He was ours.

Even our little Princess Ming knew it.

I was no more controlled, stroking his back, his little hands, bending to rub my lips on his slumbering, baby soft cheek.

Tristan held him without complaint, often shutting his eyes and pressing his cheek or lips to our baby boy’s head.  It was official.  We’d been through hell, but here we were, in our own little slice of heaven.


TWO YEARS LATER


I had the kids over at Bev’s house for some girl time.  Nikolaj was climbing all over Bev, and Ming was getting her hair braided by Frankie.  It was a pretty typical Thursday afternoon for us all.

Except that it suddenly wasn’t.  Frankie had just asked me the strangest thing, and then Bev’s response had absolutely floored me.  I just sat there in stunned silence for a while, trying to figure it all out.

Frankie and Estella wanted a baby, but they were missing one of the important ingredients to make one, so they were in need of a donor.

“Estella wants to breed a linebacker, I think,” Frankie joked, but she looked ill at ease.  This couldn’t be an easy thing to ask somebody.

And…”why are you asking me?  Shouldn’t you be asking Tristan about this?”

“No, I think this is the proper course of action,” Bev butted in.  “What could he say, without your permission?”

She had a point.

“But now I just need his permission,” I said numbly.

“If you told him you were okay with it, he’d do it,” Frankie pointed out.  And she was right.

“Which one of you wants to carry the baby?” Bev asked her.

Frankie’s nose wrinkled up.  “We’re working that out.  You’re going to think we’re demented, but we both want to get pregnant.”

Bev nodded.  “Yes, you’re right.  I do think you’re both demented.  Danika, aren’t you guys trying to adopt again?”

I nodded.  “Yes.  Domestically, this time.  You know how it goes, though.  A lot of waiting.  We are very lucky we got our first two babies as fast as we did.”

“I might have an idea that will give both you and Estella a chance to go through a pregnancy,” Bev said quietly to Frankie, as sweet Nikolaj kissed her all over the face.  He was the most affectionate boy.

That stumped me, and I just stared at her.

“Oh yeah?” Frankie asked her, sounding just as stumped.

“One of you can get inseminated, and the other can act as a surrogate for Tristan and Danika.  A baby for everyone.”

Cue the long pause.

I blinked.  Several times.  “Bev, you know I had a hysterectomy.”

She was unfazed.  “I also know they were able to leave your ovaries intact.  There’s a chance you can still produce eggs, my dear.  And eggs, combined with sperm and a surrogate makes baby.  And these two lunatics want to get pregnant.  There are no certainties, but it’s certainly worth looking into.  The stars seem to be aligning for this.”

“I feel a double pregnancy coming on,” Frankie said, looking just thrilled about it.

I felt like an idiot.  I’d heard the lingo, but I’d never even realized that you could produce eggs after a hysterectomy.

After the idea was presented, I was afraid to even give it too much thought.  Though I did tell Tristan, the moment I saw him.

“Frankie and Estella want your sperm for their baby,” I began.

He blinked, then bent down and kissed me on the nose.  “Will they buy me dinner first?”

I rolled my eyes and tried to stifle a smile, then waited patiently while our children mobbed him.  He had one smiling child on each hip when he looked at me again.  “How do you feel about this?”

I chewed on my lip, but this was the easy part.  “I’m okay with it.  I’m excited for them.  I want another baby, too.  For us.”

Ming chimed in loudly that she would also like another baby.  She was baby crazed.

“Well yeah.  We’ve already decided we’re having at least two more.  We just have to be patient.”

I didn’t bring up the second part until the kids were sound asleep in their rooms, and we were in our kinky bed.

I was naked and straddling him.  I’d just given him a hell of a ride, and we were both still panting from our efforts.

He was rubbing the side of my thigh with one hand, my bad knee with the other, and looking at my body in a way that let me know he was quickly going to be ready for a second round.

“There’s a chance I can still produce eggs,” I told him.

