Own the Eights Maybe Baby

by Krista Sandor

  She felt her husband beside her and met his gaze. The mountain of a man patted the baby’s head as a look of wonder overtook his features, and she knew he was thinking the exact same thing as she was.

  In a matter of months, this would be their life.

  “Here’s the bottle,” Briana said, handing it to Jordan, then retrieving her purse from where it sat on the kitchen island.

  Thad’s face lit up. “We don’t have to take the diaper bag with us tonight.”

  “Or the stroller or the wearable sling,” Briana listed, grinning ear to ear.

  “Or the baby booster seat,” Thad finished.

  Georgie glanced between the parents, who’d grown positively giddy.

  “We’ve got the emergency numbers tacked to the fridge, and you can’t miss Ollie’s room. It’s the one with the crib. He’s already in his pajamas. So, you should be good to go,” Briana said over her shoulder as she and Thad high-tailed it down the hall and out the door.

  And then, it was the three of them.

  Georgie glanced around the kitchen, hardly able to believe that she and Jordan were truly tasked with caring for a human baby.

  “I think they wanted a night out,” she said, staring at the closed door.

  “You’d have to be pretty desperate. I don’t know if I would have left my kid. You accused the dad of leading a double life, and I asked them if they’d enrolled their child in an infant football league,” he replied, running his hand down his face and shaking his head when little Ollie opened his mouth and belted out quite a yawn.

  “I think this fellow is ready for bed,” Jordan said softly.

  As if on cue, Ollie nuzzled into her and let loose another sleepy yawn.

  “He’s awfully relaxed,” she replied, adjusting her hold on his cherub-chub body.

  Jordan looked around. “Where do you think we should give him his bottle? Out here or in his room?”

  She scanned the kitchen that led into a cozy living room. “Briana said he liked to be rocked, but I don’t see a rocking chair out here.”

  “Let’s try his room,” Jordan said, then turned to head toward the other side of the house.

  “Wait,” she called.

  “What is it?”

  She grinned up at him. “Why don’t you carry the baby.”

  “Me?” he asked with a stunned expression.

  “Yeah, it’s amazing. You’ve got to hold him.”

  Jordan brushed his finger over the boy’s tiny knuckles. “He’s so small.”

  She gazed down at the baby’s sweet face. “But he’s also a snuggle bug. How about this? I’ll do the bottle part. You do the transport.”

  Jordan blew out a tight breath and did a little boxer jog, prancing back and forth.

  She frowned. “What are you doing?”

  “Loosening up,” he replied, shaking out his arms.

  “You’ll be carrying a baby, not a five-hundred-pound tractor tire.”

  “You’ve got a point,” he replied, nixing the pre-conditioning moves.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Carefully, as if they were orchestrating the handoff of an extremely volatile object, Jordan moved in a step closer. It was like in the movies, where the hero has retrieved something highly explosive, and then must hand it off to the bomb squad.

  With exquisite precision, Jordan cradled his arms below hers as they transferred the baby into his strong embrace.

  It could have been seconds, minutes, or hours. Time stood still.

  Okay, time didn’t actually stop. In all fairness, it was probably more like eight seconds. But it was the eight most cautious seconds of their lives.

  “I’m doing it, Georgie,” he said, grinning like he’d won the lottery as he stared down at Ollie, cradled in his muscled arms.

  “Now, you have to carry him to his room,” she said, still in hazardous bomb diffusing mode.

  He frowned. “Not yet. We need a plan. You should scout out the house and find his room first.”

  “Good idea.”

  She hurried down the hall. The Casey-Beavers lived in a one-story sprawling ranch, and—thank God—they wouldn’t have to negotiate the horrors of a staircase. Stealthily making her way down the corridor, she spied the target.

  A white door with Oliver painted in whimsical lettering.

  Bingo!

  She raised her arms, channeling an enthusiastic tour guide, and waved for Jordan to join her.

