Page 109 of Santa's Baby

“Raven and Rose. I wanted two girls.”

“Do you still want two girls?”

I unbutton his shirt, needing his flesh against mine.

“I want whatever you can give me.”

“Then you’ll be needing a lot of names,” he chuckles. “I’ll take as many as you can bear to birth.”

I get flashbacks of him in the grotto, being such a wonderful hero for the children. He’ll be the greatest daddy there could be.

I dare to imagine a life with him in this beautiful house, with kids of our own. The patter of tiny feet running to greet Reuben as he comes home from the mall. Family weekends by the seaside, building sandcastles with buckets and spades.

I want a much bigger family than the one I dreamt of with Kian.

“No more contraceptives for me,” I say. “I’d better toss the pills in the bin.”

“You really want to begin straight away?”

I nod. “Yep.” Then I blurt out the truth. “I’d have had a kid that was six years old already if fate hadn’t been a piece of shit to me, but I guess the universe has its reasons, and my road was meant to be with you.”

“You’d have had a baby? With Kian?”

“I was pregnant, yeah. I had a miscarriage, just before Kian finally fucked off and left me.”

My heart quickens as I share my past, but I don’t cry. I don’t need to. Not anymore. Reuben is easing the pain, just by being himself. He doesn’t flinch or pull away at the revelation. He doesthe opposite. He pulls me closer and presses his mouth to my ear.

“That’s a horrible thing to have to go through.”

“It’s just one of those shitters. We were rocky. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back and all that, and he walked away.”

“He walked away when you needed him most?”

I try to brush it off. “It was always gonna happen at some point. We were off more than we were on by then, I was just too dumb to see it. It was just one of those things, you know?”

He takes my shoulders and looks me right in the eyes.

“No, I don’t know. It will never be justone of those thingswhen there is such hurt involved. He left you when you needed him most, and that’s never acceptable when you love and respect someone.” I adore the way Reuben stares into my raw open heart. “Trust me, Tiffany, I will never do that to you. Not in a thousand years. If we have twenty children, or if we have none. If it comes to us like a joyous breeze, or if we struggle along the way, so be it. I’ll never walk away and leave you hurting. Not like he did.”

My walls crumble, and for once, I’m happy to be defenceless. In life and love, not just in sex. Reuben has given me the power to be powerless. He defended me, and chose me today above any other option. I’ve cost him millions, yet still, he put my needs first. I was his priority. I’m the woman he chose above everything else.

“I’ll never walk away and leave you hurting,” he says again. “I’ll never walk away, full stop.”

“Same goes,” I reply, and kiss him with an urgency that burns ferocious. A need to be taken and loved by this man. The man of my dreams.

“I want your baby,” I say. “I want to make you a daddy, and watch you being a daddy.”

“That would be the best gift there could ever be.”

He drops his pants, kicks them aside, and we tumble naked together onto his bed, hands roving, frantic. I can’t get enough of him. Every inch of him fascinates me, and that’s mutual. He sweeps his hands up and down my stomach, adoring my curves. They will be so much bigger when I’m carrying his baby inside me. I imagine my swollen baby bump. The way it will feel to be heavy in the third trimester, waiting to meet our newborn child.

My fears that it will never happen for me have disappeared.

I have faith.

I have love.

I believe in my dreams again. I believe inus.