Chapter Thirty-Eight

Nina

The hot July sun shimmered down on me, and I soaked up its every ray in a gorgeous, slinky, black maternity bikini. Shades were drawn over my eyes, and the virgin daiquiri that my husband crafted for me was sweating on the wicker patio furniture.

They say you’re not supposed to sunbathe while you’re pregnant, because it would make stretch marks worse. I didn’t worry about it too much. I was nine months pregnant! I was way more worried about the delivery of my first child than I was about the stretch marks. Getting stretch marks wouldn’t make Eli fall out of love with me, and as long as I had Eli and our new baby, I knew that I would be okay.

When you’ve got a man like Eli Connelly, you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing anymore. He’s not a stud looking for a babe to fuck. He was honorable. He was true. He was my husband.

I became Mrs. Connelly as soon as we discovered that I was pregnant back in late January. He said to me, “I know we don’t have any money right now, and I can’t give you the lifestyle that you’re used to, but it’s going to kill me if you have my child and you’re not my wife, Nina. It’s going to rip my heart out.”

When he said that to me, I pulled him close and pressed our mouths together in a long, luxurious kiss. “I’ll always be your wife, Eli,” I swore to him. “I’ve been your wife since the night we met, baby. Try getting poorer. Watch what happens.”

I giggled and squirmed as the baby kicked, startling me out of my reverie. I placed my hand over the spot on my tight belly and pretended that I was already holding her. My heart swelled with anticipation at the thought.

Any day now…

I wasn’t exactly sure where Eli was at the moment, but wherever he was, he was still mine. He was probably inside the house. The bike was still out front.

“Hey, babe,” Eli called from the kitchen window. “How’s your drink?”

“It’s so delicious, thank you, baby,” I called back to him. We used pet names so often now, it even disgusted me, but I couldn’t stop. “Honey” and “sweetie” and “big boy” slipped out of my mouth all the time.

The back door slid open, and Eli came sauntering out to join me, shirtless.

I grinned up at him, admiring the view shamelessly. Married or not, he still made me feel as horny as a high school girl. All those colorful tattoos spanned his perfect musculature. That beard made me want to dig my fingers in there and clench, draw his mouth open and suck on his tongue. I couldn’t even look too closely into his eyes without feeling a little quiver run up and down my pussy. Who else on this planet has eyes that are almost gold?

“Where did you go?” I asked as he settled beside me on the lounge chair. His palm slid over my belly and rested over our little baby in there. He was as excited to be a daddy as I was to be a mommy.

“Uh, the phone rang,” Eli said, sounding evasive.

I scrutinized him more carefully. He could never hide anything from me. He should’ve known that by now. “Who was it?”

“No one.”

“Who was it?” I repeated, more sharply this time.

Eli sighed. He grimaced and spat it out. I already knew what he was going to say. “It was your father.”

I scoffed and shook my head. It was strange, but being in federal prison had brought out a side of my father I never thought that I would see. He called me often. He sent me letters. He wanted to reconnect, to be a part of my life.

But I never responded. I never took the calls or read the letters. I didn’t know if that made me a bad person. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction of having some morsel of his old, good, fake life. No. He didn’t deserve it. He was a bad man. He deserved what little life he could get. He wasn’t going to drain mine anymore.

The city of Hinton was finally shaking off Dad’s influence and turning into the beautiful place it used to be.

I wanted to do the same thing.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Eli reminded me.

“I know,” I groaned. “Let’s not talk about it. Are you going to the bar today?”

Although Eli was still the owner of Toasty’s, he’d hired an acting manager and took some paternity time off during my last trimester. It would probably run through the first several months of our firstborn’s life. We bought this house, gave his old apartment to Linden, and never looked back at what our lives were before we had each other.

Because why bother?

“Actually, I think I’m going to phone it in and stay here with you.” His eyes settled on me warmly and he smiled. Our fingers laced together over my belly.

“Why?” I asked. “I feel like all you do is stay with me.”

“I don’t know, baby. I’ve got a feeling. I don’t want to miss anything.”

“Oh, my god!” I cried with a laugh. “You’ve done this every day for the past month! I’m pregnant, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to explode babies everywhere as soon as you look away. We still have, like, five days until my due date, and even then, it might be longer.”

“I know.” He squeezed my hand, and his eyes gleamed. “I still want to stay.”

I smiled back at him and felt a strange sensation move through my lower body. It was almost a squeezing sensation, and I writhed a little bit with it, shocked.

“What?” Eli blinked and sat up a little straighter. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” I spluttered, blinking. I wasn’t sure what to tell him. I’d never felt anything like that before. “I just…” Another squeezing sensation pulsed through me, and this time, clear liquid came flowing out of my body. It soaked the bottoms of my designer maternity bikini, and I gaped. “Oh, nooo,” I wailed. “This was so expensive and now it’s ruined!”

“Baby,” Eli reminded me. My eyes focused on his again, and the bikini didn’t seem so important anymore. “Baby… we’re having a baby. Forget about the bikini.”

“Oh, my god,” I breathed, and we pulled each other close at the same time. My lips met his and we stayed entwined in a soft kiss until the next contraction rocked through my body and pulled us apart.

“I guess we should get to the hospital,” he said.

“Plenty of time to make out later,” I panted in return. He helped me climb off the lounge chair, and I looked down at my tanned, bulbous body. “Damn it,” I whined. “I can’t go to the maternity unit dressed like Kim Kardashian, Eli!”

“Come on, come on, come on.” He ushered me toward the house. “We’ve got the time, sweetie. You can change. This is going to be, like, an eighteen-hour thing.”

I paused to glower at him. He knew that I hated discussing labor facts. He knew that.

“I mean, I love you,” he revised, leaning close and kissing me again. “And that’s exactly how labor will feel. Just a million kisses from your husband.”

“Oh, shut up,” I groaned, laughing and holding his hand in a death grip. “Just get me out of this stupid bikini!”