Baby Trap

by Hodge, Sibel

  ‘No!’ I cried with laughter as I looked around our crazy group, who looked like the Nut Cracker on ecstasy. God, I’d missed having a laugh like this. ‘Five more seconds. And Dan, you were last so you need to take a huge gulp of your drink!’

  ‘I can tell this is going to be a cazy night!’ Mark grinned when I finally let them stop.

  ‘We haven’t done much of this lately,’ Karl said to him. ‘Gina and I have been trying for a baby without any luck so we’ve been living like nuns. I finally convinced her to get out and have some fun, so we’re making the most of it.’ Karl sipped his pint. ‘You ever thought about having kids?’

  Mark shrugged. ‘Not really. I guess eventually, if I meet the right person, but I can’t say I’ve really thought about it much.’

  ‘Get a cat, they’re much less hassle,’ Dan joked.

  Amelia tutted at him.

  ‘Good idea.’ Mark nodded. ‘And much less expensive.’

  Karl looked at me over the top of his glass and smiled. ‘Gina and I didn’t really think about having kids before, either, and now I can’t wait to be a dad.’

  Dan slapped Karl on the back sympathetically. ‘So what sort of cargo do you fly, Mark?’ he changed the subject, trying to divert the attention away from babies, yet again, and back to more lively conversation.

  ‘It can be anything from animals to post. The weirdest thing I’ve flown was a lion from London Zoo to an animal park in Scotland for mating.’

  ‘Shoes!’ Kerry shouted, kicking off one of her six-inch red stilettos in Mark’s direction.’

  ‘You’d better not stretch it.’ I grinned at Karl who was trying to get on my black wedged heel. ‘They’re expensive.’

  Dan was heaving with laughter as he tried to get on Amelia’s platform heel.

  I glanced down at our feet and doubled over, almost snorting wine out of my nose. The girls looked like Charlie Chaplin with one huge, chunky man’s shoe, and the boys, well…they could only just about get their toes in the girls’ shoes and were teetering in mid-air, holding onto the table for support.

  ‘You guys are nuts.’ Mark let out a big belly laugh, shaking his head.

  I drained my second wine and put my hand up. ‘Please, Miss, can I go to the toilet?’ I said to Amelia.

  ‘Nope.’ She shook her head at me.

  ‘But I’m going to wet myself.’ I bobbed up and down.

  ‘OK.’ She grinned, ‘But only if you go with Karl’s Caterpillar boot on one foot and your wedge on the other.’

  I narrowed my eyes at her in fake anger. ‘Ooh, that’s nasty!’

  ‘And you have to take a big gulp of wine.’ She wagged her finger at me.

  I took a swig and staggered off to the toilets, although I wasn’t too sure if I was swaying so much because of the different shoe heights or too much alcohol, and I was too amused to care about the peculiar stares I got.

  When I came back, there were shots of Sambuca all round.

  Oh, God, this was going to be a crazy night.

  ‘Tongue-twister!’ Karl shouted out. ‘The rules of fuzzy duck are quite simple. We all need to stand in a circle, so gather round.’

  We shuffled into position, grinning.

  ‘I’ll start off by saying “fuzzy duck,” then, going round clockwise, the next person has to repeat it. We carry on going round in the same direction until someone says, “does he,” at which point we change direction and go anti-clockwise and say “ducky fuzz,” until the next person changes it back to “fuzzy duck.” Got it?’ He smirked.

  ‘I’m ready,’ Mark said.

  ‘Well, you can do the honours and start,’ Karl said.

  ‘Fuzzy duck.’

  ‘Fuzzy duck,’ Kerry said.

  ‘Fuzzy duck,’ I giggled.

  ‘Does he?’ Karl said, sending it back to me again.

  ‘Fucky duzz,’ I snorted and slapped a hand over my mouth.

  ‘Ha! Get a drink of wine down you,’ Amelia cried.

  ****

  ‘Thash wash a fun night,’ I slurred as we arrived back at our house five hours later. I tried to put the key in the lock, fumbling away, but it wouldn’t go in. Then I dropped it on the step. ‘Oops. Who changed the locksh?’

  Karl crouched down, swaying in the dark on the front step to find them. ‘You’ve got odd shoes on!’ He cracked up with laughter, pointing at my right foot that had my wedgie on, and my left foot that somehow had Amelia’s platform on.

