Have My Baby: Baby and Pregnancy Romance Collection

by Jamie Knight

  I did my best to pay attention to what Jim was saying during training and not the hurt look on Charlotte’s face that I could see from where I was. I was finally released from my purgatory when Jim announced the lunch break. As before, the rest of the class funneled into the café. I gave them the slip and headed for the door.

  “Hey,” I spun around so fast I nearly fell over, seeing Ann Howell coming my way. I felt the strong urge to bow but wasn’t sure if that was proper protocol, so I restrained myself.

  “Ma’am,” I said, nearly saluting.

  “You can stop that. Just call me Ann, okay?”

  “Okay, what’s up?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing. I’ve been anxious about you.”

  “Why?” I asked, surprised by her show of concern.

  “Well, for a start, I tried to call to see how it was going with Charlotte.”

  “You know about Charlotte?”

  “Of course, Hayley told me everything. At least as much as she knew,” Ann said with a wink.

  “Oh.”

  “I tried to call your hotel room, but all they would tell me was that you had a do not disturb sign on the door. I thought maybe you had gone back into a depressive state and got worried.”

  “I’ve been packing,” I explained.

  “Really?” she asked, sounding concerned.

  “I’m not moving out into my car or anything,” I said.

  “Oh, good.”

  “I got the apartment that I wanted.”

  “I thought the landlord didn’t want to rent to you,” Ann said.

  “He changed his mind.”

  “You didn’t use violence, did you?” Ann asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Good, can’t be too careful.”

  “No, I guess not,” I confessed.

  “Used cunning and subterfuge, did you?” Ann asked with a wink.

  “Kind of,” I said, a bit embarrassed.

  “Do tell.”

  I wouldn’t have, ordinarily, it all being somewhat embarrassing, but Ann was my boss after all. I felt a duty to do what she said.

  “Well, I met Charlotte, like you know. Hayley introduced us and helped me get ready for our first date. Anyway, the way that came about was, Charlotte and I were talking during the lunch break on the first day, after having made a connection during the training. I told her about the problem with the apartment and said that I wondered if it might be different if I had someone to pretend to be my fiancée. I was really just thinking out loud, but Charlotte said she would do it. So, we went to dinner to plan things. Then one thing led to another, and we ended up back at my hotel.”

  “Oh,” Ann said with a wink.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. We just made out a bit. I put her in the bed after she fell asleep, and I slept on the couch.”

  “Oh, how gallant,” Ann said, sounding like she meant it.

  “Anyway, we went to the meeting with the landlord, and Charlotte played the role of the loving future wife, even coming up with a date for the wedding on the spot. The landlord was duly impressed, and we signed the lease right then and there.”

  “Can I meet her?” Ann asked.

  “Um, okay,” I said, once again overcome with a sense of duty.

  We spotted Charlotte in the café, sitting in the same spot that she had before. She was a creature of habit like I was.

  “Hi, I’m Ann Howell,” she said, extending a hand to a sorrowful looking Charlotte.

  “Oh, hello,” Charlotte said, barely having time to wipe away her whipped cream mustache.

  They shook hands, Charlotte looking well and truly impressed by Ann’s commanding presence. I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one who had this reaction.

  “I can see why you were occupied,” Ann said with a sly wink.

  “Thanks,” Charlotte said, blushing furiously.

  “I hope your fake relationship can become real,” Ann said, before taking her leave.

  She had a point. I really wanted Charlotte, to the point of knowing that I wanted to marry her and maybe even start a family. The doctors said I was fine in that respect, and even with my injury, there was no reason that they could see, why I couldn’t raise a kid. I just wasn’t sure she would really want a broken man like me. It might be better just to step aside and let her find someone better.

  Chapter Twelve - Charlotte

  I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. First, Jacob was fucking me like I was the only girl in the world, then he was snubbing me like I didn’t exist. Next, he was introducing me to the Queen Bee of the office like he was proud or something, like he was showing me off. Ms. Howell certainly seemed as though she had been impressed. Though I wasn’t sure by what. I mean, I looked okay but never really felt like I was anything special. Except when I was with Jacob.

  I sat in the café with my double tall hot chocolate with whipped cream and white chocolate shavings, trying my best not to think about Jacob or what was going on. I wanted just some me time in my own head with nothing to stress me out. That was the thought anyway. Yeah, right. And then I thought I might as well morph into pure energy and manipulate the flow of time.

  I let out a sigh of defeat, not even the color funny pages, or the music blasting on my earbuds could remove my sad disposition or lift the shroud of general ennui. It was like I had been brought back to life only to be buried again, without so much as a cellphone to contact the rest of humanity.

  I didn’t know what Jacob was playing at, but I wasn’t giving him up without a fight. I had seen a good side to him and knew that he could love me the way I was coming to love him, despite our individual issues and handicaps. The way I figured it, we could only be better together. We could help each other.

