Amid their heavy work schedules, they began hosting dinners. The first was a fun mash-up of his nerdy programmers and her fashion geeks that ended in makeovers and at least one new romance. Then, Fliss began finding her feet with Saint’s social circle. They attended cocktail parties and galas. People were more gracious now that they realized she was carrying the next heir to Grayscale and likely to be at these events more often. Fliss didn’t kid herself that it was more personal than that, but at least she was growing more comfortable in these settings.
The only hiccup occurred when they were invited to spend an evening in the private box of a celebrity to watch a basketball game. The evening had barely started when there was the sound of a brash female voice calling out drunken greetings, but even as Fliss turned to look, Saint was moving between them, blocking her from seeing the woman. He put a word in someone’s ear, and moments later, they were heading to the car.
“Julie,” Saint explained with a curl of his lip. “I stopped short of a restraining order when I sent her the cease and desist, but there’s no reason either of us need to be in the same room with her. Do you mind?”
“No.” They hadn’t had a night to themselves in ages. She was more than glad that their evening turned into a cuddle on the couch and some unhurried lovemaking. At times like this, everything about her new life was perfect.
Except...they didn’t talk about the baby very often. Fliss was eighteen weeks along and had begun looking through books of names. She also discussed with Saint which room she thought would be best as a nursery. He was agreeable but always seemed a little reticent, which worried her.
He was busy, though. He’d been curtailing travel for her sake, so she wasn’t exactly neglected. Also, this pregnancy was happening to her in a very physical way. She had been feeling small internal flutters lately and her baby bump was growing more pronounced, but Saint had yet to feel the baby move.
She had hoped by now he would start to see the baby as more real, but when she pressed his hand to her abdomen in the shower and asked “Can you feel that?” he shook his head.
It was a very subtle sensation inside her, so she wasn’t surprised, only disappointed because she wanted him to be as excited as she was. But he wasn’t.
“Are you sure there’s even a baby in there?” he joked lightly, circling his soapy palm around her navel.
“You think I’m packing on weight for show?”
“Pack it on. I’m not complaining.” His lathered hands climbed to cup the weighty swells of her breasts. “I thought you were hot as hell the first time I saw you, but I’m liable to keep you pregnant for years, purely to enjoy this benefit.”
“We all need goals,” she drawled, amused but also heartened when he spoke as though their future together was a given.
She wanted to believe they would marry and enjoy a long life together, but she also knew the baby would change everything. They would have a whole other human being between them. They wouldn’t make love as often or sleep in or go out as much.
There was that other, deeper worry inside her, too. She’d had her world come crumbling down too many times to trust that this new life she was building would last. He might find it threatening that she had contingency plans, and she might have already sat with him and his father as they went over paperwork that explained how the baby’s trust would work if something happened to Saint, but all it did was remind her that something could happen to him.
She stored copies of the paperwork in a safe-deposit box and opened an account in her own name, one that she used to continue paying rent on her bedsit in Nottingham. She knew Saint took it personally because she told him about it and watched his expression stiffen, but having a fallback position gave her comfort.
Somehow eight weeks of living with him had slipped past and it was time for her twenty-week scan.
“Willow is sending contact details for a real estate agent who will meet with you as soon as we arrive in London,” Saint said, pulling her concentration from trying to ignore the fact that her bladder was about to burst. “I’ll need two days at the office, then we can spend the rest of the week looking at properties.”
He had delayed his trip until after this scan, to be sure she was safe to fly and could come with him, but they were going straight to the jet from here.
“Okay,” she said through gritted teeth.
Thankfully, the technician entered with a friendly smile.
Saint took her hand and gave the screen his attention, but Fliss still had the impression he was only being polite and continued to hold himself at a distance where the baby was concerned.
The woman applied jelly to Fliss’s belly and began moving the wand, explaining they typically only used the 3D imaging if this traditional two-dimensional black-and-white imaging revealed a concern. She began pointing to silvery lines and blobs, explaining she was measuring the skull and spine. She pointing out the four chambers of the baby’s heart.
“Oh, that’s a good one.” A pair of feet appeared. They were so clear, it was as though the baby had left its footprints in black sand. She snapped a photo.
Fliss became aware of her hand feeling compressed and glanced at Saint.
His eyes were glued to the screen, his expression frozen in a state of fascinated wonder. He didn’t seem to realize he was crushing her fingers.
“Saint?”
He dragged his gaze to hers and swallowed.
“Fliss...” He couldn’t seem to find words.
She was so touched, she welled up. Her heart grew so big in her chest, it hurt. This was what she had wanted from him. “I know, right?”
His mouth opened, but he only shook his head helplessly and looked back to the screen.
He was still quiet when they were in the car. She waited until they were in the air to ask tentatively, “Are you all right?”
“Not really.” He rarely drank these days, mostly in solidarity to her teetotalling, but he sipped a double scotch before saying, “I just found out we’re having a baby.”
Fliss couldn’t help chuckling. “My bad. I should have told you sooner.”
“It wasn’t a person until today. It was a date on a calendar that I needed to keep clear. It was decisions about furniture and words that Legal needed to write into some documents.”
She took his hand in both her own, able to sympathize with his shock because it had taken time for her, too.
He wove his fingers with hers, staring at their joined hands.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it was easier to think of your pregnancy as a project with an outcome, not the creation of another human,” he admitted in a very quiet voice. “Now it’s someone I have to worry about. Someone who becomes me. He—” He slid her a look. “Did you think it was a boy?”
They had told the tech they didn’t want to know the sex, but Fliss rolled her eyes at how obvious it had been.
“I mean, I’ll support whatever gender they feel they are, but yeah. For now, I’ll focus on the blue pages in the naming book, not the pink ones. But what do you mean the baby becomes you?”
“Caught in the middle.” His thumb rubbed the back of her hand with a little too much abrasiveness to be comfortable.
