“Okay.”
“A Madagascar treehouse, Hannah. That will do the trick,” he promised her. “This time next month, you’ll be pregnant. I’m sure of it.”
* * *
But the Madagascar treehouse didn’t do the trick. And neither did the isolated castle in Scotland—the closest thing Yeager and Hannah could find to Hogwarts—in November. By the middle of December, she was so convinced there was something wrong that made it impossible for them to conceive that they both had their doctors do a second workup to see if that was the case.
But the results were the same then as they’d been in the summer, before they’d even started trying to conceive—they were both healthy, fertile adults for whom conception should pose no problem. Hannah’s doctor tried to reassure her that it was perfectly normal for some couples to take several months to conceive and that, sometimes, the harder two people tried, the more elusive conception became. “Relax,” her doctor told her. “Don’t worry about it. It will happen.”
Which was all well and good, Hannah thought a few evenings later in her apartment, if there weren’t other factors at play. Billions of factors, in fact. If she wasn’t able to inherit the Linden family fortune—her family fortune—she could be working for the rest of her life at a job that barely enabled her to take care of herself, never mind a child. Her fifty thousand dollar consolation prize would make the start of a nice nest egg, but it wasn’t enough to start a business and keep it going here in New York. And without the funds to get Joey & Kit off the ground, there was no way she would ever be able to support a family. Yes, she might someday meet Mr. Right and get married and settle down. With two incomes coming in, she might be able to launch Joey & Kit and eventually turn it into a viable business.
Then again, she might not do any of those things. Nothing in life was guaranteed. Unless maybe you had billions of dollars.
And with or without the Linden fortune, Hannah knew now without question that she wanted to start a family. That had become clearer every time a pregnancy test came back negative and she was overcome by a sadness unlike any she’d ever known. Finding her Mr. Right would be beneficial in more than just a financial sense. But finding him was going to become more and more difficult the more time she spent with Yeager. The last five months with him had been the most enjoyable she’d ever spent. And not just because of the travels and adventures, either.
With every moment she spent with him, he crept further under her skin. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forget him once their time together came to an end—with or without a child. Before going into this venture with him, she’d considered him a frivolous, one-dimensional player. A guy who was fun to talk to and easy on the eyes, but who could never take anything in life seriously—especially a woman or a family. But she knew now that wasn’t true. Yeager Novak was... He was...
She gazed out the only window in her apartment, at the back of the building on the next block. During the warm months, the backyards and fire escapes of both that building and hers were alive with activity, from Mr. Aizawa’s tending of his bonsai trees to Mrs. Medina’s courtyard flamenco lessons to the luscious smells wafting over from the Singhs’ rooftop tandoor. In December, though, everything was still and quiet. Christmas lights twinkled from the Blomqvists’ balcony, the Gorskis had lit the first candle in their window menorah and Lilah Windermere was revving up for Saturnalia, her share of the fire escape bedecked with suns and crescent moons.
Yeager Novak, Hannah continued with her thoughts, was the sort of man a woman could easily—oh, so easily—fall in love with. There was just something inside him that connected with something inside her—she didn’t know any other way to put it. He was kind and smart and funny. And, for the last couple of months, he’d put her needs before his own.
She had always thought his incessant travels were due to some misplaced desire to prove he could live forever. He’d said as much himself, both that first night when he’d turned down her offer to father her child, and again the evening he’d agreed to. Now she understood, even if Yeager didn’t, that he moved around so much to escape the loneliness of having lost his family when he was young. There were times when she even wondered if his agreement to donate a second set of chromosomes for her child might be the result not of his wish for a legacy, but of an unconscious desire to recreate the family he no longer had.
He was a good man. A complicated man. A multilayered man. A man with more substance and appeal than anyone she knew. Not the kind of guy Hannah normally went for at all. Which, maybe, was why she was falling for him so much harder.
The buzz of her doorbell interrupted her thoughts and she was grateful. She somehow knew before she even crossed to the intercom and heard his voice that it would be Yeager. But she didn’t know why he’d be dropping by on a wintry Wednesday evening. They weren’t supposed to meet again until Saturday morning, New York time, when they would arrive separately in Fiji for their final adventure together—this one to camp near a volcano on Koro Island. Yeager had read it was the site of an ancient fertility ritual and he intended to recreate it, right down to the running naked across hot coals after ingesting copious amounts of kava from a coconut shell. He had to leave tomorrow for a trip to Vancouver, but would take a red-eye to Suva and meet her within an hour of her own arrival.
A few months ago Hannah would have been excited by the idea of an adventure in Fiji, especially with Yeager. Tonight the thought of another quick trip—the most exotic one of all—only to return to her normal life a week later held no appeal. Her normal life, period, didn’t hold much appeal these days. Which was, perhaps, the most troubling realization of all. Even if it hadn’t been remarkable, her life five months ago had been perfectly acceptable to her. Then Gus Fiver of Tarrant, Fiver & Twigg walked in and everything—everything—changed. She wondered now if she would ever be content again.
