“Oh, I’m sure you can.” Shayna laughed then shot me a wink and fled the scene of her second inappropriate joke.
My skin grew hot all over again because, yeah, he could give me a ride—a hell of a ride—and Shayna knew it. Damn her.
We stood there a while, the reality that I was now alone with Archer settling over me, my stomach knotting with nervous energy. Why was I so nervous about looking at baby things with him? It’s not like he didn’t know I was pregnant—he was the baby’s potential father for shit’s sake—but something about browsing for cribs, and high chairs, and baby clothes felt incrediblyreal.Doing it by myself felt more like a hypothetical, like playing pretend, but him being there took it to a whole other level—one that said “this is serious.”
“Well, are we going? Baby section is that way, I think.” He nodded toward the left, and started walking.
“Right, yes!” I said, taking long strides to catch up to him.
One thing they don’t tell you about the baby section of stores is that it’s overwhelming as hell. There was a product, tool, or mechanism for anything and everything you could think of and more. A baby probably only needed one place to lie down, right? Wrong. There were at least six different bassinets for the newborn stage, each boasting a different feature the others didn’t have, and a dozen cribs doing the same—but those came later down the road. Unless you wanted to forgo the bassinet stage, and then the crib would be an instant necessity. But then there were swings, and of course they didn’t all do the same thing. Some went forward and backward, others left to right, and one did crazy hump-and-loop motions. There were bouncers, and pack-and-plays, and little portable bassinets that resembled tiny dog beds. And that was just the sleep section.
We browsed all of it, all the while chatting about what I was thinking I wanted for the nursery. In truth, I had no idea, but I knew I wasn’t fitting half of the baby “essentials” in my apartment.
Eventually, we found ourselves in the clothing department. I really wasn’t going crazy buying things yet because I knew Linnea wanted to do a baby shower once I told my family, but I couldn’t resist looking at the teeny outfits with the little footies. I held up a soft yellow onesie with duck faces for feet and draped it over my arm.
“Do you know what you’re having?” Archer asked as he came to stand next to me. “A boy or a girl?”
I shook my head. “No, not yet. I’m waiting until the delivery room. The whole pregnancy was a surprise, so I kind of like the idea of the gender being a surprise too.”
He nodded, then grabbed a pink onesie covered with white daisies and held it out to me. “You should pick out an outfit for both options. That way you have one in the hospital for either.”
My chest warmed and I couldn’t keep the goofy smile off my face. I’d already thought of doing that, but the fact that he suggested it too made my stomach do funny things. I took the proffered outfit, double-checking the size, and put it with the neutral duck onesie. “That’s a great idea.”
Ten minutes later, we left the store with several onesies secured, and me realizing that maybe babies themselves weren’t actually the expensive things. Maybe it was the parents’ lack of impulse control when it came to cute clothes. But then again, I hadn’t had the baby yet, so maybe it was a little of both.
When we approached his motorcycle, the one I knew he drove back in the summer, but couldn’t imagine he still drove in the middle of December, I gasped. “You did not ride this here.”
He chuckled. “I did.”
My eyebrows rose in disbelief. “And you want me to get on the back of it? Are you out of your mind? I’m pregnant.”
Glancing between me and his vehicle, he rubbed his hand over the back of his head, as if only now realizing the problem. “Shit. I didn’t think about it. I—” He stopped himself from wherever that line of thinking was going. “We can call an Uber, or maybe Shayna can come back and get you? I’m so sorry.”
The smart thing to do would be to take him up on one of the other options he offered, but it was only a ten-minute drive back to my house and it was all back roads. Plus, a part of mewantedto get on it, and I trusted him.
“Do you promise to drive extra carefully?”
His response was immediate. “Yes. Careful won’t even begin to cover it.”
“Okay. Please don’t kill us.”
He reached for the bag of baby clothes and stuffed it into his backpack, then held out his helmet to me.
Surveying the situation, I realized he only had one helmet. I shook my head. “I can’t take your helmet.”
His eyes narrowed marginally, his voice filling with an authoritative sternness that left no room for negotiation. “Yes, you can. You guys are more important.”
Then he swung a leg over and mounted the seat. God, why was that so hot? The way his muscular thighs bracketed the metal beneath him had me tempted to wipe a hand over my mouth in case I was drooling. The visual had my mind falling down a black hole of filthy fantasies. I was no better than a teenage boy.
Stop it.
I quickly shoved the helmet over my head, and got on behind him. He reached around, his hand landing on my ass, and dragged me toward him, closing the healthy gap I’d left between us. When he looked back at me, he winked. My heart stutteredin my chest at the contact before kickstarting anew, the rhythm faster than it had been.
“Hold on tight.” Then he started the bike.
And.
Holy.
