Valeria let out a sigh. “I did have blood drawn—and good, that’s ... mostly what I needed to hear.”
The doctor behind the desk chuckled. “Oh?”
“It seems silly, but—”
“I assure you it doesn’t. You wouldn’t believe how many women want and try to get pregnant, and when they don’t right away, they immediately default to something being wrong with them. And you know what? When something is wrong, it’s more often their partner than themselves.”
Chris cleared his throat, but the doctor glanced his way with a smile, shaking his head as he said, “But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your husband, either, Mrs. Guzzi.”
“Why is that?” Chris asked.
“Well, that blood Valeria had drawn before coming up to the office ... it seems we did pick something up. Standard for every blood test is a check of HGC levels.”
“Pregnancy hormone,” Val said quietly.
The doctor nodded. “Yours is at a level that would suggest you’re about three weeks pregnant. Congratulations. I don’t think you’ll be needing anything from me. At least, not when it comes to getting pregnant right now.”
Valeria’s wide eyes turned on Chris.
All he could do was smile.
“Val,” he murmured.
It was all he could think to say.
“I guess ... you were right,” she told him.
Chris laughed. “Probably won’t be the last time, either.”
“Well played.”
• • •
Nine months later ...
Mia Cara made her way into the world on a cold February day. With frost crisp on the ground and a chill in the air, his daughter graced a cold world with her warm life. The hours and hours of her birth had seemed to bleed together to him over the duration, and yet as he sat in a hospital chair in the corner of his wife’s recovery room, it was like he could suddenly recall every second of it down to the smallest of details.
Blinking awake in that chair in the hours after his daughter’s birth, when the sky was dark outside, and the hospital halls were quiet. After their family had long come, celebrated, and then returned to their homes for the evening.
He remembered it all. Because he would never forget.
From the corner of the room, Chris watched his wife coo to their swaddled daughter. Her hospital gown had been pulled aside, showing her naked shoulder gleaming under the dimmed lights. With her dark hair pulled back and high into a messy bun, all the range of love and adoration on her face as she looked at their child was on clear display for him.
He understood that stare.
That instantaneous love.
The wonderment of it all.
He’d look at their daughter with the same expression the first time she’d been placed into his arms.
“You’re amazing,” he told her.
Val looked his way as though she’d known he was awake. “You, too.”
Always for her.
BENE & VANNA: PART 3
19.
Bene
“THERE?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And there?”
“Everywhere, Bene.”
Bene’s chuckles colored the master bedroom of their downtown Toronto penthouse. He kept mentioning that maybe they should start looking at an actual home. With a backyard, somewhere quiet ... but so far, Vanna seemed perfectly content with their penthouse in the city. If he were being honest, he was more of a city boy than the suburbs type, too.
But if her wants changed, so would his.
That’s kind of how love worked.
He continued working his fingers into all the tight muscles Vanna complained about from the moment she returned home. She finally started back to school which meant now she was eighteen weeks pregnant, on her feet most of the day, and too tired to even speak by the time she got home. All he wanted to do was make her smile.
Love on her.
Constantly.
Like now.
“Better?” he asked.
Vanna sighed, and rolled over to her back. Those twinkling eyes of hers stared up at him, dark hair spilling over their pillowcases. He couldn’t help himself but to touch her—it was an uncontrollable urge that not only drove him crazy, but settled him in a way that nothing else could when he did finally get his hands on her.
“Better,” she breathed.
Bene rested down beside her on the bed, reaching out to stroke his fingers through the strands of her hair. Then, those touches of his moved to her neck, too. And just like the sweet kitten she could be when her claws weren’t out and ready to kill, Vanna softened and sighed, shifting toward him so that they could tuck in close to one another.
This was better.
It always would be.
“Well,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on top of her head, “at least you have Christmas break to relax before you have to go back to school.”
“God, I’ll be huge by then.”
It took everything in him not to roll his eyes. Bene learned his lesson after doing that once to her already because she smacked him for it. When he told his twin, Beni said he probably fucking deserved it because who was stupid enough to dismiss a pregnant woman’s feelings about herself? Divert it, deny it, or just love them ... but never dismiss them.
“It’s only a couple of weeks away, and you’ll be beautiful,” he said. “Same as you are right now.”
Tilting her head back on the pillow, she stared up at him. Those soft, pink lips of hers curved into a pretty smile. That’s what he wanted to see the most.
“Smooth talker,” she told him.
Bene winked. “I do what I can, babe. Now, what else can I do for you, hmm?”
That smile of hers turned far sexier when he rolled Vanna to her back, and then went with her to hover over top of her with both his hands pressed to the bed on either side of her head. A shift of his lower half had him tight between her widened thighs. The small swell of her midsection—she hadn’t really popped yet—pressed between them, reminding him all over again, as though he might possibly forget, that this woman was carrying his baby.
And goddamn, didn’t she look so fucking perfect on her back under him?
He certainly thought so.
Leaning down, Bene kissed her once, and then twice. The third time, Vanna answered his kiss back with her own in a way that had his dick perking to life under his slacks. Her lips parted, and she finally allowed him a taste of her sweet mouth.
Candy.
She always tasted like candy.
“Yes,” she breathed against his lips, “you should definitely do that, too.”
Bene grinned, winking. “Yeah?”
There was a lot about pregnancy that he hadn’t known or really understood until Vanna was carrying his child. Like morning sickness? That shit was a fucking myth. It wasn’t exclusive to just the morning. And it could be caused by anything from the smell of food cooking to getting up out of bed too fast after a damned nap. Pregnancy was also exhausting, but especially in the first trimester; he swore for those first thirteen or fourteen weeks, his girl slept more than she stayed awake and when she did have to be up, it was to go to school. It wasn’t exhausting to him, unless you considered that every ad which popped up on his phone was about baby stuff because that was tiring.