Twin Babies with the Billionaire for Christmas

21. Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Rachel

“I’m coming to get you in an hour,” Cara says to me over the phone.

I hear her chastising someone about the right order to put silverware out for place settings and smile. She must be planning some kind of event somewhere.

It’s sweet of her to take time out of her day to keep me company while I go to my first doctor’s appointment.

“You’re the one who’s always late,” I tease her. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

She snorts inelegantly into the phone. “Pish posh. I’m still your best friend even if I can’t tell time. See you soon.”

I smile after we hang up, and then slump down into my seat a little as I stare at the computer screen.

I’ve written about half of Tristan’s book already, which is wild, considering how much time I’ve spent dealing with a flooded apartment, shocking news from Tristan’s coworkers, and worries over finances. Not to mention all the lost hours that were spent ralphing in the morning.

I make a face. At least the morning sickness seems to be over with already. I am eternally grateful. However, I can already feel my breasts getting bigger and I couldn’t fit into one of my favorite skirts the other day. I’m going to struggle to hide this pregnancy before long.

I had hoped maybe I wouldn’t show early, but that doesn’t seem likely.

“You can’t write a chapter about this,” I mutter to myself, putting my hands on the keys again thoughtfully.

“About what?”

I glance over my shoulder and slam the laptop shut, turning to look at Tristan. “No peeking!” I chide him.

He looks fully unrepentant, leaning down to kiss me with lingering thoroughness. We’ve enjoyed a week of domestic bliss that doesn’t even seem real to me.

I don’t know when I’ve ever had this much sex, and yet I never stop being hungry for Tristan.

“How’s the book coming along?” he asks me.

I nod. “Well. No snooping, though.”

He holds up his hands placatingly. “Truce, truce. I was just coming to tell you I would see you later.” He starts to leave to go to work, then turns back, snapping his fingers. “Oh, by the way, do you want to have Danny over here for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning?”

I feel a swoop of emotion race through me. I can’t even remember Danny and I ever having a proper Christmas. We always had to wait until we went to see my aunt in the summer to get to open Christmas gifts with her.

“I would love that!” I exclaim, clasping my hands together with excitement.

“Excellent,” he says to me. “I’ll plan everything out, then. See you after work.”

“See you later,” I tell him, feeling a twinge of guilt about him still being in the dark about the baby. I don’t know why the words keep sticking in my throat, but they just do.

I watch him leave the room, then glance at my watch. I have about twenty minutes to get dressed, so I’d better start working on being ready to go out in public.

By the time I ride the elevator down to meet Cara, I’m getting nervous. What if there is something wrong with the baby? What if the doctor tells me that I need to make some kind of drastic diet change or start taking all kinds of supplements or something?

I’m not ignorant about how this process works, but since I have so little family, I’ve actually never known anyone throughout a pregnancy. The girls that I’ve worked with or been casual friends with over the years didn’t stick around long enough after they got pregnant for me to experience the work of growing a human vicariously.

When I lived in Alaska, it was just Danny, myself, and my boyfriend…and the fake nurse. I sigh and shake my head. I can’t start being paranoid now or I’ll talk myself out of going to the appointment altogether.

“See, I wasn’t very late at all,” Cara says pridefully to me as I climb into her car. She drives a bit aggressively out of the parking garage and whips around the corner.

“Woah, slow down!” I exclaim, holding my queasy stomach. “You have to do pregnancy-approved driving or I’m going to throw up all over your car.”

She looks apologetic as she slows down. Her fancy Cadillac can go quite fast and she loves to enjoy it, however, I am in no condition to humor her today.

“Sorry,” she says, navigating a turn more carefully. “How are you feeling?”

I shrug. “Mostly okay now, thank goodness. I hated the morning sickness part of things.”

“Have you told Tristan?” she asks next.

I sigh and look out the window at the tall apartment buildings and businesses whizzing by out the window. “No.”

“Rachel!” Cara exclaims. “You’re just being chicken now.”

“Hey!” I retort, looking at her with indignation. “How many times have you had to tell the man that you are casually banging that you’re pregnant?”

She laughs at my outraged expression and waves her hand. “Sorry, sorry. I get your point, but I also don’t think that’s an accurate description of your relationship at this point.”

I shake my head. “We haven’t set any boundaries or given this thing a name.”

“So?” Cara shoots back. “You’re still living with him and you’re still fucking him, right?”

I glare at her.

“You’re having his baby,” she goes on. “You aren’t a fling. If you were a fling, he would have made it clear by now, and I doubt that he has. You guys got a Christmas tree together for fuck’s sake.”

I smile a little. “Okay, I guess you’re kind of right. That doesn’t mean that this thing will last beyond me needing to be around him to write the book.”

“Are you still going to go through with the book?” Cara asks. “Does your publisher know that you guys are…a thing?”

I shake my head hard, my hair flying. “No, and I’m not going to tell them. I can already tell the book is going to be really good. I don’t need to tell anyone about Tristan’s and my…friends with benefits arrangement.”

“More like author with benefits,” Cara scoffs as she turns into the parking lot of the clinic.

We wander together into the clinic and I get handed the new patient packet of documents to fill out. I start working on them as we wait for my name to be called.

“Nervous?” Cara asks me quietly as we sit side by side on the uncomfortable clinic chairs.

“Duh,” I say ungraciously, and she laughs.

