Baby & Bump (The This & That Series) (24 page)

             
I grinned. “I never learned how to swim.”

             
“I’ll teach you.” He took another step towards me. “I spent hours playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid.”

             
“My ex husband said I was frigid.”

             
“My ex wife said I was immature.”

             
Suddenly the room was uncomfortably warm. Damn these pregnancy hot flashes, or maybe it was just the fact that we were headed into uncomfortable territory. But I had to keep going. He deserved to know it all.

“He’s the father,” I said hoarsely, putting my hands on my belly. “The biological father, I mean.”

              Fletcher’s lips pulled into a line. “I wondered after your response at the birthday party.” He sucked in a pull of air and released it slowly. “Are you two still involved?”

             
“No. Absolutely not.” Shaking my head, tears flooded my eyes. “I can’t stand him. We can’t stand each other. He wants nothing to do with me, or the baby, and I’m glad. It was one of those late night, pity party, too much to drink sort of things I wish I could take back. Except that…” I looked down at my middle as the baby shifted within. “Then I wouldn’t have this little guy. And I don’t think I could live without my baby.”

             
Fletcher’s eyes warmed. “I think you’re going to be a great mother. Sometimes the best things come out of our worst mistakes.”

             
“You’re a great father.” The tears won, and spilled over. “Martha is amazing. She’s witty and sweet and creative. She’s the kind of kid I hope my baby will grow up to be like.”

             
He beamed, and it was lovely to see. His blue eyes reflected the light from a nearby lamp, and the weight of his gaze covered my skin in warm goose bumps. “I’m so sorry I got us into this mess.”

             
“I know,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself to hide my trembling. “I’m just sorry I met you at such a weird time in my life. I’m sorry I’m so huge and pregnant, and I’m—”

             
“Shh.” Fletcher put his finger on my lips. “Don’t apologize. Not to me. You’re perfect.” Fletcher stepped closer, and we were barely a half-inch apart. The heat coming off his body made my head swim. “I want to be with you, Lexie Baump. I want it to be you, me, Martha and your baby. All together. I want us all to become a family. I want the American dream, or nuclear family, or whatever the hell you want to call it. I want it all with
you.
”

I should have said something, but I couldn’t. This was happening. I mean,
really
happening. I opened my mouth, then closed it.

Blank. My mind was blank.

He cringed. “Do you want those things, too?”

Nodding, I croaked my reply. “Yes.”

His hands went to the wall behind me, trapping me between his arms. His nose traced a line across my forehead, then down my temple. I could hear his baited breath, his heart beating—or maybe that was mine—and my eyes fluttered shut.

“I want—”

I didn’t let Fletcher finish. My hands went to the sides of his face and my lips were on his in an instant, and we clicked into place like puzzle pieces once again. His hands slid down the wall to my waist, which he grasped. Pulling me against his body, his hands trembled with a fervency that rattled my ribs, and set off an electrical buzz inside of my head.

Fletcher t
ilted his head to the side, deepening his kiss and tickling the edge of my teeth with his tongue. I snaked my hands down his chest, gripping the worn cotton in white-knuckled fists and yanking him even closer. Earning an appreciative growl, I dragged his full lower lip between my teeth before pulling back to gaze into his deep pools of azure.

“I’m lightheaded,” I whispered.

“I want you,” he replied.

“Oka
y.” I brought his mouth back to mine, arching my back. For a moment, I didn’t care I was hugely pregnant. I didn’t care that I’d already washed all of my makeup off, or that my legs felt like hairbrush bristles. All that I cared about was that Fletcher was here with me.

I may as well have been the hottest woman in the world. Fletcher’s
heavy-lidded gaze told me that in his eyes I was.

His lips traced an invisible line down my neck to my collarbone, where one of his hands stroked a fiery line across the skin at the neckline of my nightgown. One of the buttons popped open, and his mouth came down on the newly exposed skin, setting fireworks off in my head and making my gasp. The second button opened, and his hand pressed against my heart, feeling the thrum of my heartbeat through my flesh.

“Lex.”

“Don’t talk.” I dragged my nails down the front of his s
hirt and tugged the hem upward. Fletcher’s breath caught.

His lips brushed mine again, just a whisper of touch, sending shockwaves down my spine. When his fingers grazed down my side, lightly tickling the flesh, my toes curled inside of my socks. I opened my mouth to speak, all of my language skills evaporating into thin air, leaving me with just one word.

“Bedroom.”

Blinking, Fletcher’s neck straightened and he faced me with a bewildered expression. His lips, still slick from our kiss, parted. “Lexie.”

I leaned forward to kiss him again.

His
hands grasped my shoulders. Holding me at arm’s length, he stepped back from my body. “No. Stop. Slow down.”

My jaw dropped. “Huh?”

