Chapter 15
MILES
“How are we doing?” Dr. Montgomery asked.
Miles and Chelsea murmured in response. Miles wondered whether Chelsea felt as awkward as he did about the two of them attending this doctor’s appointment together after the almost-incident in the kitchen the night before.
All he could think about was that whiff of cinnamon and vanilla he’d gotten when he had leaned in close, and how much he had longed for her kiss — before common sense had reared its ugly head.
I did the right thing by stopping.
Yes, he had. He knew that. They couldn’t afford to let things get complicated. But there was no denying anymore that things were already complicated, if they had come that close to kissing. Even now, the room crackled with tension.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come with her.
But he couldn’t set aside what had happened before the kiss.
That conversation had been good. Important.
He had promised her that he was going to be there for her.
He couldn’t take that back now. He had to follow through.
And besides, he wanted to be here. He wanted to be involved in all these little moments.
“Lie back, and try to relax,” Dr. Montgomery instructed Chelsea. “Let’s see what we can see.”
She lay down on the examining table. While the doctor got set up, Miles puzzled for a few moments over where he ought to be, then went to stand by Chelsea’s shoulder, hoping that he would be out of the way.
“Okay,” Dr. Montgomery said, pointing to the ultrasound screen. “And… that’s your baby.”
Miles squinted at the screen. He didn’t see anything at all.
He was familiar enough with ultrasounds to know that people usually had trouble distinguishing the images, but he hadn’t expected it to be this difficult.
The truth was, there was a part of him that had imagined he would be different.
That because this was his baby, he’d see it right away.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Chelsea asked. Miles was immediately relieved. She didn’t see it either. So, he wasn’t failing the first test of fatherhood.
The doctor smiled and traced something with her finger.
“Right here,” she said. “I know it doesn’t look like much yet, but that’s the baby.
You’re only a couple of weeks in, so there isn’t much to see yet, but just you wait.
Every time you come for a scan, it’s going to look more and more like a real human. ”
Chelsea sighed. “I can’t see it,” she said, and her voice was small.
The urge to comfort her was swift and powerful.
“Don’t worry,” Miles said, forgetting the awkwardness he’d felt when they had arrived.
“I’m not seeing it either. But we’ll get Dr. Montgomery to outline it for us when we get a printout, so we’ll be able to find it later.
” He turned to the doctor. “We can do that, right?”
“Sure, we can,” she agreed, putting the ultrasound probe away. “I’ll print this out for you right now. And how have you been feeling?” she asked Chelsea. “Any unusual symptoms? Any concerns you want to discuss?”
“No,” Chelsea said. “Except… I haven’t been sleeping as well as I usually do. Is that related?”
“You haven’t?” Miles felt concern spiking.
She glanced at him. “It’s not… typical for me to be up in the middle of the night,” she said. “Usually I sleep like a log, but lately… I don’t know if it’s physiological, or if it’s just that I have a lot on my mind.”
“It could be either one,” the doctor said gently. “If it’s troubling you, I can recommend some herbal remedies and soothing practices, but I’m hesitant to prescribe anything. It might not be good for the baby.”
“No, I know,” Chelsea agreed. “I don’t want to take that risk either. I just wondered if there was anything I could do… or if I should be worried about it.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Dr. Montgomery said. “I’ll write up a list of recommendations for you.” She smiled. “The two of you should be very happy. It looks to me as if everything is coming along perfectly.”
“This seems like one of those things every man should know how to do,” Miles grumbled. “But I’m hopeless.”
Two months had passed since the first ultrasound, and in that time, he and Chelsea had managed to put their near-kiss behind them…
for the most part. They no longer found it difficult to be in a room together.
In fact, they had been in the room they were converting to the nursery all day.
Miles had taken the day off work specifically to help with this project.
Now he was supposed to be setting up the baby’s crib, which Chelsea had ordered from a furniture store that required customers to put the furniture together themselves.
Miles couldn’t see the point of the exercise.
It would have made much more sense to order a crib that was already in one piece.
But she’d done it without consulting him, and he wasn’t going to tell her to send the thing back.
She knelt beside him. “Let me do that,” she offered, taking the hex key from his hand. “I’ve built dozens of these kinds of things. It doesn’t have to be a man’s job.” She examined the screw he’d been driving in. “Can you hold this piece right here?”
He put his hands where she had indicated, and she began to turn the wrench. “Sometimes four hands are better than one on a job like this.”
“How did you manage it when you were living on your own?” he asked her.
She laughed. “Carefully. With a lot of contorting. If I was on my own, I’d be holding that piece in place with my foot while I turned the wrench.”
Well, that’s flexible of you, a mental image of what it would look like filled his mind. A part of him wished he could have seen her.
It was times like these when he was forcibly reminded of the fact that the two of them had nearly kissed.
It was impossible, in these moments, not to think of her more romantically.
Sensually, even. Talking about contorting her body while the two of them were so close that they were almost touching…
Miles was only a man, for God’s sake. Of course he was thinking about it.
Thinking is free. It was a mantra he had adopted for himself over the past few weeks, a reminder that he didn’t need to worry too much when these thoughts came into his head unbidden.