  I giggled. ‘How did thash happen?’

  ‘I want cheese on toast!’ he shouted.

  ‘Shhhhhhhhh.’ I pressed my finger to my lips. ‘Neighbours.’ I nodded towards the dark street.

  ‘I want cheese on toast,’ he whispered, finding the key. ‘Da da!’ He jabbed it into the lock and we managed to get it open.

  ‘Good…ideeeeaaaaa.’ I stumbled into the house and bumped into the back of him, which suddenly seemed the most hilarious thing in the world.

  ‘Cheese on toast and normal sex. Perfect.’ He pulled me up the stairs. ‘No, let’s start with the sex, then cheese on toast.’

  ‘Jush let me go for a wee,’ I slurred as Karl flopped on his back on the bed.

  When I came back, he was fast asleep. I stared down at him, ran my fingers along his jaw, and smiled at my gorgeous husband. Then I pulled off my dress and zonked out next to him.

  The Other Woman

  Whenever I didn’t want my period to arrive, it always reared its ugly head, and when I wanted it to arrive so I could start my Clomid, it seemed to take forever. In reality, it was three months after I’d had my tests. The day of our wedding anniversary to be precise. Even though it had been over a year since we’d started trying, I took that as a good sign from Zelda.

  This was definitely going to work. Oh, yes, bring it on!

  My womb is a flower! A pretty, spring flower!

  As instructed, I popped my pills on days five through to nine, and had a scan booked for day ten of my cycle.

  Dr Dye arrived as I was lying on the couch.

  ‘Right, let’s have a little look and see if you’re ovulating.’ He smiled down at me as the scan machine beeped to life.

  He spent the next five minutes moving the fufu cam around in silence.

  Please say I’m ovulating. Please say I’ve got hundreds of follicles just waiting to burst open and be inseminated. Come on, what are you waiting for?

  ‘Good news.’ He finally looked up at me. ‘You have a couple of good sized follicles. You’re likely to ovulate in the next three to four days.’

  Hallelujah! Woo hoo! Hurrah! I could’ve kissed him. Instead, I skipped (yes, I actually skipped) out to the car park with a permanent grin stretched from ear to ear, saying hello to everyone as if they were my best friend. I ignored their has-she-just-been-let-out-of-the-mental-wing? looks. I didn’t care. Finally, this was the month I was going to get pregnant. I knew it. I just had this unexplainable feeling it would happen. Well, that, and Zelda must be on my side now!

  Yeeeee ha!

  ****

  ‘So we need to have sex on Friday and again on Sunday,’ I told Karl with a huge smile when he got home from work. It was amazing my mouth hadn’t actually fallen off yet from so much smiling.

  ‘Great!’ He pulled me into his arms, jumping up and down. Then he stopped abruptly. ‘Oh, shit.’ His wide grin suddenly dropped off his face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got that work team building weekend in Hampshire.’ His sudden horror mirrored my own.

  ‘OK, so just cancel it.’

  ‘I can’t cancel it. It’s been planned for six months.’ He slumped down on the chair at the kitchen table, running a hand through his hair. ‘And I’m the boss. It’s not like I can miss it. We’re staying at the hotel in Hampshire on Thursday night, then driving back to work early on Monday morning.’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘We have to do it this weekend.’ I flapped my arms around, panic suddenly twisting in my stomach. ‘Why don’t I just come
with you?’ I suggested.

  ‘You can’t. No spouses are allowed. If you come, they’ll all want their partners to come, and it’s strictly a work thing. That’s the whole purpose of team building. Get to know your fellow workers, and all that. And anyway, our company is trying to expand internationally at the moment and Adam Sandler will be flying over from America on Friday night to meet us all.’

  ‘The actor?’

  ‘No, not the actor. This Adam Sandler is a huge potential client that we’re hoping to win. If we can break into the American market, it’s going to be a fantastic opportunity. Apparently, the Americans love all that team building stuff. I’m sure Adam and his colleagues won’t be too impressed if we’re all distracted with our wives.’

