Shopping for a CEO's Baby (Shopping for a Billionaire Series Book 16), стр. 37
“Amanda.” His voice always gives me shivers, because Terry sounds like Barry White. Like everyone else, his eyes drift to my belly. “Can't believe I'll have two nephews soon. How are you feeling?”
“Heavily occupied. Literally.”
He laughs and looks around. “Nice place your mom has.”
“You've never been here before?”
He shakes his head. “No. I like Newton, though.”
“It's not quite JP.”
Before he can reply, Andrew walks over, thumbing the slideshow. “Can you believe Dad gave Pam those photos?”
“He has a soft spot for her. And it's great to see them again.” Terry frowns. “But notice how none of them have Mom in the picture?”
“I'm sure those just haven't been rotated through yet. Plus, she was probably taking the photos.” Andrew’s involuntarily first response is to defend James.
“Right. Sure.” Terry doesn't back down so much as he backs off, easily. “I'll bet that's it.”
Andrew's eyes narrow. “How's it going, bro?”
“Fine. I'm working on a cool hydroponics project.”
“Growing pot? Great growth market. We have some advisors helping us to look at capital investments in marijuana that might–”
“No. Tomatoes.”
“What?”
“Tomatoes. Hydroponic tomatoes.”
“Does that scale up?”
“I'll donate the extras to a food bank.”
It's like they're speaking two completely different languages with just enough overlap to make them think they aren't.
“You're learning hydroponics to... garden?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” Andrew blinks. “Want a beer?”
Terry glances at their dad. “Hell, yeah.”
When Shannon and Mom asked me about throwing a baby shower, I had some terms:
1. No games. Marie's rousing rendition of Porn, Labor, or Constipation at Shannon's baby shower scarred me for life.
2. We'll do a video present opening. That's right–nothing live. I have a bladder the size of Ellie's attention span, and also, the thought of smiling nonstop while we open two of everything gives me hives. Carol told me that videotaping the presents was a new thing. I'll add the video to a private YouTube channel and send the link later. This also means giving every single gift its due attention, something I just can’t do at a big bash like this.
3. Cheeto cake.
So far, so good.
A small gasp to my right makes me turn. It's Mom, hand to her mouth, staring at the screen. Following her eyes, I see a picture of my dad cradling baby me in his right arm, holding a wrench in the other hand. Shirtless and very muscular, he has a huge streak of grease across his cheek and is grinning with abandon.
“Who's that hot dude?” Marie asks, spellbound.
Jason clears his throat and whispers in her ear.
“Oops,” she hisses, stuffing a piece of cauliflower in her mouth and chewing with an I'm sorry look at my mom.
“That's Leo?” James asks with a harumph of disapproval.
“Yes,” Mom says. “I–I put that in here because I felt the show should be balanced. I wanted to be fair.”
James suddenly looks a bit sick.
Terry nudges Andrew and gives him a Told you so, bro look that makes me realize he is, without question, a McCormick man.
And then James reaches in his jacket pocket, pulling out an old-fashioned photo envelope from the days when you had film developed. His fingers don't shake as he finds three little square cardboard pieces with film in the center. Mom connected an old slide projector to her more modern one.
James goes to the older device and slips the slides in.
Suddenly, Elena Montgomery McCormick is on my mother's wall, almost life size. She’s sitting on a beach, wearing a late-1980s bikini with a high hip cut. There’s a baby at her breast, two young kids who must be Declan and Terry building a sand castle, and a dark-haired man next to her. Both of them are laughing, the wind whipping through their hair, the picture clearly impromptu.
“Elena,” James says quietly.
“Oh, my God,” Terry says under his breath, emotional restraint barely there. “Mom.”
“I've never seen that picture before,” Shannon says, awe in her voice. “Ellie looks like her.”
“You chose your daughter's name well,” James says gruffly, sucking on the last drops of whisky in his glass. His eyes jump to the sideboard, where spirits rest in bottles.
And, in this house, on walls, too.
Click
The machine pushes the slide to the next one, Elena face-to-face with a cherubic, older baby, one who can't quite walk.
“Is that you?” I ask Andrew, who nods without taking his eyes off the wall.
“You were such a fat baby!” Marie declares, nearly making Andrew choke.
“All of our boys were,” James says, voice going soft. “Elena joked that her milk was Vermont cream.”
For James to comment publicly about breastfeeding is a surprise.
“She was a wonderful mother.” Terry's deep voice cuts through. “And she would have been a tremendous grandmother,” he adds, looking at Pam. “Thankfully, Andrew and Amanda's boys will have you.”
Mom blushes. I can tell she's trying not to cry, and she'll succeed. Never overly emotional in public, Mom has the ability to experience something without reacting to it in real time.
She'll fall apart later.
Click
Toddler Andrew in a pool, swimming with Elena next to him.
The indoor swimming lanes attached to our house, put in place when Andrew was a competitive swimmer, have been under renovation, a crack in the pool disrupting everything. Of all the times not to be able to float and defy gravity.
I rub my belly. The work will be done soon. Seeing a picture of my husband with his mom, his tiny head floating above water, face screwed in intense concentration, makes me melt.
“How old is that baby?” Josh asks, moving closer to the screen. “He can't even be two!”
“Andrew was twenty months when he learned how to swim. Early start and proper training. You were so close to the Olympics,” James says in a rueful voice.
Andrew's face hardens.
James looks at my belly. “Those boys have good genes and every advantage in the world. We'll make champions out of them. Take their raw talent and maximize. Optimize. They'll go beyond anything my own sons have done.”
Anger washes