“I say just let him do it,” says the woman in the white coat. “Both of their oxygen saturation’s good.” I frown, confused, and someone points to something on the baby’s foot.
“Well, Mama,” the doctor says after a moment underneath the blanket that’s covering Marley. She spreads it back down. “You seem like you’re doing pretty well. I’ll get you painkillers if you think you need them.”
“No…” I look at Marley, and I realize she’s feeding our baby. She beams. “Not right now.”
The doctor laughs. “I’d say you just had the ideal birth—except the hall part. Based on labor and delivery logic, this must mean you didn’t have a birth plan.”
Marley smiles. I shake my head. “We’re not good at sticking to the plan.”
The doctor shrugs. “That’s life. Holley is our on-call pediatrician.” I blink at the woman in scrubs right beside me.
“You caught me as came back from my dinner break,” she says, smiling. “We’ll get some stats on baby boy in just a few more minutes, when he’s finished eating.”
“Okay.” Marley’s voice is soft. Her eyes are wet.
“How ya doing?” I ask softly, dropping down beside her.
“Good.” She grins. I kiss her cheek.
And then I take a take a long look at the critter in her arms: my son.
She beams down at him. “Curly hair, just like you, Gabe.”
I lift a hand to touch him, but it almost seems like sacrilege.
“Do it,” she whispers.
So I do. I stroke his wrinkled, reddish little forehead. It’s so soft. The baby opens his eyes slightly. Marley squeals. Then he closes them again, and keeps on eating.
“Graham or Everett?” she whispers.
“I don’t know.”
“I think he looks like someone else,” she murmurs. Her gaze shifts to mine. “He looks so much like you.” She blinks down at our baby boy, then back to me again. “What about Simon?”
That’s my middle name.
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“Now I do…” She kisses his curls. “Sweet Simon. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Simon,” she whispers. And it sounds like a secret. It sounds like the secret answer I’ve been waiting for.
Later that night, when Mar and Simon are asleep, I write it down—in ink. There’s a tattoo place across the street that happens to be open at eleven. I ask for something basic. Classic, you might say.
Marley. Gabe. Geneva. Simon.
As I cross the street after, I notice a flashing sign on a small building beside the hospital. I look because at first I think it’s donuts. But when I stop to really look, I notice the sign says, “Diner.”
When I get inside, I ask for pie. As it turns out, they’ve got seven flavors.
“I’ll take one of each.” I can’t help grinning.
“Someone’s lucky.”
“Oh yes.”
As it turns out, that someone is me.
A preview of Mr. North
by Callie Hart
North is handsome and damaged--a terrible temptation--and he has his sights set on her.
Beth is out of money and struggling hard. At the rate she's going she'll never complete her law degree. When she learns of an exciting opportunity--playing chess with New York's most elusive billionaire--the offer sounds too good to be true.
On top of that, Raphael North has a... reputation. But rumors are just that.
Then she sets foot into his luxurious penthouse and sees him.
Captor.
Enigma.
Lover.
He's all this and more.
Beth should run from the devastatingly attractive blue-eyed devil, no job is worth dealing with a man who can create so much heat she forgets how to stand.
But Mr North has a talent at keeping her off her feet... and he's about to make his next move.
Available now—keep reading for your free preview!
1
Beth
If you could go back and change a single moment in your past, what would it be? The most embarrassing moment of your childhood? The second you said fine, I don’t love you anymore, let’s call it quits? Perhaps a missed opportunity. That guy you passed on the street, the one who caught your eye. Maybe he smiled. Would you use your chance to go back and talk to him? Introduce yourself? Perhaps offer to buy him a drink in a bar? Maybe you’d take back a cruel string of words. Maybe you’d say something you left unspoken.
Personally, I’d go back to the day shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday, when my best friend, Thalia Prestwick, shoved a brown manila folder into my hand, telling me she knew how I could make some easy money. I would slide that damn thing back at her across the café table as quick as you like, and I would get the hell out of there. I’d never step foot into the towering pillar of glass on Park Avenue. I’d never have the attention of an entire city focused solely on me. Things would turn out very differently for me if I could go back and change that moment in time.
Instead, when Thalia hands me the manila folder in the Williamsburg café on a balmy, almost-springlike Thursday afternoon in April, I merely arch an eyebrow at the thing, and say, “What do you mean, extra money? I don’t need another job, Thalia. I barely have enough time to study as it is.”
“This isn’t a job. Well, it is,” she follows up. “But not a real one. You play chess, right?”
I frown at my friend. “Not since high school.”
“I’m sure they haven’t changed the rules in the past seven years, Bee. And anyway, you don’t need to be good. You just have to be able to make conversation.” Thalia’s brunette hair is neatly brushed and immaculately braided, unlike my own crazy auburn mane. She reaches across the table, taking a strand of my hair in between her fingers, studying it closely. “And you’re not a blonde. That’s a huge help.”
“I know plenty of excellent chess players who are blonde,” I say, swatting her hand away. “That’s a terrible stereotype.”
“No. I mean, the guy who’s looking for someone to play with has something against blondes. I’m not saying blonde women are too stupid to pl—” She rolls her eyes. “Never mind. Just listen.” She taps the folder with an expertly manicured index finger. “I’ve been running a little side line recently. I’ve been expanding on the whole Blizzard Buddy thing.” I’m about to ask her what the hell a Blizzard Buddy is, but she must see the question forming on my lips. She holds up a hand, cutting me off. “Blizzard Buddies are people who hang out with other people during storms. They come over to your place and eat pizza and drink beer while a snowstorm rolls across the city, and then they go home afterwards. No harm. No foul. And no funny business,” she stresses.
“People pay other people to hang out with them in New York? That sounds dangerous, Thalia. Tell me you haven’t been doing that?”
“Of course I have.” She shrugs a shoulder, taking a drink from her coffee cup. “The money’s good. And besides, I like meeting new people.”