He brushed a strand of hair back from my face, and cupped my cheeks. “I can’t do it this way.”

The baby kicked me in the bladder, and I was suddenly reminded of the circumstances. Eight months pregnant. Flannel nightgown. Hairy legs. No makeup. “Oh,” I mumbled, tugging the sweater closed over my partially unbuttoned nightgown.

“Hey,” Fletcher put a finger underneath my chin. “Look at me.”

“No, it’s okay. I totally get it, I mean, look.” I forced a laugh that came out entirely to loud. “It’s cool. I swear.”

“Wait. Hold on.” Fletcher pulled me against his chest when I tried to duck out of his grip. “Lexie, look at me.” I looked up and he smiled warmly. “Believe me,
I want to
.”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead and my heart squeezed in response. “I want to be beautiful for you,” I told him.

“You already are.” He rested his forehead against mine. “But this isn’t how I want this to happen.”

This time my laugh was genuine. “This isn’t one of those vampire movies, Fletcher. You don’t have to be virtuous. I
know I’m super pregnant, and it’s probably not such a turn on.”

“It’s not that.” He leaned in and pressed another kiss to my lips. “It’s just that I want something substantial. I want to get to know you, and—”

“You’ve given me a pap smear. How much more do you want to get to know me?”

“Not funny.”
Fletcher’s face reddened. “I mean, I want to do this properly. I want to take you on a date.”

I giggled. Being around Fletcher made me feel like an excited teenager being hit on by the quarterback of the football team. Or, rather, a
pregnant
teenager. “Okay. A date, then.”

He grinned,
and the crinkles in the corners of his eyes made an appearance. “Awesome.”

I touched his lips lightly with my own. “Where are we going for this date? Judging by my size right now,
a buffet would be lovely.”

“Stop it.” He shuddered—yes,
shuddered
—when I kissed him. He laced his fingers with mine, and walked me over to my couch. “I don’t know where we’re going yet. But I’ll figure it out. We’ll go on the date of the century in a couple of weeks.” He sat down and pulled me onto his lap.

“
A couple of weeks? Why so long?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I would make it that long before our first date. Why didn’t he just ask me to walk on hot coals while he was at it?

“My brother is flying in tomorrow help me
move into the new house and spend some time with Martha.” Fletcher stroked his fingers up and down my leg as we sat there, and I almost forgot that I was probably squishing his legs. Almost. “And then next weekend we’re all headed to Arizona for a family reunion. We do it every few years.”

I nodded. “Sounds like
fun.”

“I wish I could buy you a ticket to go with us. My mother would love you. But it’s too dangerous to fly this late in your pregnancy.
Doctor’s orders.” He touched his finger on the end of my nose, making my stomach whirl. “Plus, I want to keep you to myself for a while. Maybe I’ll come over with some Chinese takeout while my brother is here.”

“
Mmm, sounds awesome.” I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his hand, drawing in his scent. “That constitutes a first date, doesn’t it?”

He grinned and shook his head. “Nope. You deserve more.”

I pouted. “When will you get back from Arizona?”

“Two weeks.” His hand curled around the back of my neck, pulling me down for another kiss. We pulled apart with a smack and he winked at me. “
I traded a month of on-call time with Dr. Javornik to do it, but I haven’t seen my brother in over a year. This will be our first time together with the whole family in three. I’ll try to sneak away while my brother is here, so I can see you, but the minute I get back, it’s you and me.”

I nodded and brought my mouth to his again. I had no idea how I was going to get through the next two weeks. Now that I had Fletcher, I didn’t want to let him go.

Plu
s, that buffet didn’t sound half bad.

Chapter Twenty-three

              “Lex, someone’s here to see you.”

             
Marisol’s eyes were narrowed, and I immediately thought Fletcher had come into Eats & Treats to see me. He’d already surprised me with ice cream late the other night, leaving Martha home with his brother while he snuck away to see me.

Mar
isol still didn’t know he and I were together, but that hadn’t stopped me from tiptoeing around her for the last week. I was extra careful not to mention his name, even though he was in my thoughts—and his name was on the tip of my tongue—all the time.

             
While I was worried about the state of our friendship, I wasn’t all that concerned about her broken heart. She’d already gone on three dates with our food distributor, and judging by the hickey she’d come in with earlier, I was pretty sure they’d gone to bed together. Sure, Fletcher had bruised Marisol’s ego, but her
sex
social life wasn’t suffering in the slightest.

             
“Who?” My heart leapt into my throat.

             
“Who do you think?” She folded her arms across her chest.