She buzzed Yeager in and opened her front door, meeting him at the top of the stairs. He was still dressed for work, in a tailored, black wool coat flapping open over a charcoal suit—though he’d unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie. Hannah, too, was still in her work clothes, a black pencil skirt paired with a red sweater and red-and-black polka-dot tights.
As he topped the last stair, she started to take a step back toward her apartment to give him room. Before she could, though, he swept her up against him and dropped a swift kiss on her lips. The gesture surprised her. Especially when, after he completed it, he made no move to release her.
Instead he gazed into her eyes and murmured, “Hi. How you doing?”
“I... I’m good,” she stammered. And then, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, thanks to the way the blood zipping through her veins made her a little—okay, a lot—muddleheaded, she added, “How are you?”
He grinned. “I’m good, too. I thought maybe we could do something tonight.”
Her eyebrows shot up at that. “Why?”
He chuckled. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not... I mean, it’s not time for me to... I still have a couple of days before I...”
He laughed again. Something inside Hannah caught fire.
“I wasn’t planning on getting you pregnant tonight,” he told her. “I was in the neighborhood, meeting with a potential contractor, and I thought I’d drop by and see if we could grab some dinner together. Maybe go over our itinerary for Fiji one more time. I have a car waiting downstairs. We can go anywhere you want.”
It wasn’t that unusual of a request. Well, okay, the car waiting downstairs was a little outside her usual experiences, since Hannah normally bused or trained it everywhere. Even so, it took her a moment to reply.
“Anywhere?” she finally repeated. Because, if he was offering, she did have something kind of specific in mind.
“Anywhere,” he promised.
“Okay,” she said. “Dinner would
be good. Just let me get my coat.”
* * *
In retrospect, Yeager decided a couple of hours later, maybe he shouldn’t have told Hannah they could go anywhere she wanted. Because she’d chosen the Russian Tea Room. Not that he had anything against it, but...it was the Russian Tea Room, which wasn’t exactly his cup of tea. But Hannah had never been before and had always wanted to go, so here they were. And, truth be told, his cheese and cherry blintze had been pretty freaking amazing.
It wasn’t even nine o’clock when they exited the restaurant, and Yeager didn’t want the evening to end just yet. He didn’t have to be at the airport for his flight to Vancouver until eleven tomorrow morning, so it wasn’t like he had to be in bed early. He started to ask Hannah what else she wanted to do, but hesitated. She might tell him she wanted to go to the roof of the Empire State Building. Or, worse, on one of those cruises to see the Statue of Liberty. Or, worst of all, go ice-skating under the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
He risked it anyway. “What do you want to do next?”
And heard an answer that was far, far worse.
“Can we take a carriage ride around Central Park?”
Yeager flinched as if she’d just hit him with a brick. Seriously? What was this, Prom Night?
Then he remembered how she’d once told him she hadn’t gone to her prom because no one had asked her and she’d been too scared to ask anyone herself. She’d just transferred to a new school a few months before all the senior events started happening. All the kids had steered clear of her once they learned she was in the system because they’d figured she was, at best, a weirdo and, at worst, a psycho.
“Please, Yeager?” she asked, sounding very much like a high school senior who’d just moved to a new school and had no friends. “It’ll be so much fun. The Christmas lights will be up in Central Park, and it’s supposed to snow.”
Oh, good. The only thing that would make a carriage ride through Central Park more fun would be doing it in a snow globe they could buy later from some guy in a trench coat in Times Square. But Hannah’s heart was in her eyes again. Standing there in her red coat with its multicolored buttons, her striped scarf wound around her neck what looked like a dozen times, her mittened hands before her in a way that made her look like she was praying he would say yes...
He sighed with resignation. “Yeah, okay. Why not?”
Her eyes went incandescent at that and, somehow, he minded a lot less that he was doing the crass tourist thing in New York with Hannah when he could have, quite literally, been anywhere in the world doing anything he wanted. He liked being here with Hannah. He liked being anywhere with her. It didn’t matter what they were doing.
They found a free carriage at 7th Avenue and 59th Street. The driver introduced himself as Yuri and his horse as Arthur, the latter delighting Hannah since, as she told Yeager, she’d never been this close to a horse before. When Yuri heard that, he handed her a carrot to feed the animal and, by her reaction as she fed Arthur, she might as well have been donning the Crown Jewels. Then they climbed into the white carriage with red velvet seats and settled in for the ride, nestled under a red-and-black-plaid blanket to chase away the chill.
Central Park opened up before them like a Christmas card, surrounding them with a winter wonderland of lamplight and moonlight and twinkling white tree lights. All was calm, all was bright, with silver lanes aglow and kids jingle-belling and chestnut vendors roasting their fare on an open fire and passersby dressed up like Eskimos. Barely ten minutes in, snow began to swirl around them, giving everything an otherworldly glow and buffering the sounds of this frosty symphony. Hannah looped her arm through his as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, leaning her head on his shoulder. And Yeager had to admit there were worse ways to spend an evening than inside a Christmas snow globe with Hannah Robinson.
