Over time, he'd only gotten more attractive. Michael Bournham had left everything behind – the bright lights of the big city, the billion dollar deals that were second nature to him for so long as the founder of a Fortune 500 company.
Mike was a jerk when she first met him.
An even bigger jerk the second time.
And she had tamed him. Convinced him to move out here in the middle of nowhere Maine, away from the prying eyes of media vultures, surrounded by a slow pace of life that didn't fry your brain.
“What's unlikely?” she asked, his comment finally sinking in, mouth moving before she could stop herself.
“That you'd become...” He waved his hand at her, as if he couldn't say the word. Chest rising and falling as he took in a deep breath, she watched the muscles realign around his whim.
“Become what? A dolphin?”
“Lydia.”
“Say it, Mike!”
“Fine. That you'd become pregnant.”
“That we would conceive,” she stressed, heavy emphasis on the word we. “There is no 'you' in pregnancy.”
“No, but there is a penny.”
“Huh?”
“And cannery.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Anagrams. You can make those words by rearranging the letters in the word ‘pregnancy’.”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Nothing.” He sighed, then stormed into the bathroom, the sight of his muscled ass making her pause in her stunned state. The man had a fine, fine backside, and a condom blowout wasn't enough to make her not admire Mike's form.
Even if he may have just unexpectedly knocked her up.
A flush, the sound of running water, and then another long exhale mixed with her own reactions.
“Lydia?” He came back into the bedroom but remained standing next to his dresser, a wide-pine beauty they'd bought from a local craftsman last year. Old Archie was working on a raw-edged counter for their kitchen next summer.
Just waiting for some oak to age properly.
“Hmmm?”
“Where are you in your cycle?” A tilt of the head made him look professorly.
“Oh! Right! I'm...” After almost twenty years of periods, she had this down cold, the calendar math as much a part of her psyche as knowing how to breathe or walk. “Day fourteen.”
“Since the first day of your last period?” He sounded like an OB-GYN asking questions during an exam.
“Yes. That's how you count cycles. Day one of bleeding is day one.”
“And you're most fertile in your cycle from days...?”
The way he asked the question made her sigh, the long, drawn out sound mirroring his.
Because he knew.
The question was rhetorical.
“Right now, Mike. I'm most fertile right now.”
Still on her knees, she was completely naked, the cool November air making her cold, but it didn't matter.
That's not what was shocking her most.
As they spoke, Mike's sperm was making its way up the path inside her vagina, crossing through the cervix, moving up the womb where her eggs would release. Like a roller coaster, she imagined, the egg would find itself on a journey it never expected, thrown to and fro until it landed where biology dictated, and chance decided the rest.
Mike came to her, a half grin on his face, eyes evaluating her. “Then we have a situation.”
“A potential child isn't a 'situation.'” Her nipples hardened. His eyes darted down.
Mike noticed.
“It's the very definition of a situation.”
“You're dehumanizing this!”
“I'm operationally managing an unexpected set of circumstances so we can have an optimal outcome.”
“I THOUGHT YOU LEFT THIS VERSION OF YOURSELF IN BOSTON!” she shouted, making him move back from the enormous bed the three of them shared.
“Version? There's only one 'version' of me, and it's me. Just me.”
“You're deluding yourself if you think that's true, Mike! You used to be this cold, calculating asshole CEO. Here in Maine you're laid-back, sporty, intense but present.”
One eyebrow went up in an expression she considered his You've got a point look. “I'm also focused on handling a situation we didn't anticipate, Lydia.” Unblinking, he stared at her, those sapphire eyes hypnotic. While she never chose favorites between her two men, she was often struck by how perfectly each met some part of what she needed most. Jeremy's eyes were pure chocolate warmth.
Mike's were icy spears, strong and bold, challenging and firm.
“Situation,” she repeated, crossing her arms, hating herself for feeling pouty suddenly. “I'm full of your sperm, mister. You made this situation.”
“I thought you said there's no 'you' in pregnancy.”
“There isn't, but you know what is in pregnancy?”
“What?”
“Anger.” The tears began to hit her, fierce and full. “And 'cry.'”
“Oh, Lydia,” he said, softening as he rushed to her, arms around her in a split second, the same body she'd just been so raw and vulnerable with now a wall of protection and comfort. As she reached for him, too, her hands skimmed over the back she knew so well from scratching it in the throes of passion, the arms of thick muscle that grew over years of living here in the woods, the thick thighs that helped split wood, fix a broken tractor, move kayaks and canoes during a summer squall.
He was a far cry from the billionaire CEO she'd met years ago, and yet he was the same man.
The same man she loved to the core.
“We – we haven't talked about children!” she gasped as the crying took over full force, the implications of a faulty piece of latex making her mind race. “And Jeremy is going to be so pissed.”
Surprise turned those eyes to a smoky blue. “Pissed?”
“Because we weren't all together! Because you're the – the – ”
“Father,” he said slowly, eyes going wide with dawning understand. “Father.”
“Exactly! We're a threesome. We share everything.”
“We'll share this child. We'll raise him the way Laura, Mike, and Dylan raise their kids.” That threesome was the closest they'd ever have to having “friends in common,” the unlikely meeting of two billionaires sharing a woman a story rooted in Madge, of all people. She knew Laura, Mike and Dylan from their time as customers at Jeddy's Diner in Boston. Madge dated a guy named Ed whose grandson, Alex, was marrying Laura's best friend.
Madge had suggested they have their unconventional double wedding at Escape Shores Campground and the rest was history.
Lydia's grandmother was a maven, for sure. A maven who connected people in ways that enriched lives.
And made them a lot naughtier, too.
“Him? You're assuming the baby is a him? That's so sexist!” She punched a pillow. It rolled onto the floor with a plunk!
“No need to go all feminist on me at a time like this, Lydia.”
“You are so clueless.”
“And you're being hysterical.”
“Oh, here we go! 'Hysterical.' You're literally using my uterus against me!”