Claim My Baby

by Taryn Quinn

  No swan.

  It must be in the box. Besides, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t whip her up another. I was a packrat, so I was sure I had more receipts in my wallet. If she wanted more oddly shaped swans, I was her guy.

  I wanted to be her guy in a lot of ways. But I also wanted her to want that too. As much as I did.

  Not just at night. Not just in dark hallways. Out in the light, where there would be questions and assumptions and we would just have to deal with them.

  We. Not only me. Not me pushing for something I could feel she was hesitant on at best.

  Seth was already backing up. “Will do.”

  I caught her hand in mine the second he disappeared. “I can make you another if—”

  “You know it’s easier,” she said quietly, and I knew she didn’t mean finding the swan.

  “You know what’s easiest of all?” I backed her against the wall and framed her face with my hands. Her chin quivered and I lowered my mouth to hers, absorbing her exhale as if it was my own. “This.”

  I used every bit of my skill to coax her lips to open to mine, teasing her with little flicks of my tongue. Showing her all that we could be without words.

  When we finally pulled apart, she was breathless. So was I.

  “Say yes,” I said softly.

  “Yes.” She cupped my jaw, her thumb rubbing over my damp lower lip. “I would love to spend Valentine’s Day with you, Oliver.”

  11

  Sage

  Somehow I didn’t expect to spend my first Valentine’s Day in a sort-of relationship with my head over a toilet.

  Bad shellfish was the first thing I told myself.

  I hadn’t eaten any, but I had prepared it at work yesterday. Close enough, right?

  My next guess was the flu. I was around people day in and day out. Easy enough to catch something. Many things.

  Pretty sure I couldn’t catch a baby though.

  It was just crappy timing. I mean, logically, who got knocked up the first time they had sex? The odds were probably infinitesimal.

  You’ve definitely been increasing your odds by fucking like horny rabbits since though.

  Didn’t matter. Babies took time to cook. It had only been a few weeks since the initial boot-knocking in Vegas. What kind of child would make his or her presence known this early?

  Oliver Hamilton’s, that who. Pain in the ass that he is.

  Hot pain in the ass.

  I hadn’t even been at the best time in my cycle for such things. Not the worst either, since I’d just finished my period before vacation.

  I was probably worrying for nothing. But hey, I had plenty of time to fret with my head over the bowl. It wasn’t as if I felt up to debating my wardrobe for the night as I had been before my breakfast decided to back up on me.

  Normally, I would ask Ally such questions. I wished I could. She was at the end of her pregnancy and distracted, but obviously, that wasn’t why I hadn’t been able to do a full bestie share. I felt so guilty. Part of me wanted nothing more than to giggle over far more details than were necessary—hello, we were with brothers, twins no less, so it was almost an imperative we discuss some of the dirty nitty-gritty—but the rest of me thought it was asking for trouble.

  It had already been a few weeks since Vegas. Oliver rarely lasted this long with anyone, unless he only saw them bi-monthly. Not the case with me. We were seeing each other constantly. Every time we met, it was all hungry hands and greedy mouths and rude comments mixed in with sweetness and filthy lovemaking.

  I would’ve never said he was the sort of man I wanted. Not in a million years. He cleaned up well, and he had manners galore and very nicely shed them once the bedroom door was closed—and how. But he wielded snark as easily as compliments, and my father wasn’t like that. Seth wasn’t like that with Ally, though of course they had their share of banter. But I’d always expected a relationship to look a certain way, and this was not it.

  God, it was so much better than even my wildest imaginings. Who could blame me for being scared to do anything to change it? Right now, things were perfect. Oliver hadn’t yet exhibited itchy feet, and if he did, no one would know we’d ended except me.

  That meant no sad looks from my bestie. No worried comments from my parents. No concern from the townspeople who couldn’t help being busybodies.

  No sharing excitement with said bestie or mom or townspeople. No laughing over the latest male idiocy or enjoying that feeling of being part of a secret club.

  The “I finally have someone” club.

