Holding my hand on the console between the seats, his thumb ran back and forth over the top of my hand. “You look pretty in that pink dress.” He pulled my hand up and kissed it. “Can I assume that means you’re hoping for a girl?”
I shook my head. “I’m hoping for a healthy baby—the sex doesn’t matter to me.” I looked out the window. “I don’t know how to take care of either, anyway.”
Nix told me he wanted to wait to be sure I stayed pregnant before he told his family about our situation, but once we were past the critical three-month mark, he’d tell them about everything.
“You know I told you my mother would help you with all that. I don’t want you to worry even a little bit about that—you’ll be a great mother. I know you will.” He kissed my hand again, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I don’t know how he made me feel so much better just by being with me, but he did. “I know you’ll be a great father.”
“I’m going to try.” He chuckled. “I had to lie to my mother a while ago.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised he’d have to lie about anything.
“She wanted me to come for Christmas, and I told her I’d made plans with my business partners for that day so I couldn’t come this year.” He shook his head. “I don’t lie often. It felt pretty unnatural doing it, but I don’t want to jump the gun with our news.”
Thinking about losing the baby made my stomach roll, and I swallowed as saliva suddenly began to produce rapidly. I saw a stoplight ahead and prayed he’d make it to that before I had to open the door and hurl. I couldn’t even say a word as I felt sure I’d projectile vomit all over his expensive car.
When Nix stopped at the light, I opened the door and let it all out. “Baby?” he called out.
It took no time to expel the little that was left in my stomach, and I closed the door and leaned my head back on the headrest when I was done. “God, I hate that.”
He handed me a tissue as he shook his head. “Damn, I hate that for you.”
By the time we got to the doctor’s office, the butterflies in my tummy had turned into pterodactyls, and I had to cling to Nix for support. I’d never really leaned on anyone in my life. It felt odd—and even a little dangerous—but I couldn’t help it.
The waiting room was full of expecting mothers in various stages of pregnancy. A few small kids were playing with some toys in one corner, and I noticed only a handful of fathers there with the women. I squeezed Nix’s arm, which I had wrapped mine around. “Thank you, Nix.”
“For?” he asked as he grinned at me.
“Being here with me. For me.” I kissed his cheek. “You’re my rock.”
He kissed mine right back. “I am that. And I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
When my name was called, we got up. He wrapped his arm around me, supporting me, and I knew he could feel my body shaking. “I’m so scared.”
“No reason to be. Nothing bad will happen to you. Come on, be brave. For our baby, be brave.” He kissed my cheek once more and in we went.
The doctor was a man in his late fifties. He passed us in the hallway and stopped to introduce himself. “You’re new.” He extended his hand, and we took turns shaking it. “I’m Doctor Sheffield.”
Nix took the lead. “I’m Nixon Slaughter, and this is Katana Reeves.”
“Nice to meet you both. Do the deal with the nurses, and I’ll come see you soon.” He walked away, leaving us to follow the nurse once more.
“He seemed nice,” I said, and felt a tiny bit better about this whole thing.
“I’m sure he’s very nice. And he had many high recommendations. I think we picked the right man for the job, baby.” He gave me a confident smile, and I had to smile back.
After an hour of being weighed and measured, and giving urine and blood samples, I was handed a paper robe and Nix and I were sent to a room to wait for the doctor.
I undressed behind a little curtain while Nix looked at the posters on the walls, which depicted the stages of a developing fetus. “Let’s see here,” he said as I changed. “It’s now the twelfth of December, and that means we’re six weeks. That means we should be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat, according to this chart.”
I came out wearing the unflattering paper robe and looked at the table I had to climb up on. Then I felt hands on my waist, turning me around. Nix lifted me up, putting me on the table. “Thank you.” I couldn’t help the smile that took over my face. The man was just too damn good.
“You look adorable. Can I take a picture of you? I swear I won’t post it on anything; I just want to chronicle everything.” He pulled his cell out of his jacket pocket and cocked his head as he waited for my approval.
“Swear to make me look good in this silly thing?” I asked.
He nodded. “You’ll look like a pinup girl, I swear.”
With a nod, I gave him approval and found him snapping a ton of pictures and taking selfies with me in the pictures too. He had me laughing and feeling a lot less nervous in no time at all.
When Doctor Sheffield came in, he wore a wide grin on his face. He pushed one hand through his salt and pepper hair as he came to us. “Glad to see you two having a good time. It’s nice to see people celebrating bringing a new life into the world.” He opened up the folder with all my information and looked it over. “Says here you two are certain about the date of conception and that some people must’ve had a fun time on Halloween.” He grinned knowingly at us.
“That we did,” Nixon confirmed. “So when are we going to be seeing our little baby’s face, doc?”
“If everything goes right, you’ll see your baby on the twenty-fourth of July. How does that sound?” The doctor walked over to the counter to put on a pair of gloves.
My heart began to pound then. I knew what the gloves meant and wasn’t real keen on Nix being there while the doctor poked and prodded me. But I guessed that would be something I’d have to get used to. Nix did seem set on being a part of every little bit of the pregnancy—as much as he could be, at least.