It’d only been a week since Fletcher had left my apartment in the middle of the night after the best make-out session I’d ever experienced in my life. In those seven days, ten hours, and thirteen minutes since he’d pressed one last kiss to my lips before disappearing into the night, we’d
had ice cream once, emailed each other twice a day, talked on the phone at least once a day, and I’d long since lost track of how many text messages we’d exchanged. We were getting to know each other more than I ever realized was possible. For instance, I now knew about Fletcher’s lucky socks, which he’d not washed since his senior year of college when he’d scored a one hundred percent on a physiology exam. And he knew that I keep all the stickers off of my produce, and that they decorate the inside of my plate cupboard door.

I also knew he’d been thinking about me night and day since parting ways, and that his brother accused him of being high while they were painting his new living room. And Fletcher knew I was sleeping with one of the throw pillows off my couch, because it still smelled like him.

Oh yeah, I had it bad. We both did.

I brushed flour off of my apron, and tried to smooth down my hair. I’d been making homemade fettuccine for the past two hours, and looked about as limp as the noodles I was cutting. “Oh, geez. I’m a mess. Send him in.”

“Him?” Marisol’s eyebrows rose. “Sorry to disappoint you, love. It’s your mother.”

My shoulders sagged. “Oh.”

I didn’t want to see my mother. I’d already seen too much of her and Pastor Irm. I wasn’t sure what to say after the things I’d said outside her house that day. As gratifying as it should’ve been to discover my mom was a giant hypocrite, I didn’t feel good about it at all. She’d still lied. She’d still judged me more harshly than anyone else I knew. And she’d still broken her promise to accept me—and my baby—time and time again.

“You sure you want to see her?” Marisol
had never been my mother’s biggest fan. “I can send her away.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You looked like you would enjoy doing that entirely too much.”

She shrugged. “Eh. It’s been a boring afternoon. Some Patsy drama would pass the time. Who did you think it was, anyway? You looked entirely too excited for you to think it was your mother at the door.”

Heat
saturated my neck and face, and I wondered if my feelings for Fletcher were obvious. Marisol could usually sniff out one of my crushes like a bloodhound finds a steak.

It was just a matter of time before I was going to have to confess my big secret to her, because t
hings with Candace had become increasingly strained. She’d told me, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t going to keep a secret from Marisol, no matter how good the reason was. I’d promised that as soon as Fletcher and I went on our first official date, I would take Mar to lunch, sit her down, and explain that Fletcher and I were dating.

The baby kicked me in the back, and I grunted in pain. “Ugh. I was excited because I thought it was the stork.”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Marisol sauntered towards the front of the shop. “I’ll send her back. Gird your loins.”

I stood next to the stainless steel table I’d been rolling noodle dough on and smoothed down the front of my apron. As the door opened, I noticed I’d left out my knife set and quickly tossed it into a nearby sink of water. The last thing I needed were any weapons lying around. My mom wasn’t a violent woman, but until a month ago, I’d not considered her a sexual woman, either.

“Alexandria.”

I looked up to find my mother standing across the table from me. She was wearing a baby blue sweatshirt with dancing kittens across the bosom, and a pair of stonewashed jeans that were an inch or two too short. Her graying blonde hair had been ratted and teased into a perfectly round helmet, and a chain of pink beads held her glasses on her head. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and she was wringing her hands as she waited for me to respond.

I took a deep breath. “Hi, Mom.”

She looked down at my stomach. It’d gotten so big that my apron strings barely tied behind my back. “You look so cute,” she said with a tiny smile. “You’re glowing.”

Snorting, I brushed a strand of hair back from my forehead and secured it with a barrette. “That’s usually code for
you look sweaty and gross,
isn’t it?”

“Oh, don’t be oversensitive, you—” My mother cut herself off, took a breath, then said, “What I mean to say is, you look beautiful, dear.” Her eyes flooded, and she fanned her face. “I can’t believe my baby’s having a baby.”

              My heart swelled. “You’re going to have two grandbabies, as soon as Corbin and Andrea get a placement.”

             
She nodded. “I’m a lucky woman.”

             
I fidgeted with a spoon. “What brings you by today, Ma?”

             
Her eyes fell to the floor. “I can’t believe I’ve missed so much.”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“I should have been with you at your appointments,” my mom said with a sigh. “I should’ve been picking out booties and layettes with you. I should have helped plan your baby shower. I should have been the one to buy your baby a crib, or a stroller, or one of those new-fangled front pack thingies.”

             
I swallowed. While I honestly wasn’t sure what a layette was, I understood where she was going. In my mother’s quest to make me an honest woman, she’d missed the bulk of my pregnancy. Now I was on the verge of delivery, and I’d experienced almost every pregnancy milestone sans my mother. It sucked. Really sucked.

             
“I know.” My voice was quiet. “I’ve really missed you.”

             
“I missed you, too.” She pushed up her glasses.

             
“You can come to my shower,” I offered. “Candace is throwing me one next week. I want you to be there.”