  “Easy,” she cautioned as he grew cocky and picked up a little too much steam for her liking.

  Step by step, her big strong husband made his way toward her as little Ollie went on a raspberry bender. If she hadn’t known that the man was holding a baby, it would have sounded as if he’d just departed a bean eating contest—and won—by a landslide or a bean slide.

  She chuckled to herself.

  “What’s so funny?” Jordan asked, arriving with Ollie. “Wait, let me guess. Farting humor?”

  She nodded as the boy released another rip-roaring raspberry, making her point.

  She opened the door as Ollie shot off a few more. They stood in the doorway to the baby’s room and assessed the dim space. With a rocking chair in the corner next to a wooden crib, the room most definitely belonged to the little raspberry machine. A small lamp cast a dim golden glow, highlighting a dresser equipped with a changing table and a precious mural of a mountain scene, complete with skiers peppering the slope.

  “Why don’t you sit in the chair, and I’ll pass him over to you,” Jordan offered as Ollie continued to serenade them with fart chorale.

  She entered the baby powder-scented room, placed the bottle on a side table, then settled herself in the rocking chair.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered.

  She flashed her husband two thumbs-up. “We are a go for bottle time.”

  So far, so good! They’d successfully moved the baby from point A to point B.

  The next challenge: filling him up with formula.

  With the ease of a man who’s done a bazillion squats, Jordan lowered himself, inch by inch, positioning the baby into her arms.

  “And three, two, one. We have infant touchdown,” he said through a sweet smile.

  Yep, they were NASA-level baby passers.

  The boy wiggled in her arms, then smacked his lips. She took a breath as Jordan handed her the bottle.

  Real baby. Real bottle.

  “I’m going in,” she said, then brushed the bottle’s nipple across his lips.

  “Easy,” Jordan cautioned.

  “And contact,” she whispered as the baby stopped dropping raspberries and started sucking the hell out of his dinner.

  “Wow, he’s a total pro, and with all those raspberries, he probably could play the trumpet,” Jordan offered, pulling over an ottoman and sitting down to watch Oliver down eight ounces of formula as if he’d just finished a baby Iron Man.

  Shrouded in the dim light and surrounded by stuffed animals, she leaned down and smelled Ollie’s head.

  “He smells like spring rain.”

  Jordan rested his hand on her knee and rubbed gentle circles with his thumb. “I wouldn’t know. All I’ve been able to smell for the last few months is pineapple from those dryer sheets,” he teased.

  She gazed down at the boy. “He’s precious, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he sure is.”

  She pulled her gaze away from the child and met her husband’s eye. “Do you have a preference?”

  “For what?”

  “For us. Do you think we’ll have a boy or a girl?”

  “I don’t think of our baby like that,” he said as the light played off his dark tangle of hair.

  “I hate to break it to you, but babies don’t come out gender-neutral like our Faby,” she answered, but Jordan wasn’t trying to be funny or evasive.

  His expression grew pensive. “I don’t mean it like that. I think of our baby more like a part of us. No matter if it’s a boy or a girl, we’ll be a fa
mily, and this baby will be our everything.”

  She blinked back tears.

  “Are you all right? Are you hungry? Do you need to eat some pineapple? I’ve got five cans in the back of the car—in case of a pineapple emergency.”

  She sniffled, overcome with emotion. “No, it’s not a pineapple emergency.”

  “Then what?” he whispered.

  “That might be one of the sweetest things you’ve ever said. And when I met you, you were such an asshat,” she answered on a teary exhale.

  He cupped her face in his warm hand. “I love you, too, messy bun girl.”

  Ollie turned his head from side to side, and she pulled the bottle back and handed it to Jordan. She rocked back and forth, inhaling the baby’s sweet scent. He released a lazy sigh before closing his eyes—so trusting and so innocent. She stared at his little nose and his delicate eyelashes, resting on porcelain cheeks, and all her worries about her mother’s reaction melted away. She’d been consumed with anxiety, wondering if she had what it took to be a mom, worrying she couldn’t do it all.

