“Max…” I angled toward him, searching for…I wasn’t even sure.
“Surprise,” he husked and pressed a kiss to my forehead, his fingers drawing delicious circles on my lower back like anintentional reminder of how they’d been stroking my front just a few minutes ago.
“How…”
His eyes slid to his cousins, and Lou was the first to confess.No surprise there.“I had a few things I bought for you and the baby. I wanted to bring them over, but Max said no visitors.”
Frankie snorted and then grinned. “Surprised that baby’s still in there after a week of going at it.”
My cheeks turned fire-hydrant red, and I watched Lou elbow her twin while Harper jumped in and said, “Lou told me about it, and it made me think about a baby shower. I figured with…everything going on, you didn’t have anything planned. So I asked Max if we could throw you a surprise shower.”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak as tears welled behind my eyes.
A surprise baby shower.
“You didn’t ask,” Max corrected, folding his arms. “You informed me there was going to be a surprise baby shower and that I either agreed to produce Daisy or you’d call for a welfare check.”
A laugh erupted from my chest and broke through my stupor of surprise. That sounded more like his sister—his family.And now, it felt like mine.
“And you were the one who said it should be garden themed,” Harper countered.
I couldn’t even look at Max right now, my eyes burning with unshed tears. Six weeks ago, my idea of family was making sure I was married to the man who’d fathered my baby. And when Todd left, I’d thought it was only proof that my mom had been right all along—that the only person I could count on was myself. And now…now, I hardly recognized that woman. Literally and figuratively.
Max pressed his hand to my back, drawing me closer to him like he could see straight through me, right to my overwhelmed and emotional core.
“Glad to see I’ve rubbed off on you, Harp.” Frankie linked her arm with Harper’s and smiled. Reaching for my arm, Frankie pulled me away from Max, saying, “You have to see the diaper cake Aurora made. Oh, and the food. Mom and Gigi made a blueberry cake.”
My stomach growled.
“Max, do you want food?”
It wasn’t until Frankie slowed that I realized Max was no longer next to me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw he stood where we’d left him, and even though he was already in a conversation with Jamie, he was watching me with that look of possessiveness that made my blood heat.
“I’m fine for right now,” he said, catching my eyes. “I had a snack before we got here.”
If Frankie heard my mortified little squeak, she didn’t let on, too engrossed with getting me into the kitchen to see the spread of food. Meanwhile, my wicked husband had the gall to lift his left hand and run his fingers discreetly under his nose, solidifying the naughty flutter in my stomach with a wink.
“So haveyou given any thought to a name?” Aurora asked, bouncing her son, Jack, on her hip.
“Don’t ask Aurora for suggestions. Kit said you told him you wanted to name Jack Nutterbutter Butterfinger,” Frankie teased.
“No, I told him I had a dream that we named the baby Bushybacked nudibranch,” Aurora corrected, appearing more offended that her sister-in-law had gotten the Latin taxonomy wrong than that she actually believed Aurora wanted to name their baby that.
My eyes widened as I took a huge bite of the blueberry cake. Grinning, Aurora explained, “It was one of the species I was studying at the Friendship lighthouse when I met Kit, and it just happened to make it into a dream. I wasn’t serious about it.”
Kit walked by right then with a poignant harrumph, and everyone laughed. Aurora turned and playfully stuck her tongue out at her husband, even though her gaze held nothing but adoration.And so did his.
My chest squeezed. Now, I recognized the look so clearly, and it seemed almost impossible that I hadn’t realized it was how Max had looked at me all these years.
“I haven’t given thought to a name, to be honest,” I admitted, which felt a little crazy since I had just over a month until my due date, but I knew why I hadn’t.
I felt like I’d been living in a tornado since Todd disappeared, unsure which way was up or down, right or wrong. I hadn’t felt safe or settled until very,veryrecently. Max was the eye of the storm. The safest, surest place to be, but that didn’t mean we still weren’t surrounded by uncertainty.
We’d done a lot of things over the last week—talked about a lot of things. But we hadn’t talked about more than this moment. It was like we were drowning in four years of fantasies now able to come true, and we didn’t want to come up for air. But we had to. At some point, and soon, we had to talk about what came next.
We were already married.Would we just stay married?Already living in Max’s house.But he wanted to sell it, so would we move? Before the baby? After?It was as though life hadgiven up on waiting for fate to bring us together and finally forced her hand, leaving us to scramble to figure out the details.
“Well, you could always go with Blueberry if nothing else strikes your fancy,” Harper teased as I was in the middle of stuffing another forkful of blueberry cake into my mouth.
