22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“Ican do this. I can do this. I can fucking do this.” I punched my steering wheel when I couldn’t figure out how to get the damn thing to move out of my way. Then the tears started to flow because the only way to get my belly out of the way was to back the seat up further, but if I did that, then my feet couldn’t reach the stupid pedals.

“Why aren’t cars made for pregnant women?” I yelled at the stupid Jeep. Finally, after finagling with all the knobs and switches, and seat movers, it fell into the perfect sweet spot where I could program that seat adjustment to one of the numbers on the door. Then, all I would have to do was push that number next time I wanted to get in and this nightmare would never have to happen again.

“Whew!” I said to myself when I finally got on the road. “Janine, I can’t wait for you to be here so mommy can have her belly back to normal.”

My daughter couldn’t answer me. It didn’t matter, I still talked to her enough that people probably thought I was nuts. We were on our way to surprise Brax with lunch at work. Dates were sort of hit or miss lately, considering I kept nodding off at the worst possible times, so I wanted to make it up to the man while I was wide awake for once. Truthfully, I worried that maybe he would get tired of my pregnancy-induced narcolepsy and leave me for a woman who could stay awake longer than it took to eat a whole meal after working all day.

I took the basket full of goodies out of my car and waddled into the building where Braxton’s office was located. When I found the right one, I was greeted by a beautiful blonde woman who had the biggest damn rock I’d ever seen sitting on her ring finger.

“Wow, that is one hell of a ring,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

She tittered before offering me a bright smile. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m here to see Braxton Halford.” I held the basket up in front of my belly. “I brought lunch.”

“Oh!” She popped the word out in surprise. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Hi, I’m Aviva Acker, Brax’s girlfriend.”

The woman’s eyes widened as she glanced from my face down to the belly that resided behind my basket and back up to meet my eyes again.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Halford left word that he wouldn’t be in today. He said he had something planned with a special lady,” she explained. My heart dropped. It bypassed my stomach where both the good and bad butterflies sometimes resided and hit the floor with a splat instead.

“Um, okay,” I managed to get out.

“Ma’am, do you need a seat? Water? I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s whatever you’re thinking. Maybe he’s just out with his friend, Mel. You know Melanie, don’t you?” She seemed skeptical of that, as if she was trying to clue me into something that might be going on with them.

“I do know Mel. I’ll check in with her, thanks.”

I walked out of the building without looking back and pulled my phone from my pocket. Mel picked up on the first ring.

“Tell me you’re not in labor!” Mel shouted into the phone.

“No. Tell me you’re with Brax,” I demanded in an equally shouty voice.

“No, I’m at home stuffing my face with cookies. Isn’t Brax at work?”

“I’m at his office. The secretary told me he called out to spend time with his special lady friend today. Then she insinuated that it probably meant he was with you.”

“Oh, that stupid Trollip wouldn’t know the broad side of a barn if her face hit it going seventy miles per hour.”

“That was descriptive,” I muttered as I turned my phone to stare at the call information. Maybe I woke up in a different dimension this morning or something.

“Is she still wearing that stupid rock?” Mel asked.

“If you mean the giant ice rink on her ring finger, then yes.”

Mel laughed. “It’s not real.” I could almost hear her eyes rolling as she said that. “Ginger likes to pretend she has some billionaire fiancé, but I saw her out with the balding, 30-something tax attorney who probably makes less money a year than she does.”

I chuckled at that. “As wonderful as it is to get all the dirt on what’s her name, especially since she insinuated you were Brax’s special lady, it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s out with another woman. Is his mom in town?”

“No, she lives in Paris.”

“France?” I asked.

Mel chuckled again. “No, sorry, you didn’t let me finish. His mom moved to Paris, Texas so she could tell everyone she lived in Paris.” Mel full out laughed then. “That woman is a nut. Actually, she’s a cracked nut and there are parts missing. I love her to death. When you meet her, I’m sure you’ll love her, too. There’s just a whole lot of character to get to know, if you catch my drift.”

“Okay. I think I’m just going to head back home. I have all this food in a basket that I brought to surprise Brax with, but he’s not here.”

“Do you want me to try to call him?”

“No. I’ll just…” I took a wrong step and nearly fumbled my phone and the basket full of food. “Dammit!” I yelled.

“Avi, are you okay?”

“Sorry, I stumbled on a stupid…” I paused to look down. “What the hell is that?” I shook it off because it didn’t matter. “I really hope it wasn’t petrified dog shit,” I huffed. Mel had been forgotten until I heard her laughter come through the phone again.

“Did you just say you tripped over petrified dog shit?”

“Um, I think so.” It was my turn to laugh. “That would have been just my luck. Can you imagine falling in dog shit and suddenly you go into labor, but no one wants to touch you to help because… You know… You’re covered in dog shit.”

“Oh boy! You’re at the anxious stage where every scenario you come across is like some doomsday movie playing out in your mind for how the last moments of your pregnancy will go.”