  She stopped rocking and watched the baby sleep in her arms.

  “I know when I want to tell my mom and Howard about the pregnancy,” she said, meeting Jordan’s gaze.

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “After the Battle of the Births gender reveal. It’s only a month away, and then, not only will we be telling them about the pregnancy, we’ll know if we’ll be welcoming a little miss or a little mister.”

  “What do you think we’re having?” he asked, rubbing sweet, slow circles on her knee.

  She relaxed into the rocker. For the first time in a long time, the twist of nerves in her chest loosened. Her breathing matched that of the peaceful, sleeping infant in her arms, and she exhaled a slow breath that seemed a long time coming.

  An easy smile pulled at the corners of her lips as she gazed at the man, perched on a little blue ottoman, ready to give her and their baby the world. Perhaps, it was the cheesecake or the pineapple juice she drank before they’d left, but a slight flutter tickled in her belly.

  “I don’t know, but in a few weeks, we’re going to find out.”

  13

  Jordan

  Jordan cracked open his eyes and glanced out the window. A silvery haze hung in the darkness, signaling first light was at least a few hours off. His best guess? It had to be somewhere between four and five in the morning—probably closer to four. He shifted his large frame and untangled his legs from the bedsheet.

  He’d always been a morning person—a morning person whose day usually started closer to seven a.m. rather than four. Still, he wasn’t complaining.

  He rolled over and reached for his wife. But he wasn’t surprised to find her side of the bed empty. He was about to pull up the covers and get in a few more z’s when the clap of a cabinet, or maybe it was a door clicking shut, caught his attention.

  Nesting.

  That’s what Maureen had called it when he’d asked her what had happened to his wife, who, up until about a month ago, enjoyed sleeping until at least eight in the morning.

  Now, she rose before the ass crack of dawn to reorder the spice rack, alphabetize their takeout menus, or empty out the linen closet, only to rewash and refold their sheets, blankets, and towels, then methodically place them back in their original resting spot. During another dawn nesting session, she’d doled out his protein powder, putting a perfectly measured scoop into forty reusable baggies so he wouldn’t have to measure the mixture when he was making his morning energy shake.

  It was damn kind of her.

  She was an unstoppable organizing force of gestating nature. A few days ago, in a three-hour block of frenzied pregnancy persistence, he’d awoken to find that she’d assembled the baby’s crib and had reread half of Pride and Prejudice—at the same time. She’d explained that the process of going back and forth, her mind nourished by Austen’s prose, gave her the wherewithal to decipher the assembly instructions he would have sworn were crafted by a drunken toddler.

  God help any piece of clutter, non-assembled furniture, or stray item that entered Georgiana Jensen-Marks’ orbit.

  But it wasn’t only the nesting that signaled the progression of the pregnancy. Clocking in at twenty-three weeks, there was no hiding the little human residing in Georgie’s belly. With her rounded abdomen and smelling of pineapple, she was beautiful and radiant—the picture of citrus-scented maternal bliss. Still, it also wasn’t the nesting instinct that had ushered in the return of her easy smile and sparkling eyes.

  After their night babysitting little Ollie, a weight had lifted from his wife’s shoulders. He’d seen the distinct shift with his own eyes because he’d experienced it himself.

  When it came to the question of fatherhood, he’d wrestled with his own demons. While other couples planned when they wanted to start trying to conceive, he and Georgie had landed right in the thick of it. And with the most stressful of times, he and his wife were prone to fall back on the things that served them the least.

  For him, it was that itch to be the best.

  The drive to push harder hadn’t vanished. It would always be there. What he’d learned from his wild Georgie-Jensen-infused life was how and where to focus that energy.

  Did he always get it right?

  No.

  Had he gone to the baby NFL website six thousand times and almost registered a non-existent child to join the tot league? Maybe. Fine, yes! But he knew better.

