“Why don’t you?” I slide my arms around his and stare into his blue eyes. “Are you afraid of loving it too much, too hard, before you even meet it?”
“Whatever they say, it won’t be real until we hold it.” He drops to his back and pulls me to his side; then he cups the back of my head and sets my face against his neck in my special crook, and I close my eyes and lightly lick him like he’s taught me he likes. He is so big, he loves so hard, he fights so hard. I’m giving him what he has never, ever had and never even probably knew he wanted. He’s afraid to hope. . . .
The next day, I hang around the sidelines, watching him pound the heavy bag. Hit. Hit. Hit. I’m doing some yoga stretches when I feel a definite bump coming from inside me. I stop breathing. I feel it again and I go utterly still, and it comes once more. It’s not a bubble. I feel as if something inside me is punching me, just like Daddy is punching the heavy bag.
My heart leaps and I leap just as hard to my feet.
“Remington. Remy! Remington f**king Tate!”
He swings around and stops the swinging bag with one hand.
“Feel this!” I take his glove off with shaky hands and toss it aside and put his hand on my stomach, my heart racing. Come on, little baby. . . .
Remington frowns in puzzlement. It kicks.
He narrows his eyes and presses his big hand closer, his eyes flicking up to mine. “Is that . . . ?”
I nod.
All of a sudden, he flashes me a white, arresting smile, his dimples as deep as I’ve ever seen them, his eyes bluer than the sea in Tahiti as he ducks his head as if ready to talk to the baby. “Tell her to do it again,” he whispers.
“She pays no attention to me.” My lips tip up in a smile as I nudge him playfully. “And it’s a he. Because my hair is shiny and I’m carrying low, I think. And he’s got quite a punch. Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll show you more of his moves.”
“Kick for Papa and let’s move it!” Coach yells from the other side of the heavy bag.
Remy smirks at me and Riley comes over, all lazy surfer-boy swagger.
“He moved? Jesus, I have to feel this,” he reaches out.
“Don’t touch,” Remington growls, slapping his hand aside.
“Dude, she’s like a sister—”
“Hands off, Riley,” he warns, shoving him aside with one arm.
Riley releases a great peal of laughter, while Remington grabs me closer with one hand and keeps the other spread on my abdomen, our gazes holding as we wait like two dodos for the baby to move.
When the baby kicks again, and he bursts out laughing, I’m so full of love, I hug him. “Is that real enough for you?” I breathe, a smile dancing on my lips as I tip my head up at him, my nostrils catching the delicious scent of his soap and sweat clinging to his skin.
“That felt f**king surreal,” he whispers, his eyes alive with joy, and, as if it were a contest for speed, he kisses my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, and my chin; then he grabs me by the waist and flings me in the air, a squeak of alarm leaving me as he catches me.
“Remington Tate, you’re the only man who flings his pregnant girlfriend in the air like that!”
“She’s a little firecracker and she loves it!” He flings me up again.
That night, for the first time, we play baby his first song. Remy puts his headphones on my stomach and plays Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open.”
The song tells the baby how he’ll show him the world and receive him “with arms wide open,” and I swear I can feel the baby’s comfort while his sexy, beautiful father stretches out beside me and starts kissing me.
“Has she got my hook?” he asks thickly, between those soft, drugging kisses as we hear the music trail into my tummy.
“He has definitely got your hook, because of course it’s all about you,” I softly tease, cupping his jaw.
He laughs. “All about me?”
“All of it. Everything. My whole life,” I say with a dramatic flair that makes it obvious I’m exaggerating, but his smile is so dazzling and huge, his big lion’s ego so grand in the room, I pat his jaw and laugh, and for some reason, I just have to say it again, if only to keep looking at that big wide grin on his face. “Yes, Remy, it’s really all about you.”
SIXTEEN
AUSTIN AWAITS
“So it’s all over the headlines that Riptide’s girlfriend is pregnant,” Pete says as we fly to Austin.
Now Josephine flies with us too, and today she sits with Pete, Riley, and Remington in one of the living room sections, while Coach is on the bench, and Diane and I occupy one of the other living room sections. Remy and the men seem to be discussing my security for the two Austin fights. Apparently, we’re approaching semifinals, so Scorpion will now be fighting on the same evenings as Remington.
A part of me is anxious to see if we’ll bump into Nora at the fights, while another part of me dreads the outcome of such an encounter.
Remy is in a gruff, overprotective bad mood. The fact that his f**ked-up parents live in Austin and that he sold the house where we usually stay undoubtedly annoys him. Pete rented another house to keep us away from the media, but Remington is not appeased. I know he doesn’t like the thought of me being in the same state as Scorpion, much less the same zip code.
While I show Diane the pictures Melanie sent me of color schemes for the baby’s room, I hear Remington’s voice, low, as if he doesn’t want me to hear, but authoritative. “Anyone approaches her or so much as looks wrongly at her, you take care of it immediately.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see how Pete nods somberly and smoothes a hand down his black tie. “Don’t worry, Rem, I’ll protect her as if she were mine.”
“She’s not yours, dipshit. She’s MINE.”
“Mister Tate,” Josephine interjects, “I’ll be on standby making sure she’s not in any way threatened or inconvenienced.”
“I really love this blue-and-green scheme,” Diane tells me, disconnecting me from the conversation on the other side of the plane.
Turning back to the images, I sadly tell her, “I wish that ring thing had worked. Remington doesn’t want to know, and I don’t want to find out from a doctor and spoil it accidentally for him.”
“Hey!” Riley yells from the other section. “What are you guys going to call it?”
Remington’s shoulders are hunched as he leans over and studies something Pete is showing him on his phone, and I don’t think he’s even listening to me, but I still say, “If it’s a boy, I haven’t been able to think of anything. But I have the perfect name if it’s a girl.”
“Oh, yeah, what?” Riley asks, leaning back on his arms, curious.
“Iris,” I say softly. Remington instantly turns to look at me, and the intimacy of his gaze bores and burns through me like a wave of lust and love crashing through me.
“I like Iris,” he says gruffly, nodding approvingly.
It takes Pete a lot more effort to get Remy to concentrate again on whatever Pete was showing on his phone, for Remington keeps looking at me across the plane. I can’t concentrate on what Diane says either, for I keep looking back at him.
It just feels wrong to have all these seats between us, my iPod tucked in my bag, and my guy so far away.
He leans as far back in his seat as possible, and across the plane aisle, he stretches his arm and opens his large hand. I link my fingers through his, and then it feels right again. He keeps checking out his man stuff, and I keep talking with Diane about baby stuff, his hand holding mine across the aisle.