"Hey Eddie." Margot bounced across the top deck of Annabella and over to where he stood pouring her a glass of sparkling cider, and draped her arms around his shoulders. "What's the wireless password?"

Eddie had already seen this coming a mile away. After a stressful week at work - not to mention a stressful week of rushing to plan out every detail of the wedding - he could see that Margot was wearing thin. Despite showing no signs of stopping, and despite the puppy dog eyes she was making at him now, he knew her too well. Her blood pressure was probably sky-high, even if she wouldn't let him close enough to get a cuff on her and check for certain.

That was precisely why he had invited her to spend the night aboard Annabella with him. It was the end of the week, and there was no better way for the hard-working mother of his child to spend a Friday night than relaxing with him to tend to her every need.

And that meant absolutely no contact with the frenetics of the outside world.

"There isn't a password," he replied. "I deactivated the Internet. No browsing for fun, and definitely no working while we're onboard."

"Ugh." Margot pouted, but she didn't extract her arms from around him like he’d expected her to. "You're really taking the doctor's words as a health scare, aren't you? Not that I can truly complain about being doted on.” She whisked the glass of cider out of his hand, threw her beautiful head back–and downed it in one single, sensuous swallow. She batted her eyes and held it out again expectantly, and Eddie felt certain she was trying to send him some sort of signal...but he was determined it was the only signal either of them were going to get access to tonight. If Margot wanted to check her work e-mail, she would have to do it over his Wifi-withholding, sober-in-solidarity body.

“Look, we both could use a breather,” he explained. “I know you’ve been going hard at work. I don’t need to call your secretary or otherwise spy on you to guess that you haven’t slowed your roll. It isn’t who you are.”

“Thank you,” Margot said primly as she accepted his offered refill. “For what I’m taking as a compliment.”

“It was meant as a compliment,” he insisted. “And anyway, William’s been riding my ass at work all week. I thought we deserved the evening off to escape.” In truth, the project that William was so relentlessly demanding Eddie’s attention on was the most recent Daley Flights ad campaign launch. William’s idea of perfection could be even more inflexible than Sam’s if the right ingredients–and the right clients–were involved, and Eddie could only keep so many balls in the air. Between the baby, the wedding plans, the launch specs...and trying to keep his brothers, clients, fiancée, and fiancée’s family happy...he feared he was headed for a potential disaster. Better to back away for twenty-four hours and tackle it all again when he could see straight and mitigate the chaos.

Because of course he could handle it. He was Eddie Jameson. The people in his life were finally starting to respect him, to rely on him. He just hadn’t expected them to all demand his attention at once.

“You don’t want anyone riding your ass this evening. Got it.” Margot retreated from him to lounge once more on one of the outdoor recliners. She took her time crossing her legs, and Eddie’s cock lurched when he saw what she meant for him to see. Beneath that innocent yellow sundress, she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

Any thought he had entertained of a relaxing evening with Margot quickly fled. Eddie set his own glass of cider aside and crossed to her. She watched him through her lashes, holding a quizzical expression until the last minute. By the time he had scooped her up in his arms, she was shrieking and flailing and laughing girlishly. She hung her own arms around his neck as he carried her below.

Eddie hadn’t planned to make love to Margot so early in the evening. He had been strict with himself when working out a potential schedule for intimacy, and it wasn’t something he had expected to initiate–but how could he resist her when she looked as delicious as the too-sweet cider they had quenched themselves on already?

“Come here.” He growled low and primal in his throat as he laid her down on the bed. Margot giggled again and kicked her legs; he caught one calf and slipped her shoe off before she could tease him by pulling it out of reach. Another little kick sent her other shoe flying off her toe into a far corner of the Annabella’s bedroom.

He considered helping her shed her sundress, but that thought flew entirely from his mind the moment she pulled him down for a deep, sensuous kiss. Eddie nipped and lapped at her lips until she parted them, and he tasted the sweet nectar of the cider they had shared above deck. His hand delved beneath the skirt of her dress. He stroked the hot, soft flesh hidden between her legs, and swallowed the pleasured purr she gave at his most intimate touch. When he hooked a finger along her entrance and thrust it experimentally inside her, her back arched, and her hips raised up off the mattress to meet him.

“I’ll come,” she gasped as she drew him down again. “For you, I’ll come.”

Eddie hiked the soft petals of her dress up around her waist as her fingers quickly wrestled the front of his pants open. Her haste to free him was as massive a turn-on as the brief glimpse of herself she had given him earlier; by the time his cock sprang into her eager hands, he was already hard as a rock.

“Mmm,” Margot hummed appreciatively against her lips. She pulled Eddie toward her by the hips and lowered her mouth to lavish attention along his length. Eddie groaned, thrusting into the eager wet heat of her mouth, and she wrapped her lips around him. She pumped a hand along his base as she sucked him, and his next groan was explosive. He had to brace his hands against her shoulders to get her to stop before she undid him completely.

