She takes the photo from me, tracing his tiny little feet. “Or she,” she says, leaning back into me.
“Or she,” I say.
We stare at the pictures until the water cools.
“We need to get out of here,” I say.
She nods. “Yeah, the water is too cold.”
I laugh. “Well, that, too. But I was thinking we should get away for a few days. Take a vacation before the baby comes. Let’s fly out to California and stay at my parents’ house. It’s right on the coast. We can go for long walks on the beach. We can lie in bed all day. We can fatten you and Junior up with my mother’s cooking.”
“Junior?” she asks.
I shrug. “It could be gender neutral.”
She laughs and it’s music to my ears. “A beach vacation sounds heavenly, Ethan. I just need to see if I can get the time off.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem.” I wink at her. “I know people who know people.”
Chapter Forty-one
Our long weekend in Santa Monica has turned into a ten-day vacation. I’ve never seen Charlie more relaxed and carefree. And watching her with my mom—it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted.
Dad and I are sitting at the bar in the kitchen watching Mom and Charlie prepare tonight’s dinner. Chicken Piccata I think they said. It’s amazing witnessing the bond she has formed with my parents in a mere eight days. From the moment they picked us up at the airport, they welcomed her as part of our family and doted on her like the daughter they never had.
Of course, my mother is over the moon about becoming a grandmother. Yes, she’s been one before, and although my mom was a great Nana to Cat, I think she and I both know this time will be different.
My mother pulls Charlie into a hug. “I’m going to miss you so much, dear.”
“We still have two more days, Jackie.”
My mother gives her a stern look so Charlie adds, “Sorry . . . Mom.”
My mother’s smile lights up the room. She insisted Charlie call her ‘Mom’ the instant they met. I can see Charlie isn’t completely comfortable with it yet, but she’s indulging my mother. My mom is not an easy woman to turn down.
“With our hectic work schedules, and the few hours we get to see you each night, it feels like you just got here,” Mom says. She turns to my dad. “Marc, when are we going to retire so we can move back to New York and spoil our grandchild?”
He laughs. “Tomorrow,” he says with a wink to Charlie. My parents often joke about wanting to retire. But the truth is, nothing could pull them away from the jobs they love. My parents are their jobs. When they can no longer hold a scalpel, they will no doubt teach. I’m pretty sure they will work until they drop dead like my grandfather, hopefully at ripe old ages.
“Am I doing this right, Mom?” Charlie asks her, looking down at some kind of butter sauce.
Dad knocks his shoulder against mine and whispers, “She’s a keeper, son. Well done.”
I smile at him. He hasn’t known her long, but I can tell he thinks she’s the one. Just like my mom is for him and his mom was for my grandfather.
I hear the front door open and then footsteps echo through the grand parlor and get louder as they come closer to the kitchen. My brother appears in the doorway. “Smells good, I didn’t miss dinner, did I?”
Chad has stopped by several times this week while we’ve been here. Charlie even convinced me to go out with him one night for what she called ‘brother bonding.’ But truthfully, I think she just needed a night off from all the sex we’ve been having. Another bonus of being here and so far away from our problems.
“Hey, Chad,” Charlie greets him. “No, you didn’t miss dinner.”
He walks around the massive center island, kissing both Charlie and my mother on the cheek.
“So, how’s everything in the world of Thad Stone?” my father asks.
“Good,” he says. “We’re finishing up re-takes for Defcon One this week. I’ll be glad when that’s done.” He rolls his eyes.
Defcon One is the movie he’s been shooting for the past several months. It was one of the reasons he was in New York back in March. He’s had some trouble with his co-star. Let’s just say she’s Gretchen-esque. I can relate.
“When will the movie be released?” Charlie asks.
“Probably not until early next year. The time it takes to produce a film from start to finish is about twelve months. Sometimes longer.”
“Well, I can’t wait to see it,” she says.
“You guys should come out for the premier,” Chad says.
Charlie looks down at her belly. “I don’t know, Chad. Depending on how early next year, we may have a newborn.”
“Nonsense,” Mom says. “You’ll come and I’ll babysit. I hate those premier things anyway.” She winks at Chad. “We won’t want the baby picking up any germs on a commercial airplane so Ethan will charter a jet.”
“Charter a jet?” Charlie stares at me suspiciously.
I shrug. She’s seen my penthouse. My cars. But she hasn’t seen my bank account yet. I may have downplayed my net worth just a tad.
“Let’s play it by ear, okay?” I say. “Who knows what will be going on then.” Charlie’s eyes turn sad. She and I both know that if things don’t go our way, our lives may be filled with restrictions where the baby is concerned.
Just as we’re sitting down to eat, my mother’s pager goes off. She looks at it and sighs. “Sorry, guys,” she says. “Nature of the business.” She gets up and takes her plate to the counter where she wraps it with tin foil.
My dad gets up and hands her his plate, too. “I’ll keep you company, sweetheart. There are some patients I’d like to check on myself.”
She smiles at him and wraps up his plate of food. I smile at Charlie. We lock eyes. I know we’re both thinking the same thing. That we hope after we’ve been married for thirty years, we won’t mind skipping meals just so we can be together.
