Tempt the Hookup (Tempt 3)

I don’t have any time to think about anything else because the doorbell rings. Looking into the mirror, I know there is nothing I can do to fix my appearance, but I’m not sure I want to. As I walk downstairs, my heart is pounding, and my palms are all of a sudden sweaty. My hand turns the handle, and I swing open the door to find his back is to me. I take him in, but he hasn’t changed that much. He turns, and my stomach literally flips. Sitting in my room in Paris right after I had Aiden, I would think about Luca, and my stomach would flip. I thought it was just a memory and that I made it up, but now, standing here with him, his crooked smile showing his one dimple, I know that nothing I felt was imagined.

“Hey,” I say. “Did you find the place okay?” I ask him, moving to the side so he can come in.

“Yes,” he says, walking in, and I shut the door.

“We can talk in the kitchen,” I say, walking down the hall to the kitchen area. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea, whiskey?” I try to make a joke, and he just shakes his head. Instead, he pulls out a stool and sits down. He sets his hands in front of him on the island, and his finger taps it nervously. “So,” I start, my mouth going dry.

“I think we need to start at the beginning,” he suggests.

“That would work,” I say, nodding at him.

“When did you find out you were pregnant?” he asks, and I look into his eyes. Again, the wrong thing to do; my brain knows he’s off-limits … my body, not so much.

“Three weeks after I got back. I was feeling sluggish and so tired,” I tell him. “I would have to nap during the day, and then I would be in bed by eight. I didn’t know what it was.” I just remember the need to sleep. If I could have slept for a week, I think I would have. “My mother finally told me in no uncertain terms that either I go to the doctor or she would drag me there. At first, they thought I had mono.” I look down, remembering the doctor saying he was taking a pregnancy test out of precaution.

“Was the …” He stops and then starts again. “Was everything okay with the pregnancy?”

I nod my head. “It was perfect. Nine months with no complications at all. He was born after nine hours of labor, and he even took to the breast right away,” I say, and I swear I blush. He has obviously been very well acquainted with my breasts but saying it is a huge thing. The memory of him biting my nipple and pulling it back while I rode him comes to mind, and I close my eyes to get it to leave. I avert my eyes just in case he can see what I’m thinking about, and I wonder if he ever thinks about me or the weekend we spent together.

“Why did you leave and go to Paris?” he asks, and I take a deep breath.

“Well, as you can imagine, breaking the news to my parents wasn’t easy.” I walk to the fridge this time and grab two water bottles. I hand him one bottle while I open the other and take a couple of sips because my mouth still feels dry. I have to get through this, and then I never have to repeat it. “I was a college student who got pregnant on a booze cruise. It didn’t help that I had no idea who the father was, let alone how to contact him.”

He shakes his head, looking down, his hand now holding the bottle. “This is all my fault,” he whispers.

“It was both of us who decided no last names,” I remind him, thinking back to that first night.

We walked up on the top deck, the wind blew my hair everywhere, so I had it tied up on top of my head.

“Let’s lie down here,” he said to me while he pointed at the long tanning chairs.

We grabbed two chairs side by side and lay down on our backs and looked up at the blinking stars. “Do you know anything about the stars?” he asked me.

“Only that if you see a shooting one, you need to make a wish,” I told him, laughing. I raised my hand and pointed at the sky. “Look at that one. It’s blinking every two seconds.”

“Where are you from?” he asked, and I turned to look at him. He turned his head to look at me also.

“For the weekend, can we forget who we are?” I asked him.

“That sounds like the best plan ever.” He smiled at me, and I saw that he had one little dimple. My hand itched to reach out and touch it.