Page 22 of Such a Tempting Omega

“I’m not taking money from you, Liam.”

He smiled but not out of happiness. “First of all, I’m your alpha and your mate. I take great honor and pride in caring for you. Giving you money would mean the world to me. Second, no, that’s not my idea. You’re my mate, and we’re having a baby. I was planning on asking you to move in with me anyway.”

The cheesecake didn’t sit well anymore. “You are doing this because of this letter.”

Liam looked genuinely hurt. “I’m doing this because I’m in love with you and I feel awful when you’re not around. When I have to wake up in my bed alone. Missing you in the night. Reaching for you even though I know you’re not there.”

“You love me?” I asked. The tears rolled down my face. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

“I do. I love you both.”

“I love you too.”

“Good. Now, will you move in with me, Hirsch? Make me stop missing you?”

He made it seem like I was doing him a favor. “Well, when you put it that way. Yes, Liam. I will move in with you and while we’re on the subject…I know sometimes I put up a fuss, but I really appreciate the ways you take care of me.”

He beamed. Brighter than the sun. “Let’s go get your things packed. I’m so excited.”

Getting up, he headed for my bedroom and brought out two suitcases. Kyle had gifted them to me, and the few friends I had left during that time thought it meant something deeper. It probably did but I was too blind to see it.

Didn’t matter anymore. Now they would be used to pack up and make this new life real. A life with someone who loved me.

“What about the desk and the chair?” Liam asked. “I can get someone to come pick it up for me in one of my trucks.”

“Leave it,” I said. “It was his. It can go to the dump for all I care.”

“Ready to go, then?”

I looked around, and in my head, I chanted a few prayers. I would leave the bad memories here, where they had occurred. All the mean words. The control. The manipulation. The lies. They would stay right here and die before someone else occupied the space.

Here, I would bury my ties to Kyle once and for all.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

“I have something else to talk to you about on the way home.”

Home. Our home. “What is it?”

Liam took my hand as we walked to his car. “We need to pick a color for the nursery.”

Chapter Nineteen

Liam

Hirsch still wanted to find a job, but his stomach had not taken well to the new inhabitant of his womb, making him quite ill well into the morning and sometimes even in the afternoon for the first few months of his pregnancy. As a crafty alpha, I took advantage of his weakened state to get him to agree he would put off any kind of job search until after the baby’s arrival. I might have felt a little guilty if he hadn’t been so utterly miserable and in no shape for pounding the pavement for a job that he might not feel well enough to do.

But a few months in, as his second trimester began, his sickness dissipated. I came home from watching the little garden installation one afternoon to find my omega in a blue funk. He was sitting on the sofa staring straight ahead, his lips turned down in a frown. I glanced toward the TV, but it was on screen saver.

“Hirsch?” I set my laptop bag down on a chair and moved to stand between him and the mountain scene on the flatscreen. “Are you all right?”

He blinked, focusing as if he had just noticed my arrival. “Liam. When did you get home?”

“Just now. What are you doing?”

“Watching TV,” he said. “What else is there to do?”

Good question. He kept the house spotless, refusing to allow me to hire a housekeeper so he could relax. And since the two of us weren’t very messy, it didn’t take much of his time. He also did most of the cooking, but once those things were done, all he had to do was rest. Which had been great for a while though it was inevitable that restlessness would set in.

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