CHAPTER ONE – December 2015
“Love is in the air here in Cedar Rapids. We have weddings and babies showing up every few weeks, and our great city couldn’t be happier. Join us next week when I venture out to the store and start my nursery décor. Until tomorrow, Cedar Rapids, this is Nadia Maverick-Ali, signing out”
“And cut!” the station manager yelled. “That’s a wrap.”
Nadia pushed her chair away from the desk and stood up. Her left hand instantly went to her lower back as she waddled her way down from the stage and to her dressing room. As she passed by Junior, she gave him a high five.
“Good show today, J.R. I’m excited for next week.”
The station manager smiled at her and shook his head. “Nadia, I keep telling you, you’re not going to make next week. You’re going to pop any day now. Please just take the leave of absence. I’ll have one of the interns sub for you until we can find a proper replacement.”
“No way, I’m not giving in that easily. This baby is making it the full forty weeks. That means there is no way he or she is being born in two thousand fifteen.”
“The pool has you bursting on Christmas Eve. You know that?”
That made Nadia laugh. “How much is it up to?”
“One fifty on the twenty-fourth.”
“And when is your spot?”
Junior smiled at her with a sinister look. “The twenty-third.”
“Put me down for December thirty-first. We’ll call him or her ‘Tax Credit.’” Nadia let out a jolly laugh and continued to her dressing room.
Nadia loved her job. She had thought it would be hard to give up being a reporter, but she’d found being a personality on television was exactly her speed. It was much safer for starters. She didn’t take on such dangerous jobs, but perhaps that was simply a happy side effect of being pregnant. She’d thought Carlisle was overprotective when they had first become friends. He had gone to great lengths to keep her safe, and had even installed state-of-the-art cameras to make sure no one was in house unwanted.
But then she’d gotten pregnant.
She’d had no idea what overprotective really was until the day she’d came home to find a Hummer in their driveway. It was a light blue, and in some lights it even looked a bit white. The inside was decked out with leather interior, heated seats, and an amazing stereo system. At first she’d thought that one of Carlisle’s friends had shown up for an unexpected visit, but that hadn’t been the case at all. He had bought her a new car, no, not just a car, a tank.
And that’s when she’d known it was going to be a long pregnancy.