Page 30 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
5
Georgie
“Is everything okay?” Bobby asked, pushing his glasses to the bridge of his nose.
Georgie tightened her grip on Jordan’s hand. “Yes, everything is…fine.”
As fine as one can be after discovering an eight-week-old blueberry-sized human had set up camp in your uterus and learned that a hoard of people had just watched them perform act one of the first act of theNaughty Rancher’s Daughter.
Concern marred Hector’s expression as he lowered his voice and spoke to the marketing and PR employees. The group headed back to the other side of the office when Barry looked over his shoulder and caught her gaze.
“Barry, would you mind staying as well?” she asked.
Barry had been with them from the beginning. The easygoing producer had been by their side during the Battle of the Blogs, and like Hector and Bobby, he’d become like family.
“Sure, Georgie,” the man said, pressing a button on the wall that activated the retractable divider to close.
Hector paced in front of them. “It’s the whole outdoors angle, isn’t it? You think it will be like that awful boot camp the Denver Wedding Frau made you attend before you got married where you had to bring your own pooper scooper.”
“Shit shovel,” she and Jordan said in unison as a chill traveled down her spine.
That implement from hell would haunt them forever.
Bobby gave them a sympathetic grin. “We promise that there won’t be any camping involved. The team thought it would be great for you to branch out and highlight some of the attractions the state has to offer, and the Colorado office of tourism also reached out to us. They’d love to have you as ambassadors. And it’s not all extreme sports. They’d mentioned having you visit some of the city’s small breweries, and they even suggested a trip to the Western slope to check out Colorado’s vineyards and budding wine industry. The sky’s the limit!”
While partaking in wine tastings and extreme sports to showcase the state would be an incredible opportunity, it didn’t exactly fit into the parameters of a safe pregnancy.
“That all sounds great,” she answered warily, sharing a look with her husband.
“Interesting ideas,” he added, but the concern in his eyes signaled his unease.
Hector gestured to a pair of sofas, and they settled themselves.
“I feel abutcoming on,” the man said, catching Bobby’s eye.
This was the moment she’d been dreading since the first pair of pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test this morning. The moment she’d realized the plans she and Jordan had made had to be scrapped.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t want her baby. She did. Sweet blueberry pineapple surprise, she did!
The minute that alien peanut showed up on the screen, she knew it was meant to be. What she didn’t have the answer to was what happens next, followed quickly by a sense of panic, not knowing the first thing about raising a child.
She loved her mom, but the woman had her quirks when it came to parenting. When she was a girl, Lorraine Vanderdinkle’s idea of mother-daughter bonding had been to spend the weekend in a hotel ballroom, wearing enough rouge to make a newscaster cringe and jamming high heels onto her little feet so she could parade on stage in a beauty pageant.
She didn’t want to be that kind of mother. She wanted to shower her child with books and days spent staring at the sky, searching for cloud-shaped animals. She wanted to sing songs and finger paint. With Jordan on one side and her on the other, she’d imagined swinging their little one between them as they enjoyed a meandering walk.
But what if her child wanted to be in beauty pageants?
Would she be like her mother and deny the wish because it wasn’t in line with her taste?
While they were on their honeymoon, between bouts of mind-blowing sex, they’d planned their future.
Their love story unfolded over a handful of months. Their honeymoon in Fiji had been their first real vacation. Lying in the shade of a cluster of leafy palm trees, they’d listened to the ocean’s calming melody as they’d laughed and dreamed, talking of the future and the adventures to come.
A future that included growing their brand and their businesses. Jordan wanted to branch out and open gyms in other parts of the city, and she had dreams of doing the same with her bookstore. They wanted to travel and share their More Than Just a Number philosophy all over the world. Yes, it would be a lot of work, but they’d be in it together. CityBeat’s sweethearts. Partners. A team. A perfect pair.
The idea of turning their duet into a trio hadn’t even popped up.
Like some abstract concept, she’d wanted to become a mother—someday.