  The clock ticked by at a maddening pace. I watched it carefully, waiting for the appointed time, like a fidgety schoolgirl watching for the onset of summer vacation. Finally we were dismissed from training, and I made a beeline for the back row, penning Jacob into his corner before he had time to escape. Going by his expression, he really hadn’t been expecting this. I was glad I could surprise him.

  “Do you need any help moving?” I asked, it being the first thing that occurred to me. It also had the advantage of being obviously true, given his condition.

  “Um, yeah, that would be great thanks,” he said, not seeming to know what else to say.

  That was all I needed to be able to try and show how much better his life would be with me in it.

  I felt an absurdly strong urge to hold Jacob’s hand as we walked out of the Howell and Howell building to his car. I really wasn’t sure how he was feeling right then, so I resisted, seeing no reason to make things any more complicated than they already were.

  Jacob’s hotel room could have definitely used help. All of his worldly positions were out of their various storage places and piled up on every available flat surface. This didn’t reflect as poorly on him as it might have. I still remembered well the hell that packing for a move could be. I think it was actually Dante’s tenth circle before the final edit.

  With me doing most of the actual packing and Jacob moving, supervising, and directing, we had the whole thing done in no time. The monotony of the job was mitigated by the small number of items to be packed and the fact that Jacob kept glancing at my ass, even though he thought I didn’t notice.

  I thought again about what he had done to me, particularly to my then virgin asshole, and my pussy got super wet. I wanted so much to just pull down his pants and suck him off. Just to get the feeling and taste of his cock in my mouth again. I could feel my mouth water just thinking about it.

  His new apartment seemed even more beautiful than the first time I had seen it. The ocean sparkling blue just outside the window. The super-efficient kitchen standing ever at the ready.

  “Just put that stuff in the bedroom,” Jacob said, closing the door behind me.

  “Okay.”

>   I put the last load down on the bed, pausing, just for a moment, to imagine what it might be like for Jacob to fuck me in it. The headboard banging against the wall so loud it risked the neighbors complaining. It was ridiculous and far too early, but I wanted so much to live there with him, logic be damned.

  I had done as well as I could on the first few loads to the apartment to hint at my desire to move in, but he would always undercut it with constructive suggestions as to how to change my own home to look more like his. He was overlooking the fact that I would never be able to get a view like that at my place no matter how hard I might try. All I could figure was that Jacob didn’t feel the same way I did, at least about the home, marriage, and family.

  It could have just been my imagination, but I didn’t think so.

  ****

  The commute down to the Howell and Howell office for my first day of work as a paralegal was nerve-racking. I was still somewhat surprised that I had not only passed training but landed one of the few rare positions at the original home office. I must have made quite an impression on at least one of the Howell siblings. It also turned out that I was assigned to none other than Ann Howell, the empress herself.

  I did the very best I could, really not wanting to lose the job before I had time to properly start it. At lunch, weary but satisfied, I took the elevator down to the café to gorge myself with some of the best pastries I had ever tasted with a hot chocolate chaser. It may well have been an addiction, but in balance, it really wasn’t the worst I could think of. It added a few pounds to my figure, but that didn’t seem to bother Jacob much.

  As I took another sip of warm, chocolaty goodness, I tried to push all thoughts of Jacob and his big cock out of my mind.

  “You look deep in thought.”

  “Do you have ninja powers?” I asked as Hayley sat down across from me.

  “New sneakers,” Hayley explained.

  “Ah.”

  “Spill,” Hayley said.

  She always knew when there was something wrong. There was no point in trying to lie to her.

  “Remember when I was corresponding with the enlisted guy?”

  “Of course.”

  “It was Jacob.”

  “No shit!”

  “Not a speck,” I said.

  She blinked at me. “So why do you look like you’ve just heard bad news? Shouldn’t this be something awesome.”

  I shrugged and played with my cup some. “I thought now that we’ve found each other that we might… you know.”

  “Live happily ever after?”

  “Not exactly the words I would use, but that is the general idea, yeah,” I confessed, trying to keep tears from flowing.

  “Is it possible that he is thinking the same thing?” Hayley asked.

  “I suppose, but I don’t think so.”

  She reached out and took my hand. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Hayley said.

  My best friend was right, of course. She usually was, at least in matters of the heart and clothes. I really had no idea what Jacob was thinking. He could love me as much as I loved him and just wasn’t able to show it, or he didn’t know how to.

  I had heard some pretty gnarly things about what trauma could do to your personality and figured that the PTSD on top of that wouldn’t help. He had told me a lot about what he had seen in combat, and I knew it affected him badly. It was more than possible that he had tried to shut down his emotions in order to cope.

  I tried to talk to Jacob several times, both that day and the next and the one after that. It was nearly the end of the week before I figured out it wasn’t going to work that way. Every time I tried to talk to him at all, my nerves would clench, and I wouldn’t be able to speak at all. I was close to giving up when I had an idea. I wasn’t exactly a chatterbox when we had first met either, but it had still somehow worked, with a little help from Hayley. It might work to do it that way again. I didn’t have Hayley’s help this time, but I did have the support of another old friend, writing. One that would also hopefully help the process go that much faster.

