Page 19 of One Last Time

“Hey,” he replied.

“One last time, right?”

Andino nodded. “One last time, babe. I was thinking …”

“Do you do that often?”

He bared his teeth, muttering, “Smart ass.”

She was.

And he loved it, too.

“What were you thinking?”

“Giovanni Andino,” he said. “For a name.”

Right.

Because if this worked, they were guaranteed a boy. Wasn’t that what the doctor had said at their last appointment? All the embryos left were genetically male.

“I like that,” Haven said. “Might be more than one.”

Her husband chuckled. “Giovanni for the first, then.”

A flutter of worry slipped through Haven’s heart. “But what if—”

“No buts. No what ifs. None of it.”

She let out a hard breath.

Andino leaned in and kissed her cheek. It was enough to settle the raging war of emotions in her heart. People couldn’t possibly know unless they were the ones going through the same thing as her, but this wasn’t easy.

Not on the mind.

The body.

Or the heart.

Nothing about infertility was easy.

“Giovanni Andino,” he told her. “No matter what.”

Haven nodded. “No matter what.”

That would be his name.

ELEVEN

“Daddy?”

Andino glanced up from the rim of the glass of cognac he’d been swirling and sipping to see his oldest daughter lingering just beyond his office doorway. A smile crept over his lips as her big eyes grew wide, and in silent question, she raised the item in her hands for him to see a little better.

A book.

“Would you?” Lynn asked.

Shit.