“Hands off, Riley,” he warns, shoving him aside with one arm.
Riley releases a great peal of laughter, while Remington grabs me closer with one hand and keeps the other spread on my abdomen, our gazes holding as we wait like two dodos for the baby to move.
When the baby kicks again, and he bursts out laughing, I’m so full of love, I hug him. “Is that real enough for you?” I breathe, a smile dancing on my lips as I tip my head up at him, my nostrils catching the delicious scent of his soap and sweat clinging to his skin.
“That felt f**king surreal,” he whispers, his eyes alive with joy, and, as if it were a contest for speed, he kisses my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, and my chin; then he grabs me by the waist and flings me in the air, a squeak of alarm leaving me as he catches me.
“Remington Tate, you’re the only man who flings his pregnant girlfriend in the air like that!”
“She’s a little firecracker and she loves it!” He flings me up again.
That night, for the first time, we play baby his first song. Remy puts his headphones on my stomach and plays Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open.”
The song tells the baby how he’ll show him the world and receive him “with arms wide open,” and I swear I can feel the baby’s comfort while his sexy, beautiful father stretches out beside me and starts kissing me.
“Has she got my hook?” he asks thickly, between those soft, drugging kisses as we hear the music trail into my tummy.
“He has definitely got your hook, because of course it’s all about you,” I softly tease, cupping his jaw.
He laughs. “All about me?”
“All of it. Everything. My whole life,” I say with a dramatic flair that makes it obvious I’m exaggerating, but his smile is so dazzling and huge, his big lion’s ego so grand in the room, I pat his jaw and laugh, and for some reason, I just have to say it again, if only to keep looking at that big wide grin on his face. “Yes, Remy, it’s really all about you.”
SIXTEEN
AUSTIN AWAITS
“So it’s all over the headlines that Riptide’s girlfriend is pregnant,” Pete says as we fly to Austin.
Now Josephine flies with us too, and today she sits with Pete, Riley, and Remington in one of the living room sections, while Coach is on the bench, and Diane and I occupy one of the other living room sections. Remy and the men seem to be discussing my security for the two Austin fights. Apparently, we’re approaching semifinals, so Scorpion will now be fighting on the same evenings as Remington.
A part of me is anxious to see if we’ll bump into Nora at the fights, while another part of me dreads the outcome of such an encounter.
Remy is in a gruff, overprotective bad mood. The fact that his f**ked-up parents live in Austin and that he sold the house where we usually stay undoubtedly annoys him. Pete rented another house to keep us away from the media, but Remington is not appeased. I know he doesn’t like the thought of me being in the same state as Scorpion, much less the same zip code.
While I show Diane the pictures Melanie sent me of color schemes for the baby’s room, I hear Remington’s voice, low, as if he doesn’t want me to hear, but authoritative. “Anyone approaches her or so much as looks wrongly at her, you take care of it immediately.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see how Pete nods somberly and smoothes a hand down his black tie. “Don’t worry, Rem, I’ll protect her as if she were mine.”
“She’s not yours, dipshit. She’s MINE.”
“Mister Tate,” Josephine interjects, “I’ll be on standby making sure she’s not in any way threatened or inconvenienced.”
“I really love this blue-and-green scheme,” Diane tells me, disconnecting me from the conversation on the other side of the plane.
Turning back to the images, I sadly tell her, “I wish that ring thing had worked. Remington doesn’t want to know, and I don’t want to find out from a doctor and spoil it accidentally for him.”
“Hey!” Riley yells from the other section. “What are you guys going to call it?”
Remington’s shoulders are hunched as he leans over and studies something Pete is showing him on his phone, and I don’t think he’s even listening to me, but I still say, “If it’s a boy, I haven’t been able to think of anything. But I have the perfect name if it’s a girl.”
“Oh, yeah, what?” Riley asks, leaning back on his arms, curious.
“Iris,” I say softly. Remington instantly turns to look at me, and the intimacy of his gaze bores and burns through me like a wave of lust and love crashing through me.
“I like Iris,” he says gruffly, nodding approvingly.
It takes Pete a lot more effort to get Remy to concentrate again on whatever Pete was showing on his phone, for Remington keeps looking at me across the plane. I can’t concentrate on what Diane says either, for I keep looking back at him.