Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“This weekend,” Haven said, “if I don’t go into labor naturally.”
“Worried?” Catherine asked.
Haven shrugged as the server approached their table. “Not really—more about how they plan to induce me, and less about the birth itself. I mean, I have kind of came to the conclusion that I won’t be able to control anything about the birth. I say I’ll do it all naturally, and then I have false contractions for like five hours, and I seriously start to consider an epidural. So, let’s just wait and see how it goes.”
“I get that.”
Siena made a face. “I hear the drip is ... rough.”
“Right? Anyway, I am trying everything to get this girl to come out on her own before the weekend so I don’t have to worry about it.”
“The usual, ladies?”
The server hadn’t even bothered to pull the pad and pen out of her apron. All the employees at Andino’s restaurant were used to seeing Haven come in and out, not for the last few months ... Catherine, Siena, and Haven all made an effort to come each Wednesday to have breakfast, a late brunch, or lunch depending on their schedules. Sometimes, it was just Siena and Haven, if Catherine was out the state for work, too.
Nonetheless, they were used to them.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Catherine said, “oh, and that raspberry tea for Haven.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“I heard it’s good for dilation.”
Haven considered that. “Fine, I’ll suck it up.”
“So, you’re really trying everything?” Siena asked, grinning just a bit.
“Pretty much.”
“I mean ... everything?”
Even Catherine snickered at that.
Haven blamed it on mommy brain, even if her baby wasn’t born yet—wait, was pregnancy brain a thing, too?—why she couldn’t figure out what Siena was trying to say. “Why are you both snickering like teenage girls?”
“Sex,” Catherine said, reaching across the table to snag a packet of sugar for the coffee the server had poured into her mug. “She’s asking if you’re having a lot of sex, and if so, we hope it’s been good sex.”
Just like that, Haven understood.
Her cheeks pinked.
The easy answer?
And the obvious one?
Yes.
Actually, she swore from the moment Andino knew she was pregnant, it was like his desire to fuck jumped up a notch or two. Not like he didn’t already try to get her horizontal on whatever flat surface that he could whenever he had the chance, but add pregnancy to it, and the man was fucking insatiable.
It didn’t matter how big she got, or the fact that with being bigger came difficulties which made them need to figure out more interesting ways to get the deed done ... he still loved it, and frankly, so did she.
Sex was great when pregnant.
Nerves for days.
And that man found every single one of them.
“Well?” Siena asked.
Haven grinned. “Yeah, that, too.”
“Get it as much as you can now,” Catherine said, winking, “because once the princess is here, you know what they say ... at least for a little while, there’ll be none of that.”
“Shame, that is.”
She meant that, too. In every sense of the word.
Their laughter drew attention again.
Haven didn’t care.
Women should draw attention.
Girls made the world go round.
She rubbed her stomach again, feeling the baby shift under her palm, reminding her that soon ... she would be adding another girl to their little crew. She couldn’t wait.
Women
“Are you going back inside?” Lucian asked.
“Yeah,” Dante added, shooting Andino a smirk, “isn’t that where you’re supposed to be?”
Andino ignored his uncles’ teasing. His father, leaning against the railing of the back porch while they enjoyed the sun just beginning to set and the comfortable weather, tipped his beer up for a long swig, shaking his head all the while.
“He was told to stay the fuck out of the kitchen for a while.”
Dante arched a brow. “Why?”
“She’s in pain.”
“And? That’s—”
“I figure when she threatens to cut off my balls, and considering they set her up in the middle of the kitchen in that pool, so she’s closer to the knife drawer ...” Andino trailed off, shrugging his broad shoulders. “I’m not stupid, that’s all.”
Lucian chuckled. “Never thought we’d be doing a willing home birth in the family.”
Yeah.
Andino, neither.
He didn’t say that out loud, however.
Yes, he would much prefer putting his wife in a damn hospital while she birthed their first baby girl. With doctors and nurses and pain medication and whatever else she needed right at her fingertips whenever she was ready to demand it.
She wanted that, too, at first.
Hell, right up until this past week, she wanted that. And then the doctors kept saying inducing. Shit like medical intervention. She looked at him one night in their bed and just asked, “Why won’t they let my body do what it’s supposed to do? Why are they trying to make it do what they want it to do?”
And just like that, with only a few days to plan, their birth plan changed.