“You do?” Her eyes filled with hope. “Oh, Lex, I was so wrong. I judged you so harshly. I epitomized the kind of person I never thought I’d be.”

              Nodding, I swallowed back the ball of emotions tickling the back of my throat. My instinct was to go around the table, wrap my arms around my mother, and tell her that it isn’t her fault, and that I’m sorry. Ever since my dad died, my brothers and I had treated her with kid gloves, but I wouldn’t do it today. She’d hurt me so badly.

             
“You were really rough on me, Ma.” I told her, my voice cracking.

             
My mother squared her padded shoulders at me. “I will never do that to you again. Not ever. I accept you, and your baby, just as you are right now.”

             
Shaking my head, I tossed the spoon into the sink. “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe you. You’ve promised me that before.”

“I may screw up from time to time,” she said. “Because I’m not perfect. As you well know. But I promise you that I’ll try my hardest, and that I’ll always apologize when I do something stupid.” She sighed. “
You’ve been through so much over the last few years, with the divorce and starting your own business. And you’ve done it all without the help of a man, Alexandria. This whole time I’d been watching you, assuming you’d be happier and more successful if you had a husband to take care of you. When the truth was you were doing more with your life
without one
.”

             
My mouth dropped open. She got it, she really did. “Thank you,” I croaked.

I hoped this was real, and that my mother wasn’t going to parade in some random guy from her church five minutes from now. I examined her face. She looked serious. Her brow was furrowed, and her lips were pulled into a line. She only made that face when the truth was being spoken, or when she was listening to Pastor Irm’s sermons at church.

Ew. Pastor Irm. Not a great visual.

             
“I want you to know I’m proud of you.” My mom’s chin started to quiver. “I want you to know that I love you, and I know you’re going to be an amazing mother. You’re so determined and diligent, you won’t even need help. The rest of us are going to have to beg you to let us come over to relieve you.”

             
“I don’t know about that.” I chuckled nervously. “I’m a little scared to be alone. But not so scared that I don’t think I can handle it. Just scared enough to feel anxious to tackle it.”

             
“You were always that way.” My mom shook her head and smiled. “If your teachers told you there was a test coming at the end of the week, you wanted to take it on Wednesday. You didn’t want to wait. You weren’t scared. Just determined. Sometimes when you were little, I thought that determination would be the death of me. But I can see it serves you well now.”

             
“I still need you,” I blurted. When my mom looked at me with a face full of hope, I shrugged. “A girl needs her mom, you know? I mean, I could do the single motherhood thing alone. I know I could, if I had to. But I don’t want to do it without my mom around.” My shoulders sagged now. “I just want you to accept me the way I am. Don’t try to improve me. Just let me improve myself.”

             
She nodded and wiped a tear off of her cheek. “It’s a deal. I promise this time. I really do.”

             
“I know.” I reached out a hand and took my mothers across the table. It felt great to feel her soft fingers around mine. I could feel the promise of a new relationship in her grip, and I actually believed it. “And, I promise to accept you the way you are, too.”

             
She nodded and wiped her eyes again. “Of course you do, dear.”

             
“No, Mom, listen.” I gave her hand a gentle shake. “Look at me.”

             
She looked at me with a cringe. She knew where I was going next.

             
“You’re, um, you know,
with
Pastor Irm.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Stating the obvious, if you asked me. But that was my intent. Throwing the absolute truth out between us, and letting it lay on the tabletop like a big ugly mess we couldn’t ignore.

             
Ten seconds passed. Finally, she nodded so subtly it was almost unperceivable.

             
My stomach turned, and the baby shifted. This epitomized uncomfortable. I felt like a parent giving their teenager the sex talk, instead of a grown woman discussing her mother’s sex life.

             
“Ma, do you love him?” I already knew the answer to that question. My mother had been in love with Pastor Irm for years. We all knew it. Just because we pretended like it wasn’t happening didn’t make it untrue.

             
My mother released my hand and patted at her hair self-consciously. She opened her mouth and released a high-pitched giggle. “I do. Oh, Alexandria, I’ve been wanting to talk about it for so long!”

             
I covered my mouth and laughed. “I knew it. That was the worst kept secret I’ve ever heard. You love him, and he loves you. It’s been clear for years.”

             
She beamed. “I haven’t felt like this since your dad and I were dating.”

             
I came around the end of the table and looped my arm in hers. “I’m happy for you. I really am.”

             
“You’re not upset?” She asked. “I always thought that you and your brothers would be upset if you though I was replacing your father.”

             
“It’s not replacing Dad.” I led her to a small table and chairs where Marisol and I sat during breaks. “If it makes you happy, I’m all for it. Corbin and Darren probably feel the same way. We only want you to be happy.”