Page 66 of My Possessive Billionaire: Our Fake Marriage

I don’t know how many hours we actually went, but I’m pretty sure twelve was a conservative estimate. Let’s just say we made up for our disappointing fake wedding night and then some.

Amanda

3 years later

There was an old phrase I remember hearing as a child. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes—fill in the blank with the name of whatever kid we wanted to make fun of that day at recess—with a baby carriage.

Well, as it turns out, that’s a pretty logical progression. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that Evan and I went at it like rabbits. In any event, I don’t think we were married for a month and a half when I got pregnant.

Knocked up, as it were. I hadn’t been expecting it to happen so soon, but don’t get me wrong. It was the happiest news I’d evergotten in my life.

Evan started strutting around like a proud poppa while our child was barely more than a zygote in my belly. He wasted no time in telling everyone. He did the whole bit, passing out cigars and drinking bourbon and slapping other men on the back.

For me, I was a bit afraid. I wasn’t sure I would be a good mother. I am told by lots of women, Jennifer included, that such things are normal for an expectant mother. Jennifer told me there would be something wrong if I wasn’t at least thinking about how my life would change when the baby was born, if not necessarily freaking out about it.

Me, I was freaking out about it all right. Jennifer said that there was no reason why I should be worried. I countered that I’d never been the most nurturing person in the world. She told me that I was trying to nurture the Earth itself. I found this to be rather pretentious and called her out on it.

Jennifer just smiled and said that I would figure out how to be a good parent all on my own. I had everything it took, she said.

Still, I tried to direct my nervous energy to productive areas. I did my research, and then some. Just about every book on babies and expectant mothers out there got added to my Amazon shopping list. I also did a ton of research on the web, though after about your one thousandth mommy blog, you realize they’re all pretty much the same.

I decided that the best thing I could do for our family was to prepare the environment. To that end, I wanted to have a literature-rich environment, which the library in the manor certainly provided.

On the other hand, I was afraid of living way outside of the city. I was afraid that if something happened, we’d be too far away from the hospital to make everything okay. For the first several months of pregnancy, I kept this anxiety to myself.

Eventually I told Evan, and he made me wish I’d said somethingfrom the get-go. He put his arms around me and told me it would all be okay.

He also told me that whatever I needed to feel better, he would provide, with no questions asked. He kept to his word, too, no matter how outlandish my prenatal demands grew.

I was worried that the manor couldn’t be childproofed, so we moved into a condo downtown when I got pregnant with Stan.

Yes, it was a big change, but the fact was we both had jobs to do. The centralized location of our condo—he went and bought the whole building, of course, and then sublet everything except the top three floors we lived in—made it easy for both of us to get to our respective offices.

The work was not done. We still had to save the rainforest. Some of the governments in South America had become less receptive to conservation efforts, and we had to fight harder than ever to keep the world’s lungs breathing.

I knew we were going to win, though. With Evan’s brand recognition adding impetus to the cause, things were looking better already.

On a gloriously sunny Saturday, I sat on the veranda enjoying the outdoors. The city moved on below us, but my eyes were only on my toddler son. Stan already looked a lot like his father, though his nose sort of resembled my own.

Like his father, Stan liked to take a lot of risks. We’d already added netting around the veranda railing just in case he somehow managed to scale the four feet. He got into everything. I liked to joke that his pudgy body hid the fact he was really a housecat in disguise.

Stan squealed and jumped around in circles. He’d discovered a bird’s feather, probably from a pigeon. He picked it up and thrust it in the air as he jumped.

It took me a moment to realize what he was trying to do, and I just couldn’t help but laugh. Evan came out of the house,carrying a tray with iced tea for us and chocolate milk for our toddler son.

“What’s he doing?” Evan asked.

“He’s trying to fly. He found a bird feather and now he’s trying to figure out how to fly himself.”

“I think I remember doing that when I was a kid,” Evan said, his lips twisted into a frown.

“I’ll just bet that you did.”

Stan raced across the veranda, using his makeshift ‘wings’ to try and achieve what the Wright Brothers had all those years ago in Kittyhawk. That name always seemed kind of suspect to me. I mean, the place where planes first took flight just happened to have the word Hawk in it? It was like Alicia Keys being a pianist, or Harry Shearer being a barber. It just seemed too convenient.

Stan decided that the best way to achieve flight was to get some altitude from the get-go. I cringed as he raced up the steps to the top of the playground structure.

“Oh no.” I moved forward a half step. “Tell me he isn’t going to jump off the side.”

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