Bending down, he pressed his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. “I know. You have enough to handle being pregnant. You don’t need to hear me complain about work and other nonsense.”
I wrapped my arms around him in an embrace and held him to me. “I don’t care what it is or if you think it’s nonsense. If it’s bothering you, it’s important,” I whispered near his ear. “I hope you know that.”
He squeezed me tightly, and I knew he was dealing with some burden, even if he didn’t feel like talking about it yet. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. You’re the important one in this group, remember? I’m not the one carrying our children.”
His hands slid down my body to cradle my baby bump, and he smiled as he looked down at it. “Speaking of that, we need to get to work deciding on what their nursery is going to look like after we get back from London.”
I watched as he gently moved his thumbs over my stomach and smiled. “We don’t know what the sex is, Tristan. I don’t want to make it all pink and frilly, and then we have two boys or design it in all blue with trucks and airplanes, and then we have two little girls.”
“Isn’t there some unisex color for babies? What is it, green or yellow?”
“Yellow could be good. Maybe ducks?” I asked, knowing he was trying to get my mind off his odd behavior.
“Ducks? A room full of ducks?” he asked, looking up at me.
“It’s cute. We can decide when we get back. Right now, I want to sit down and spend some time with you before you become chained to your desk again.”
I didn’t know what part of that upset him, but a darkness crossed his face by the time I finished my sentence. He forced a smile, but I knew something was wrong. I’d just have to wait for him to tell me.
* * *
The Richmont London was just as wonderful as I expected it to be. I’d pumped Tristan for information about the room décor for hours on our flight, and for once, he seemed happier to be on the plane than he had back home. Far more formal than his other properties, the London location still impressed me. As at all his hotels, the staff greeted us with warmth when we arrived, and we were quickly shown to our penthouse suite.
Exhausted from the trip, I made a beeline to the nearest bedroom and flopped down on the king size bed, loving the feel of the firm mattress under my aching back. This having babies business was tough on the body, and Dr. Michaelson hadn’t been wrong about me needing to stretch my legs on the flight. Even though I had gotten up and moved around a few times, for the first time, a plane ride had really tired me out.
I stretched my weary body as Tristan lay down next to me looking the very picture of relaxation. As he weaved his fingers in mine, I couldn’t help but comment on this new Tristan. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy after a flight. Is there something about London I should know because it seems to have a wonderful effect on you?”
Nuzzling his lips to the spot on my neck just under my ear, he chuckled. “No. I’m just happy to be here with you. That’s all.”
He trailed kisses over my skin to my shoulder as I took in the gorgeous design of the Royal Albert Suite. The canopy bed sat on the dark hardwood floor in the middle of the enormous room, surrounded by cappuccino brown walls on three sides and a full bank of windows on the fourth wall covered in pale gold sheers. Above our heads, the gold and paprika red colored canopy completed the design, making me feel warm and secure. The designer had done a wonderful job of making what could have been a sterile, large space quite welcoming, and I felt myself falling in love with this latest hotel of my husband’s.
“Your properties are really stunning, Tristan.”
“Our properties, princess. Ours.”
I rolled over and saw him grinning at me. He said those words so easily, as if they were second nature to him, but I continually had a hard time thinking of anything he owned before we married as part mine. You could take the girl out of the middle class, but you couldn’t take the middle class out of the girl.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that, you know.”
Tristan kissed me softly on the cheek and whispered, “Yes, you will. The hard part will be to make sure our kids don’t get too used to it.”
He was right. I’d always been so thankful my father had grounded my upbringing in our middle class values. I knew what it meant to work hard and achieve things. I was forced to account for my behavior, and when that meant I got in trouble, I didn’t get what I wanted sometimes. But Tristan came from a world that smacked of entitlement. He’d always had everything he wanted.
“How are we going to do that? How did you learn to work hard and earn things?”
“My mother,” he said with a smile. “She always made sure Taylor and I knew as easily as things could come to us, they could be lost. Unfortunately, my father had more influence over Taylor, but because I always gravitated toward her, my mother’s ideas about money and possessions became my ideas.”
Climbing on top of him, I sat across his stomach and looked down at the serious expression he always wore when he spoke of his mother. “She did a good job, Tristan. Money and things come and go, but it’s the people we love that matter. We just have to make sure that our kids know that too.”
He gently ran his palms over my rapidly expanding stomach and nodded. “We will. I promise I won’t spoil them too much.”
I twisted my face into a fake scowl as I remembered how he spoiled me from practically the moment we met. “I know you, Tristan Stone. When you care about someone, they always benefit. I just want you to promise me our children will understand the value of people as much as they do things. I want them to be like us, not your brother.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll be wonderful, just like their mother.”
Bending down, I smooched his cheek. “Such a smooth talker.”
Sliding his hands around my waist, he settled his palms on my ass and pulled me into him. “Only with you, princess.”
“Don’t you have work to do, Mr. Stone? We didn’t come to London to make love, did we?”
“Not really, but I just figured since we’re here and in bed…” he said with a sly, sexy look in his eyes.
Just then, his phone vibrated in his pants’ pocket. Rolling off him, I said with a giggle, “Perfect timing.”
Tristan rolled his eyes and swung his feet off the bed as he answered his phone. “Yes?”
The person on the other end began to speak, and I instantly saw my husband’s expression grow serious. He walked out of the room, leaving me alone in the Royal Albert Suite to think about how lucky I was.
Tristan’s meetings took up the entire next day as he worked to solve some problem that had occurred between the hotel and some high level government official on his last stay at the Richmont London. Apparently, a nervous hotel employee had unceremoniously nearly outed the man and his mistress, and now he was calling for an investigation into the legality of Tristan’s ownership of the hotel in the UK under some arcane law no one had thought about for over a century. His attempts at business diplomacy left me with an opportunity to visit a museum or two, and I was drawn to one nearby, Pollock’s Toy Museum.
A tiny building painted red and green on the main floor, it was actually two houses joined by three narrow staircases. As I walked through looking at the wide assortment of toys, everything from board games to Russian nesting dolls, I found myself in the Teddy bear and doll house room. The stuffed animals seemed to cover every inch of space, and near a tiny window a family of tan bears sat around tea cups having their very own tea party.
The room began to feel hot, and I knew I’d overexerted myself with all those staircases. As much as I wanted to stay and see the rest of the museum, my thighs began to cramp, so I quickly bought a Teddy bear in the gift shop and made my way back to the hotel, worried that I’d put the babies in danger because of my need to wander around instead of waiting for Tristan in the room.
I laid down on the bed, instantly feeling better as the pain in my legs eased, only to hear my phone ring. Lifting it off the night table, I saw it was Jordan and swiped my phone, happy to hear from her. “Hey, you! I was just resting after visiting a museum. What’s up there?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to talk to a friend.”
Her voice trembled, like she was holding back tears. “Jordan, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“It’s over,” she said as she began to sob unlike I’d ever heard her before. “I just got off the phone with him. He’s not coming back.”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Why would Gage be acting like this? Did you have a fight?” I asked, heartbroken to hear two of my favorite people hadn’t been able to make it work together.
“I don’t know, Nina. I think he’s found someone else. Maybe that woman he was with before.” Jordan began to cry harder, making her words impossible to understand.
I hated hearing her like this. “Shhh, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.”
“I hate to be a bother, but I really need a friend at this moment. Would you be okay with me coming out there to hang out for a few hours? I’ll leave before Tristan comes home so he doesn’t have to deal with my weepy ass self, but I don’t want to be alone now.”