It touched my heart that Auggie felt likewise. He got me back to the farm, helped me up the steps and then assisted me upstairs to the bedroom to lie down.
I saw his suitcases beside mine, reminding me that this would be the first time we stayed together. After he got me in bed, with some juice and something to eat beside me, I captured his hand. “Don’t leave.”
He bent down for a kiss. “I’m not going anywhere. Wife,” he added with that teasing smirk.
I giggled. I pulled him down to lie with me on the bed. He spooned me from behind. I fell asleep with him caressing my tummy with one hand.
When I woke up again, there he was, staring at me, stroking my hair. “You’re here,” I murmured dreamily, cuddling close.
He took me in those big strong arms. “Try to get rid of me,” he said. We kissed but stopped short of anything getting too hot and heavy.
There was something more important than that now.
In fact, Georgia was where it all changed. We stayed on the farm a couple of days before heading back into Atlanta to rehearse for the show. He wasn’t going to leave me alone, so I ended up staying with him in his room for the first time since the tour started.
We only told Audra and Fern what had happened. Fern was beside herself, ready to quit the dance troupe. Auggie wouldn’t hear of it. Instead he hired me an assistant, an Aldaynean named Kelly Murphy, who served as a page in the Royal Court. She met up with us by the show on Friday, so that when I wasn’t with Auggie, I was with her.
Kelly was also trained as a doula, so she had experience taking care of pregnant women through birth and delivery and after. She was a true ginger with a full brogue and biting wit, and I fell in love with her immediately.
I no longer flew on Roan I, but joined Auggie on his private royal jet, Seamus I. Throughout the month of May, we flew from Miami to New Orleans, then up through Houston and Dallas, Texas. I mostly slept and ate, sightseeing with Auggie in each new town as he showed me the world. By Dallas, he was the one showing me snow globes to buy for our little Peanut.
Unofficially I assisted with our Charity Days, working closely with Audra to orchestrate the events, until Kelly would shoo me away to get some rest. At night I would lay in Auggie’s arms as he worshiped at the altar of my changing body. We hadn’t made love yet, neither of us dared. But the intimacy that took its place was even more powerful. Even without the benefit of orgasm, which he denied himself because we were too afraid for me to indulge, there wasn’t one square inch of his body I didn’t know, and vice versa. He had already picked out a space on my canvas for the tattoo he had planned for me, though we had to wait till after the baby to have it done. Still, we both envisioned the design there, as if it were already completed. “Like music,” he murmured. “You just have to reveal it.”
My body became his instrument, which was why he spotted the little baby bump before I did. “You’re seeing things,” I teased.
But I did notice I was filling out my clothes a little more. Worse, so did PING. Per their headlines, however, they blamed it on the food.
It was a mixed blessing.
My boobs were bigger. My ass was wider. We met up with Darcy in Vegas at the beginning of June for another wardrobe update. I was almost twenty weeks along by then, and my little Peanut bump was no longer a figment of Auggie’s imagination.
I decided to let Darcy in on the secret, since she had technically been hired to conceal it. I knew I could trust her. She had her own issues with PING. There was no love lost between them. She went right to work designing a look to keep our precious cargo concealed for just a little longer.
In Seattle and in San Francisco I could wear layers, which worked wonderfully.
But the end of June loomed, when we would return to Los Angeles for his concert at the Forum. I couldn’t help but wonder if my fairy tale had met its end.
After all, Los Angeles was PING’s backyard. It was also