"You're lucky she waited for you to come to your senses," Kaazim said.
"Very lucky," Jake said from the seat beside him.
"She didn't wait for me. I mean, she was dating. In fact, she was dating one guy seriously when I asked her to try again."
"Then you are doubly lucky," Kaazim said. Jake just nodded.
"I am. You saw her: She's beautiful and could have anyone she wanted. I so don't deserve her after all I put her through."
"I'm glad you felt safe enough to bring her and your son to St. Louis," I said.
Socrates smiled at me. "Me, too."
"When is the baby due?" I asked.
"Soon, and we just found out it's a girl."
Appreciative noises were made. Fortune called from the backseats that she and Echo were sharing, "That's wonderful to feel safe enough to have a family." I remembered what Sin had said, that Fortune had talked to Nathaniel about being his baby momma. There was a spurt of jealousy, which wasn't an emotion I felt much.
The jealousy went straight to anger, which was usually my default for any negative emotion. Damian's hand squeezed, but this time Nicky leaned in closer, running his hand up my thigh. It wasn't sexual, more comforting, but he'd unbuckled his seat belt to do it so that I was suddenly looking into his face almost close enough to kiss. I knew he felt my emotions, but not my thoughts. What did he think had made me feel jealous?
The peacefulness began to seep away on the conflicting emotions. I was suddenly anxious and afraid and . . . Damn it, if I felt that way about Nathaniel having a baby with someone else, what did that say about me, about us? Fortune was even our shared lover. It was a nice, practical solution for everyone, so why didn't it feel nice or practical inside my head and heart?
Nathaniel leaned in and kissed me gently on the cheek. It made me turn and look at him. I realized that he didn't just get my emotions, but sometimes my thoughts. How much had he gotten just now? My pulse was suddenly in my throat and my chest was a little bit tight, but it wasn't fear of being on the plane. Nope, relationship baby panic and not the kind I'd always feared. I'd sat in the bathroom and stared at a pregnancy test and prayed for it to be negative. I'd even had one false positive when I first got all my inner beasts. But staring into Nathaniel's eyes from inches away, I suddenly realized something. I did want to have a baby with him and with Micah. It wasn't a possibility with Micah--he'd had a vasectomy years before we met--but Nathaniel and I could. I just hadn't known until that second that I wanted to do it. Fuck, it was such a bad idea.
Nathaniel gave me a smile that lit his whole face up. He just glowed with happiness, which meant he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Why do you think it's such a bad idea?" Damian asked, and I realized that the three of us were all too interconnected in that moment for him to be left out.
Dev leaned over the back of Damian's seat and asked, "What is a bad idea?"
Nathaniel looked up at Dev with that shining, happy face. "Anita wants to have a baby with me."
Dev let the surprise show on his face. "Wow, that's . . . unexpected. Great, but . . . wow."
"Wanting to have a baby with someone doesn't mean you do it," I said, a little desperately.
"I thought that's how it worked," Fortune said.
I was suddenly angry with her, because her willingness to get pregnant had made me think too hard about it. I was furious with her in that moment.
"That's not fair, Anita," Nathaniel said.
"Would you really get pregnant with someone else?"
"I want to have a baby with you, but you told me that wasn't ever going to happen and I want children."
"You're not even twenty-five yet. What's the rush?" I asked.
"It doesn't have to be now, but I thought you'd feel differently if it was a woman in our poly group."
"So did I," I said.
Fortune said, "If this is what I think it is, it's about Nathaniel and me. We weren't seriously talking about him and me, but more that I could stop using birth control and keep having sex with everyone. As Harlequin we were not allowed to breed unless the Mother chose us for it, and then, like Socrates, we did not feel safe enough to have me incapacitated by carrying a child."
Echo took her hand and said, "We felt safe enough to contemplate it, but it is not Nathaniel's child we seek, but our own."
I nodded. "I get that--I really do--and you totally don't deserve my anger, but it's just thrown me that I feel this way at all. I mean, you said it: incapacitated is how pregnancy would be. I wouldn't be able to do my job."
"Nor I, late in pregnancy," Fortune said.
"But the baby will be born and you can both get back into warrior condition," Echo said.
"But then we'd have a baby that would be like the greatest hostage ever," I said.
"To take the child of Jean-Claude and Anita Blake would be suicidal," Echo said.
"It's really unlikely that Jean-Claude would be the bio-dad. He's over six hundred years old. Most vampires aren't fertile after a hundred or so," I said.
"Legally you will be marrying only Jean-Claude, so in the eyes of the world, it will be his," she said.
I glanced at Nathaniel. "You okay with that?"
He grinned at me. "Of course, the baby will call all of us Daddy."
I said, "Jean-Claude would probably be Pere," which was French for "Father," and thanks to channeling him I even pronounced it correctly, which I could never have done on my own.
"Probably we'd have different dad-isms for all of us," Nathaniel said.
"What do you mean, dad-isms?"
"Jean-Claude could be Pere, but we could use Dad, Daddy, Dada, Papa, Pa, Pop, Poppy, all the slang for Father."
"You've really thought about this," I said, and not like I was happy about it.
"Anita, I've been trying to think of all the arguments against it so that when we finally talked for real I'd be prepared. I never thought it would come up like this."
"It doesn't matter who's Dad, or Poppy, or whatever; the kid would still have a sign around its neck saying, Kidnap me and use me against my parents, please."
"Echo already said it would be suicide," Giacomo said.
"Yeah, but people do stupid things all the damn time."
"Anita," Nicky said.
I looked at him so close to me, felt the weight of his hand on my thigh, the nearness of all that muscled willpower. "For your baby to be taken they'd have to get through me first."
"And me," said Dev.
"And me," Pride said.
The plane filled with the sounds of all of them saying the same thing.
"Yes, the baby would be a hostage if it could be taken," Echo said, "but the likelihood of anyone, or any group, slaying all of us and taking the child is almost zero."
"And when Echo says that, she means only those of us on this plane," Jake said. "If you add all the rest at home, then there are few children on earth safer than one you would have."
I shook my head, afraid but not of being on the plane.
"All children of powerful people are potentially at risk," Magda said, "but few are as well protected as any we might have."
I looked at her. "We?"
"I do not think I wish to have one, but if Fortune can get with child I think more of the female Harlequin would consider it."
"There is no guarantee that I can get pregnant at all. I mean, I'm over a thousand years old. My body looks like I haven't seen thirty, but I've seen so many more years than that. Now that I have people who can help me not shift form for the time it would take me to get pregnant, which is what lets the clans breed at all, and a safe place, it still may be impossible," Fortune said.
"One of the best things about having the tiger clans come to stay in St. Louis is them helping the other wereanimals through pregnancies," Nathaniel said.
"I'm not sure I'd put that in the best thing category," I said.
"But I would. It's made so many people so happy."
/> I smiled at him. "We both want that."
"Everyone to be happy," he said.
I nodded and couldn't stop from smiling more. Then I frowned.
"What's wrong?" Nicky asked.