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EPILOGUE
BELINDA, FOUR YEARS LATER
“Thanks for meeting me here after work today instead of waiting for the weekend. What do you think?” Austin looks around the townhouse the real estate agent is showing us. “It’s close to downtown, but not right in it; it’s the size we want; it has the amenities we want; and it’s a nice neighborhood. Do you like it?”
I bite my lip. “It’s…nice.” It is, in fact. And if I didn’t know what I found out over my lunch break, I’d tell him to go ahead and put an offer on it.
But I do know what I know.
“I think we’d better snap it up,” my husband warns. “If we don’t make an offer, it’ll be gone pretty fast.”
I make an equivocal noise and tilt my head from side to side.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing wrong, exactly.” I sigh. “I think it’s a little smaller than I wanted.”
“Oh.” He sounds surprised. “I thought we only wanted two bedrooms. It’s just the two of us. And when we start our family, we can always sell this and buy a bigger house.”
“Well,” I say, disconcerted, “it’s just that I think we should go ahead and look for a bigger house now, instead of waiting.”
Austin stares at me for a second. Then his eyes narrow and he turns back to the realtor. “Thanks for showing us the property this afternoon, Warren. I guess we’re looking for something bigger, though.” There’s a very slight questioning tone in his voice.
“Three bedrooms minimum,” I say to the realtor, who nods in understanding.
“I can check over my listings and get back to you this evening, if that suits.” A thought occurs to him. “Unless you’ve seen something else you’d like to get a closer look at?”
“No, I don’t have anything specific in mind.”
Austin gives me a sidelong glance. He’s suspicious, as well he might be.
I’d planned on making this announcement after a really nice dinner at home this evening, but he’d been so insistent on the phone about me coming to see this townhouse, I figured I’d better make the effort. But it just won’t do.
“Well, thanks anyway, Warren,” Austin says, and we step outside the townhouse while Warren locks up and then waves goodbye.
“What’s going on?” Austin asks grimly. “You’re not just angling for a bigger house, right? You wouldn’t be—”
“I’m pregnant,” I say.
We hadn’t been trying. But we hadn’t been preventing it, either.
And now look what’s happened: we made a tiny version of us. I’m so happy I can hardly speak.
Austin is competely at a loss for words. His jaw drops, and he starts to say something but the words won’t come out. I realize that his dark eyes are full of tears. “You’re sure?” he whispers, taking my face in his hands.
I nod, blinking the happy tears out of my own eyes. “I’m at seven weeks now. I already called the doctor to make an appointment.”
He kisses me, then pulls me into his arms to hold me tight. I can feel his heart beating fast against my cheek. “Oh, Belinda. Oh, my love. We made a baby.”
“We did,” I agree, and let the tears flow. “It’s an everyday miracle, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Austin puts his hand on my still-flat stomach. “I can’t believe it,” he says in an awed voice, then laughs. “Well, okay. You win. We’ll find a bigger house.”
I nod.
“But for now…” He picks me up and carries me to his car. He deposits me carefully into the passenger seat. “Right now, we need to go home, and I need to be in the middle of you, deep as I can get.”
A wave of desire swamps me, and I have to shake my head to clear it.
“After all,” he says, getting into the driver’s seat, “this is the last first time I’ll ever kiss my pregnant wife.”
We share a tender smile, and then he leans over to kiss me, his tongue warm on my lips and then on my own tongue, desire flooding me again. And then we go back to our apartment to make love—for the last first time.
But not for the last time.
There’s so much life ahead.
