Mr. Big Love (Mr. Big 2)

“Oh,” I said and sat up. “Do you want more Dramamine?”

She shook her head again and didn’t open her eyes.

“Maybe you could go to the drug store down the street and get a pregnancy test?”

She opened one eye and peered at me.

“Alexa…”

A shock went through me at that.

“Do you think…”

I sat there, trying to calculate her last period, which I could remember quite well, because she was really suffering and needed lots of red wine to get through it because of her cramps.

“I’m only a week late,” she said softly. “But my period was really erratic while we were away. Sometimes, it was six weeks between them. Sometimes five. We may have been off in our calculations. I could be six weeks pregnant.”

She’d gone off the pill because of migraines before I met her, and so using condoms had been a necessity. There had been a couple of times, however…

“It was the night we decided not to go to the movie, right?” I said, remembering the one and only time since we returned to Manhattan that we hadn’t used one. “We counted the days and thought you were safe, right?”

“Right,” she said, her voice sounding defeated. “Maybe we counted wrong.”

I lay beside her and pulled her into my arms.

“What do you want to do if you’re pregnant?”

She sighed. “We were going to wait to get married until I’m done with my coursework. We were going to wait to have children until I was finished with my PhD.”

I smiled, wanting her to not feel bad about it.

“We couldn’t wait until I went to the drug store to get more condoms,” I said, grinning. “I guess we won’t have to wait any longer.”

“You think it’s funny?” she asked, her voice sounding surprised.

“You know what they say – the best laid plans of mice and men…”

I didn’t feel bad – just shocked. In my mind, it was just a change of plans. Just rescheduling things. Juggling priorities.

“It will change everything,” she said in a soft voice.

“Everything changes everything,” I said and kissed her. “If you’re pregnant, we’ll tell Candace to move up the plans for the wedding. One month from today. How does that sound? We can probably find a justice of the peace willing to marry us in that short time. We’ll have the wedding at the beach house. We’ll send out e-invitations to our closest family and friends. Think Candace can pull off a shot-gun wedding?”

I smiled at her expression.

“You’re actually okay with this?”

“Alexa, we were going to get married and have children anyway.”

“Yes, but not for a couple of years…”

I sighed and pulled her closer against me. “Alexa, I love you. I want to marry you. I want us to have a family and live together for the rest of our lives. Let’s do it. Sooner than later is fine with me.”

“Okay,” she said and finally, she smiled. “I’ll ask Candace to put a rush on her wedding planner gig.”

“Good. Better yet, we should get married as soon as possible so our child doesn’t think he or she was conceived out of wedlock. We’ll lie and say they were just premature.”

“Luke!” Alexa said and mock-punched my shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with being premature. It happens all the time. The first baby can take anywhere up to nine months but the second always takes the full nine.”