I scooted to the end of my chair and held out my hands for Tika. “May I?” I asked Asia.
“Oh my god. Please.” Asia handed off Tika and her soft, chubby little fists, then flopped down in her chair with a deep sigh.
“I’m stupid to think I can do two at once, aren’t I?” I said as Tika scrutinized my face. When I realized her look of confusion was matching mine, I smiled and cooed at her and made her laugh. No reason to bring her down with me.
“Oh you’ll be fine. Trust me. It feels terrifying now, but once they show up you just go. You know what I mean?”
“I’ve heard you love them so much you want to make sure they’re clean and fed. Stuff like that.” I looked at Zia and she winked at me. I knew she was right. I loved my little nuggets already, but that day it was a little hard to see the big picture. Whether or not I liked it though, the big picture was going to show up in just a few short months.
✶
Sunday night snuck up on me like a damn bandit. Michael had a full week ahead of him. Training camp was starting and he still had to keep up with his usual business junk. Our HoneyDate that weekend involved Michael giving me a foot massage. It was the most romantic shit he had ever done for me. I’d finished my presentation for Notable Moments. I knew there was more I could do. More tweaks, maybe a little more polish, but I just couldn’t look at the designs anymore. Michael proofread the copy for me after dinner and then I declared myself free to relax for the next nine hours.
I was trying to make myself comfortable in bed so we could snuggle and watch a movie. Patch was sitting patiently on the floor, waiting for me to get my shit together so he could set up shop on my side of the bed. He was fascinated by my belly, and sick to shit of having to readjust every time I couldn't find my perfect spot. Just as I patted the bed and signaled for him to jump up, Michael’s business cell started break dancing on his night stand.
“Babe!” I called for him, just as he came striding out of the bathroom. His shirt was off, but he was still wearing his jeans. He scowled at the screen then hit accept. I reached over then and quickly made sure my own phone was plugged into its charger.
“Hey, Nick. Yeah, it’s fine. What’s going on?” I couldn’t make out what the person on the other end was saying, but if I had to guess, it was Nick Yang. No freaking clue why he was calling. “Hey, hey, no man. It’s okay. It’s okay. What’s going on?”
Michael sat on the bed and reached over and rubbed my stomach through our bedspread. I could barely hear Nick on the other end, but he was loud enough that I could hear the frantic tone in his voice.
“Tonight?!” Michael said. More mumbling. Still frantic. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be out there in the morning. Okay. No, it’s okay.” Michael let out a shaky laugh. “I understand. I have a mother too. It’ll be fine. I’ll see you.” He laughed for real this time. “I promise. I won't tell the guys. Yeah. Hide your luggage if you can and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Michael flopped on his back beside me, then tossed his phone. It bounced twice, then hit Penny in the belly. Her head snapped up. “Sorry, girl.”
“Was that Nick Yang?” They had scooped up the rookie point guard from UCLA in round two of the draft. Michael and the coaching staff had high hopes for him, but clearly something was up.
“Yes. It was Nick. I have to go to Seattle tonight.”
“What? Why?” Penny whipped her head around and looked at me. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t suddenly super bummed out. Michael rubbed her side, then grabbed his phone again. He started texting.
“Nick’s mom saw everything with Ardmenson and now she’d freaking out. She doesn’t want him to leave for camp.”
“He’s like twenty-three, isn’t he? And like a professional basketball player now. He can leave the house after dark, right?” Michael often reassured the parents of rookies that their kids were in good hands with the Flames, but this sounded a little extreme.
“I get it, kind of. He’s a really good kid. Total straight edge. Like bible study and shit, and he actually organized study groups and tutoring sessions for his college teammates at UCLA so their grades would be legit. Very good family. Very concerned mother. He was too embarrassed to say anything about it.”
“Okay, now I feel bad. He does sound like a good guy. And I don’t blame Mom. Some of these professional players are a little out of control. Ardmenson isn’t the only one. I can understand her being afraid that he’s going to get mixed up in some crazy shit.”
“His mom loves me though. Apparently I’m the only one who can convince her that this is the right move for her son.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know. For Nick’s sake, I hope it doesn’t mean buying her a house down here.”
“Eeyikes. Yeah.”
Michael started moving around the room, sighing again, louder than I’d like. That was the exhausted and frustrated sigh. The why-the-fuck-did-I-buy-a-basketball-team sigh.
“Baby. Come here.” I held out my hand and then pulled him closer when he came around to my side of the bed. Patch was not impressed, but he didn’t have to move. I reached up and touched the stubble growing in on my husband’s cheeks. “I think it’s pretty sweet that he trusts you this much, though. You must be a pretty great guy.”
“I need to be more of an asshole, huh?”
“Maybe. Just a little bit. I’m gonna let this one slide, but I think the more pregnant I get, the less running off in the middle of the night I’m gonna let you do.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. Are you gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow night. I’m going to take PJ and we’ll just grab him and go.”
“The old snatch and grab.”
“You know it.”
“I love you.”
Michael leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. “I love you too.”