  Their journey to the altar had taught him that while he wasn’t about to change her and she wasn’t about to change him, they could refocus and reframe any situation to make it work—and that happened by supporting one another.

  That was their path. A continuum of learning and laughing and falling more in love with this woman with each twist and turn the universe threw their way.

  He listened as Georgie’s footsteps drew closer, reached beneath the bed, then swiped a bottle of an electrolyte-infused sports drink.

  She may be eating for two, but he had to maintain his strength as well…for other activities.

  While his wife enjoyed nesting on her own in the early morning hours, there was one particular activity where she sought his company.

  Namely, doing the naughty—a lot.

  If he had to name this portion of the pregnancy, he’d call it the Nesting and Naughtiness phase.

  This little pregnancy perk wasn’t something he’d been expecting.

  They had a terrific sex life. Cars, couches, tents, more cars, offices, barns, beds, chairs, tables, in front of an alpaca—there was not a bad place to get down and dirty with his wife.

  Scratch that. He didn’t recommend having a member of the camel family intrude when knocking boots in the great outdoors—otherwise, he was always game.

  All the same, when it came to pregnancy and sex, he’d figured there might be a lull or at least a drop in demand. She was, of course, growing a person. If it were him, or probably any other male on the planet tasked with being a walking incubator, he’d take the entire forty weeks off.

  But holy hell! He’d misjudged that assumption by a mile.

  A clickity-clack coming from outside their bedroom sent his pulse racing. He took a quick swig of his sports drink, then slid the bottle back into its hiding place under the bed as a heady jolt of excitement coursed through his body in anticipation.

  Who would he meet this morning?

  Georgie opened the door, and he gazed at her silhouette. Yesterday, she’d come in wearing boots and a cowgirl hat. They’d reenacted the naughty rancher’s daughter scenario, which had become one of his favorites. They had to get more creative with their sexual positions, thanks to his wife’s blossoming body, and that’s where a well-loved book came into play. After consulting their worn copy of the Kama Sutra, his dirty cowgirl rode his hard length like the rodeo beauty queen temptress she was.

  That was the best part of this nesting business. It usually ended with his wife organizing he
r old costumes, and then, modeling an outfit for him in the wee hours of the morning.

  He narrowed his gaze in the dim light and took in the splendor of his wife. The hem of her costume caressed her upper thighs, revealing her smooth, toned legs. The bedroom door creaked open a few more inches and let in the light from the hallway. And anchors away, his blood supply headed south.

  Standing in front of him was the sexiest sailor he’d ever set eyes on. In a short, pleated dress with a folded collar adorned with shiny gold stars and a red bow resting below her ample breasts, his wife had him giving her a morning salute.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  But before he could answer, the clickity-clack was back as Georgie busted out a four a.m. tap routine—all with Faby in her arms.

  “I think you’ve sold yourself short on the skill set you developed when you were a teenager on the pageant circuit,” he said as his wife tapped out a rhythm, then set the fake baby on the bedside table with a pizazz not often exhibited at the crack of dawn.

  “Oh yeah?” she replied, doing a shimmy twirl that revealed her bare ass hidden beneath the pleated layers.

  He should take another gulp of his sports drink, but that would mean taking his eyes off his sexy sailor wife. Nope, that one sip would have to sustain him, no matter what sexual acrobatics his wife demanded.

  He propped himself up and took in the full splendor of this morning’s randy role-play costume. The snug white sequined sailor dress accentuated her baby bump as well as her heaving breasts, which had him at full mast. And while the costume designer of this gem probably never would have predicted that this garment would be worn for a session of early morning hanky-panky, he sent a quick thank you out into the universe for seamstresses everywhere.

  But he forgot all about costume design when he watched Georgie tap dance her way to the other side of the room. With her back to him, she leaned over and pressed her palms to the top of their dresser. The pleats of the sailor suit skimmed her legs, exposing the taut globes of her ass, and he flexed his fingers—his digits aching to grip the supple flesh.