I’m starting my family, with or without a partner.
And I’m completely draining my savings account because IVF is expensive AF.
Yikes.
As soon as I click Submit to make my appointment, I take a deep breath and sit back. In one week, I could be pregnant, on my way to becoming a single mom, broke as hell but living my dream.
Now I just have to find the right way to tell my family, all the awesome people who helped me celebrate my birthday tonight. I know they’ll be happy for me, and they’ll help me raise this baby… but I honestly never thought I’d say, “Mom, Dad, guess who just got inseminated?”
I set my laptop aside and lie back, falling asleep to visions of baby booties and chubby cheeks.
2
Nash
“Come on, hurry!”
I chuckle as my four-year-old niece, Chelsea, does her damnedest to drag my two-hundred-pound ass to the door. She’s got her hands wrapped around two of my fingers and she’s giving it all she’s got.
“Hey, be nice or Uncle Nash isn’t going to want to stay with us next time he’s on leave,” my sister, Quinn, says as she holds Chelsea’s backpack out to her.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Can’t fault the kid for loving the library.”
I take her backpack because Chelsea is still trying to drag me across the room. It’s empty right now, but after storytime I know this little bookworm isn’t going to want to leave the library until it’s full. Quinn and her husband, Owen, have been raising a voracious reader and it’s pretty darn cute.
“Are you sure you don’t mind taking her?” Quinn asks me. “I’d normally go too, it’s just that I’ve got this conference call…”
“Are you kidding? Chelsea and I are gonna tear it up at storytime,” I say with a grin just before I finally give in to Chelsea’s frantic pleas. “Okay, let’s go!”
“Yay!”
We walk the couple of blocks to the Golden Creek Library, Chelsea skipping and grinning the whole way. It’s times like these I wish I was home more often. Don’t get me wrong, being a U.S. Army soldier is the best damn job in the world and I’m never bored when I’m deployed. But my niece is growing up fast and I’ve missed a lot. Seems like just last week that I was in Japan and Quinn was video chatting with me, bragging that Chelsea had started to crawl.
Inside the library, we follow the sound of kids chattering and running around, and find the children’s department. Chelsea immediately breaks off from me to say hi to some storytime friends, and I hang back with the other parents.
“Okay, everybody, inside voices,” someone says, coming into the room. I turn my head and my chest instantly tightens with desire.
The children’s librarian is goddamn smokin’.
She’s got rich, chocolatey brown hair and deep blue eyes, with fringe across her forehead that gives her a good-girl vibe… but what I notice most are her curves. She’s plump and soft in all the right places, and when her eyes catch mine across the room, I have a few thoughts that are definitely not appropriate for storytime.
Damn, she’s beautiful… I was not expecting that, and it only makes me want to volunteer to bring Chelsea to the library whenever she asks for the handful of days I’m in town.
“I’m Miss Nora,” she says to the kids gathering around her, smiling and getting down on their level as she pulls a picture book off a shelf. “And today we’re going to read The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say Moo.”
I lean against the back wall and watch Chelsea plop down on the carpet, right in the front like the little teacher’s pet her mother always was growing up. Nora invites all the other kids to sit close, not minding when one of them climbs right into her lap, and opens the book. The material is a bit too childish for me, personally, but I gotta say, I’m rapt nonetheless.
Nora’s got an instant connection with these kids—Chelsea is hanging on her every word… and I can’t tear my eyes off her either.
While she reads, I try to rationalize it. I’ve been surrounded by a buncha hard-faced soldiers for months, not a drop of estrogen around. I must just be reacting to the soft curls of Nora’s hair, the femininity of her curves in that floral-print dress. It’s normal, right, for a guy like me to go on leave and have the strong urge to clear all these kids out of here so I can push this sexy librarian up against the stacks and take her?
Well… normal for guys like me, but not me.
I’ve never been that type, honestly. I appreciate a gorgeous woman when I see one, but I’m not into meaningless sex and a little part of my mind is always present, reminding me that the military comes first and it’s only a matter of time before I deploy again. So I restrain myself, I don’t let my fantasies run wild.
Until her. She’s something else.
After storytime ends, the kids all get up and a lot of them disperse, off to whatever Sunday afternoon activity comes next. Chelsea runs up to me and says in a cute little-kid lisp, “I want to read more bunny books!”
“Hmm, okay,” I say. The only titles I can think of are Pat the Bunny and Watership Down, and I can’t imagine either of them are right for a four-year-old.
Luckily, the sexy librarian overhears us and offers to help. She guides Chelsea over to a shelf of picture books about animals, and pulls a few of them out for her. While my niece pores over her options, Nora stands next to me and says, “I haven’t seen you at storytime before. Your wife usually brings Chelsea.”
“Wife?” I say, brow furrowing for an instant before
