Chapter 5
“What a night,” Kara said to Dan as he drove them home hours later. “It’s so nice to see Stephanie getting such praise for how she refused to give up on Charlie. And Grant for writing such a beautiful script.”
“I know. I hope he’s ready to add another Oscar to his shelf.”
“That’d be so deserved.” Kara yawned for the hundredth time since they’d left the party thirty minutes ago. “I’m going to sleep for a week when we get back to Gansett.”
“You can’t sleep for a week in August.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” She had about four weeks remaining until her summer season running the launch service in North Harbor came to an end and she could relax until the spring.
“What’s up with you being so crazy tired all the time?”
“That’s what happens when I try to keep up with you.”
“Seriously, Kara. You’re freaking me out with all the sleeping. That’s not like you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it possible, you know, that you might be… well, pregnant?”
Kara laughed at that. “As you well know, it’s more than possible.”
“Do you think you are?”
“Could be. It would explain a few things.”
“What other things besides being tired?”
“My boobs hurt, my pants feel snug, and I’m hungry all the time.”
“Kara! When were you going to tell me you’re pregnant?”
“As soon as I confirmed it.”
Dan glanced in the rearview mirror before sliding across three lanes on the 5 and taking the next exit.
“What’re you doing?”
“Finding a pharmacy to get a test.”
“We can figure it out when we get home to Gansett.”
“We’re figuring it out right now.” He drove faster than he should have through a commercial area and took a hard right turn into a pharmacy parking lot. “Lock the doors when I get out.”
“Yes, dear.” Kara watched him go, sinfully sexy in the tuxedo he’d worn to the premiere, eating up the sidewalk with his always-impatient stride, which was even more so now that he was on a mission to find out if she was pregnant.
She giggled to herself, imagining her famous husband buying a pregnancy test. It’d probably be all over the news that she was pregnant before they knew themselves.
He returned ten minutes later carrying a big bag that he passed to her when he got in the car.
Kara looked inside and burst out laughing when she saw he’d bought no fewer than twenty tests. “We only need one.”
“I want to be sure.”
“I don’t have enough pee for twenty tests.”
“What do you need pee for?”
Kara lost it laughing again. “You have to pee on the stick to take the test.”
“Jesus.”
“How can you be thirty-eight and not know how a pregnancy test works?”
“Because I’ve never come close to being a father, until now.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. I might just be anemic or something.”
“My hopes are up,” he said as he drove toward the beach where he owned a house a half mile from Grant’s.
“You’re driving too fast.”
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Slow down, or I’ll withhold my pee.”
“That’s gross, Kara.”
“Slow down, Dan.”
He downshifted the two-seater BMW he kept at the house in LA but didn’t slow down all that much.
“I was thinking that we should name our first child Dylan,” Kara said, “whether we have a boy or a girl. What do you think?”
He glanced over at her. “That’d be perfect,” he said gruffly. “Thank you for honoring my brother that way.”
“I wish I’d known him.”
“I do, too. He would’ve loved you, but not as much as I do. It’s still amazing to me…”
“What is?”
“How everything is so much better since you found me and saved me from myself.”
Kara laughed at how he described their meeting. “Is that what I did?”
“You have no idea.”
“You did the same for me. After my sister stole my boyfriend and then married him, I thought I’d never want to take another chance, and then there you were in your pink Oxford shirt and your ridiculous loafers, making a complete ass of yourself on a daily basis trying to get my attention.”
“Um, hello, I was being totally serious, and you just insulted me.”
“Did you or did you not make a complete ass of yourself trying to get my attention?”
“I brought you Diet Mountain Dew. Do you know how hard that is to find on Gansett Island?”
“Answer the question, Counselor. Did you or did you not make a complete ass of yourself?”
“I refuse to answer the question on the grounds of self-incrimination.”
“Save your legal mumbo jumbo for someone who doesn’t know all your BS.”
“My ‘legal mumbo jumbo’ is in hot demand. In case you missed it, Oscar-winner Flynn Godfrey just played me in a movie. And if I may add, he did a good job, but he couldn’t quite capture the sexy devil Dan Torrington really is.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Kara muttered. “Do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk?”
“Nope, not really, and neither do you.”
“Yes, I do. I’m officially tired of hearing you talk about what a sexy devil you are and how Flynn Godfrey played you in the movie.”