  The “oh yes, I do have a date for that party” club.

  The “yay, I don’t have to buy my own roses on Valentine’s Day” club.

  Although I would probably have to just the same, because…Oliver. But still.

  Why should we mess around with a winning formula? Even the secrecy made things hotter.

  It also made them more inconvenient.

  And upsetting when we had to lie to those who mattered most.

  And awkward, since it was getting harder to come up with excuses why we couldn’t do things with Seth and Ally when we were basically using all our non-work hours to fuck and sleep.

  More on the fucking, less on the sleeping.

  I’d had to hide my swear gallon under an old sweater in the closet. The way Oliver wielded that word in my ear while he was inside me had led to me using it fairly often myself.

  The slippery slope I was on had turned into an ice-covered Magic Mountain.

  When I was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to toss any more cookies, I stumbled to my feet and into my bedroom. Where I curled up on my bed and, like the mature woman of the world I was becoming, wished heartily for my mommy.

  Ugh, being sick alone was no fun. Especially when thoughts were preying on me that this “sickness” would last for a full nine months.

  If only I could ask Ally how soon she’d had morning sickness. For that matter, I wasn’t sure she’d had much. She’d talked about carrying crackers just in case, but she hadn’t regaled me with tales of worshipping the porcelain god and hoping for oblivion.

  Then again, I was the oversharer of our duo.

  Before I could question the impulse, I crawled across the bed and snatched my cell off the nightstand to send her a quick text. Maybe she had some free time today and I could oh so casually inquire what her first signs were of being with child.

  Ally replied right away.

  I’m @ the real estate office, sprucing it up. This place is 2 boring. So I brought in some silk flowers.

  Grinning, I sat up cross-legged.

  Should I buy some little heart lights? Or better yet, baby bunnies? Easter stuff is in the stores.

  Ally wasn’t as quick to answer that one.

  Um, well, maybe if it’s tasteful, but you know Oliver does work here & he’s not really into decorations.

  My grin turned downright demonic. Even not being able to see my own reflection, I knew it. Getting to decorate and annoying Oliver to boot? Double-bonus day.

  Distraction from possible baby brewing in my belly, check.

  I’m grabbing both hearts and bunnies, got it. What about window clings? Or oh, a festive doormat? Maybe both. You know, increase curb appeal.

  I couldn’t type fast enough. Ally wasn’t answering me. No problemo. I just wanted to get my ideas down.

  Jeez, I hadn’t been this excited since…

  Since you used to dream about staging houses for a living, along with running the bed-and-breakfast.

  Yeah, well, this was just for fun. Just a way to keep my hands busy since I had too much on my mind and didn’t have plans until tonight with Oliver.

  Hmm, they have those copper buckets at the florist’s, the ones right out front? A spray of delicate white blooms would be pretty & they would chase away some of the gloom.

  Ally finally responded.

  You do realize Oliver hasn’t sanctioned any of these changes, right? He doesn’t even know about my silk flowe
rs, but Seth figured pregnancy dispensation. U don’t have that.

  Oh, if she only knew. Thank God, she didn’t. Thank God, I didn’t.

  There was nothing to know.

  Bad shellfish. That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  Let me handle Oliver.

  That made me giggle. Pissing him off was half the fun, since I’d discovered he tended to be even more inventive while dirty-talking naked if I riled him up beforehand. Not seriously riled up, of course. Just from teasing him about the lack of a pair of worn-in jeans in his wardrobe, or that he really had Celine’s greatest hits on his running playlist. Or decorating his office in crazy frou-frou crap like holiday lights and maybe drawing a bunny on his desk calendar. Stuff like that.

  Nothing like “oh, hey, how do you feel about me having your baby?”

  Or “remember that morning-after pill? I swear, the reason I didn’t take it wasn’t because I was hoping to get inseminated with a golden Hamilton offspring.”

  I was pretty sure he wouldn’t get riled up sexually after either of those questions.

  Another message came through from Ally.