He sat up, then flipped us both until I was on my back, and he was looming over me.  “I don’t understand.”  He started playing with my clit, watching the action with enthralled attention, still half buried in me.  Clearly, this was not the best time to bring it up.

“Frankie said she’d be a surrogate for us, and there’s a chance I can still produce eggs.”

He pulled his hand back, looking confused.  “I don’t understand.”

“I guess they were able to leave my ovaries intact with my hysterectomy.”

“I didn’t know they could do that.”

“Yeah, me neither.  What do you think?  About giving it a try?”

“I’m happy with whatever makes you happy.  I want more kids, but I’m not at all picky about how we get them.”

God, I adored this man, every single inch of him.

Though a few minutes later, I might have loved several specific inches of him best.

Of course, there were a million ifs and plenty of odds not working in our favor.  All three of us were over thirty.  After a lot of stressful doctor’s visits and nerve-wracking test results, Estella and Frankie wound up being pregnant at the same time.  They even wound up with close to the same due date.

Frankie was carrying our baby, Estella theirs.  And coincidentally, Bianca and James finally decided to get pregnant around that time.  There were a solid twelve months in there where the four of us couldn’t be in the same room without talking about all things baby.  I loved it.

Jared Jeremiah Vega was born huge and healthy.

Tristan couldn’t stop crying when he wrote that name down on the birth certificate.

He was born only five days past his due date, but weighed in at a whopping eleven pounds.  Frankie blamed Tristan one hundred percent for that, and cursed him up and down every single time she saw him for nearly a year.

Maria Sosa-Abelli was born just days after Jared.  She was only five pounds, but healthy and beautiful.

Ming was in heaven.  “We have so many babies now!” she said, twirling her pink dress around like a mad woman.

None of the adults in the room could stop laughing about that.

Nikolaj didn’t care for the hospital, but agreed that his little brother was, “Pwetty cool.”

We’d had to buy a mini-van.  I was in heaven.  We had so many kids that I was officially a min-van mom.  We loaded them all up and took our Jared home.

We didn’t sleep the first night.  When I say we, I mean all of us.  Tristan and I couldn’t tear ourselves away from the nursery, and Ming wouldn’t stay in her bed.  Even Nikolaj couldn’t stop coming to check on his new brother.

“Why did we name him Jared, Daddy?” Ming asked between adoring glances at her baby brother.

He got choked up at the question, but eventually, haltingly, he started to tell our Ming the story of his brother, Jared.  It was an important story, and though she wasn’t old enough to really understand it now, I knew that we would be sure to teach her that, though those we loved may die, our love could keep them close to us forever.

Ming fell asleep halfway through his story, sitting on his lap in the rocking chair.  He just held her closer, kissing her on the top of the head.  Nikolaj had fallen asleep in his other arm a while back.

I was sitting in a rocking chair facing his, cradling Jared in my arms.

We shared a look.  What a journey it had been.  I had a whole lot of happy under my belt these days, but never in my life had I been so happy as I was in that exact moment.

“I love you,” I mouthed at him.

He flashed one ruinous dimple at me.  “Love you more.”


BOOKS BY R.K. LILLEY

IN FLIGHT (UP IN THE AIR #1)

MILE HIGH (UP IN THE AIR #2)

GROUNDED (UP IN THE AIR #3)

LANA (AN UP IN THE AIR NOVELLA)

BREATHING FIRE (HERETIC DAUGHTERS #1)

BAD THINGS (TRISTAN & DANIKA #1)

ROCK BOTTOM (TRISTAN & DANIKA #2)

LOVELY TRIGGER (TRISTAN & DANIKA #3) 

AND COMING SOON…

THE WILD SIDE (A NOVEL)

CROSSING FIRE (HERETIC DAUGHTERS #2)

MR. BEAUTIFUL (UP IN THE AIR #4)


Thanks so much for reading this series!  Keep up to date on all of my current and future projects at www.rklilley.com, and if you liked this book, please, please, please, review and tell all of your friends!