  ‘OK, so…’ I paced up and down, trying to come up with a solution. ‘I’ll just drive down to Hampshire on Friday, we can have sex in between your meetings and team building games, then I’ll come back and drive down again Sunday. How’s that?’ It wasn’t exactly a romantic weekend or anything, but then, sex was purely functional at the moment, so did it matter? A brief thought flitted into my head of my son or daughter asking where they were conceived. “Oh, it was a quickie, functional afternoon in Hampshire, darling.” I shook the thought away. No, we had to do whatever it took.

  He tilted his head, thinking about it. ‘That could work.’

  I clapped my hands together. ‘Fab!’ There was no way, absolutely no sodding way I was going to miss trying the first month I was actually ovulating. I only had five months of tablets left.

  ****

  Karl had consulted his itinerary in great detail before we arranged when I should drive up:

  Friday

  10.00 a.m – Team building games: Balloon Activities, Helium Stick, Rope Knot Game (whatever they were – sounded a bit kinky to me)

  12.30 p.m – Lunch

  2.00 p.m. – Raft Building Exercise and Tug of War (yawn)

  4.30 p.m. – Free time

  6.00 p.m. – Pre-dinner drinks and meeting with Adam Sandler (yep, I knew it! It was just an excuse for a piss-up)

  7.00 p.m. – Dinner

  8.30 p.m. – Keypunch Game (I seriously hoped they weren’t going to get drunk and punch each other’s lights out)

  There was a nookie window of opportunity between 4.30 and 6. Perfect. It would take probably an hour to drive there, but there was no way I was going to have a repeat of the seventy mile an hour sperm, so I left early, allowing plenty of time.

  The hotel was spectacular – a real country retreat. Rolling expanse of manicured gardens, wood panelling everywhere inside. Even the heads of several stags dotted around, which was a bit yucky. I could feel their eyes staring at me as I trotted through reception and took the lift to the fifth floor with my head down. If his colleagues saw me here, they might be a tad pissed off that I’d managed to tag along and none of their wives had. Mind you, I’d only ever met one of the guys he worked with, and I’d never met his boss, so it wasn’t like anyone would really recognize me, but for some reason I was feeling nervous. Kind of like I was the other woman, and I was meeting Karl for a secret tryst. It was actually quite exciting for a change. Hmm…maybe we should do a bit of role-playing to spice things up a bit. OK, so we had to do it, which was getting slightly repetitive and boring. Especially since the no oral sex rule applied, and the best positions to allow the sperm better access to my cervix were limited. But why not take the pressure off having to perform by acting out? Good job I’d put on some sexy knickers for once. This particular pair of red and black lacy ones, which were little more than a piece of dental floss, really, hadn’t seen the light of day since our honeymoon. Yes, this could be quite exciting.

  I got out of the lift and walked down the thick-carpeted hallway to his room. I looked down at what I was wearing – short black skirt, knee-high boots, tight V-neck jumper with no bra for added arousal.

  I knocked on the door. ‘Room service,’ I said in a husky voice.

  I heard a movement from inside. ‘Er…can you come back later, please,’ Karl’s voice said.

  I frowned at the door. Then banged again, slightly harder. ‘Room service,’ I said, more insistent this time.

  ‘Gina? Is that you?’

  ‘No, it’s your other woman. The one you’re having a secret affair with.’ I grinned to myself.

  The door clicked open slightly and his eyeball poked out around it. He visibly relaxed. ‘God, I thought it was the maid trying to seduce me.’ He quickly looked up and down the hallway to make sure no one was watching and pulled me gently inside.

  I shut the door, thrusting out my almost D cups. ‘No, I’m not the maid. I’m…’ I tried to come up with a sexy name, ‘Verotica.’ I raised an eyebrow and licked my lips suggestively.

  ‘Huh?’ He stood there, looking at me like I was talking Russian.

  For God’s sake. Did I have to spell it out?

  ‘Verotica,’ I repeated, nice and slow and sexy. ‘Your other woman.’ I winked at him.

  ‘Ah, yes! Verotica, you naughty minx.’ The penny dropped. ‘Oh yeah, you’re much better in bed than my wife.’

  ‘Oi, don’t push it!’ I laughed back, glancing around.

  There was a small sitting area with plush gold couches in the middle of the room. To the right of me was a full-length wall mirror, and directly opposite it, to the left, was an archway that led to the bed. And what a bed! A six-foot, four-poster bed with intricate wooden carvings and plump burgundy and gold cushions.

