Baby Love Lite (52 page)

My curiosity was definitely piqued now.

“
Gina, I’m not sure that you
know this, but an accident some years back made it impossible for
me to carry a baby. I can conceive, but would never be able to
carry a baby after the first trimester. Unfortunately, when Nigel
and I married, we learned that he was sterile for all intents and
purposes. Recently we've explored surrogate options. I’ve had
several of my eggs harvested and stored. We're going to have my
eggs artificially inseminated and have located a surrogate through
the agency who will have the fertilized eggs implanted into her,
where hopefully they'll attach to the uterine wall, and she'll
carry the baby to term.”

“
Oh, Tess!” Gina and I both
said in unison.

“
That's great, Tess,” I said
hugging her.

“
You go for it, Tess,” Gina
encouraged, “I really wish you and Nigel the best with
this.”

“
Thank you,” Tess replied
smiling.

Even in my extremely buzzed state, I felt as
though Tess was holding something back. It was probably my
imagination as I tossed down the rest of my drink, and went back to
the bar. Trey was still nowhere to be found and I wanted to
dance.

Just then I saw Trey, Tristan and Nigel come
back into the room. I scurried over to him, pulling him by the hand
onto the dance floor as the DJ announced the next tune by saying,
“It’s electric!”

Trey was clearly at a loss trying to follow
the steps of the electric slide. I was having a blast other than
knocking into the couple next to us several times. When that song
ended, the DJ asked for requests. I shouted out “Disco Inferno.” It
happened to be a dance I'd seen Maggie do a million times growing
up. I'd no clue as to what I was thinking. The song started and I
was going through the same moves that I'd seen her do many times.
Again, Trey wasn't in his comfort zone with this.

Then some random guy that was with the DJ saw
me out there on the floor with a partner that totally hadn’t a clue
as to how this dance worked. He was in front of me in a second and
we danced to the song as if we were Travolta and Gorney from the
old classic movie, “Saturday Night Fever.”

Trey gave me a dirty look as he sauntered off
the floor. The dance finished and I realized as I left the floor, I
was still spinning. The DJ was starting the next tune which was a
classic ACDC tune called “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.”

Oh, Sweet Jesus, the Adios Mother Fuckers
are kicking my ass!

I made a hasty exit to the deck and stumbled
down the two steps that led out into the yard. I traipsed quickly
over to the side of the house, where no one could see me from the
deck. I felt my stomach start to heave.

Luckily, I made it over to the line of
oleander bushes that were dried up for the winter season and
unceremoniously tossed my cookies over them. It'd had only been a
figure of speech when I'd told Trey earlier that I'd planned on
partying until I puked. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
I wasn’t sure that I was done tossing just yet.

“
What the hell!”

I heard Caroline’s shrill, drunken voice from
the ground on the other side of the bushes. “Oh, shit! Landon, I
think someone just puked on me!”

My glazed eyes adjusted to the darkness, and
I could see Caroline’s body sitting atop Landon in the grass, both
of them half-naked.

Holy shit!

I quickly staggered away, not wanting to be
recognized. As I stumbled back across the yard toward the house, I
met Trey who'd obviously been searching for me outside. Just as he
reached me, I spewed all over the front of him.

“
Jesus Christ!” he snarled.
“Are you happy with yourself, Tylar?”

He pulled me behind him and took me around
through the front entrance of the house; he halfway carried me up
to our suite. Once there, he planted my ass in front of the toilet
where I continued to heave. I heard him running the shower to get
it warmed up.

Trey somehow managed to peel
my clothing off along with his, and pulled me into the shower with
him,
where he proceeded to try and get me
sober. Afterwards, he dried me off and dressed me in my
pajamas.

The last thing I remembered before I passed
out on our bed was Trey wishing me a ‘Very Fucking Happy New
Year.’

My head was pounding when I finally came to
in our bed on New Year’s morning. This was worse than the hangover
I'd experienced last year when Gina and I'd gone to the track and
met the "mirror" twins.

Evidently, wine hangovers weren’t quite as
lethal as those caused by drinking too many Adios Mother Fuckers.
Even my eyelashes were in pain. I managed to raise my head off the
pillow a couple of inches and saw that Trey wasn't in the bed. At
this point, I wondered if he'd even slept in here last night. When
I looked at the pillow and blankets I decided that he had.