Imagining her body in his arms, her soft skin under his hands, didn’t mean that he was going to act on those ideas.
In fact, maybe it was better to allow himself to fantasize about her.
That would allow him to clear his mind of the thoughts that would otherwise plague it, in the way that listening to a song you had in your head helped you get rid of it.
At least he hoped it would have that effect. So far, it didn’t seem to have worked very well.
Chelsea sat back, grabbed the side of the crib, and gave it a shake. The piece she had just attached seemed firmly connected, and she smiled. “There we go,” she said. “Fit as a fiddle.”
“It does look good,” he had to admit.
“I hope you like it,” she said. “I know I probably shouldn’t have placed an order without talking to you first, but I saw it, and it was just so cute that I couldn’t help myself, you know?”
He laughed. “It’s all right, I’m glad you got the one you wanted. And I have something too. You’re not the only one who’s been shopping without consulting the other person.”
“I’m not?”
He held up a finger as he got to his feet. “Wait here a moment,” he said.
He left the room and went down the hall to his own bedroom, where he had been hiding the gift he’d purchased for the baby. A moment later, he returned, holding a massive bear in his arms. It was almost as tall as Chelsea, and twice as wide. “What do you think?” he asked, holding it up.
She gasped. “Miles, it’s gorgeous! Oh, what a sweet bear! Where did you get it?”
“Hart and Honey.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
He grinned. “I’m surprised I know what it is. It’s a baby boutique downtown. Dad told me about it. Apparently, my parents shopped there before I was born, so I went down to check it out after work a few days ago.”
“It’s huge! How did you get this thing in the house without my knowing?”
“I brought it in while you were in the bath the other day,” he explained. “What do you think — over here in the corner?”
“Yes, I think that’s great,” she said as he positioned the bear sitting up in the corner of the room. “It looks so cozy. Our baby is going to be the luckiest little kid in the world.”
She got up and went over to the bear, sat down between its arms and legs, and snuggled into its body. “This will be a great place to sit and read the baby a story,” she said.
Miles nodded. He could picture it. Although, seeing her there now, he found himself thinking that he ought to get a nice thick cushion for her to sit on while she did it.
The mother of his child couldn’t be forced to sit on the floor.
Yes, that was the next surprise he would bring home for her, as soon as he had the chance to go shopping again.
Another month passed. The nursery was painted and decorated, and it seemed impossible that they still had so long to wait before its new occupant would be moving in.
And yet, at the same time, sometimes Miles still found it hard to believe that a real baby was on the way — that this wasn’t just a wild fantasy he had dreamed up for himself.
That was, until the night he woke to the sight of Chelsea standing in the doorway to his room.
He sat bolt upright, fear lancing through him. “What is it? What’s the matter? Is the baby all right?”
“The baby is fine,” she said quickly. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s… Miles, it’s kicking. I can feel it.”
He was out of bed in a heartbeat, his hands on her shoulders, guiding her to sit on the edge of his bed. “You can feel it?”
“It’s amazing.” Her voice was full of awe and wonder. “I’ve never felt anything like this in my life. I had no idea… It’s a real little person.”
He stared at her belly, as if he might be able to see the kicks. She was wearing a tank top and it had ridden up, so a few inches of her bare skin were exposed.
Chelsea reached out and took his hand. “You have to feel this,” she murmured. “You have to.”
She pulled his hand to rest against her stomach, keeping her own hand on top of it.
At first, Miles didn’t feel anything. He looked at her, brow furrowed, wondering if this was like that first ultrasound — if he was just missing out because he didn’t know how to perceive what he needed to perceive.
She gasped. “Right here!” She yanked his hand to one side.
And Miles felt it. A strange sensation below the skin, barely more than a rumble — but it was there. “Oh, my God…”
“That’s our baby!” Chelsea’s eyes were full of tears. “That’s really our baby, Miles. It’s really in there.”
He met her gaze, and his heart swelled with love.
Love for the baby. That was all it was. Just love for the baby.
But even that was so much more than he had expected to feel at this stage.
He was having this baby to make his father proud.
He had expected that he would grow to care for it, of course, and that he would want to be a good father.
But he hadn’t dreamed of this feeling. It was powerful.
All-consuming. He had never felt anything like it before in his life.
I would do anything for this baby, he realized. I would go to the ends of the Earth.
And it was impossible to separate that feeling from the way he felt about Chelsea. The two of them, at the moment, were one. Caring for the baby meant caring for Chelsea, and he knew in that instant that he would have done anything in the world for her, too.
But that’s just because she’s carrying the baby. That won’t last. Once the baby comes, my feelings for Chelsea will go back to normal.
But she was looking at him with such tenderness in her eyes, and he was suddenly sure her feelings mirrored his exactly. They were so close. Those lips he had thought about every day for the past three months were so close. That soft skin, that sweet aroma that haunted all his fantasies…
Miles couldn’t resist anymore. There had never been much hope.
He leaned in and kissed her, deeply and passionately, and her arms wrapped around his neck as she returned the kiss in equal measure.