Page 169 of Nine Months to Bear
“Wedid this.” I pull back to meet his eyes. “Together.” I pull him toward the shower, giddy and light-headed. “Come on. We need to celebrate properly.”
“We just did celebrate,” he says with a laugh. “Twice.”
“That was before the call!” I turn on the water and laugh like an insane woman. “This is different. This is… God, Stefan, this is everything.”
He steps into the shower behind me, hands cupping over my stomach. “You’re shaking.”
“I know. I can’t stop.” I lean back against his chest. “Part of me keeps thinking I’m gonna wake up. That none of this is real.”
“It’s real.” His lips find my shoulder. “The partnership, the baby, us. All of it.”
“Say it again.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. The whole thing, again and again and again. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing it.”
As he grins against my throat, Stefan’s hands start to wander lower and lower. He says the same thing he said earlier this morning, two words that never fail to make me smile.
“With pleasure.”
61
STEFAN
Olivia appears in the kitchen doorway twenty minutes later. She’s wearing a simple sundress that makes her look like a summer bluebell. Her hair’s down for once, not in that tight bun she usually wears to the clinic.
She looks soft. Touchable. Like someone I could actually have a normal life with.
“So, um…” She twists the hem of her dress. “I was thinking…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s kind of silly. Actually, I don’t even know?—”
“Olivia.” I level her with a look. “Spit it out.”
“Maybe we could, like… I don’t know. Spend the day together?” Her cheeks go pink. “If you’re not too busy. I mean, I know you have work stuff, and there’s probably a million things more important than?—”
“Olivia.”
She stops rambling and looks at me.
“I’m the boss. I can do whatever the hell I want.” I cross to her, cup her face in my hands. “And right now, I want to spend time with you.”
Her smile is everything I never knew I needed. “Really?”
“Really.”
I picture it suddenly: us on some island somewhere, lounging, tan, happy, at ease. No Bratva, no FBI, no rivals trying to kill me. Just Olivia and me and our kid. A little house by the water, maybe. Teaching the baby to swim. Olivia laughing in the sun.
Fuck. I’m turning into my father after all.
“We could drive out of the city,” she suggests. “Find somewhere quiet for lunch. Just be normal people for a few hours.”
“Normal.” I test the word. “I don’t know if I remember how to do normal.”
“Well, I’m terrible at it, too, so we’ll figure it out together.”