I must’ve had a wild-eyed look on my face as the doctor came and pushed me gently back. Nix took the place on my right, holding my hand and smiling at me reassuringly. “You’ll be just fine, baby.”
I nodded but didn’t feel just fine as the doctor placed my feet in the stirrups. Then he pushed something cold inside of me as he said, “We’ll just get this Pap smear out of the way, then I’ll do a transvaginal ultrasound and see if we can hear a heartbeat.”
My entire body tensed as he cranked the mechanism, opening me up so he could do the test. “Ow,” I whined when it pinched me.
“Almost done, Katana,” the doctor assured me.
When I looked at Nix, I saw he wasn’t even breathing as he stared at the top of the doctor’s head. He was nervous too. He never said one word about it, but I could read his body language. All the while, his only mission seemed to be trying his best to keep me calm.
I had lucked into getting the best baby-daddy in the whole world. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve all of this. But I was thankful for it all. I squeezed his hand, and he looked at me. “Thanks again for being here for me.”
He nodded. “Thanks again for including me.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead.
The doctor finished with the uncomfortable procedure then pushed something else inside me before flipping a switch on a small screen on his left. We could see the screen too, but I had no idea what we were looking at.
He moved the device inside of me as he searched for our baby. “Here we go.” He smiled at us as he pointed to a small orb on the screen. The orb pulsed as the doctor turned up the sound, and there was the tiny heartbeat.
A tear fell, and I gasped. Nix squeezed my hand and looked at me. “So there it is. Our baby, Katana.”
My heart filled with love. Love for the little orb, and love for Nixon Slaughter.
God help me, how can anyone fall in love this quickly?
Chapter 19
Nixon
A few days had passed since we’d gone to the doctor. I was having lunch with August as our other partner, Gannon, was busy with other things that day. I guessed a two-year-old could take up a lot of time, but my bet was that it was actually the hot young babysitter that had Gannon Forester so busy these days.
I’d made this vow to myself about telling as few people as possible about the pregnancy, but I couldn’t stop myself. “So, I’m going to be a little busy myself come the end of July.” I put a piece of pepper steak into my mouth as I waited for August to ask me why that was.
“That’s some time off, Nixon. You have another deal going on or something?” he asked me, then took a long drink of his iced tea.
“You remember when I left town for Halloween?” I ran my hand over my beard, remembering how that night had marked the beginning of me growing it out. I’d soon have a much more permanent reminder of that fateful night.
“Yeah, I remember you ditching us that night. So, what about it?” He stopped eating to give me his full attention. “You look different, Nixon.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “How so?”
He shrugged. “Not exactly sure about that. You just look a little different. A little happier or something. You must be getting more sleep than you usually do. You have a healthy look going on.”
I’d had less sleep than usual lately, as Katana and I had spent at least two hours of every night since she moved in engaged in some mind-blowing sex. Her bedroom was merely a place for her clothes to be kept. But I had been eating better—spending more time at home with Katana eating the healthy foods Mona made us instead of eating out so much.
“So, the thing that will have me so busy by late July is actually a baby.” I stopped, waiting for his reaction—dropping the mic, so to speak.
August blinked a few times. “Have you been seeing someone seriously that you’ve left out of our conversations?”
“Well, now I am.” I chuckled. “The woman I met on Halloween is pregnant—and it’s mine. When she called me and told me she took a test that came back positive, I moved her into my place.”
Being a wealthy man himself, August was cautious where women were concerned. “Hold on. This woman, have you had her checked out? You can’t be sure that baby is yours, not until after it’s born and you can have a paternity test done. Don’t you think that moving her in with you is jumping the gun by a whole hell of a lot?” He shook his head. “It’s not like you to do something stupid like this.”
“No, it’s not.” I fidgeted in my seat, as it never sat right with me when anyone thought I was making a mistake. “And I will have a test done after the baby’s born. But I don’t want to miss out on a thing if the kid is mine. Which I do think it is. This woman has given me no reason to believe she’s a liar.”
“And what does this woman do for a living?” August asked as he put his hands behind his head and leaned back, as if he was my therapist getting ready for one long session.
“She’s a book cover designer. She freelances and works from home.” I winked at him. “Pretty cool, right?”
He finally smiled and sat upright. “Thank God. I was pretty sure you were going to tell me she’s a stripper.”
“Damn, August!” I laughed, and so did he.
“I’ll have to introduce you to her soon. You’ll see, she’s genuine. And I must admit, I’m starting to fall pretty hard for her.” I shoved my hand into my pocket and looked down. “She sure is making me think a lot.”
“Uh oh.” August shook his head at me.
Now, why would that be considered an uh oh?
“Care to add to that, August?” I asked him as I picked up my iced tea and took a sip.
“You wouldn’t do anything stupid, right?” he asked, then tapped the tabletop with his finger. “Like marry her on a spur of the moment kind of thing, without having a prenup, right?”
“A prenup?” I asked then shook my head. “Why would I need one of those things? I don’t believe in divorce. My parents raised me right, August.”
