Page 68 of Jake and Conner
My guests all seemed pretty happy with it too.
Mary finished her slice and went back for seconds in record time, and Hope followed on her heel as if she had to make sure her older sister didn't get more cake than she did. "What are you going to call the baby?" she asked as she sat back down in one of the chairs opposite me and Conner. Hope was nearly seventeen but she'd never lost that wide-eyed way of looking at the world that she'd had when I first got to know her as a baby. "I can't believe I'm going to be an aunt," she said. "I don't feel old enough to be an aunt."
"We're all getting older," Mary said, digging into her second slice of cake. "Whatareyou going to call the baby, though?" she asked then, glancing at Conner.
"We haven't decided," Conner said, truthfully. "We don't even know the sex yet, which makes it harder."
"Yeah." I laid an arm around Conner's shoulder. "And if we had decided, we wouldn't tell you."
"No fair," Livvy spoke up. "Don't stick my niece or nephew with a horrible name."
"As if." I scoffed. "Give me a little more credit, Liv-Liv," I said, referencing the name she demanded to be called by when she was a toddler.
In response, she scrunched up her nose and focused on her cake again.
Conner chuckled. "I'm sure we'll come up with something good."
My little sister shot my boyfriend a skeptical look, but didn't say anymore.
"I'm excited to meet the baby," Hope announced with a smile so bright it lit up the whole room.
"So are we," I said in response, kissing Conner's cheek. It wasn't a lie. I couldn'twaitto meet the little one and start this new chapter in our lives. I was ready for this, and I thought that by the way Conner grinned at me, maybe he was ready for this too. I was feeling optimistic, anyway. Even if we still needed to have a talk--but that was going to have to wait until after the baby shower. After all the work I'd put into this, I didn't want to spoil the day. So we finished eating the cake--or most of it, anyway--we played a silly game where our guests had to bob for pacifiers in a tub of water, which Livvy turned out to be surprisingly good at, and then Conner unwrapped his presents. We were given a lot of cute onesies, a good supply of diapers, bottles and pacifiers, a tiny hot water bottle for the baby with a penguin on it, a baby monitor and a ton of other things were undoubtedly going to prove invaluable.
We thanked everyone more than once, and we silently agreed not to unwrap Mrs. Rosewood's gift until all our guests had left--which turned out to be the right course of action.
"Look at this," Conner said, holding up the two pieces of underwear he had unwrapped when we were finally alone.
"Is that the same underwear she sells at Raphael's studio?" I asked.
"I'm not sure." He turned the clothes over in his hands. "These have, uh... conveniently placed holes."
I took the woolen underwear from him. It felt soft and warm in my hands and I thought maybe it wasn't so bad, but then I noticed what Conner had been talking about. This underwear was clearly designed so that if both participants were wearing it, you could have sex without taking it off. "That's... interesting," I concluded, stifling a laugh. Old Mrs. Rosewood was never going to change, was she?
"You think that's interesting?" Conner shook his head at me. "I wonder how she comes up with these things."
I only shrugged. "She probably has a lot of time when she's not out there educating young omegas and alphas about life and healthy sexual behavior."
"I guess if knitting keeps her from doingthat, then it's a good use of her time."
"Probably." I licked my lips, thinking about how I could segue into the next thing that Conner and I needed to discuss. "You know, she said some other interesting things today."
"Yeah?" Conner shot me a curious look as I laid the underwear aside.
"Seems that Raphael told her something you didn't want him to tell anyone."
Conner's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean?"
"She made it sound like something happened at that demonstration you attended together."
"Oh, that." Conner glanced at the shelves to left of the couch, as if the sight of the books lined up there gave him some sort of comfort. "It was nothing."
But he knew that it wasn't nothing. I could tell by the way he tensed. It wasn't obvious, not like his whole body gone rigid next to mine or anything, but I knew him well enough to know all his little tells. When his eyebrows drew together like that and his shoulders squared, he was about to dig his heels in on a topic he expected me to argue with him.
So I decided to throw him for a loop. "Raphael told me," I said. "I agree that it probably wasn't a big deal."
Conner stared at me in disbelief. "You do?"
It was hard to keep myself from grinning at the look on his face, but somehow, I managed. "Yeah. I know you fainted and I'm not freaking out. I think I deserve some credit for that. I'm really trying here."