“Don’t wait up!” Mom shouts on their way to the garage.
Halfway into our meal—that’s been prepared to perfection by Charlie under my mom’s tutelage—my phone pings with a text from Levi. There is a case he’s working on that needs my immediate attention.
“Charlie, I’m sorry, I have to make a couple of calls. Do you mind if I leave you in my brother’s capable hands for a little while? I promise to make it up to you later,” I say with a devious grin.
“Bro, I’m sitting right here,” Chad says. “Please stop giving me visuals.”
She laughs. “It’s fine. Go take care of your work thing.”
“Thanks for a wonderful dinner, sweetheart,” I say.
I immediately look for her reaction.
She wrinkles her nose and gives me a small shake of the head. “Makes you sound like your dad,” she says. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want me thinking about him when—”
“Enough said,” I tell her, holding out my hand to stop her words. I mentally cross that one off the list.
“Jesus, will you just go already,” Chad says. “You two and your dinner foreplay are killing me.”
~ ~ ~
Two hours later, I crawl into bed next to Charlie. She’s sleeping, but still she gravitates over to me. When she places her head on my chest, I inhale her scent. I swear since she’s been pregnant, she smells even better than she did before.
In the moonlight, I watch her sleep. She’s so peaceful. More peaceful than I’ve ever seen her. It makes me wonder if being in New York is part of the problem. Even if the Zach Thompson issue goes away, will she ever be comfortable living so near the place of her childhood nightmare?
She seems to love it here in Santa Monica. We’ve gone for long walks on the beach every day. I’ve taken her to see the sights. We even went up to the Wine Country. She insisted we go even though she was unable to partake.
I think she’s even put on a few pounds which is a good thing. I was beginning to worry, as was her doctor, that she w
asn’t gaining enough weight. Everything feels better here. Lighter. Happier.
But I know leaving New York right now isn’t really an option. And I’m not sure I could ever tear her away from the Mitchell clan. They are all so close. They seem to be making up for all that lost time together when Charlie and Piper were traveling abroad.
My family is here. My parents. Chad. Everyone but Kyle. They could be her family. I think about how well she’s gotten along with them. How close they’ve all become in a few short days. I sense Charlie loves the parental attention she has been missing all these years.
It makes me think of her dad. She’s told me a lot about him. And although he’s not going to win any Father of the Year awards, I’m not sure he’s as bad as she makes him out to be. The guy was being abused by his controlling wife. Charlie was so young, only twelve, when he left. She could be confused about things. He could have had every intention of taking her, but maybe her mom threatened him. Maybe there were circumstances she didn’t know about. He claimed he didn’t know she was hitting Charlie. I’m willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt until I hear otherwise.
I’d like to meet him and see for myself. But I won’t. I promised Charlie I wouldn’t do anything like that again without consulting her. She trusts me now. She loves me. And it’s the best feeling in the world knowing she will put her life in my hands, her child’s life, and know I will always take care of them. It’s taken a long time to get to this point and I’m not willing to jeopardize that for anything.
Before I know it, the sun is coming up. I think I’ve watched her all night without sleeping.
She makes an adorable squeaky yawning noise and then she opens her eyes to catch me staring. She smiles, but then she narrows her eyes at me, looking worried. “You look tired,” she says. “Were you up late working?”
“I was up late,” I tell her. “But I wasn’t working. I was watching my beautiful fiancée sleep.”
“Oh, God,” she says, throwing an arm over her face. “I hope I didn’t snore. Or drool.”
I laugh. “There is nothing you could do that would turn me off, Charlie. But no, you looked like an angel. So peaceful. I wish I could bottle it up and take it with us back to New York.”
“Me too,” she says. “Everything just seems . . . better here.”
I smile wondering if maybe in the future, we could make a life here. A life with our child. I push the thought of moving here aside for now, thinking I’ll bring it up again if we really do get to come back here for the premier of Chad’s movie.
“Everything?” I ask, pulling her so close she can feel what lying next to her does to me.
She reaches down, touching me through my boxer briefs, making me even harder. Needier. “If I recall,” she says with a wry grin, “you promised to make something up to me. I’m curious as to just how you plan to do that, Stone.”
“Unnngh,” I growl though her long strokes across the thin fabric separating us. “Any way you want me to, baby.”
She stops stroking me.
“What, not ‘baby’ either?”
“Nope.” She thinks on it for a second. “I actually don’t mind it when you’re deep inside me, about to come. And now that I think about it, I really don’t care what you call me during those times. As long as it’s not Gretchen.”
I cringe. “You had to go and ruin a perfectly good erection by bringing her up.”
She slips her hand under my boxers. “I think we can still salvage it.”
I tug them down to give her full access. Her eyes go wide and hungry as she stares appreciatively at my naked body, making me want to pound my chest.
“I thought this was about me making it up to you,” I say, perfectly happy to have her fondle me, but at the same time, needing to put my hands on her.
“Just let me play for a little bit,” she says, looking at me through lidded eyes. “You got to watch me all night. Now it’s my turn.”
