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Granted, it was the best tomato soup I’d ever eaten in my life. While Janus and Leander disappeared every morning, I slept in—I was so sleepy lately!—then dragged my achy body out of bed somewhere around noon.
Milo had breakfast waiting for me, usually just some toasted ciabatta slices. Then I’d make my way out onto the sunny balcony to watch the bustling city while I tried to get the food down. Then I’d get started on what was always an overwhelming amount of email.
Leander’s last movie Trapdoor was still making big numbers at the box office over a month after release and Hollywood was realizing he was the new It Guy. So everyone wanted him for their new project. So many scripts and project offers were coming in, along with requests for interviews and appearances, Milo and I were kept just as busy as the twins.
Leander had gotten his way—when didn’t he?—and I’d visited a doctor of his choosing the second week after we’d arrived. At least she’d been a kindly Italian woman who spoke excellent English. She’d made me feel at ease as she led me through a few non-invasive tests and let me hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
I sobbed at hearing proof of the little creature inside me. It made it feel far more real. I’d refused to let anyone in the appointment with me—my own little rebellion at Leander’s controlling nature. The nurse made a recording of the heartbeat for the twins to listen to later since they couldn’t take the day off training.
From the dates of my last period cycle, the doctor gave us a likely window of conception dates. Milo was there with me, plus the doctor gave me her notes in a report for Leander.
He read it that night with a furrow in his brow before Janus yanked the paper out of his hand. Janus’s eyes scanned the paper quickly and then a grin broke out on his face.
“Ha!” Janus said. “The doc says she got knocked up right after she first started working for us. It could have been that first time we fucked on the plane before she even started the pill. So either of us could be the father.”
Janus pulled me close and cupped my cheeks. “Our baby could be mine.” He grinned down at me like I was everything in the world to him.
“Or not,” Leander snapped. “She could have lied about being a virgin and been knocked up before she ever started working for us.”
Janus let go of my cheeks and spun to look at his brother, standing between me and him like a shield. “Fuck off. You felt her. She was a goddamned virgin and you can get the fuck out of here if you’re going to talk to the mother of my child like that.”
Leander scoffed. “There’s every chance that’s my baby in there. Way more chances, in fact.”
“Well, at least you’re admitting it,” Milo said softly from behind me.
Leander spun on his friend like he was part of a mutiny, then headed for the door. “I’m hitting the weight room. And if you don’t want to lose the job as my double, brother, you better join me so your muscles keep up with mine.”
He slammed out the door of the apartment the studio had put us up in. Janus had given me a squeeze. “Such exciting news, honey,” and then he’d gone off to join his brother.
And so it went. Leander didn’t sleep with us anymore. He took a bed in one of the other rooms in the four-bedroom apartment while Janus and Milo snuggled up with me each night. I was most often nauseated again at night, so there wasn’t a lot of funny business going on, just them sandwiching me as we all snuggled up to sleep. Apart from a few hours in the afternoon where the nausea let up, I was usually curled up and glad I could work from bed.
A little more than five weeks after we’d gotten there, Milo was out getting groceries and the nausea was manageable. I was out on the balcony doing some work, when I set down my laptop and looked out on the city.
I was in one of the most amazing, historic countries in the world and I’d been tucked up in this stupid apartment. I looked around and put a hand on the beautiful, tiled balcony. Sorry, apartment, you’re gorgeous, I didn’t mean it. It really was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever stayed. I just had a hella case of cabin fever.
I put a hand on my tummy. I’d had no clue pregnancy could be this wretched. Never again, I swore. It must have been men who’d named it morning sickness. Trying to trick us women into having their spawn. Because it was all day sickness, truth be told!
