Over the Phone

Chapter Sixteen

Eight Months Later...

Chloe stood at the stove, pushing sliced chicken around the pan with a cream sauce, linguine cooking in the pot on the back burner. The door opened and a smile broke out on Chloe's face as a fluttering started in her stomach. The door shut softly and Adam popped around the corner.

"Hey, baby," he said, kissing Chloe on the cheek as he put his arms around her from behind, his hands resting on her belly.

"Hi, baby," he said in a small voice. "Daddy's home." Chloe laughed softly and looked at him over her shoulder.

"Yeah, he knows, hon. The second you opened the front door, he started dancing on my bladder!" Adam laughed and dropped to his knees to talk to the bump in Chloe's belly.

"Did my little man get excited and start kicking Mommy again, AJ?" Chloe smiled again and ran her hand over her belly.

"AJ?" Adam smiled up at her.

"Yeah, Adam Junior!" Chloe gave a short laugh.

"No way, Adam. Our baby isn't going to bear someone else's name. Not even his daddy's! He's his own person." Adam raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh really? And what kind of name did you come up with for him," he asked, his voice skeptical. Chloe bit her lip gently.

"I kind of like... Hayden Gregory." Adam pulled a face.

"Yuck, okay, clearly we're gonna need more time to pick out a name." Chloe laughed.

"Yeah, well, we'd better figure something out soon. We only have two and a half months left," she said excitedly.

She had never been so happy before. Adam and Chloe had eloped two weeks after Beck had been arrested, then just 2 months later, in the midst of the trial against Beck and her accomplice, Chloe had been on the stand giving her testimony of events when she became very suddenly ill. After a few moments to compose herself, Beck's lawyer asked her if her illness was tied to the injuries she'd sustained in the attack on her those months back. It was then that Chloe revealed to the court that it was not an injury, she was actually nine weeks pregnant. Adam had been thrilled to find out he was going to be a father. It hadn't taken very long for Chloe to get pregnant after they'd gotten married at all. He'd known almost from the day he'd first heard her voice that he wanted to spend his life with her. The fact that she felt the same for him had been the cherry on top. When he'd looked at her with all the love he felt in his eyes and suggested to her that they just go for it and get married- and then she'd said yes- he didn't think that he could ever get any higher than that. But when she'd come out of the bathroom with a pregnancy test in her hand and announced that there were two pink lines... he could have died happy at that exact moment. He could clearly remember tears jumping to his eyes as he'd embraced his wife and kissed her soundly.

He couldn't help but smile as he felt his son move under his hand. It was amazing to feel his child kick and flip, moving just below the skin of the woman he loved more than anything in the world.

"How are you feeling, babe? Do you need to go lay down?" Chloe ran her fingers through his hair as he kissed her stomach just over place his son's foot had just been.

"I just woke up from a nap. What I need to do is get this pasta out of the water, but what I need to do first is go pee," she said energetically as she darted from the room, leaving him to tend the pots on the stove. He smiled and took the pot to the sink, draining the pasta, and adding the noodles to the sauce before Chloe had come back to the kitchen.

"Aww, hon, you didn't have to do that. I was coming right back," she said as she re-entered the room. Adam plopped a heaping serving of pasta and cream sauce into a bowl and handed it to her.

"You still act like I'm doing more than I should for you, Chloe. You'd think you'd be used to it by now." Chloe bit her lip as she smiled.

"It's not that I'm not used to it. I just don't want to ever treat you like I don't appreciate it anymore." Adam took the bowl from her hands again and set it on the counter, wrapping her in his arms tenderly.

"You are the most amazing woman I've ever met, Chloe. I swear, I love you more every day than I did the day before." He brought his lips to hers and kissed her soundly. Chloe wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss enthusiastically. She pushed her fingers into his hair and held him closer. Adam ran his hands over her body, teasing her with his fingertips. Chloe pulled away laughing softly.

"Baby, if you keep that up, dinner will be inedible," she said with a small shiver, his touch setting her nerve endings on fire. Adam looked at her with clouded eyes and a sexy smile.

"I'll take you out to dinner later," he said, his voice rough, as he lifted her from her feet and claimed her mouth again, carrying her back toward their bedroom.