Who am I to argue with that? I latch my hands behind my head and enjoy watching everything she does to me. Every touch. Every stroke. Every light tickle she feathers over me. It doesn’t take long for her to work me up into a frenzy. And right before I topple over the edge, she pulls back. She knows I only want to come inside her. She knows that since we don’t have to use condoms anymore, I want to be deep within her, sharing our release together.
She climbs up my body, taking time to explore every ridge and ripple. I’ve never felt more revered in my life. What did I do to deserve this? To deserve her?
She kisses the underside of my left bicep. “Mmmm,” she says. “I love this.”
I have a birthmark there. She thinks it looks like a banana. I always thought it looked more like a fingernail moon, but after the first time she said it, I examined it with a magnifying glass and damn it if she wasn’t right. One edge of the birthmark sticks out like the stem of a banana. Twenty-seven years I went without knowing that. She knows me better than I know myself.
She licks it and I shiver. When I can’t take not touching her anymore, I reach around her and pull her on top of me so she’s straddling me. She pulls her sleeping shirt over her head, leaving her clad in only her underwear. My eyes rake over her body, her magnificent full breasts, her perfectly round belly, her soaked-through panties.
I put my hands on her breasts, giving her nipples a pinch. They pucker and harden under my touch. She gasps at the sensation. She’s gotten so much more sensitive there since becoming pregnant. I’ve been able to make her come just by playing with her nipples. It’s fascinating to me that the same part of her body that brings us so much pleasure will also be used to feed our child. He’s not even here yet and already I’m jealous that he’ll get more access to them than I will. “Mmmm,” I mimic her. “I love these.”
She giggles, pushing her chest further into my hands.
I’m growing painfully hard beneath her. “I need to be inside you. Right now.”
I don’t want her to move off me, so I reach down with both hands and rip her panties right off her body.
“Hey,” she pouts. “I liked those, Ethan.”
“I’ll buy you a hundred pairs. Every color you can think of.”
She smirks at me. “Will you have them delivered by charter jet?”
I put a finger inside her, feeling how ready she is for me. “I’ll deliver them by submarine if you want, just let me make love to you, Charlie.”
“Do you really have enough money to buy a submarine?” she asks.
I add another finger and press my thumb on her clit. She gasps. “Do you really want to talk about this now?” I ask.
“Noooooo,” she responds breathily. “Oh God.”
“Are you okay like this?” I ask. I love the fact that her belly is getting bigger, forcing us to get creative with all kinds of positions. But her being on top is probably my favorite. It gives me the best view of her face when I make her come. And being so up close and personal with her chest isn’t that bad either.
She answers me by lowering herself onto me. She sets the pace, working herself slowly up and down at first. She threads her fingers through my hair. She loves to grip my hair when she rides me. I put my hands on her hips, urging her to increase her pace as I thrust into her from beneath.
Our lips come together as we kiss and breathe and pant into each other, each of us wanting to find release. Each of us wanting to stretch this out as long as we can.
She moves herself back and forth and in circles on top of me, driving me to the edge of insanity. I want to take her over the cliff with me so I work a hand between us and find her slippery nub. My other hand I use to pinch and twist one of her sensitive nipples.
She rips her mouth from mine. “Oh, yes . . . Ethan!”
We lock eyes as she begins to shudder. Knowing she’s right there. Feeling her start to pulsate around me. Hearing her shout my name. It all comes together at once and my body stiffens as I thrust into her one last time, emptying myself into her as her spasms milk e
very last drop from me. “Charlie!” I hear myself shout without any care of who might hear.
She collapses onto me, her body molded against mine as we regulate our breathing and regain our bearings. Then she sits up suddenly and squeals, “Oh my God!”
“What is it?” I ask, not knowing if she’s in pain or having a second orgasm.
“I just felt the baby move,” she says, putting her hands on her stomach. “Oh, Ethan. Oh my God. I felt him move. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
I put my hands next to hers and try to feel something, but I don’t. That doesn’t stop me from sharing in her excitement, however. Seeing her experience this for the first time is beyond wonderful. The baby inside her is alive. My baby is alive and moving and kicking. If I thought she was beautiful before, that pales in comparison to how she looks right now. She is a goddess. My love. My everything.
“What does it feel like?” I ask, needing every detail of every feeling.
“It feels like little bubbles,” she says. “Or maybe like a butterfly flapping its wings. It’s so soft.” She concentrates hard. “I can’t feel it anymore. But, God, Ethan. There is really a baby in there.” A tear escapes her eye and I kiss it away with my lips. “I mean, I know there is a baby in there, but now . . . it’s just so real.” She puts her hands back on her stomach. “I want him to do it again.”
I remove her from my lap and position myself over her, using my elbows to keep my weight off her belly. “It was the orgasm,” I tell her. “I’ve read about that. Your uterus contracts and it causes the baby to move around.”
I kiss her and then work myself down her body, past her breasts, past her belly. I look back up at her. “Give me five minutes and I’ll have Junior doing somersaults.”
Stone Rules (A Mitchell Sisters/Stone Brothers Novel) Page 26