So all I did was smile against his skin and let out a happy sigh. “I’ll move in with you tomorrow,” I agreed.
THIRTY
DEENA
Cal camewith me to my first scan. He held my hand as we watched the grainy, black and white image shift and change on the sonographer’s screen. When the fastwhomp-whomp-whompof the baby’s heartbeat played in the room, we turned to each other. My eyes filled with tears, and Cal squeezed my hand.
“You’re about fourteen weeks and one day,” she said, “which puts your due date at December 16th.”
I blinked rapidly, still in shock. “So that means…”
“You’ve been pregnant since the anniversary party,” Cal finished. His fingers were still braided in mine, and he lifted my hand to kiss my knuckles. “All this time, Deena, you’ve been carrying our baby.”
Our baby.
My heart felt like bursting. All my life, I’d never imagined having a baby. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? I’d neverallowedmyself to imagine it. In my mind, having a child meant being married, and being married meant being trapped. I’d grown up with the expectation that I’d find a man as soon aspossible, settle down, and have babies. All my hopes and dreams would be shoved aside.
But now…
Now a different future was possible. I could be with a man I loved—genuinely loved. He would be supportive, and I could keep running my business. I could have it all.
Suddenly, all the emotions I’d pushed away came roaring back. Ididwant to be a mother—always had. But I’d simply cut that desire off, because I’d connected it with the loss of independence. It would be a loss of independence, of course, but not in the way I’d imagined. With Cal by my side, I could still be me. He knew how important my business was; that was why he’d agreed to hire me on a non-exclusive basis. That was why he’d sent clients my way. Why he supported me and hired me and admired me.
He was my boss, but he also championed my dreams and my freedom.
Having a child with him would be a true blessing.
The rest of the appointment was a haze. Cal drove me home—because his penthouse was quickly feeling like home—and tucked me into bed so I could rest. Exhaustion still clung to me, so I accepted the soft kiss he pressed to my lips and curled into a ball under the blankets to sleep.
When I woke up an hour later, I found Cal sitting on the armchair near the window in his bedroom, a stack of books resting in front of him. In his hands, another book lay open. He frowned at something on the page and slowly turned to the next one.
“What are you reading?”
Cal looked up at me and smiled, then showed me the front of the book. I read the title:What to Expect When You’re Expecting.A smile broke out on my lips, and I shuffled to the edge of the bed to look at the other books’ spines.Expecting Better, The ExpectantFather, Moms on Call, Cribsheet, Real Food for Pregnancy,and half a dozen other titles stared back at me.
“I bought the top twenty best-selling books on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting,” Cal said, eyes back on the page. “At fourteen weeks, the fetus is typically three and a half to four inches long.” He looked up at me and smiled. “The size of a peach.”
I put my hand on my lower stomach, huffing. “Wow.” Settling into the chair across from Cal, I leaned my head on my hand and listened as he read me interesting excerpts from his book. I picked up the top book on his towering stack and flipped through it, simultaneously overwhelmed and utterly cherished.
This was so much more than I’d expected to happen. I’d never felt so loved and supported in my life. The pregnancy was a shock, but Cal’s reaction made me feel like anything was possible.
“I’ve scheduled an appointment with a pelvic floor physiotherapist,” he said as he flipped a page. “She’ll be here tomorrow at noon.”
My brows lifted. “Okay. I guess I’m not going to the office, then.”
Cal met my gaze, frowning slightly. “Why would you go to the office?”
“To work?”
He set the book down. “Deena, you’re pregnant. You can’t work.”
“Millions of women work while they’re pregnant. I’m not an invalid.”
“You’re not millions of women. You’remywoman.”
A thread of stress began to tighten inside me, pulling from my gut all the way through my heart and into my throat. “I’m going to work until I can’t anymore,” I said. “I have clients who expect me to deliver a service to them.”
Cal flicked his fingers as his eyes returned to his book. “You don’t need money, Deena. I’ll take care of you.”
