Page 107 of Calamity Rayne Knocked Up

“It’s okay. Holidays are stressful.”

“But I don’t want them to be. Christmas is supposed to be fun.”

“And it will be.”

“Gah! You have an answer for everything.”

“And you talk too much.” He leaned over my swollen body and kissed me.

“Mmm, you taste like merlot.” I missed wine. Especially when wrapping presents. Maybe that was what was wrong with this picture.

“You should take another sip.” He lowered his mouth to mine, making slow, sensual dips with his tongue and teasing a laugh out of me.

“Flirt.” I arched my back and it pinched. “Ah!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah—” I coughed as acid rushed up my esophagus. “Wait.” I pushed his mouth away and rolled to my side with the grace of a beached whale. “I can’t do this on the floor.”

Hale sat up and pulled me with him. I was like one of those untippable punching bags that wobbled into position. “Couch?”

I scrunched my nose. “I think bed.”

He looked disappointed. Probably because every time we went to bed all I wanted to do was sleep. But he pulled me to myfeet anyway.

“Ah! Leg cramp!”

Hale looked at me with concern. “What do you need?”

“I need to not be pregnant anymore!” Cradling my back, I wobbled to the stairs. “Can you clean that up so Elara doesn’t see it?”

“I…I thought…” He glanced back at the unwrapped presents and wrapping paper and sighed. “Sure.”

“Thanks, babe.”

I was conked out when Hale came to bed. I vaguely recalled him kissing my temple and trying to cop a feel, but he gave up when it felt like necrophilia.

The following day, he had to fly to Chicago. I finished my fall semester, and with no current employment, my schedule was wide open.

We kept Andrew on full-time because I was exhausted, and we didn’t want to lose him, but he mostly hung out in the guest house until I called him in to take over.

As Christmas approached, my emotions gained on me. Why couldn’t Remington just apologize? Miles and Marta both told me he was miserable since I’d quit. I missed my job. I missed him—the stubborn butt face. And Imissed having an outside purpose. But Hale was right. I needed to stick to my boundaries, and Remington had crossed a line.

It wasn’t just about him trusting me. It was about him respecting my life and my personal time the same way I respected his. It was difficult standing up to him. But the hardest part of all of this seemed to be my pregnancy. Remington was like a father to me. Pregnancy was a major milestone and I wanted him to be a part of the process. Every time I thought of something I wanted to tell him or ask him, I was reminded that he wasn’t there and it was hard not to cry.

“Let’s check the advent calendar, Peanut.”

When I was little, my mom always bought me one of those paper calendars that hid a piece of chocolate behind a tiny paper door. The candy was never good, but that wasn’t the point. It was the tradition of opening it each morning and counting down the days until Christmas with my mom.

“Let’s count. How many more days?” I pointed and Elara repeated my words. “One, two, three, four, five.” I helped her pull open the door.

Of course, Elara’s advent calendarwasn’t made of paper. When I explained the tradition to Hale, he had a local woodworker custom-build a Victorian dollhouse for his daughter. It had shutters, interior lighting, and even a mechanism that made the chimney puff when a button was pressed. And there was no crappy chocolate in hers. He had every little box stuffed with a small prize.

“What is it?”

She popped open the small door and pulled a small, plush dog from the box and held it out to me. “Doggy.”

“Ooh! What’s the doggy say?”

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