  I was fidgeting on the bus all the way home, hardly able to constrain my excitement. If there was a possibility of me having a real relationship with Jacob, this was my last chance. Logging into the internet, I had to put in the password for my work email three times. My fingers were shaking so bad.

  Finally, I got in and managed to type out a message that introduced myself to him as though our previous correspondence hadn’t happened, and we had just met at work. Reading it over again, correcting a typo here and there, I still wanted to try and put my best foot forward, I took a deep breath of courage and hit send.

  He had gotten close to me once though letters, I was hoping that it would happen again.

  Chapter Thirteen - Jacob

  The tapping at my office door wasn’t aggressive. If anything, it was overly gentle. None the less, my reaction, a quick snap of the head, the old instincts kicking in, was enough to make Liam jump back a bit. I couldn’t blame him, really. There had been an instance during my darker days when I had broken his arm when he was trying to get my attention. Once bitten, twice shy as they say.

  “What are you listening to?” he asked, by way of conversation.

  “Mayhem,” I said, the mangled screams and crushing blast beats still audible, if a bit tinny, in my extracted earbud.

  “Sounds like it,” my brother-in-law said in a half-hearted attempt at a joke.

  “What’s up?” I asked, hitting pause on the MP3.

  “You’re on break, right?” Liam asked, still a reasonable distance away.

  “I hope so, or I’m in trouble,” I joked.

  “Funny,” Liam said, sounding genuinely surprised.

  “I have my moments,” I replied with a humble shrug.

  “Some of my guy friends want to meet you,” Liam said.

  “The hell you say,” I replied in shock.

  “Dead serious. A lot of us are vets too.”

  “Iraq?” I asked.

  He nodded, crossing his arms as he leaned against the printer. “And Afghanistan. Russ was an unwilling guest of the Taliban for years, and our friend, the international human rights attorney, still has a limp from a shrapnel injury.”

  “The Howells have a policy of hiring broken soldiers, do they?” I asked, sounding a bit more bitter than I meant.

  “Not officially,” Liam said, taking it in stride. “But it’s something I do at my company too.”

  It did make sense when I thought about it. Though she seemed to have come back in one piece with her sanity intact, Ann Howell was also a vet. It was logical that she would want to give opportunities to other vets and be more understanding of the injuries of war and not hold them as character flaws like a lot of people seemed to.

  “Okay,” I said, taking out the other earbud and wrapping the cord around my phone.

  I had heard rumors about office water-cooler chat from friends who had been gainfully employed. I just assumed it was one of those fantasy things that one heard about but never actually saw, like the elephant in the room.

  The conversation at the café ground in its tracks as the others saw me approach, as though Liam had shown up with an intact Sasquatch corpse.

  “You did it,” Russ said, in sheer amazement.

  “Was there ever any doubt?” Liam asked, his bravado having its own gravitational pull.

  “Yes,” came the chorused response.

  “Well then,” Liam said as his face fell, not used to having his ego crushed quite so thoroughly.

  The expression he made caused me to laugh.

  I was really beginning to enjoy my life. I had a new job, which I was surprisingly well suited for. I was starting to make friends again. Both things were happening with no small measure of help from Hayley and Liam. I still wasn’t a social butterfly, but I never really was all that outgoing to begin with. One of my primary skills in life was bei
ng alone in a crowd. In any case, it was nice to get some social contact again outside my immediate blood and legal family. I was getting along particularly well with Ann’s husband, Russ.

  As good as I was feeling about life, the universe, and everything, I still wasn’t sure about being with Charlotte. She was so amazing, and I didn’t feel like I was good enough for her. I wanted to give her the best life possible and just couldn’t see her being happy with me. I really should have known better, considering most of the guys at the office, including the injured vets, were married to beautiful women.

  Speaking of which, it was at that moment that my phone dinged an alert, letting me know that I had a new message on my work email — something that Hayley suggested that I do. My heart sank further as I read. I had been trying to do what was best for Charlotte. Instead, I broke her heart. The email was introducing her as though we were strangers. It didn’t feel like her to me at all.

  I still wanted Charlotte with every fiber of my being, even though the negative part of my mind was still yelling that I wasn’t good enough. Excusing myself from the conversation, I went back to my cubby hole that was humorously referred to as an ‘office.’ Not that I was complaining, of course. I was glad they didn’t give me a table in the corridor.

  I send a text as I sat down in my surprisingly comfortable chair. It was about ten seconds before Charlotte texted back, despite her being only one floor below me:

  Hey, Jacob.

  Hey.

  Are you on break?

  Everyone keeps asking me that! Yes, I am for another five minutes.

  Good, don’t want to get you in trouble.

  Unlikely, Russ seems pretty forgiving, particularly on matters of the heart.

  He is pleasant, isn’t he?

  Couldn’t ask for a better boss.