  ‘Nice bed,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ He pointed at the mirror. ‘And we’ll be able to see ourselves having sex.’ His eyes lit up. ‘Kinky!’ He took my hand and pulled me through the archway and onto the bed, laughing.

  I pushed him onto his back, straddling him. ‘So, Karl, what can I do for you that your wife can’t?’ I licked my lips, eyeing his crotch.

  ‘Everything,’ his voice dropped to a husky whisper as he ran his hands up my thighs.

  ‘Well, I’m sure your wife does some things right.’ I insisted, pulling my jumper over my head to reveal the lack-of-bra status.

  ‘Yeah, but not like you, Verotica. You’re hot!’ With one quick move, he’d flipped me over onto my back and was kissing me everywhere. My lips, neck, ooh, that sexy spot just above my collarbone that made me shiver.

  And the next minute, all our clothes were on the floor in a tangled heap, and I was on top of him again. I tried to think of other thoughts to put me off coming until after he did so my orgasm would aid his Olympic swimmers on their journey.

  What shall I cook for dinner tonight?

  Oh, God, that’s good. Mmmm, yes.

  Should I buy those black boots I saw last week? Nah, I don’t need another pair.

  Damn, that is soooo nice.

  Shall I stop off on the way home and rent a DVD?

  Omigod, I’m going to…

  I rolled over so I was on my back again. All the better for aiding and abetting sperm travel, you know.

  Don’t come yet! Nooooooooo. Stag’s heads!

  That put me off for a nanosecond.

  I tried to imagine I was shagging Gordon Brown instead. That definitely did the trick! And my orgasm disappeared long enough for him to ejaculate inside me.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at Karl who was staring down at me with a lopsided, sexy grin, and then my orgasm exploded.

  Satisfied and sweaty, I grinned back, and then suddenly I heard a knock and the sound of the door opening.

  Before I could cover up my almost Ds, not to mention other bits, I saw a balding man with glasses appear in the sitting area through the reflection in the mirror, closely followed by an older man.

  ‘Karl, are you here? I’d like you to meet Adam Sandler,’ the bald man said.

  ‘Aghhhhh!’ I cried, grabbing the sheet and covering up my modesty in case they happened to look through the archway into the bedroom. In my haste, I accidentally kneed Karl in the nuts and he let out a howl of pain.

>   ‘Hang on! I’ll be out in a minute, Clive,’ Karl’s high-pitched voice said, which came out a cross between a mouse sucking helium and a cry of the banshees, as he fumbled around for part of the sheet that I wasn’t using to cover up, too.

  ‘Oh!’ Adam gasped when he noticed our reflection in the mirror for the first time, and his brain registered what his eyes were seeing, closely followed by Clive’s jaw dropping as he noticed, too.

  ‘Clive, I…I…wasn’t…expecting you at this time!’ Karl struggled for breath through the pain.

  Shit. Clive’s his boss.

  I cringed and pulled the sheet over my head as a hot flush of embarrassment seared through me, not that they could see that, of course, but I was pretty sure they’d seen plenty already.

  ‘We had a meeting booked for me to introduce you to Adam before dinner,’ Clive said, his voice turning from surprised to incredulous.

  ‘I thought the meeting was…ouch…booked for six not…ouch…four-thirty!’ Karl said.

  ‘Well, Adam’s flight got in early so I thought we’d stop by now. I did knock but the door wasn’t shut properly so it just swung open.’ Clive again. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be otherwise engaged!’

  Damn, in the excitement of role-playing neither of us had checked the door.

  ‘This company was started by my family, and I still believe in traditional family values!’ Clive’s voice took on a deadly tone. ‘Not only is this a company weekend that you’re being paid for, but I’m sure that your wife would not be very happy about you carrying on with other women behind her back!’

  And before Karl could explain further, I heard Clive muttering his apologies to Adam and the door slammed behind them.

  Oops!

  ‘Omigod.’ I pulled the sheet down when they’d left, staring at Karl open-mouthed. ‘Go and talk to him. Quick!’ I did ushering hand movements as Karl cupped his nuts and rolled back on the bed with his eyes clamped shut and his mouth open with no sound coming out.