“We mostly see beige around here! Thanks for spicing up my day,” the doc added with a sparkling smile.
This appointment may go down as the most embarrassing day of her life, and perhaps, if she and Jordan could figure out this parenting business, also, as one of the best.
“Here you go,” the doctor said, handing Jordan the printed images. “Take your time and stop by the front desk before you leave. The receptionist will have a bag of pregnancy essentials along with the list of scheduled visits. Again, it’s such a pleasure meeting you both, and Georgiana?”
“Yes?” she answered, starting to think Dr. Beaver was a pretty great guy.
“You’ve got one of the top ten cervixes I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot.”
Maybe great was too strong a word.
Dr. Beaver left the room, and she sank onto the exam table. She stared up at the ceiling, then startled when a warm sensation overtook her belly.
She glanced down and found her husband caressing her abdomen.
“Georgie Jensen-Marks has a perfect ten cervix,” he said with a cocky twist to his lips.
“Stop it,” she said, but there was no bite to her words. It was pretty funny.
“And my super sperm put a baby inside you,” he added.
“How do you know it wasn’t my super egg that gobbled up your sperm?” she countered, unleashing a smirk of her own.
He chuckled as his devilish grin faded. “I love you, messy knocked-up bun girl.”
That sure didn’t roll off the tongue, but she didn’t care.
She slid her hand on top of his. “I guess if you have to gestate a baby, a little Asshattery heir is the way to go.”
“And nice call on the lingerie. I think it earned us some points with the doctor. You know, it’s like wearing your Sunday best, except the underwear version.”
She shook her head and released a long sigh.
“We’ll figure this out. We will,” Jordan said, staring into her eyes.
She observed this man as a pregnant pause, pun intended, allowed them to take in the moment.
“I really thought you were an asshat when we first met,” she said, stroking his cheek just below his toddler battle scar, then noticed the little mark next to it that had to be from when she pegged him with the pregnancy test box.
What a day!
“And you know how much I hated your Birkenstock sandals,” he replied, but his expression said the opposite.
She brushed her thumb across his baby combat injuries. “That seems like ages ago, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” he answered, staring down at her belly.
What was their next step? Did they tell people about the pregnancy? Should they keep it to themselves? And God help her, what would she do about her mother? Her mind was about to start a new spin cycle when their phones chimed the appointment alert for their meeting with Hector and Bobby.
“How are we going to play this with CityBeat?” he asked.
She blew out a tight breath. “I have no idea.”
The one thing she did know was that they needed to come up with a strategy—and fast.
4
Jordan
Jordan glanced at his watch, then listened as his wife hummed her delight.
“We’ve got a little over twenty minutes before we should leave to make it to CityBeat on time,” he cautioned, but it was no use.
She’d fallen in love.
“I’ll be finished way before then. I promise. I just want to savor each bite,” Georgie answered through her third slice of pineapple cheesecake.
This eating for two was no joke!
After the appointment with Dr. Beaver, which, holy hell, was quite a name for an obstetrician, they needed some time to decompress and regroup before heading over to meet with Bobby and Hector. He’d searched the internet for a place with pineapple desserts and found this coffee shop a block away from the CityBeat building.
And bingo! He was the baby daddy of the year. Okay, more like the baby daddy of the quarter-hour, but he’d take it.
It almost didn’t seem real that their child—an actual living creature—was due in June! Freaking June! He was a number’s guy. And he couldn’t help but calculate that by this time next year, they’d have an almost five-month-old baby!
He’d been thrown for a loop in the waiting room from hell. But the moment their alien peanut baby, who was probably ninety percent pineapple at this point, materialized through the fuzzy gray and black lines on the ultrasound, he forgot about the baby NFL and the fact that they should have gotten this kid on a wait-list to play cello, viola, or harpsichord before he and Georgie had even met.
He was going to be a father. He didn’t think his heart could hold any more love than he had for his wife, but when that alien peanut appeared, he was done for. A goner. Like the Grinch, his heart expanded in his chest.
A boy or a girl, it didn’t matter to him.
What did matter was giving this baby everything.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know where the hell to start. He should have asked those dads to give him the number for the baby NFL.
“Did you babysit growing up?” he asked as his wife enjoyed the final bite of cheesecake.
He wanted her in a state of complete pineapple bliss. After what she’d endured with that insane magic probe, he’d need to get this place on speed-dial to ensure they always had plenty of the pineapple deliciousness on hand.
He knew Georgie had fallen in love with the baby the minute its little alien form came to life on the screen—just like he had. It was as if a tidal wave of emotion overtook the exam room and washed over them. But that didn’t mean their concerns about what life would look like now had vanished. He wasn’t sure how they would balance this pregnancy with all their commitments. Luckily, between her second and third slice of cheesecake, he’d gotten an idea.
They’d approach this pregnancy scientifically. And that required a baseline. When he worked with clients, it was his job to assess their current fitness level and work from that point. He and Georgie needed a pregnancy knowledge baseline. Only then could they measure the impact that impending parenthood would have on their lives.
While she oohed and aahed through her dessert, he’d gone over his actual knowledge of what to do with an infant, which wasn’t much.
A decade ago, when he’d met his former fitness mentor, Deacon Perry, his daughters were babies. He’d held them and watched as Deacon’s now ex-wife and his father’s current girlfriend, Maureen, cared for the twin girls. But he didn’t pay all that much attention to the day-to-day how-to-keep-your-baby-alive routine.
These actions happened. They had to have—the girls were still living, thriving eleven-year-olds. But he didn’t know the logistics and mechanics of how this keeping-baby-alive process worked.
Georgie set down her fork and glanced over at the pastry display. “It looks like I got the last slice of pineapple cheesecake.”
She’d inhaled the last three slices, but he was a smart enough husband to not mention that part.
She took a sip of pineapple juice. “To answer your question, no, I never babysat growing up. I was too busy being dragged from pageant to pageant. What about you?”
He shook his head, about to answer when an infant wailed a few tables over. Like baby detectives, they observed as the mother popped a pacifier into the infant’s mouth, and the child calmed instantly.