“That’s a thing?” I asked her.

“Afraid so.”

“I thought I was one crack shy of blowing my nut and moving to Paris, Texas, too,” I insisted.

Mel chortled on the other end of the line. “Oh my God! Aviva, it hurts to laugh. Stop it! Do you realize you just said you were about to blow your nut?”

“I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I need to go home and do some laundry before Janine gets here.”

“Wait!” Mel yelled into the phone, instantly sobering. “You packed a picnic basket for Brax and now you’re going home to do laundry?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Avi, it sounds like you’re nesting.”

“Whatever. I love you, Mel, but I need to get back home so I can get everything done and play Sherlock Holmes and figure out which ‘special lady’ has my boyfriend’s attention the one time I set out to deliver a wonderful lunch to him at work.”

“Okay, if I hear from Brax, I’ll let him know he needs to keep an eye out for contractions soon.”

I didn’t know what the hell contractions had to do with me figuring out who Braxton was spending his time with, but I was on my way home the minute I hung up my cell.

When I pulled up in front of my mother’s house, it was to see Braxton picking some woman up in his arms and carrying her to the porch. He stopped dead in his tracks when he heard my vehicle approaching and I could have sworn I read his lips when he said, “Oh, shit! Busted!”

“You better put me down on the porch and go grab my bags then!”

I recognized the woman’s voice. That was my mother. What in the world was going on?

“Mom?” I called out after throwing my car in park and hopping out with the basket in one hand and my cell phone in the other.

“Aviva,” she replied.

“What are you doing?”

“My boy here took me shopping today.”

“Your boy?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. If you two would get the lead out, I could officially call him my son.” My mother rolled her eyes at me. “I don’t know what you’re waiting on. The two of you couldn’t be more perfect for one another.”

I turned to Braxton then who was holding a bunch of bags with a guilty look on his face. “Mel called a minute ago.”

“Ah,” I said while I waited for him to elaborate.

“I took off to help your mom. Jane wanted to surprise you with…” He waggled the bags around. “Stuff.”

“Some surprise!” My mom huffed before she yelled for Amelia, who wasn’t there because Brax had probably given her the day off since they planned to shop together.

“She’s not here, Mom.”

“Damn.” She turned back to Brax. “Hurry up and dump that stuff in the living room. I’m going to need to ride you into the house.” Mom waggled her brows and giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Mom!” I yelped in shock. The woman threw her head back and laughed. It seemed Brax was good for healing more than one Acker woman’s broken heart. “You can’t steal my man!” I yelled across the lawn at her.

“Oh, please! I wouldn’t even know what to do with all those muscles he has. Your father was a soft kind of man, doughy in the middle, but I liked him just fine. He knew how to push my buttons.”

“La, la, la, la, la, la…” I covered my ears and wished those words could be unheard.

“She’s such a prude,” Mom told Brax who laughed as he picked her up and carried her into the house.

Once my mom was situated, she made me take a seat, too. “I wanted to get some things for the baby, but Amelia can’t really do my heavy lifting very well on her own, getting me in and out of a car and the house and the store.” I nodded at her explanation. “So, I asked your young man to help an old woman have a shopping day.”

Aww.

“What is in that basket?” Mom asked after she noticed it was still clutched in my hands.

“I tried to surprise Brax at work with lunch, since I keep falling asleep during our dinner dates.”

Mom laughed and Brax grinned at me. “Surprise!” He huffed out with his hands raised and fingers waggling like someone, at some point in time, taught him all about spirit fingers. My guess was Mel.

“Surprise!” I called back to him in a teasing tone. “Guess we got our wires crossed today.”

“Yes, and Mel told me what happened with my secretary. I will have a word with her when I get back to the office tomorrow. Under no circumstances should she have talked to you the way she did. For that matter, she didn’t know who you were, so she shouldn’t have offered anyone else’s name.” His frustration showed for a moment then he moved closer and wrapped his hands around the basket to move it to the coffee table. “You are free to know anything about where I am, so don’t think that’s me trying to hide things from you. I haven’t had the chance to introduce you at work yet, though, so it was like she told a stranger those things. That’s what I’m mad about.”

“I understand completely. I’ll admit it was a bit disconcerting at first, but by the time I was done talking to Mel, I felt better and wanted to come back and do some laundry while I waited to talk to you like an adult about things.”

“Laundry?”

“Yep, I need to wash everything before…”

“She’s nesting. That baby will be along any day now,” My mother clapped her hands together and then pushed her shopping bags closer to me. “This was perfect timing.”

“I’m not nesting just because I’ve been too tired to get things done lately and now it has all piled up.”

We took a few minutes to open the presents my mom got for me and Janine, then we ate the picnic lunch I’d prepared for Brax. “I’m kind of glad you were here with Mom. I didn’t realize how much I made.” Three of us ate off the lunch that I’d made for him alone and there were leftovers.

“Nesting,” Mom teased again.