I put on some crap TV and stayed awake while Michael got dressed and ready to leave. I was tempted to walk him to the door when Emmanuel brought the car around, but it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t get up. I hadn’t the will. I kissed him goodbye and told him I’d be looking forward to his text in the morning. I hated sleeping without him, but I knew I could manage one night.
✶
I was up all fucking night. I knew there was no magic to keeping food down. Even my favorite cravings betrayed me on a pretty regular basis. I had plenty of nights like this before, but Michael had been there to hold my hair and soothe me back to sleep. The second I woke up the next morning though, I knew something was wrong. Holger had just walked into the room, carrying the laundry.
"Good afternoon, Mrs.," he said.
"Uh fuck, what time is it?" I groaned. I still felt like crap. I rolled, trying to sit up and rubbed my stomach.
"It's one thirty."
"What? Fuck. Fuck! I missed my call." I looked over at my nightstand and my phone was gone. I started frantically patting around the sheets. "Fuck, my phone. Where's my phone? Shit! I think I left it in the bathroom." Holger took off for the bathroom door and came back a few seconds later with my almost dead cell phone. I had a ton of missed calls and voicemails and texts. All from Daniella and Lili. There was one check-in text from Michael wishing me luck with the presentation and telling me he'd call me as soon as he landed and dropped Nick at his hotel. "I tried to wake you earlier but I didn't think I should disturb you," Holger said.
"No, you're fine. I fucked up." I could feel Holger's worried gaze on me as I hit Daniella's number. She answered right away.
"Kay?! Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm fine. I'm sorry. Michael had to take an emergency trip and I was up all night puking."
"Did you go with him?"
"No, no. I'm home. I was just dead after it finally stopped and I didn't have my phone near me."
"Oh. Okay. I called the house phone after I got off the call, but Vera said you were out cold." Shit. I knew that
tone, but it had never been directed at me.
"Fuck, she should have woken me up." But Vera was not responsible for my schedule. She was on house and dog duty. It wasn't her fault that I'd massively fucked up.
"Well, we were done by then anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered."
"Shit, I'm sorry. What happened? Did we lose the account?"
"No, we're good to go. We still have to talk money some more, but I had a few of the designs you'd already showed me—" I wanted to puke all over again. Those designs were very rough. "They loved them, thank god, but they still want to talk to you."
"I'll call them right now. Uhh fuck, who should I ask for?" Daniella had been handling the actual business side of things. She'd set up the call.
"Debbie Newman, she runs the baby line, and Patsy Hargreaves, the CEO."
"Dude. I'm so fucking sorry."
"It's okay." Her voice softened. "I'm just glad you're okay."
"I'm fine. Let me call them. I'll call you back."
"Okay."
I hit end and then shimmied to the edge the bed. Holger held out his hand to help me up. Which was a smart move, ’cause my head instantly started spinning and I teetered a little to the left.
"I'm going to have to insist that you get back in bed."
"I'm not gonna fight you on this." I sat right back down.
"I'm bringing you some tea and some water and as soon as your call is finished, we're calling Dr. Prado. No arguments."
"Sounds good. Can you hand me my laptop?" It was fully charged and safely stored on the bottom shelf of my nightstand. Holger passed it to me and then helped me get settled. Before I could even think to ask, he grabbed one of the portable charges Michael kept stashed on his side of the bed, then rushed out of the room. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings, but after a few calming breaths I fixed my voice and hit send on the number Daniella had provided. Patsy was gone for the day, but I was able to get Debbie on the phone.
"I don't think I can express how embarrassed I am. Women harvest crops and work the mills when they're way more pregnant than I am now and—"
"Kayla, please. It wouldn't make much sense for me to push products to pregnant women and busy parents if I had no empathy for what you're going through. My son was two weeks late and let me tell you, the joys of an emergency c-section. One missed meeting when you're dealing with twins is not enough to get us to go back on our proposal."
"Thank you so much. I'd love to send you the rest of the designs," I said. "I can shoot them over now if you don't mind."
"Absolutely. Show me what you got."
Debbie skipped an internal meeting to go through each item with me, giving me notes and showering me with praise for the more humorous onesies and cards. Her personal favorite was a little t-shirt that said "Puréed, Not Stirred" with a smiling carrot holding hands with a winking spoon below it. She let me apologize a few more times and let me know that they'd have an offer over by the end of the week.
I called Daniella as soon as we were done, but she didn't answer. She sent me a text right away though.
On the phone with Jade and the rep from FedEx. Call you back in a sec.
A sec turned into three hours, but she couldn't talk long. She and Lili were meeting their parents for dinner. I knew she wouldn't be mad at me forever, but I also knew that I had really fucked up.
✶
Guilt and restlessness led me to convincing Holger that he should help me assemble the two cribs that had already been gifted to us. After we finished, I asked as politely as I could to be left alone. We'd checked in with the doctor and I'd managed to keep down most of my dinner and the small snack he prepared for me. After I promised him that I would keep sipping on my water, he felt comfortable giving me some space.
That's where Michael found me some hours later, sitting on the floor of our de facto nursery, our new 64-piece tool kit splayed out on the floor beside me. I'd settled on the flat head screwdriver, twisting the smooth blunt end between my fingers, just focusing on the way my skin gave around the metal, thinking about how much of a mess I’d made.