“But did hers?” he winked at me and wagged his finger at me. “You aren’t the only one who can file for a thing like a divorce, Nixon. She could too. And she could take you for half of everything you’ve got.”
His question about her upbringing did send a red flag floating through my brain. “She was raised in foster care. She didn’t know her father and her mother abandoned her.”
“Damn,” he murmured. “That sounds like one hell of a rough life. My heart goes out to the poor thing. That said, now you really need a prenup. She’s what I like to call a wildcard. You have no clue what she might turn into. When you know a person’s family, you can get a rough idea of what the person is like and will be like later on in life. You’ve heard the saying, look at her mother to see how she’ll be in twenty years, right?”
“And her mother is a low-life,” I mumbled. The thought wasn’t pretty, nor was the vision that appeared in my head of Katana turning into her absentee mother. “Damn.”
“Look, don’t rush into anything. Just because she’s pregnant, that’s no reason to go faster than you would with anyone else.” He waved the waiter over. “Can you bring the bill?”
The waiter gave him a nod and headed off.
August’s words hit me like a punch to the gut. How could I have forgotten about Katana’s horrible past?
Something like that had to really screw with a person’s head. And Katana did have a certain vulnerability about her. Sometimes vulnerability could lead to weakness, and that could lead to self-destructive tendencies. Those were the kinds of things that can end relationships.
Maybe I was moving too fast. Thinking too much about making things permanent much too quickly.
But even as I thought about that, my heart beat harder, as if it were trying to pump more blood to my brain. It reminded of how my pulse had kicked when I looked into her pretty eyes as we listened to the first sounds we’d ever heard of our baby. That was real.
All the “what ifs” were not.
There could be a billion “what ifs.” What if she did turn out like her mother? What if she did turn into some self-destructive person, bent on ruining me? There was just no end to them.
But then I began to think about my own “what ifs.” What if I never made a commitment to her? What if I lost her to another man who would give her the stability I knew she’d craved her whole life? What if I lost her only because I was too worried about “what ifs?”
My thoughts were consuming me as August paid the bill. He interrupted my internal battle as he asked, “How about Friday? You still going out?”
I shook my head. “No. There’s no point—I promised Katana I wouldn’t see anyone else.”
His eyes went wide with what looked like shock. “Fuck! Are you kidding me, man? You’ve already made a promise like that to her? You barely know this chick, Nixon. Damn, does she have some voodoo shit on you or something? This is so unlike you.”
“She’s pregnant with my child,” I said, wanting him to understand what I was doing. “She told me she wouldn’t see anyone and I told her the same. I also told her that it wasn’t a thing that was set in stone.”
“Again, you’re making some pretty big decisions based on the assumption that this baby is yours,” he pointed out as we got up and started heading for the door. “And what about me?”
The doorman opened the door, letting us out, and we walked into the cool afternoon. A slight breeze stirred my hair, and I ran my hand through it. “What about you?” I had to ask.
“I don’t want to hit the town all alone. Gannon already called, and he’s backed out on us. And now you too?” He shook his head as we headed for our cars. “We have a nightclub to put together. That is one of the main reasons we hit the town on Friday nights, if you’ll recall. To get ideas about what people like, what they flock to.”
We stopped at his BMW, and I had to tell him something I’d been thinking about for a while anyway.
“We’re not making a club for everyday people. We’re making one for the super-rich. And that means our clientele won’t have the same desires as the people who go to the clubs that are already here. Our clients will be looking for sophistication, style, and ways to rub elbows with other people with money who can help them further expand their businesses.”
All he could do was nod. But he still wore a frown. “I guess you’re right.”
“When we came up with that grand plan, we were all single and free. And we were all looking for a good time. Well, my good time is waiting for me at home. And although Gannon has yet to come clean with us, his good time is also at home. Those clubbing days are most likely a thing of the past for the two of us.” I watched August’s expression grow grim. “I hope that doesn’t upset you, man.”
With a shake of his head, he opened the driver’s side door and looked at me. “You guys are growing up on me.”
I guess we were. And it was long overdue.
Chapter 20
Katana
The afternoon had a cool, gentle breeze blowing in off the ocean water, bringing with it a wonderful scent. I sat on the deck getting some vitamin D from the sun and enjoying the gorgeous day.
Nix had had lunch with one of his business partners, then he said he’d be home after that. I loved the fact that I had someone coming home to me every day. It was so different from my life before.
A man cleared his throat, taking my attention away from my thoughts, and I pulled my shades down to see who it was. A tall man stood on the stairs looking at me. “Hi there. You’re a new addition to this neighborhood.” He gestured to the deck. “May I?”
“Of course,” I said, sitting up and making sure my dress was straight. I’d been lounging and had no idea what kind of state I was in. “I’m Katana Reeves.”
He came to me and shook my hand. “John Simmons. I live next door. You related to Nixon?”
“No—no, I’m not.” I didn’t know how much to tell the man.
“Oh, okay.” He pointed to the other chair. “You mind?”
“No, please sit down.” I pointed to the unopened bottle of water on the small table between us. “Thirsty?”
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