Margot raised her hazel eyes to him in loving invitation, and Eddie laid her back down, cradling her head as he eased her back into the pillow. He buried himself in the sweet scent of her neck as her hands found him and guided him home.

He slipped his cock inside her, letting her secret warmth engulf him utterly. She was ready to receive him, as slick as she was tight, and she hissed with pleasure as he angled his hips and struck that sweet hidden spot inside her. “More,” he thought he heard her pant, but he couldn’t be sure. He was so lost in the sensation of her that he was beyond comprehending anything else. Every muscle, every fiber of his being, sang with awareness of how perfectly she fit him – and how perfectly he filled her.

“Margot.” He groaned her name as he surged against her. She lifted her legs off the bed and wrapped them around his pumping waist. His abdominals brushed against her soft belly. Every feminine curve of her drove him wild; his hands roamed along her every dip, swell, and plunge, memorizing the contours of her body, reveling at the way she had changed and would continue to change. Yet she was still Margot, the girl he had adored since childhood, the mother of his child, the woman that was to be his wife. Thinking of her in every precious context now was enough to put him over the edge. Several more thrusts and Eddie spilled himself inside her, losing himself completely in the wet, heavenly sensation between her legs. He collapsed atop her with a sated groan. After several moments, he managed to summon his remaining strength to overturn himself beside her.

“Mmm.” Margot snuggled close, and Eddie wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulders. Her curves may have been filling out, but she still felt so petite in his arms. He didn’t know if it was a natural conclusion to come to when he compared Margot’s size to his own, or if he was only more aware of how precious she was to him now than he had been before. “This is nice,” she murmured.

“Nowhere on earth I’d rather be right now,” he agreed.

“Interesting, considering we aren’t technically on solid ground at the moment.” Margot sat up a little to look at him. A wave of tenderness washed over Eddie. He reached up to tuck a sex-disheveled piece of hair back behind one of her adorable ears.

“You could say that again,” he murmured. “I haven’t felt like there was solid ground beneath me since I saw you that night. Our first.”

“It’s been the same for me.” Margot pillowed her cheek against her fist as she looked at him. “Eddie, do you know what my dream wedding would really be?” she inquired.

Eddie drew her down deeper into his arms. “Tell me,” he whispered.

“My dream wedding, my perfect wedding, would be just the three of us, adrift out at sea.” Margot sighed, and as she spoke, the images washed over him. “It would be so romantic to just say goodbye to everything and everyone we knew.”

“The three of us,” Eddie murmured.

“You, me, and the baby. We’d leave New York behind us for a little while,” Margot said. “Just for a little while. And then we’d come back, a conquering family, and surprise all our friends and acquaintances and clients. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Eddie squeezed her in answer. He could feel himself already starting to drift into the easiest sleep he’d had in a while, comforted by the lullaby of the future she spun for them. He didn’t care whether or not he dreamed tonight: it was a dream enough already to have Margot here with him in his arms.

* * *

Annabella hummed beneath him. Eddie stirred and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He was lying in his favorite pool of cool, satin sheets, in a shaft of sunlight that strobed occasionally as the boat rocked. He yawned and stretched his arms. He groped around for Margot to pull her closer, and came up short.

That’s when it hit him: not only was Margot missing. His boat was moving.

Someone was driving Annabella without him.

“Margot!” Her name slipped from his lips in a shout. Eddie rolled out of bed and quite literally hit the deck; he struggled upstairs, dragging the sheet with him as an afterthought. He was in a blind panic thinking his boat was stolen...thinking that someone had boarded while he slept and gotten hold of Margot, or the baby...he had forgotten to mop last night. What if she put her foot down wrong and slipped on a puddle of water? What if she tumbled overboard?

His fears were like a runaway train with an endless number of cars in tow, but as soon as he surfaced from below deck, he breathed a temporary sigh of relief. It was Margot behind the wheel; he could see her curvaceous silhouette posted up and steering Annabella with an easy, expert hand.

Then he woke fully, and the reality of the situation registered with him. Margot, pregnant with his child, was piloting his boat – no easy, or relaxing, feat. Eddie shouldered his way onto the deck and crossed to her quickly.

“Margot,” he repeated, voice a bit more even this time; at the very least he wasn’t shouting in a blind panic. “What the hell is going on? Where are we? How long have you been out here alone like this?”

“Relax, Eddie!” she laughed as she stepped back to let him take over at the wheel. “I’m not going to crash it. I’ve been driving my father’s boat since I was five years old.”

“You shouldn’t be driving anything at all!” he exclaimed. He didn’t care if he sounded like a raving lunatic; he didn’t care if he looked like one, barely wearing a sheet like he had just woken after an all-night toga party. He had one hand on the wheel, and one holding his makeshift garment up to conceal himself from any other boats they might pass out on the harbor. “This is exactly what the doctor warned us against doing right now.”

