Shopping for a Highlander’s Baby (Shopping for a Highlander #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Amy

Ceramic tile is hard and very cold.

I find that out when my toes turn into icicles as I stand holding a plastic wand that says PREGNANT, like the world's bossiest fortune cookie.

PREGNANT

The condo holds the aroma of last night's roasted garlic pizza, which felt like a good option at nine p.m. Now? Not so much. A breath of ocean air wafts in through the cracked-open window.

Boston hums outside.

Inside, I am a statue with messy sex hair and a pee stick screaming my future and... oh, my God.

The word grandmonsters rings through my head like Quasimodo clanging the Notre Dame cathedral bell. Our mothers ruined our wedding, crashed our elopement, and now here we stand, five weeks later, married and—

PREGNANT

I breathe in, out, forgetting the rhythm as my distracted brain tries to fill a whiteboard. An Airtable. Every Kanban board. All the Excel spreadsheets, every last one of them.

Hamish wraps around me from behind, lifting me before my feet realize it. He is warm and tall and smells like soap and sleep, and his forearms around my ribcage are so solid, so sure of where they belong, that my body gives up its panic and leans back into him before my brain can file an objection.

Beware the boundless optimism of a man who once insisted a vibrating bed should be on our wedding gift registry.

And that guests should throw quarters instead of rice.

"I canna believe it," he says into my ear, voice hushed. "We're havin' a wee bairn."

"Hi," I say to my husband of five weeks, who hit the bullseye with the first married shot, dammit. "Yes. Apparently."

Years ago, back when I hated him, I called Hamish "sex on a stick."

Now I'm holding the sex stick, all right. I just never thought it would be white plastic and determine my fate.

Hamish lets go, walks away, and comes back into the bathroom carrying a chilled bottle of Champagne. It's the bottle we brought back from our honeymoon in Love You, Maine, from the heart-shaped-everything suite. He holds it up, eyes shining.

"Breakfast o' champions?"

"No, love." I put my hand on his. "I can't drink that now."

A microsecond of confusion crosses his face, then he executes a pivot that would impress his old coach.

"Aye. Well then, coffee it is." His auburn brows drop. "Unless ye canna have coffee?"

"I will always have coffee."

I follow him to the kitchen, where he takes out two mugs that are as mismatched as my feelings. One is floral enough to double as a Kentucky Derby hat. The other is white with a cartoon sheep that shouts Baa! in a font that gives me hives. Kerning this bad should be punishable by death.

He sets the sheep in front of me with a flourish, eyes never leaving my face.

"Better?" he asks, smile spreading, his contagious joy doing that annoying thing it does where it gets under my skin and starts arguing with my anxiety.

He doesn't just wear his heart on his sleeve.

Every emotion is on full display, zero filter, and most of the time he has only one feeling: pure happiness.

His goal in life is to spread it, which he did.

Between my spread legs.

"Better," I say, and it is, as I smell the morning brew and reckon with being knocked up.

Knocked up.

Such a vulgar phrase for having my womb filled with the miracle of life. It's the conception part that's all about tongues and hands and fingers and clits and cocks and friction and slick and—

What was my point?

"Pet, have some." He slides my mug toward me. "Ye look a bit glazed there."

"Right." I dip my face toward the cup and my hair slides forward, trying to act as a garnish. Catching the curl, I tuck it behind my ear.

Pregnant.

We stand hips to counter, steam making the window fog.

He studies me with those moss-green eyes, steady and warm, the full weight of his attention on me.

Hamish McCormick's attention is a physical thing.

You feel it on your skin. When he looked at a football pitch, sixty thousand people held their breath.

Right now he's looking at me, and I'm the one not breathing.

"Ta us," he says, lifting his mug. "An' ta the wee one."

"To us," I echo, and we clink, the sound small and sure. I sip, pulling in air to cool the hot drink. My tongue adjusts while my brain writes lists.

List A: Joy. Actual, luminous, joy. My body is making a baby. Achievement unlocked. Much sooner than expected, but a bucket list item all the same.

List B: Logistics. OB appointments, coordinated with work travel. Can I run while pregnant? Pregnancy clothes. Morning sickness. My bladder's performance review. Both my sisters have children and I know how this plays out.

I set the test stick on the counter. It stares up at me with follow-up questions.

Hamish's palm presses softly to my stomach as if monitoring the situation.

"Thank ye," he says, more breath than voice. "Thank ye for this. Best Christmas present I ever got."

"You helped," I point out, and he nods solemnly.