  If you say so. So you’re coming by? Lunch after?

  Sure. Where do you want to eat?

  Oh God, I could eat a horse & its young. Hmm, how about that new Italian place?

  I was already salivating. So much for the flu. I’d no sooner finished throwing up than I was ravenous. That didn’t seem likely for some kind of weird food poisoning either.

  Lordy, was I fucked. Possibly fucked.

  But what I didn’t know for sure couldn’t harm me. In the meantime, there were carbs.

  With the hot pumpernickel rolls?

  No way. Really? I think I just had an O. Not that I remember what those feel like.

  If those rolls are as good as they say, they’re probably almost as good as my last O.

  Yeah, no self-generated Os either. I’d have to climb over my belly to even get near between my legs.

  I started to text back that mine definitely hadn’t been self-generated—I still didn’t really know how to do those properly, Oliver or no Oliver—when reality smacked me like a cold, dead fish.

  Self-generated was all I was supposed to be having. Anything else would be deemed a bestie betrayal of the highest order.

  You lost your virginity and you didn’t tell me?

  Worse, the Oliver thing. What was the next level beyond bestie betrayal? Friendship homicide?

  Then again, Ally had been the one who’d sent Oliver after me to Vegas. If not for her, we wouldn’t be having the best sex of my life. Well, I’d had no sex before, but still, I knew when I was in the presence of greatness.

  Not Oliver himself. Just his penis. He was egotistical enough. I wasn’t going to help him by telling him how he’d rocked my world.

  Rather than even addressing Os in any form with Ally, I went with the better part of valor. I ended the conversation and said I’d see her soon, gaudy decorations along with a little class for contrast in hand.

  I finished packing my overnight bag with my new lingerie—full price for the first time ever—then picked up the tiny swan I’d searched through that box of paper goods to find.

  God, I was already looking forward to seeing Oliver again and it had been, what, five hours since he’d left my loft? It didn’t seem to matter.

  If this was what it felt like to be an addict, I didn’t want to stop. And that scared me most of all.

  After grabbing my bag, I headed downstairs. I dropped the bag in my trunk, but I didn’t take my car to lunch. Why bother when the real estate office was right down the street, along with the drugstore and florist, and the Italian place was just around the corner?

  Blessing and curse of a small town. Everything and everyone was right there. No privacy. No secrets.

  No running away.

  Except that was just what I was doing. I wasn’t headed toward the stores I wanted to stop by on the way to Hamilton Realty. It was warm for mid-February, so I’d detoured to my favorite place pretty much all year long.

  The shore of Crescent Lake.

  There were a few kids and parents stomping through the slushy snow, and the mail boat was just pulling into the dock. The wind stirred my hair and I pushed it back, narrowing my eyes on a little brunette girl who was racing in circles with a balloon in her hand. Bright pink. While I watched, she let go and cried out as it floated away.

  As if in slow motion, I ran toward it, diving up into the air to try to snatch it before the wind yanked it away. My fingers brushed the end of the ribbon, wrapped around, and locked on. I released a triumphant cheer and fell back on my ass in the snow, the pain echoing dully through my spine.

  Smart. Real smart. You’re afraid you’re pregnant and you just did a swan dive? What’s wrong with you?

  “Thanks, lady,” the little girl said, tugging the balloon from my hand. A tall, willowy woman I assumed was her mother was behind her, hand on her shoulder. “I just got it for winnin’.”

  Winning what, I wondered, but she was probably around Laurie’s age and I didn’t want to make her mom uncomfortable. I didn’t recognize her, so maybe she was new in town. Not that I knew everyone, but I knew a lot of people, especially working at the diner.

  “Y-you’re welcome.” Without realizing it, I’d clamped an arm protectively over my belly.

  “Are you okay?” The woman frowned, pushing back the long red hair that had escaped from her sturdy-looking hat. “You look pale.”