“I can’t help that they had to get the handsomest guy in Hollywood to play me in order to do me justice.”
“Shut up, Dan.”
“Make me, Kara.”
Thankfully, they arrived at the house, and she was saved from having to take drastic measures to shut him up while he was driving. He came around to give her a hand out of the low-slung car and steadied her when she wobbled on the ridiculous heels she’d bought for the premiere.
“In case I forgot to tell you earlier, you were a total smoke show tonight, babe. That dress is fire.”
“This old thing?” Kara said, glancing back at him as he followed her up the stairs to the door.
Their friend Tiffany Taylor had helped her find the perfect dress for the premiere, and Kara had never felt sexier than she did in the clingy black dress that was far more daring than she normally would’ve chosen for herself.
Tiffany had that effect on her—and many others.
“That old thing has had me sporting wood all night.”
“Honestly, Dan.”
“Honestly, Kara.” He put his arm around her from behind and pressed his hard cock to her back to make his point. “Been dealing with that since the first second I saw you in that dress.”
“That long?”
“That long, so hurry up and go pee on a stick so we can do something about my stick.”
She didn’t want to laugh at that, because God forbid she should encourage his juvenile humor, but she couldn’t contain the laughter.
He thrust the bag of pregnancy tests at her. “Do at least three of them. I want to be sure.”
She took the bag from him, rolled her eyes and headed for the master bedroom, kicking off her heels as she went.
Her feet were happy to be rid of them. Sky-high heels were so not her thing, but Tiffany had convinced her she couldn’t wear that dress without those shoes along with the thong she also couldn’t wait to be rid of.
On second thought, she’d leave that on until Dan saw what she’d worn under the dress he liked so much.
Another thing Tiffany excelled at was getting her to buy racy underwear that her husband went wild over.
He was too funny and too sweet and too everything. Despite his over-the-top ego and ridiculous new habit of speaking of himself in the third person, she loved him more than life itself and couldn’t wait to give him a baby they’d name Dylan, after the adored brother he’d lost in Afghanistan.
In the bathroom, she shut and locked the door, because she wouldn’t put it past him to come in there to watch her pee on the sticks.
Her heart gave a little lurch when she realized what she was about to do.
She’d suspected she might be pregnant when she missed her last period, but with the trip to LA and the premiere coming up, she’d planned to see Vic when she got back to the island to confirm it.
Leave it to her hotshot lawyer husband to beat her to the punch.
She shouldn’t be surprised. He didn’t miss much when it came to her, which was one of the things she loved best about him.
He paid attention to her, and he had from the start, noting things like the soda she preferred before she’d given him so much as the time of day.
Her hands shook a little with excitement and nervousness as she opened three of the boxes, got the sticks and read the directions to make sure she did it right.
She’d never taken a pregnancy test before, had never had so much as a scare, so this was all new to her, too.
But at least she knew you had to pee on the sticks and still couldn’t believe he hadn’t known that!
When she was finished, she set the sticks on the counter and got busy taking off her makeup and brushing her hair.
A soft knock on the door sounded through the room.
Smiling, she went to open it to him. He’d removed his suit coat and bow tie, released the top buttons of his dress shirt and had his arms propped over his head on the doorframe. He was devastatingly beautiful, and even though he knew it, she loved him anyway.
“I can’t believe you locked me out.”
“Really? You can’t?”
His playful scowl only made him cuter than he already was. “What’s the verdict?”
“I haven’t looked yet.” She took his hand. “How about we look together?”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Let’s do it.”
“We already did it. That’s how we ended up in this boat.”
“No one I’d rather be in any boat with, as I proved to you very early on by paying for many a ride on your boat before you were even nice to me.”
They approached the vanity with trepidation, as if it might contain explosives that would detonate if they moved too quickly.
Kara looked down at the tests and saw three big plus signs.
“What’s that mean?”
“Plus means positive.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“So it would seem.”
Dan let out an earsplitting whoop, picked her right up and swung her around, hugging her so tightly, she gasped. “Oh shit, what am I doing? You’re pregnant, and I’m acting like Tarzan.”
“If you start beating your chest, I might leave you.”
He set her down gently, framed her face and gazed down at her. “You can’t ever leave me, because you’d wreck me and because you’re my whole world. You and our baby…”
She was stunned when she saw tears fill his eyes.
