about making a decision?"
"I would never dream of it," he said, full of mock seriousness. "Be careful on your drive home, you've got some precious cargo."
One hand drifted to her barely-rounded stomach, and she smiled. One of his fingers tipped her chin up so that she looked at him.
"Both of you are."
He didn't look anywhere but her eyes when he said it, and somehow, that made it so much sexier. She had to force herself to walk slowly to her car after she descended the stairs, instead of fleeing at a dead run like she kinda wanted to. There was something oddly disconcerting about Tate calling her precious.
Precious. C'mon, who did that? Hot. She'd heard hot. She'd heard sexy. It came with the territory when she'd ended up with the definition of va-va-voom, Jessica Rabbit curves at the age of fourteen. But no one had ever called her precious. It made something slowly blossom inside of her, and she couldn't wipe the stupid ass grin off her face the entire drive back to her parents, even though the darkness that arrived so early in the winter in Michigan was pressing in on her, casting odd shadows on the quiet, wooded streets.
She knew from earlier in the day that her mom would be the only one home tonight; Kate had a night class and her dad had some chamber of commerce meeting. The thought of a quiet house was nice after the roller coaster of an afternoon, but she had a sinking feeling that her mom was waiting to ambush her with all the really big things that Rachel had avoided talking about with her family. Things like where she was going to live and how she was going to support her child. It wasn't that she thought she wouldn't have their help - she knew she would. Despite all the crazy her parents subjected her and Kate to, they always gave absolute trust and support.
"I'm in the dining room, sweetheart," her mom called out as soon as Rachel walked through the garage door. With a fortifying sigh, she toed off her shoes and hung her purse on a hook in the coat closet. Snagging a banana on her way through the kitchen, she shook her head at the picture her mom made at the dining table.
Rachel prayed she aged like her mother. Madelyn Hennessy was a knockout. Her mom wore her hair longer than Rachel did, only a little bit of gray threading through the red hair that hung well past her shoulders. They shared the same hazel eyes, the same cheekbones and mouth, and though Rachel had always been a bit envious of the more slender frame that her sister and mom shared, one reassurance she had looking at her mom's perfectly unlined sixty-year-old skin, was that Rachel's ivory skin was the exact same.
At the moment though? The knockout effect was in short supply. Her hair was up in a sloppy bun and she wasn't wearing a stitch of makeup, which showed off some fairly impressive dark circles under her mom's eyes. It gave Rachel a little pang to think that she might be the reason her mom wasn't sleeping. But, considering the spread of pregnancy books and magazines in front of her mom, chances were good that it wasn't caused by anything else.
"What's all this for?" Rachel said, flicking a finger along the edge of a stack of books at the edge of the mahogany dining room table.
"Just pulled out all the pregnancy books people gave me when I was pregnant with your sister, brushing up on all the stuff I should know to help you." She flopped her head down on folded arms and let out a gusty sigh. "But, damn it, all of this is outdated; how the hell am I supposed to know what size fruit the baby is right now? Son of a bitch, I need all new books."
And people wondered why Rachel felt comfortable with all sorts of four letter words at the age of fourteen. She sank into a chair across the table and pulled a large hardcover book in a horrifying shade of purple into her lap, flipping open to a page towards the back. Her jaw dropped when she saw a black and white picture of a gross, goopy head coming right out of some poor woman's hoohah. After slamming the book shut and dropping it on the floor next to her, she watched her mom gnaw on the corner