She stared at the little thing. Dressed in only a white cotton diaper, its painted eyes gazed up at her.
“You want us to hang out with a fake baby?” Jordan pressed.
Stu nodded. “Yes! Carry it around the house. Take it on a walk. It’ll help you ease into becoming parents.”
“Does it need anything?” she asked, touching the mannequin’s chin.
“That’s what this is for,” Stu replied, then handed Jordan a giant bag.
“The fake baby needs all this?” he exclaimed, his large frame slumping as he secured the strap of the bag over his shoulder.
“Like I said. Get used to it. We’ll be in touch with the details, but plan on a challenge or two during each trimester,” Lenny replied.
Her gaze bounced between the diaper bag and the fake baby—Faby…whatever.
This was it.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
She cradled the infant care simulation doll in her arms as the walls seemed to cave in on them; the air growing stagnant.
She inhaled a steadying breath. “Hector, I have to ask. What made you think I was pregnant in the first place?”
“It was what you were eating at your wedding reception. Well, more like what you were and what you weren’t eating,” the man answered.
But that didn’t make any sense.
She shifted the fake baby in her arms. “I hardly ate anything at all. It was such a whirlwind of an evening.”
“Then perhaps you don’t remember when you honored me with a dance.”
Her brows knit together. “Of course, I remember our dance.”
“Do you also remember the part where I twirled you around, and you plucked a piece of pineapple off the dessert table?”
She thought back to their dance. They’d laughed and talked, but she had no recollection of fruit being a part of it.
“I remember the twirl but not eating any pineapple.”
“You certainly did. I was surprised to see you do that after what your mother told us.”
“What did she say?” Georgie asked, but she already had a good idea.
Hector leaned in. “One afternoon after we’d read the psychic energy of three hundred citrus-scented votive candles for your wedding, a tiring task, your mother told us the story of how you cleared out a Ritz-Carlton ballroom, losing your lunch all over the beauty pageant judges after you ate a pineapple fruit cup,” he replied.
“It was the pineapple that tipped you off?” she pressed.
“That, and you didn’t even glance at the tiny tubes of vegan chocolate chip cookie dough we had made especially for your wedding day. We all know how you feel about those.”
“That reminds me,” Barry piped up. “We’ve got some here! Hold on! I’ll get you one!” the man offered and headed for the office’s kitchenette.
Her stomach did a flip-flop at the mention of the vegan treat.
Jordan stroked her arm. “Georgie, are you okay? You look a little green.”
“Have you had any bouts of morning sickness yet?” Stu asked.
She blinked as the thought of tiny tubes of vegan chocolate chip cookie dough, once her go-to stress reliever and the tasty treat that never let her down, now turned her stomach.
“Um, I haven’t experienced morning sickness yet…but…” she rasped as the taste of bile flooded her mouth.
Barry jogged toward them, his hands teeming with the pocket-sized tubes of vegan dough.
“Look, Georgie! We’ve got a ton of them! You can take a bunch home with you!”
She tried to wave him off, but in the blink of an eye, her mild belly flip-flops morphed into a heavy-duty, high-speed tumble that would put an industrial clothes dryer to shame.
Her stomach spasmed.
This was not good!
There was no time to hightail it to the restroom. She tossed the fake baby…faby…whatever, to her husband and lunged for a trash can.
But she was too late.
Just as she’d done years ago in a child-sized evening dress and five-inch heels, she lost her three delectable slices of pineapple cheesecake all over poor Barry’s feet.
“Whoa!” the man exclaimed.
“Thank God we installed tile instead of carpet!” Hector murmured to Bobby, leaping out of the way.
“There it is. A telltale sign,” Stu replied calmly as if it were standard practice for women to lose their lunch, or in her case a trifecta of cheesecake, in his presence.
“There’s a pack of ginger lozenges in the diaper bag. They can help ease the nausea,” Lenny added.
She wiped the back of her hand across her lips.
Perfect! More advice from Team No Uterus.
Jordan leaned over and rubbed her back with the fake baby tucked under his arm, its little head inches from hers. The doll seemed to have a mischievous curve to its fake baby lips. Were they always like that? Was she having another pregnancy delusion?
“I’m sure the nausea will end soon, and we’ll figure everything out,” Jordan said, trying to reassure her.
She held the doll’s gaze and knew instantly that her husband was wrong.
It was just the beginning of this pregnancy roller coaster—and they were locked in for the entire ride.
6
Jordan
Jordan steadied himself. “We’ve got something to share with you.”
“Some very important news,” Georgie added, squeezing his hand like a vice.
Who knew librarians had such a grip?
He glanced at his wife. She’d whipped out her beauty queen grin—the giveaway she was nervous.
She wasn’t the only one.
“But we want you to know that we love you very much and always will. That will never change,” his wife continued.
Mr. Tuesday, their black and white beloved mixed-breed pup, cocked his head to the side.
Georgie lowered her voice. “This is a lot for him. We’ve only been living together for six months and with the wedding, and then with us being gone the last couple of weeks for our honeymoon, I think he’s confused.”
Who wouldn’t be confused? It was as if the universe decided they were on the relationship Autobahn.
“I think you should tell him, Jordan,” his wife said with a crease between her brows.
“Why me?” he asked through a smile, talking like a ventriloquist. Why? Because he didn’t want to upset the dog. This would have made no sense to him before falling in love with Georgie and her crazy canine. But now, he was a dog dad. And that’s what dog dads do.
“You did do this to me,” she said with a covert gesture to her belly. “You know, planted the seed. Fertilized the garden,” she whispered as Mr. Tuesday’s head cocked to the other side.
“You seemed onboard with the gardening,” he replied cautiously.
“True. I couldn’t get enough of it—the gardening, that is,” she added quickly, her cheeks growing pink with embarrassment.
Did she think Mr. Tuesday had an opinion on their sex life?
Did she not want their dog to know that they’d done the dirty a bazillion times in a tropical paradise and, not to mention, this morning in the shower? They all lived in the same house. In some doggy way, he had to know.
Jesus, this was getting weird.