Page 10

Indi

I replayed the entire ridiculous episode in my head all the way home from the birthing class, as Finn listed all the things he wanted to do to Ambrose, including boil him like an Irish potato in a stew and cut off his limbs and feed them to various Celtic deities.

But it was baffling why my ex-husband had acted that way. Ambrose was usually so concerned with status and decorum. Running up to me like that, with his eyes wild and his perfect salt-and-pepper hair disarranged, his jaw like granite, was not at all like him, and I couldn’t understand it.

But, somehow, it pissed me off.

I had been over Ambrose for months. Did my best to ignore him.

Yet, somehow, he kept popping up like a whack-a-mole game.

“The less said about Ambrose the better,” I said, cutting across Finn’s expostulations. “I don’t want to think another second about him.”

“All right,” Finn said reluctantly, running his hands through his thick dark waves. “But—hell, I had all this shit planned out.”

He took the little velvet box from his pocket and opened it again.

“I know you aren’t sure yet. I know you think we’re too alike maybe.

But please, just—hold it,” Finn said, giving me that big gleaming grin.

“I’ve never met anyone like you. Look at the massive diamond, lassie, and think of all the possibilities.

How many more diamonds and gems I can cover you with?

This was Prince Harry’s second choice engagement ring, you know. ”

“Prince Harry—what? How did you—? I don’t just care about diamonds!” I protested, although my eyes seemed entranced by the sheer level of sparkle here. “I care more about making the world a better place for our baby! My causes are what I care about the most!”

“I care about all of those causes too!” Finn said, coming around behind me to nibble on my neck. “I love the fuck out of all your causes.”

“You’re not supposed to love the fact that our local wildlife and trees are endangered,” I protested.

But thinking about that only made me think of how Ambrose and I had met, and how I had been surprised a man who seemed so stuffy and pompous could do something like that .

And I was in no mood to remember it.

The only way Ambrose had surprised me recently was how willing he apparently was to humiliate himself to keep me from marrying Finn, but that could be chalked up to the fact that Ambrose was usually the most handsome man in town, and now that Finn was around, he was only a second or third-placer.

“I will give a million dollars for every single tree you want to save,” Finn was saying, and I did not want to remember Ambrose, so I leaned back into my baby daddy and let him slip his fingers underneath the band of my shorts and start to stroke my pussy, always with that one rough finger on my clit and the others pressing deftly inside to that patch of sensitive skin that made me wild. . .

Maybe I should say yes. Finn was romantic, loaded, funny, doted on me and the baby, and was sexy as hell.

For the next few weeks, I tried to focus on planning my baby shower. Finn and I were not planning on finding out our baby’s gender, but it would still be fun to get together with friends and have a small, low-key party.

However, it seemed like every time I stepped out my front door or looked out the kitchen window, I saw Astrid, looking like Garfield with his nose pressed up against the window of a pasta restaurant, and one day she finally came up to me at the fence as I was watering my roses.

As usual, she looked pretty and perfectly done-up. At first glance. But the closer I looked at her, the more there was. . .wrong, like a badly-painted china doll that was beginning to crack.

“Indi, can I come in and talk to you?” she asked, her lips spread wide over those massive brilliant white teeth.

“No,” I said politely. “Finn is getting out of the shower and I’m afraid you are in no emotional space to be able to handle that.”

She gulped visibly, the carefully arranged curls around her head trembling.

Strangely, it seemed like since Finn had arrived she’d been trying to hide her bump, not show it off as she had been before.

“The shower? Oh god. Oh god. . . here’s the thing,” Astrid said, then she stopped and stared unblinkingly at me for several long moments.

“ What’ s the thing?” I prodded. “I don’t have all day.”

“The thing is—” Astrid said firmly. “That I don’t want Ambrose anymore.”

I crossed my arms over my belly.

“And? What’s that got to do with me?”

“I don’t want him anymore,” Astrid said, her eyes gleaming with a fanatical look. “You can have him back.”

“Sorry, no take-backs,” I said. “It’s a very well-known rule.”

Astrid blinked her huge china-blue eyes at me.

“What do you mean—you don’t want Ambrose back?”

“ Why would I want Ambrose back?” I asked coldly. “After I saw him fucking you on the back porch over there, I ceased to have any interest in him.”

“That was a mistake,” Astrid said anxiously, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “Just some messing around that went too far.”

“Indeed,” I said, turning to go. “I’m sorry, but I have no interest in your love life.”

“Please, Indi,” she cried suddenly, clutching at me. “I want Finn back! I neeeeeed him, you don’t understand!”

