Page 39 of Baby Bombshell for the Boss

“I can set up an office space in the living portion of my bedroom suite,” he said. “I’ve been using that as a TV room, but I have a TV in my living room, so it doesn’t need to be like that.”

“I didn’t expect you to want to set up a nursery at all,” she admitted. “I mean, are you thinking you’re still going to want us to be here after the baby is born?”

“Well, it’s up to you,” he said. “But my idea wasn’t that we’d live together until the baby came and then I would kick you out. I mean, I want to help with things. And I don’t think you’re going to need less help after the baby is born.”

“No, I’m sure I’ll need more,” she agreed. “But we never talked about the future. We never discussed how long I was going to be here. You said you wanted me to live with you while I was pregnant, but if you want to set up a nursery, that means you’re imagining it going on for a lot longer than that, right?”

“As long as you want, really,” he confessed. “I don’t want you to leave. I think coparenting will be easier if we’re close together like this, so I want you to stay for as long as you’re willing to stay. I want to take care of our baby together. Are you willing to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Ivy admitted. “It sounds nice. But I don’t know how much I want to commit to right now. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” he said. “And don’t worry about it. This isn’t a decision we need to make right away. We can set up the nursery and play it by ear.”

“But I don’t want you to waste time and money turning a whole room of your house into a nursery if I can’t even commit to staying here,” she said. “That’s unfair to you.”

“If you decide to leave, you’ll just take all the nursery supplies with you when you go,” he told her. “I’d still want the baby to have them. I’m still going to want to spend money on a nursery and things for our baby no matter what, so please try not to worry too much about what the future is going to look like. Let’s just make a nursery together, and for as long as you and the baby are here, we’ll have it available.”

Ivy nodded slowly. “We can do that, I guess,” she agreed.

She felt torn. On one hand, here was another example of the situation slipping out of her control. Every day, she found herself wading deeper and deeper into the life she was unintentionally building with Elliot. Now they were going to turn a room into a nursery — that wasn’t something you did for someone you didn’t plan to go on living with. Turning a storage space guest room into a functional guest room was one thing, but turning the office into a nursery… well, that wasn’t like the situation with his money. Elliot’s office was something he would miss when it was gone. He was actually making a sacrifice now, and Ivy didn’t know whether she could allow that or not.

But was it her choice? This was his house. She could tell him right now that she didn’t want to stay here after the baby came, but she didn’t know if that was true or not. There was a not insignificant part of her that really did want to stay. And she wouldn’t be taking advantage of his generosity if she did that, because she was confident that he meant what he said. He really did want to have her here. He would be disappointed if she left, because he wanted to have his baby in his home with him, and that was a logical thing for a person to want. She had no trouble believing that it was the truth.

“You look like you don’t want to do this,” he said.

“No,” Ivy said. “That’s not the issue.”

“What’s the issue?”

“The issue is that I really do want to do it.”

He laughed. “That doesn’t sound like an issue.”

“This is difficult!” she said. “I don’t know what’s appropriate for us, Elliot, and I don’t think you do either. And I don’t want to cross any lines. I want to make sure that we’re always doing the right thing, and that we won’t have any regrets.”

“We may have regrets,” Elliot said. “It’s very possible. Life is full of regrets. But it’s every bit as possible that we’d regret it if you went back to your house, if we lived apart and didn’t raise our child together. We don’t know what our regrets will be. That’s the problem with life. So the only thing we can really do is decide what chances we want to take.”

“And you think this is a chance you want to take?” she asked him.

“I know it is,” he said. “I know for sure that I’ll regret it if I don’t even try to make this work. If I don’t try to participate in this child’s life. You and our child both deserve that from me — and to be perfectly honest, I feel like I deserve it too, Ivy. I deserve the chance to make a family here. You’ll let me try, won’t you? If you feel like you have to leave in the end, I’ll respect that. But let me try to take care of the two of you, at least.”

Ivy nodded. “We’ll try it,” she said. “I can certainly offer that much.”

“Then we’ll make a nursery?”

She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. But they would have been happy tears, and tears had come so easily to her lately that it wouldn’t have seemed unusual at all if she had cried. It was the hormones, she supposed. “We’ll do it,” she agreed. “I must be out of my mind, but I guess I’ve known that for a while now.”

He laughed. “Don’t give yourself such a hard time,” he said. “I feel a little crazy these days too. A lot is changing, and it’s all happening so fast. But I do think we’re doing the right thing.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ivy said.

But she had a good feeling about it. This was a risk, and she knew she might regret it, just as they had discussed. But if there was a chance of her baby growing up with a father in the home, that was a chance worth taking, no matter what was on the line.

So she would stay. She would give this a try and see if the two of them could make it work — and if so, for how long. She was sure that Janelle would think she was being foolish, and maybe she was but Elliot had been right. They would regret this if they didn’t make the attempt, and if it were to pay off, it would be more than worth the risk they’d taken.

Ivy got up and left her room. The rest of the house was starting to look more and more like someplace she would have chosen to live. Even in the short time she’d been here, she had made some significant changes, adding area rugs to the cold wooden floors and replacing the industrial-looking blinds on the windows with soft curtains. She’d added more plants all around the house, making it warm and alive, and she had purchased a few appliances for the kitchen. Elliot claimed he didn’t cook, but Ivy did, and she knew she would be able to convince him of the value of having a well-stocked kitchen before this was all over.

She went to the room that was currently his office, that was soon to be her baby’s nursery. It was small, but a baby didn’t need that much space, and it was close to the room she herself currently occupied. That was the most important thing. She needed to be near her baby at all times.

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