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Fifteen
“Have your assistant return everything but this.” Pen held up a tiny pair of shoes. “I can’t part with these even though they’re hysterically overpriced. The rest of it I can shop for online.” She stood over the boutique baby clothes spread on Zach’s king-size bed, her hands on her hips. There was a line in the center of her brows communicating her worry.
“Why?” He slid out of his suit jacket and hung it in his closet.
“Because a growing baby doesn’t need extravagant—” she gestured to the stacks of gender-neutral clothing “—everything.”
She’d set up the visit to the baby boutique for Saturday afternoon, and then they did something he’d never pictured himself doing. They shopped for their future son or daughter.
He’d purchased the clothing, shoes and toys that he and Pen carried out in the boutique’s signature shiny bags, but he didn’t stop there. He’d also snapped several pictures of furniture with his iPhone and sent them to his interior designer. Like right now, Pen had loved it but protested the inflated price tag.
“No one needs extravagant everything,” Zach commented, unbuttoning his shirt. Pen paused, a yellow stuffed elephant rattle in her hand, and watched. He liked the way she looked at him—like he was her next meal. “Come take your clothes off.”
“There’s an invitation,” she said with a laugh.
She tossed the elephant aside and came to him in the closet. Her eyes were sleepy despite it being hours before bedtime. After a shopping excursion and a late lunch, she looked beat. Not that it hindered her beauty at all.
Holding herself steady on the closet’s interior wall, she slipped off one high-heeled shoe and then the other.
“Ah, so much better.”
He’d lectured her nonstop about the damn shoes. It hadn’t done any good.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said, shrugging off his shirt and tossing it into a hamper, “our child is entitled to have as many extravagant things as we see fit.”
Her eyes roamed over his bare chest and he sucked in a breath to expand it farther. She smiled and gave him a playful shove.
“That’s what I’d like to avoid. An entitled child.” She turned and lifted her hair and he pulled down the delicate zipper holding her dress closed. “I want our son or daughter to be loved and know that ‘stuff’ doesn’t matter.”
Zach ran his fingers down her exposed back, pausing at her bra strap. “This, too?”
She eyed him over her shoulder, a spark of want in her eyes mingling with the fatigue. As tempting as it was to seduce her, he’d digress.
“I’m going to work at home for a bit. Why not grab a nap?”
She slipped out of her dress, revealing smooth skin and a softly rounding belly. His chest flooded with possessiveness.
She covered her stomach and her brows bent.
He moved her hand and gave her a smile. “I like watching the changes in your body.”
She cocked her head as if to challenge him. “You mean my growing girth?”
“You’re making a human being. That takes up some real estate.” It was a miracle in every sense of the word. “It’s okay to take a break.”
“I’ll relax, but I want to keep my eye on the internet for our inevitable online debut.”
The photographer had shown up like Pen arranged, snapping pictures of them inside the store through the windows as well as from across the street when they left the baby boutique.
“Right. The blogger.”
“Not just any blogger.” She hung her white dress and pulled on a pair of stretchy pale-pink pants.
He wanted to dispute the long white shirt covering her, until he realized he could see the shape of her nipples and the swell of her heavy breasts outlined by the thin fabric.
“The Dallas Duchess,” Pen stated with a gesture that sent her breasts jiggling.
He pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and slipped into a pair of tennis shoes. “And she’s important, I gather.”