“Rachel Smith?” a nurse calls, poking her head out of a door into the hall with the exam rooms.

I rise with Cara and we walk together into the back where I am weighed and then taken to room five. The nurse asks me some preliminary questions, then glances at Cara.

“Should I put you down as her significant other or spouse?” she asks Cara.

Cara blinks, and I say hastily, “Oh no, she’s my friend. She’s just here to support me. She could be my emergency contact, though.”

The nurse doesn’t seem flustered in the slightest and just collects Cara’s information before leaving us to wait for the OBGYN.

Once the nurse slips out of the room, Cara winks at me. “I guess we make a cute couple.”

I roll my eyes and press a hand to my belly. I swear I can feel junior swimming around inside of me the past twenty-four hours. Maybe I can, I guess. I also don’t know when that starts to be a possibility.

There’s a knock at the door, and the doctor pokes her head into the room. “Rachel Smith?” she asks.

I nod. “Hi.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says. She sits down across from me at the little desk by the door and starts asking me things like how far along I think I am and if there are twins in the family.

I feel a little sad when I can’t really answer most of the family medical history questions. I simply don’t know enough about the people in my family on either side to be sure about any of that.

“Let’s get you up here and take a look,” the doctor says briskly once she has collected all the information she needs. “The goo will be a little cold, sorry,” she says regretfully as she squeezes the cold ultrasound jelly onto my stomach. “The warmer broke this morning.”

“My excellent luck continues,” I say glumly, but then Cara takes my hand and squeezes it.

“Chin up,” she says, and I return her smile. When we were teens, this used to be Cara’s mantra for everything.

When she needed to convince herself to go to work at the mall rather than hanging out with her friends, she’d tell herself, “chin up”. When she was sick and didn’t want to go to cheerleading practice, she would tell herself, “chin up” and head out the door.

Over time, it had become our little secret codeword for moral support. I used it when I was alone as well sometimes, but we always said it to each other when the going got tough.

“Okay, everything looks great,” the doctor says after poking around a little bit. “So I guess some of your good luck is still with us.” She gives me a big, sweet smile, and I feel better. She seems nice and I think I can trust her.

“Want the images emailed to you?” the doctor asks as she clicks around, making notations and indicating measurements on the images she collected.

“Sure,” I say. “I put my email on the documents I filled out.”

“Will you have a spouse or partner that we need to include in information about your care here?” she asks next.

I swallow hard, suddenly emotional. Cara notices my silence and squeezes my hand.

“Umm,” I say, my voice sounding tight. “I actually haven’t told the father yet, but I guess…if I can make myself do it…I bet he’d be happy to be included.”

The doctor doesn’t even glance over at me, she just nods as she keeps tapping away at her computer. “Sounds great,” she says agreeably. “I’ve sent those images so that you can brag to everyone.”

“When do I get to know the sex?” I ask, suddenly realizing that this is one more thing I don’t know about the pregnancy timeline ahead of me.

“Based in your potential conception date, by your next appointment we might be able to tell you,” the doctor says back. She gives me another smile. “Any other questions for me?”

I shake my head. “No, I think that’s it. Thanks.”

The doctor leaves the room and I finish wiping the ultrasound gel off my stomach before pulling my shirt down.

“I’m honestly glad I have someplace to stay right now that has a fireplace,” I say to my friend as I shrug my jacket back on. “I don’t know how you guys stand living here. It’s so freaking damp all the time. I never feel like I can get warm.”

I finally realize that Cara has been silent for quite a while. I glance over at her and notice that she looks slightly pale.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, feeling a dagger of panic shoot through me.

“Uh,” Cara says, stumbling over her words. “Gosh, there’s just no nice way to tell you this.”

She passes me her phone and I gasp.

Isaac had sent her link after link of gossip articles about me and Tristan, showing us kissing, holding hands, standing outside by the limo with the Christmas tree. The headlines blare things like: FAMOUS PLAYBOY TECH MOGUL SEDUCES HIS BIOGRAPHER and RACHEL SMITH GETS THE REAL INSIDE SCOOP ON MILLIONAIRE TRISTAN BLACK.

“Oh no,” I breathe, my head spinning.

“You can say that again,” Cara whispers back. She takes her phone back and frowns as she taps out a message to her brother. She’s quiet for a moment, thumbing through the articles, and then he replies. She rubs her forehead.

“These are all over Facebook, X, and even Instagram,” she grumbles. “What the fuck? There has to be someone who has it in for you guys. This is so malicious.”

I feel lightheaded. Everything feels wrong, off-kilter, broken. I need to call my publishing house and my agent, but I feel frozen, suspended between knowing this bad thing has happened and the reality of everything that I am going to lose.

“They’ll get rid of me,” I say, my voice cracking.

“Who?” Cara asks in a distracted way, still looking at her phone.

“Price and Jackson,” I reply tonelessly, naming my publisher. “They won’t be able to withstand the scandal of this.”

“Oh, I don’t think it will be that bad,” Cara says with false cheer. “After all, things will blow over as soon as the next scandal comes up.”

“It’s the holidays,” I say with despair lacing every note. “Everyone will have weeks with nothing else to do but make fun of me and drag my name through the mud.”

Cara chews on her lower lip silently. She knows I’m right.

I drop my head into my hands and groan. “Merry fucking Christmas,” I say.