When she comes out we both stare at it as she sets it on the counter.

“The instructions say to wait two minutes to read the result. Be sure to read the result before ten minutes have passed,” I tell her.

With my hands gripping the counter, my eyes are locked on the stick as the time slowly passes by. S’belle is pacing the room. My foot taps the floor at a hundred miles an hour. When a blue line appears in the square window, I twist toward her. “It’s turning.”

She looks at her watch, the one I finally had fixed for her. “It says wait two minutes. It hasn’t even been thirty seconds. You shouldn’t be looking yet.”

“I’m impatient and never follow instructions. You know that.”

She gives a little giggle. The one that makes my heart flip.

I decide I’ll pick up the instructions to see what the window means.

“I thought you didn’t follow the instructions.”

“Shhh . . . let me figure this out.”

She rushes over to me and pushes her way under my outstretched arms.

I read out loud with her cocooned inside my arms, “If a blue line appears in the square window within ten minutes, the test has worked.” I continue reading the instructions. “A plus sign in the round window indicates a pregnancy result—”

She pulls the folded paper from my hand.

“Hey, let me finish reading that.”

She holds the stick up. It has the biggest, bluest plus sign displayed in the first window.

Every part of my body hums with a kind of happiness I’ve never felt in my life. “A baby?” Shock takes over.

She nods.

“How?” I ask her.

She grins. “Well, the birds and the bees . . .”

I pull her to me and kiss her, soft and gentle. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I got a second chance at life.

After a few moments she leans back. “I think this explains my mood swings and my puking. My mother told me taking antibiotics makes the pill less effective. I had no idea—”

I shut her up by putting my finger over her lips. “Shhh . . . I don’t care how it happened.”

Her hands go to my cheeks and she holds them there. “Are you sure?”

I nod with emotion clogging my throat. Is she kidding me?

We stare into each other’s eyes for a long while and then I drop to my knees. She follows my movements as I lift her shirt and kiss the shamrock she wears to never forget our first baby. I look up at her and then glide my mouth to kiss above the gleaming green symbol of remembrance. And this time when I look up again I say, “S’belle Wilde, I love you and I promise you forever.”

CHAPTER 38

Happy

Bell

Seven and a half months later

You might be a little horny were the first words I read when I opened a pregnancy book to a random page many months ago. It made me laugh because the description fit. I had bought Ben two books from Fiction Vixen the day I thought I might be pregnant—the first one The Modern Kama Sutra: An Intimate Guide to the Secrets of Erotic Pleasure and the second Finding Out You’re Pregnant. It was the latter that shared that helpful tidbit with me. Once we both calmed our racing nerves in the bathroom, we went back to our table and decided food to go would be best. I was ready to leave my refuge and go home. I just wanted to be alone with Ben.

Sex with Ben has always been . . . well, amazing. And in the past several months my need for him has been off the charts. When we were first together I knew that what we had was different. I don’t know how I knew—I just did. And no one I was with after him had ever made me feel the way he does. Everything about him, every touch, caress, word, and whisper, makes my body come alive. It still does. And now even though my belly is swollen beyond belief as I enter my ninth month of pregnancy, I want him more than ever.

Ben doesn’t mind at all. He’s happy to indulge my every need—whether it’s a slice of triple-crusted pie from Four & Twenty Blackbirds at midnight, or my weird craving for vegetables, especially carrots with lemon juice drizzled over them, or of course my constant arousal. He likes that my br**sts are bigger—a fact that amazes him on a daily basis. The Kama Sutra book has come in handy because as my body has changed, our favorite sexual positions have grown uncomfortable and some aren’t even feasible.

We’ve had to get very creative and experiment with different ways to please ourselves. We take turns picking new positions to attempt. It’s been so much fun.

After showering, I tug the towel off my head and let my hair dangle in curls, patting the water from it.

He picks up the book as I walk into the bedroom and with complete focus looks through it.

I point to one of the drawings. “That one.”

He strokes his chin. “You think? I’m not sure about the leg placement.”

I giggle and toss the book aside, throwing myself back on the mattress and bringing him with me. “Let’s make something up.”

Both of our towels come undone. “Sounds like a plan,” he growls.

It’s not an exaggeration that we have sex at least twice a day. I made the mistake of telling my new girlfriend Summer from Lamaze and I don’t think she believed me. We took a spin class together and when we went to the juice bar afterward, I told her my vagina was really sore and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to have sex tonight.

Her head snapped to mine as she rubbed her own swollen belly. “You’re still having sex?” She went on to say, “God, that’s the last thing I feel like doing.” And then she laughed.