“Perhaps you should have taken better care to stay married to him,” I said, wrenching my shirt from her grip.

“ He wanted to divorce me ,” Astrid said unhappily, pulling at her corkscrew curls. “I thought it was because he was too much of a free spirit to settle down. He is an untamed eagle you know, bold and free. It would have been so shameful of me to try to clip his wings.”

I listened without sympathy to her inane babbling. “He seems perfectly ready to settle down now,” I said.

Astrid’s narrow face turned practically green with envy. “Why? Why?” she yelped. “What do you have that I don’t? I don’t understand it!”

I shrugged.

“Think of how I’m suffering,” she begged. “Just look at these bags under my eyes.”

“Right, like you thought of my feelings when you went around fucking my husband in your lounge chair?”

“I regret that,” she said hastily, but I only rolled my eyes.

“Goodbye, Astrid.”

“Take Ambrose baaaack ,” she wheedled. “Please please please , I beg of you. I’ll give you money to let Finn go. My family comes from old Swedish money, you know. I could set you up for life, Indi. You’d never have to work another day.”

“I already get plenty of money from Finn,” I retorted. “I don’t ever have to work massage therapy again if I don’t want to.”

“Indi, you don’t understand!” she groaned. “Finn and I are soulmates!”

“Funny,” I said. “Why would your soulmate give me an engagement ring?”

I drew it from my pocket as the stunning brightness of it reflected the sunlight and hit her right in the eyeballs.

Astrid let out an anguished screech, clutching the fence posts.

“He gave you that?”

“That’s right. And we’re not even engaged. He just gave me this to try to convince me.”

She gasped out a sob.

“Indi, I’ll give you anything. Please please. I’m sorry for fucking Ambrose. I’m so so so so sorry. It wasn’t that memorable, I’ve already blocked it from my memory! I will never talk to him again if that’s what you want. Just give me my husband back !”

Her eyes were bright with tears but all I had for her was a sigh of exasperation.

“You are embarrassing yourself,” I said. “Just go back and make the best of it with Ambrose. Or break up with Ambrose. Do whatever you want. Just leave me out of it for I fear I do not care.”

“How could I ever be satisfied with Ambrose’s stodgy old teacher ass?” Astrid pouted. “When I know a rock star like Finn does want to settle down.”

“But not with you ,” I pointed out helpfully. “He doesn’t want to settle down with you. ”

“Indi, I will clean your home myself for a year! Two years! I will get down on my knees and scrub your toilet with a toothbrush. Do you want my car? My ring?”

She started riffling through her purse and throwing wads of $50s at me.

“Take it! Take anything!”

I rolled my eyes and I went back inside.

“Goodbye, Astrid.”

I heard another anguished screech from her as she saw Finn’s massive, sculptured body pass by the living room window, clad only in a tiny little peach-colored towel that did barely anything to hide his massive hanging dick.

He jerked the curtains shut and I wasn’t one to turn down Sunday morning sex, so I allowed him to gently position me on my hands and knees on the bed and then pleasure me with long, decadent strokes.

“Want to go check the mail?” I asked afterward as I stretched like a cat on the bed, loving the way my swollen belly was getting bigger every day. “I’m supposed to be getting a few Amazon packages and we can put together the crib later if you want.”

“Anything you like, baby,” he reassured me, then put on the world’s tiniest gym shorts and went out the door.

I lay there for another moment, luxuriating in my skin, then I remembered I wanted to check my old bloodwork for my iron levels, so I went into the office to find them. I flicked through my neatly filed paperwork, pulling out the letter from the lab, but something was stuck to the paper.

What in the world was this?

It looked like one of Ambrose’s old medical documents.

Annoyed, I yanked it out of my drawer.

There was a sort of commotion outside, but I ignored it to look at what I had found.

I thought I had gotten rid of every evidence of Ambrose in this house, or as much as you can get rid of an ex who lives right next door to you, but apparently he was sticking around like a noxious type of fly.

He was going to get this paper in his mailbox with a cold note that said, “I don’t want your shit around.”

There was something sticky on the document, a few brown speckles all over it and I rolled my eyes.

Mr. Multitasking had apparently been drinking coffee while opening the mail and spilled it over his doctor’s letter.

I pulled it closer.

Wait, this was Ambrose’s sperm count results.

I scratched at one of the coffee spots with a pink-nailed finger and gasped in shock.

The coffee spot had covered up his results.

My eyeballs bugged out at the number on the paper.

For years, we had assumed the problem was me, but it wasn’t. Not at all.

As I got up to check on the racket outside, I realized one thing.

There were very few sperm floating around in Ambrose’s arrogant, bastard balls