“You’ve made me so happy, Kara. You and baby Dylan.”
Kara curled her arms around his neck and went up on tiptoes to kiss him. “You’ve made me just as happy.”
“Let’s go to bed and celebrate.”
“Lead the way, my love.”
He surprised her once again when he lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed, setting her gently on the mattress and then propping himself on his arms to gaze down at her.
“What?”
“Just looking at my beautiful baby mama.”
“I can’t believe we’re going to have a baby.”
“Are you excited?”
She nodded. “And scared.”
“Why?”
“The whole pushing-a-pumpkin-out-of-my-body thing is a tad bit terrifying.”
“Ugh, do you gotta put it that way?”
“How else should I say it?”
He lowered himself to kiss her, brushing the hair back from her face. “Don’t be scared. We’ll get you the best drugs money can buy.”
“I won’t say no to that.”
“I’ll be right there with you. I have no doubt you’ll do great, and you’ll make the prettiest baby ever. He or she will be so lucky to have you as their mom.”
“And you as their dad.”
“This is the best day of my whole life, and not because Flynn Godfrey played me in a movie.”
Kara laughed and brought him all the way down on top of her.
“I don’t want to squish the baby.”
“The baby is fine.” She curled her legs around his hips and pressed against his hard cock. “But your wife could use some attention.”
“My wife has my undivided attention.”
Once upon a time, Kara had thought she would marry a man named Matt, before she found out he’d been secretly dating her sister at the same time he was leading her to believe they were headed toward marriage.
Now Kelly was married to him, and Kara was thankful every day that they’d betrayed her, because they’d led her, indirectly, to this perfectly imperfect man.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked, studying her in the intent way he had of making her feel seen and adored.
“About the long and winding road that brought us together and how thankful I am for the people who stabbed me in the back and led me to you.”
“I’m thankful to them, too, even if I still want to stab them for hurting you the way they did.”
“No more stabbing. We’ve had enough of that.” She took hold of the hand that had been sliced open at their engagement party by a knife-wielding Jim Sturgil and kissed the pale white scar that ran the length of his palm.
“Are we really having a baby?” he asked, his expression still awestricken.
“It appears that way.”
“When can I tell people?”
“Not for a while. We want to make sure it’s going to take.”
He’d been rocking against her suggestively until she said that. “What’s that mean?”
“A lot of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Surely you must know that much.”
“Don’t even say that word. Nothing is going to happen to our baby.”
“Still… Let’s keep it between us for now.”
“Ugh, if I have to.”
“You do know it takes, like, forty weeks to have a baby, right?”
“That’s a long-ass time.”
“Yes, it is, and you can’t be extra the entire time.”
He pushed against her suggestively again. “I’m always extra, baby. That’s one of the things you love best about me.”
She rolled her eyes and gave his hair a gentle tug. “How about less talk and more action?”
“Action is my middle name.” He slid a hand under her skirt, encountered the thong and froze. “Well, what have we here?”
“You’ll have to take a look and see.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He pushed himself up so he could help her out of the dress and then sat back on his heels to admire the skin-tone bra and thong Tiffany had chosen for her. “Could I please have a picture of how you look right now? I swear no one else will ever see it but me.”
Kara laughed to cover her nervousness. “Sure.”
Dan bounded off the bed to get his phone. “Don’t move.” When he returned to the room, he stopped short at the sight of her… hair loose around her shoulders, propped on her elbows, legs slightly apart.
Before him, she wouldn’t have had the courage to put herself on display that way. But he loved her so much and made her feel so desired that it was easy to do things with him that wouldn’t have happened with anyone else.
He took a couple of quick photos, tossed the camera aside and hastily undressed before rejoining her on the bed and kissing her with the kind of wild desire that had become part of her everyday life. “Want you so bad, sweet Kara, love of my life, mother of my baby.”
“I want you, too. Always.”
He was in such a rush, he didn’t bother to remove the thong, but rather moved it out of his way and took what they both needed. “Yes. God, I was dying for you all night.”
No one had ever said things like that to her before he did. He made love to her with urgency and reverence. “Look at me, sweetheart.”
She looked up at him.
“Tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“You’re not picturing Flynn Godfrey right now, are you?”
Sputtering with laughter, Kara spanked his ass. “Shut up and finish what you started, will you?”
“Gladly.”