"Just a bit o' Scottish spunk that made a goal in one."

I almost snort coffee. He reaches for the Champagne bottle and tucks it into a cabinet with the ceremony of a curator returning an artifact to its museum case, then closes the door and gives it a pat, sealing away a version of us.

And not just the one where I can drink alcohol.

"Okay," he says, bracing his hands on the counter, joy leaking from his pores. The man sweats excitement. "We need a proper toast."

"We just did a toast."

"That was a practice toast, a rehearsal. This is the tech run." He squares his shoulders and faces me.

"Ta the bairn, who doesna yet ken their mum is the fiercest woman in Boston. Ta their da, who will spend today in a daze, marvelin' at his good fortune. Ta coffee, the patron saint o' common sense."

"Ta the bairn, who will no' be named after a brand," I add, mimicking his accent. "Ta onesies wi'out puns. Ta ma bladder, which I speak to the manager aboot in month eight."

"Aye," he says, eyes bright, tactful enough not to mock my hideous attempt at sounding Glaswegian. "Bring it all on. All the good, all the bad, all of it. We've made a baby, lass."

"Pregnant," I whisper.

"So," he says, after a beat, approaching the subject the way you'd approach a feral cat. "Are we... tellin' the mothers?"

Outside, a seagull screams. My spine tries to flee my body.

"We can wait," I say.

"How long is 'wait' in your dialect?"

"Nine months?"

"I think they'll notice before then."

"Not if you just stand in front of me all the time."

He smartly ignores that idea and says, "In mine, it's two minutes. Five, if ye let me shag ye ta celebrate."

"You're using shagging as a bargaining chip for when to tell our parents?"

"I use shaggin' for everything. Celebrate? Shag. Commiserate? Shag. Win the game? Shag. Lose the game? Shag. Tell the mothers? Sh - "

"I get the picture."

The test stick is laying on the counter and we study it again. He nudges our mugs to the sink.

"Amy. Look at me."

I do. It's not hard.

"They dinna get ta take over our pregnancy," he says. "No one does. If they try, they have ta go through me."

Mindreading wasn't part of our vows, but his words touch my soul right where I needed them.

"You are very persuasive," I tell him, and I mean it. "But you don't need to fight my battles. I can hold my own with Mom and Fiona."

"Even better." There's pride tucked behind his smile.

My phone dings on the counter. The preview banner says Mom and contains seventeen emojis, three of which appear to be doing yoga, two that are vaguely medical, and one that is a dolphin with the number 67 for eyes. I turn the screen facedown.

"We can tell them later," I say softly.

"Aye," he says. "Later." His face falls a bit. It's the look of a man who was already picturing Fiona's happy scream.

"Walk me to the T?" I ask.

"Ye're no' stayin' home?"

"I have work."

"Today? Of all days?"

"It's still a work day."

His hands cover my flat stomach, his big paws warm against me. Heat pours into my skin, into muscle, into bone, meeting the rush of enthralled excitement and quivering fear already pumping through my blood.

"Nothing's happening yet," I whisper as he bends and lifts my shirt, kissing my navel. The brush of his lips sends a current straight down through me and I want him — oh, how I do — but what I need right now is normalcy. Routine. Something that's mine and wholly under my control.

Like work.

"Mmmm, but it could, lass," he says in that low voice that vibrates through me. It's the sound that got me pregnant in the first place. If fertility clinics could bottle that tone, the human race would need a second planet.

"Staahhhhhp," I groan, but I pull away, meaning it. "I really do have a meeting."

"Before seven in the mornin'?"

"Global marketing. Remember? In Europe, they're eating lunch."

"In Europe, they're eating lots o' things, pet." His eyes widen with merriment and I burst out laughing.

"You don't have any gray matter in that skull, do you? It's just a testosterone tap, hormones sloshing around."

"And what's wrong wi' that?"

"Walk me to the station," I repeat, giving him a kiss as he grabs my ass. The man's hands could palm a football and my entire future at the same time. They're doing both right now.

"Aye. I can be a man who walks." He adjusts himself. "A bit stiffly, but so."

The serious look his eyes take on gives me pause, but then he reaches for me and I melt into him, safe in the warm cage of his arms, the morning both heavier and lighter.

Babies don't respect plans. Time management for babies is about now and now and now and now and now.

I shower quickly, basic makeup, hair up. Hamish gets the coats. As he turns off the kitchen light, I slip the test into the junk drawer with the rubber bands, spare keys, gift cards, and seashells. The drawer is becoming a grab bag of household items with no logical home.