“I thought I would surprise you.” Margot’s brows drew together in confusion, and she frowned. “It’s no fun having a boat if you just let it sit around moored all the time. I thought you loved sailing.”

But I love you more! The remonstration came unbidden into his head, and nearly escaped past his lips. Eddie blinked in surprise at the unfamiliar inner voice that reared up so unexpectedly. Margot’s look of puzzlement was slowly morphing into a glare as he sat with himself and introspected, but he couldn’t pull his brain away from what it had just shouted at him.

He loved Margot. He wanted to keep Margot safe. If that much was true, and he was suddenly certain that it was, then that included keeping her safe from herself.

“I love sailing.” He felt like a complete Neanderthal echoing what she had just said, and decided to try again. “But navigating the boat around here can be stressful, and we’re supposed to be minimizing the stress in your life. Wouldn’t you rather sit down and look over, uh…” What hadn’t they done yet? “...nursery furniture with me? I’ll turn the Wi-Fi back on.”

“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” Margot said through her full-blown scowl. “I’ll tell you what I told her, and it’s that I have no interest in painting a room up in my apartment right now. Besides, we don’t even know if the baby is a boy or a girl.”

“You seemed pretty certain last week that it was a girl,” Eddie pointed out quickly.

Margot shrugged. “It was just a hunch. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Now Eddie could feel his own temper starting to rise at this, and he quickly stamped it down. He didn’t want to get in any sort of argument with Margot. Still...he had wondered before if she was being too flippant about this whole ‘go with the flow thing’, and had chalked it up as nothing more than a normal contrast to his own sudden, passionate need to take charge. But if she wasn’t taking his concerns seriously, did that mean she wasn’t taking other important matters – matters of her own health – at all seriously as well? He couldn’t be there to watch her twenty-four-seven, no matter how hard he might try.

“Come on. It’ll be fun,” he said stiltedly. Eddie had no delusions of it being ‘fun’, but he needed to put on a brave face for Margot if she wasn’t feeling it. “Go grab my laptop and I’ll show you my Pinterest board.”

“Really, Eddie? A Pinterest board?” She seemed willing enough to entertain him on this front, though, and disappeared below deck to grab his computer. He shouted down instructions to her on how to reconnect the Internet; by the time she resurfaced, he had steered the boat into a spot where he felt safe enough to idle while they spent some quality planning time together.

“See? We can go gender neutral, if you like,” he mentioned as he clicked open his browser. “There’s pastel yellows, greens...hell, we don’t have to stick to any sort of heteronormative idea of what our baby colors should be.”

Margot smiled as she settled in on one of the deck cushions beside him. “Such a way with words,” she commended. Then: “I’m not worried about colors, Eddie. But you know most of this stuff won’t fit inside my apartment.”

“Of course,” he agreed. He was eager to troubleshoot now that she had voiced a personal concern, and he was proud to have an easy answer for her. “All this will go in the classic six.”

“What do you mean?” Margot stared at him, uncomprehending, and Eddie closed the laptop slowly.

“I meant to surprise you officially last night,” he explained. “Margot, I bought the classic six for us to share. I thought maybe you suspected that’s what I…” He cut himself off when he saw the look of horror that passed across her face. “Surprise,” he concluded weakly.

“Eddie. You didn’t.”

There it was again: that flare in his chest, that feeling of wanting to get into an argument and knowing he had to suppress the urge. “Of course I did. I bought it for the three of us. Did you think I wouldn’t plan for us to live together? Maybe the old Eddie wouldn’t have–“

“I don’t care about the old Eddie!” Margot exclaimed. She leapt to her feet with incredible agility for a boat-bound pregnant woman, and Eddie followed suit with a hand ready to stabilize her. She recoiled as if his touch was enough to sizzle her flesh; the way she wrenched her arm away from him was like a punch in the gut. “Did you think I would be happy to hear you made such a massive decision for us on your own? That you didn’t even think to consult with me seriously about where I should live?”

“You should live with me, Margot!” Eddie exclaimed. “I didn’t think it was that big a leap that you might want to live with your husband!”

And the man who loves you more than anyone. There was that voice again, that unfamiliar mental cadence that had appeared like a lightning bolt that morning and seemed insistent on stunning him again and again with the revelation that he had fallen for his childhood friend.

And there was said childhood friend, glaring at him like he had betrayed her worse than anyone to come before him by even attempting to put his money where his mouth is and provide for her and their child. Had he been wrong to purchase the apartment without her consent? He had thought Margot liked the classic six. But maybe this wasn’t a matter of like, or love. It was a matter of something else...and it was something he had just fucked up royally.

“Turn the boat around,” Margot said. “Please, Eddie. I need to get off now. I need to think.” She pressed a hand to her forehead and turned away. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to go to her, to wrap her in his arms as he had the night before and physically enfold her.

Only he couldn’t. He had tried to do everything right, and still somehow managed to push her away.

When Eddie looked at Margot now, he felt lost at sea.