  “Sure thing. I’m fine. Hey, look at me. Plenty of padding.” Laughing a little, I got to my feet and brushed off my snowy, wet butt. Glad I’d spent so long picking out this cute eggplant-colored velvet skirt and pairing it with my gray leggings.

  Now I was a soggy mess. At least I’d done a good deed.

  The little girl ran off to join her friends—or a class, I realized. There were too many kids running and laughing to be just one family’s children. I shivered. If one woman had borne all of them, God save the queen. There was another woman trying to herd them. A class monitor, maybe, or assistant.

  “You’re not her mother,” I said, retaining my title as queen of the obvious.

  The other woman laughed and held out a hand. “No, I’m her teacher, Kelsey Ford. I live in Turnbull right now, though I’m moving to town soon. I’m new to Crescent Cove Elementary. I took over one of the kindergarten classes.” She cast a look skyward. “Midyear replacement. Always the best.”

  I pumped her hand before releasing it. “Oh wow, yes, I pick up my bestie’s daughter from half-day kindergarten sometimes, but she has Mrs. Pollock.”

  “Oh, yes. Technically, they could combine the two small half-day classes, but personal attention with the teachers in our non-traditional kindergarten setting is a big selling point for the school. Goodness knows I have my hands full as is. The full-day teachers deal with much more.”

  “I just bet. Nice to meet you.” I returned her smile, still clutching my wet backside with the other. Classy. “I’m Sage Evans. My family owns the bed-and—”

  I stopped. Nope. That wasn’t me anymore. I knew that. So why had I slipped? It wasn’t as if I’d fallen into a time warp and the past year hadn’t happened.

  “Oh, the bed-and-breakfast right up the street? That pretty purple and gray one with the huge porch?” She angled her head, her lips pursing. “Funny, I thought I saw a sign when I drove by there today. Future site of condos or something? I was so unhappy, thinking what clowns didn’t see the architectural value in—” She broke off and flushed the same color as her hair. “I’m sorry. Diarrhea of the mouth is a weakness.”

  “You too? I can see we’ll be fast friends.” I laughed loudly to stop the tears already stabbing my eyes from having free rein.

  Condos. How could this be happening? How could my parents have sold our home right out from underneath me to people who didn’t even care about the place and all the memories that had been made there?

  That was wh
y I wouldn’t spend that money. Not for me. If I was having a baby, it would be different. I’d use the money my parents had given me to ensure his or her future. But I would never use those profits for my own gain.

  “Hey, are you sure you’re all right?” Kelsey smiled at me gently. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have about the bed-and-breakfast? I’m sorry. I’m so new here. I don’t know a single soul except a few of the other teachers and Principal Gentry.”

  “No, no. You didn’t do anything.” I waved off her concern. “My parents sold the bed-and-breakfast. Progress and all that. I used to work there, and now I’m a waitress.” I patted my hip. “Discounted meals, quite the bonus. Anyway, I should go.” Before I started to sob or something equally distressing. “So nice to meet you.”

  “Wait, can we maybe have dinner sometime?” Kelsey flushed again. “I know, I know, I seem desperate for friends, but I guess I am. I just really don’t know anyone, like I said, and it’s Valentine’s Day and it’s totally lame to be alone.” She brightened. “Unless you’re free too tonight?”

  I hated to say no. I had been in her spot. Not the new-in-town thing, but I understood the need to not spend another Valentine’s Day alone.

  Except this time, I wouldn’t be. I wasn’t in a real relationship—probably not in the cards for me—but I wouldn’t be alone.

  “I’m sorry, no, I have plans.”

  “Oh, of course, you do. Pretty girl like you, you have to have a boyfriend.” Her eyebrows climbed. “Oh God, I didn’t mean that how it must sound. I swear, I wasn’t trying to pick you up—”

  I laughed for real. This woman truly was my mouth-twin. “We are definitely destined to be friends.” I pulled out my phone from my purse and handed it to her. “Put in your number and we’ll set something up for next week. Maybe not dinner though.” Depended on if my food-poisoning-slash-baby was still a factor. “We could always do a movie.”