"Hey," Michael said cautiously as he entered the room.
I looked up, then back down at my hands. I couldn't see his face anyway. The hallway light was casting him in total shadow.
"Hey."
He squatted beside me and stroked my hair. "Holger told me it was a rough day. How are you feeling?"
"Not great." His touch moved to my forehead then eased down my cheek. "I really let Daniella down. I don't think I've ever disappointed her before. It feels awful."
"I lost Steven three million dollars once."
"Really?"
"Yep. Some investments are just bad, but I learned a valuable lesson and our friendship survived. And I don't even like him as much as you and Daniella like each other. Talk to her. Let her say what she needs to say. You two will work it out."
"I don't know what I'm doing." I looked up at him as a fat tear ran down my cheek. "I think she just won us our first huge piece of business and all I can think about are these kids. They aren't even here yet and they are all I can think about. It's scaring me."
Michael's thumb brushed my tears away. He kissed my lips.
"I was thinking about you the whole time I was gone. I was standing there in Mrs. Yang's living room trying to explain to her that Nick was smart enough to keep his personal life a hundred miles away from the backseat of a cop car, and I was just picturing your face," he said with an unapologetic shrug. "I'm shifting all this money around, making sure that I'm making all the right moves for my sites, the apps, the team, but every single second my mind is on you. It is scary. The stakes is high." I laughed as his mustache lifted a bit at the corner.
"But we do this together, right?” he said. “We get through this together. If it becomes too much, you have me and I have you. And when they are old enough to return the favor, if we do this whole parent thing well enough, Brayden and Bethany will be there for us too."
"You want girls, don't you?"
"There are so many men in my professional life, it only seems fitting that my home be filled with amazing women." I could only shake my head and wipe my face. "I desperately need a shower. Would my beautiful, amazing, smart, kind, caring wife care to join me?"
"Yeah, I guess." Michael chuckled a little as he helped me up.
We said our goodnights to Vera and Holger, then made our way to the bedroom. I let Michael undress me and then got under the hot spray of our dual head shower as he got rid of his own clothes. The minute I saw his naked body, that large and now healed tattoo of my name sprawled across half his chest and his semi-hard erection, I wanted him to fuck me. But there was no way that was happening in the shower, not standing up, my body wasn't having it. After we toweled off and lotioned up though, I let Michael spoon me between our soft sheets and dropped the oh so subtle hints that I wanted him inside of me.
"I want you to fuck me," I whispered to him in the dim light of our bedroom. He didn't say a word, just moved closer and started kissing on my shoulder as his hand slid up to my sensitive breasts. His cock was already hard against my ass. My pussy was already wet. I reached back and guided him in the general direction of where I wanted him to be. My ass was too fat and my belly too round to put him in myself, but my husband knew what he was doing, he knew the drill, knew exactly how I liked it.
I leaned forward just a little, moaning his name as he pushed his way between my swollen, wet lips. I squeezed my eyes closed, savoring the even motion of his hips, the gentle push and pull that became more frantic as my hormone-riddled lust became too much for me and I started to beg. I lost myself, biting my lip nearly raw to keep from screaming as his hand smoothed over my tender skin and captured my clit. I came, hard, gasping for air as I pushed myself back against him. I wanted him as deep as he could go. That orgasm gave me the boost I needed to climb on top of him so we could do it all over again.
This second round, somehow it was better, my hands braci
ng the wall above our headboard as he sucked my nipples into his mouth. I cried out this time, his name mixed with profanities as I clenched down around him. He wasn't far behind, gripping my lower back with his strong hands as he filled me with every last drop. After, after I drank a little water and after he cleaned away the traces of our lovemaking from between my thighs, we lay there together, his arms around my shoulders and my head resting on that new ink.
"I have to go to L.A," I told him. "I have to make things right with Daniella in person."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
My eyes started welling up again. Michael was up to his eyebrows with his own shit. He'd just spent twenty-four hours traveling just to protect the interests of his team and I knew he'd pack right back up and accompany me on another six thousand mile trek.
"I don't deserve you."
"You deserve everything your heart desires."
"As much as I'd love you to, I think I have to handle this alone."
"If you change your mind..."
"I know, babe. You got me."
"Always."
Eight
I thought I was going to get away with a solo trip to Los Angeles, but Holger, of all people, wasn’t having it. He didn’t say as much to me, but Michael let it slip that my little episode had really scared Holger. The secondhand account worried Michael too, but he trusted me to let him know when I wasn’t up to something. I could manage a cross-country flight alone, but I agreed to let Holger tag along, just in case. We got in Wednesday night. It was strange staying in the Malibu house without Michael, but I FaceTimed with him and the puppies before bed.
The next morning, I called the girls and took their breakfast orders. It’s always better to show up with food. Daniella was still a little tense with me, but I figured she didn’t hate me too much when she asked for a breakfast sandwich and an iced coffee instead of telling me to shove my food-related bribes up my ass. PJ delivered Holger and I to the office a little before ten a.m., thanks to that glorious L.A. traffic.
SO FOR REAL: A Sugar Baby Novella Page 8