Total pages in book: 199
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1001(@200wpm)___ 801(@250wpm)___ 668(@300wpm)
I quickly take the test and then wait the appropriate two minutes as directed.
Which turn out to be the longest two minutes of my life.
When the time’s here, I grip the stick tightly as I check my fate.
At first, I can’t believe it. I think I’m seeing things.
But somehow it registers.
And when it does the knowledge hits me in my belly.
Right in my womb.
Before I can give it a conscious thought, I’m running out of the bathroom. I’m dashing down the hallway, throwing the front door open, hurrying to get to him. I know he’s doing his workout thingy — chopping wood; I could see him through the window before I went to do the test.
Plus I can hear him.
The hypnotic thwack that I always fall asleep to.
Even through the noise though, he hears me coming.
Which is a good thing because as soon as he turns around and spots me, his forehead bunching into a frown, I jump into his arms. But thanks to his fiendish workout schedule, he hardly gets jarred.
I wind my arms around his neck and for the first couple of seconds, all I do is breathe his musky, cinnamon-y scent. And I think he does the same with his palms under my ass, clutching my panty-covered cheeks and his nose buried in my neck, our chests moving in a rhythm.
Then, I whisper, panting, “I think you should get your tux ready.”
“What?”
“Because it looks like you’re going to the prom.”
He doesn’t respond to it but I know he heard me.
But more than that I know he understood me.
Because his fingers on my ass squeeze tightly.
But still I don’t want there to be any confusion so I continue, “Daddy.”
At this, he goes completely still.
His wildly breathing chest freezes and I don’t detect even a single twitch on his body that I’m plastered to. Squeezing my thighs around his naked hips, I’m about to break away from him but he does it himself.
One of his hands snaps up to my hair and he yanks my head back.
Which is when I realize that all his emotions, all the life in his body has been reflected in his beautiful dark eyes.
“What’d you say to me?” he rasps, barely able to get the words, his voice even, out.
My lips pull into a smile. “I’m pregnant.”
“Pregnant.”
“With your baby.”
“My baby.”
My smile blooms into a grin then even as my eyes tear up. “She’s here. She’s coming. We did it.”
Finally a shudder goes through him.
A tremor.
Bigger than ever.
Bigger than the jolt that had hit me when I saw the test myself.
So I slide my hands up to his face and cradle his cheeks and ask him what he asks me every day. “Are you happy?”
With his eyes looking liquid and flickering with a thousand emotions, he rasps, “Fuck yeah.”
At which, my tears spill out and he comes down to lick them away before sealing our lips in a sweet, sweet kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Her Beautiful Thorn
There are certain moments in your life that you remember forever.
That you know you’ll remember forever.
Not because these are happy memories — most of them aren’t — but because these are the memories that have shaped your life.
The day your father left and your mother wouldn’t stop crying. The day it really sank in that he wasn’t coming back. The first time you punched someone and it felt so fucking good. The day your mother died. The first time you wanted to run away from home; it was either that or kill your own big brother and his rules. The first time you held a soccer ball in your hand. The very first goal you scored.
The day you saw her for the very first time, sitting on the hood of her brother’s car.
The first time she came to your soccer game. The first time she smiled at you.
The day you broke her heart and left her crying in her dorm room.
And then there’s the day when she tells you she’s pregnant.
With your baby.
And immediately after telling you that and changing your whole fucking life and making you the happiest son of a bitch on this planet, she texts a guy named Ezra.
Ezra Vandekamp, that’s his full name.
He’s a real estate mogul and the heir to the Vandekamp empire. Currently in Korea for a big-ass merger and the groundbreaking for a construction project of a hotel building. They’re calling it the next masterpiece of architecture and him a genius for managing both the business side and the design side of it. They’re also saying that he may be what the Vandekamp empire needs to keep pace with the changing architecture and real estate markets.
There’s a whole interview on him in Architectural Digest and Forbes; I looked it up online.
I’m not into reading so I didn’t read the whole thing. Plus I didn’t think that I could. Not after reading her texts, or rather a couple of them. For the record, I hadn’t gone snooping on her phone. It was right there, on the nightstand, opened on the texting app. She’d just gone to take a shower after I’d fucked her against the tree right after she told me the news. I found that I couldn’t stop myself from making that connection with her.