The look older women give you, their eyes going soft and concerned, like you deserve to be the object of pity, the recipient of chicken soup and completely unusable advice.

  Three thin, gold bracelets jangle against her freckled, wrinkled skin. She’s nothing like my future mother-in-law, and—