They rode in silence for a little while then Hannah sighed with much feeling. “I knew it would be like this,” she said.
“Like what?” Yeager asked.
She hesitated, sighed again and whispered, “Magical.”
On any other night, with any other person, Yeager would have said that was ridiculous. There was no such thing as magic. This was just Central Park, a place they both must have visited dozens of times. Lights ran on electricity. Snow was just frozen pieces of water. There was an explanation for every single thing around them.
Except, maybe, for why he wanted so badly to kiss her when there was no reason to do it.
“When you were a kid,” she said quietly, “did you believe in Santa Claus?”
“Of course I believed in Santa Claus,” he told her. Hell, he’d held out on the Santa-being-real thing way longer than his classmates, something that had brought him no end of ribbing. He hadn’t cared. He’d been absolutely certain a white-bearded man dressed in red came down their chimney every year to scatter toys across every inch of the living room, leaving cookie crumbs and a half-empty glass of milk behind. What other explanation could there be? Such had been the innocence of his childhood. An innocence that was shattered one night in upstate New York, when his mother called him from almost a thousand miles away to tell him he would never see his father alive again.
“How about you?” he asked Hannah, pushing the memory as far to the back of his brain as he could. He thought she would reply the same way. So he wasn’t quite prepared for the answer she gave him.
“I don’t think I ever had the chance to believe in him. I mean, maybe when I lived with my mom before she died, I did. I don’t know. But I don’t remember ever looking out the window, up at the sky, waiting for his arrival. Someone must have told me at one of my first homes that there was no such thing as Santa.”
When he and Hannah had their baby, Yeager thought, no one was ever going to do that. Every child should have the opportunity to believe in magic for as long as they wanted to believe. Even if Yeager didn’t believe in it anymore.
“Did you at least have presents to open on Christmas morning?” he asked.
“Usually.”
Usually, he echoed to himself. Meaning there had been some Christmas mornings when Hannah had gone without the breathtaking exhilaration that came with ripping brightly colored paper off boxes to see what treasure was inside. That wasn’t going to happen to their child, either.
“What kind of Christmas traditions did your family have?” she asked. Probably because she’d never been in one place long enough to establish traditions of her own.
There was a time when Yeager would have refused to answer, since he generally hated talking about his parents and the life he’d had with them. That life just didn’t feel like it was his anymore. In a way, it felt like it had happened to someone else. With Hannah, though, he didn’t mind talking about it so much. With Hannah, that life didn’t seem so alien. It didn’t feel so far away.
“Every Christmas Eve,” he said, “my mom made Cornish hens, with sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts as a side.”
None of which he’d eaten since her death.
“We had this Christmas china she got somewhere,” he continued, “and she’d break it out for that meal and Christmas Day, then it would be boxed up again and stowed for another year.”
Yeager still had that china. Somewhere. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to part with it when it came to disposing of his parents’ possessions after graduating from college. Maybe he’d look around for it this year. Break it out before Christmas. Maybe he and Hannah could—
But he wouldn’t be in New York for Christmas, he reminded himself. He had long-standing plans to be skiing with friends in Vail.
“I got to open one gift on Christmas Eve,” he continued for Hannah, “and I always took about an hour to pick out which one. Christmas morning, I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed before eight, even though I was always awake by six. But at
one second after eight, I’d run downstairs and behold the glory that was Christmas morning.”
For the first time in a long, long time, he was able to smile at the recollections. Hell, it was surprising that he was even able to tolerate the memories in the first place. How the tree lights would be on when he awoke, even though his father was adamant they be turned off before he went to bed. How, somehow, there were already cinnamon rolls baking in the oven and hot chocolate heating on the stove and Christmas carols playing on the CD player. Back then, he’d put it all down to Santa. Santa and the magic of Christmas.
He told Hannah about all that and more, until the snow was falling furiously around them and he was dipping his head toward hers and she was lifting hers in return to meet him halfway. Their lips connected gently at first, the subtle brush of their mouths against each other a warm counterpoint to the night around them.
They chatted and canoodled for the rest of the ride around the park. When Yuri pulled Arthur to a halt where they had begun, Yeager was surprised by the depth of his disappointment. Part of him wanted to go around again. But another part of him—a bigger part—just wanted to be alone with Hannah.
As they drew up in front of her building in the car he’d hired for the day, he grew more disconcerted. Why did he feel so annoyed at having to say good-night to her? He’d be seeing her again in Fiji in a few days. For some reason, though, the days between now and then felt like an interminable—intolerable—period of time. But how to finagle an invitation to...oh, he didn’t know...spend the night with her, without sounding like a jerk.
“So, Hannah, what would you think if maybe I—”
“So, Yeager, is there any chance you might want to—” she said at the same time.
They stopped talking as one, their gazes connecting. Then, as one, they both smiled.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she told him.
“I’d love to,” he said at the same time.
He sent the driver on his way after that, emptying his wallet for the tip, not wanting to waste any more time doing something as mundane as keeping track of his cash flow.
Baby in the Making Page 12