EXCEPTional

Bonus Chapter (2)

*Bridget*

    I shook my head at his anxiety. "You worry too much," I told him, waddling into the kitchen.

    Being pregnant was awkward. It wasn't necessarily uncomfortable, and I couldn't be happier that I was going to have a baby, but the little tike sure liked to mess with me.

    I was peeing every ten minutes, because the baby thought my bladder was a trampoline. And I was eating everything in sight. I was hungry all the time, because the baby was, which had me convinced the tike would be a boy.

    Chance was hoping for a girl, for whatever reason. And my mom said I was carrying like it would be a girl. But I was convinced the baby inside me was a boy. Too squirrely to be a girl.

    We didn't want to know the gender of our child. We wanted to be surprised. Coming up with a name for both a boy and a girl was the one drawback.

    Angel-face trailed after me, just about glued to my side. "Well, you're carrying my unborn child. It's my job to be worried."

    I faced him and put a hand on my hip. "Yeah, how is this fair? You get to have all the fun, and I have to do the work." I gestured to my bulging stomach.

     That had been a running joke ever since I learned I was pregnant.

    He laughed, cradling my face. "Being away from you is going to give me an ulcer. It's not all fun and games for me."

    "Sure it isn't," I joshed, patting his cheek. When he gave me his goofy smile in response, I had to smile back, and I was reminded as to why I fell in love with the male model.

    How Chance managed to keep our wedding (and engagement) out of the tabloids, I'd never know. But he did it. He whisked our families and friends to Oahu, Hawaii for a private ceremony on the beach at sunset.

    Mom dragged Louis, and dad brought Donna. It was the first time mom and dad had seen each other since mom's wedding. They did well, since they were both happy in their current relationships. They were their usual selves, and mom and Donna became best friends within five minutes of meeting each other.

    Sheila went stag to the wedding, but had a wild fling with one of Chance's groomsmen. She was still single, living in an apartment in Brimwell, but she was happy. She was visiting us at the moment, though.

    As I made an egg salad sandwich (my latest strange pregnancy craving), I thought back to the announcement of my engagement.

    Dad was less than pleased at first. But he warmed up to the idea when Chance funded the renovations for his house. And dad's partner in crime was ecstatic and congratulatory.

    Sheila didn't stop yelling for a week, and she constantly asked to see the ring. Being her roommate had never been as taxing as it was when I got engaged.

    Meanwhile, my mom didn't find out until we visited her villa in France, after a month of being engaged. She zeroed in on the ring on my finger instantly, and shouted, "My baby's marrying a model!"

    Of course, no one was surprised. They had been waiting for angel-face to put that ring on my finger. Mom claimed she knew it would happen since the beginning, from the moment she met Chance way back in high school.

    But now I was twenty-eight, and eight months pregnant. Which was why husband-dearest was so worried and taking time off from the modeling world: my due date was a month away.

    I inhaled my sandwich, to Chance's amusement. He claimed my new dietary habits were one of the things he enjoyed about my pregnancy. His favorite change was my increased sex-drive, thanks to those pesky pregnancy hormones.