As if on cue, the bedroom door opened and
Trey came in carrying Preston. They were both still in their
jammies so it couldn’t be that late. The clock on the nightstand
read 7:52 a.m. I knew that I'd passed out before midnight, so I'd
at least gotten a sufficient amount of rest.

Trey put Preston on the bed and she
immediately smiled at me as she crawled over to where I was slumped
against my pillows wanting to die.

“
How ya feeling, baby?” Trey
asked his voice resounding in my ears like a relentless
echo.

I managed a weak, sickly moan, covering my
eyes with the back of my arm. Preston was right there next to me
chanting “num-num . . . num-num.”

She was tugging at my pajama top. It
hurt.

“
I don’t think so, Preston,”
Trey said, scooping her up into his arms. “Mommy’s num-num is
likely to be eighty-proof this morning. She’s going to need to pump
and dump before anyone under drinking age can imbibe from those
breasts.”

“
Ha ha,” I managed
weakly.

“
I’ll go get her a bottle
and feed her some cereal,” Trey said. “Can I get you anything while
I’m downstairs?”

“
Gina,” I rasped. “Please,
Trey, send Gina in here.”

“
I’ll see if they’re up,” he
replied. He left the room. It was obvious that he'd no sympathy for
my condition this morning. Several minutes later, Gina popped in
looking well rested and refreshed.

“
Feeling kind of down and
out this morning, girlfriend?”

“
Gina, please have Thatcher
make me whatever that concoction you had him make for me last year
to kill that hangover I had. Tell him to make it stronger. Hurry,
please.”

“
You got it, Ty. Be back in
a few.”

It seemed like an eternity before Gina
returned with a tray that had a glass of the red liquid and a plate
of dry toast on it. Trey was right behind her with a tall glass of
ice water and a bottle of ibuprofen. I managed to sit up anxious to
drink the nasty brew and feel the relief it would bring.

I chugged it down swiftly, feeling the warmth
start in the pit of my stomach and rise back up through my throat.
The long, loud belch that followed tasted fiery this time.

“
That’s a turn-on,” Trey
remarked, handing me the glass of water and two tablets of the
ibuprofen to swallow. “It ranks right up there with you puking all
over the front of me last night.”

“
You did?” Gina asked
giggling.

I was clueless. Trey gave Gina a dirty look
and told me to lie back down that he'd handle Preston until I felt
better. He left Gina and me alone.

She continued giggling as she sat down on the
bed. “I wondered what the hell happened to you last night. One
minute you were on the dance floor dancing to ‘Disco Inferno’ and
the next minute you’re nowhere to be found. You missed some
excitement.”

I was just glad that I wasn’t part of any
excitement last night.

“
Oh, yeah? What happened?” I
asked, lying back against my pillows waiting for the ibuprofen to
kick in. The nasty drink had done the trick on everything
else.

“
Well, let’s see. First
Caroline came running in all freaked out with her damn shirt all
unbuttoned and Landon’s jacket tied around her waist. She claimed
someone puked on her, but I think as hammered as that bitch gets,
she finally exceeded her own limit and either puked or shit
herself.”

Oh my God! It's all coming back to me
now!

“
Actually Gina; that
would've been me. I felt sick after that last dance and went
outside. I made it over to the oleander bushes to heave. Hell, I
didn’t know her and Landon were on the other side of them screwing.
Please don’t tell anyone. I’m glad she didn’t recognize
me.”

“
Oh, Ty, that's too funny.
I'd say being that it was Caroline that was probably just some
karma coming back at her in liquid form. But the really big news is
I found out what the brotherly pow-wow was all about last
night.”

“
The what?” I
asked.

“
Come on, Ty, you couldn’t
have been that trashed. Remember when Tristan, Trey and Nigel all
went off to talk about something important? It was when you, Tess
and I were talking on the couch.”

“
Oh yes-yes,” I said, “I
remember now. So, what was the discussion about?”

“
I’m not sure if you’ve
recovered enough to hear this.”

“
Gina, I'm so not in the
mood to have to drag this out of you. Spill it now.”

“
Okay, but get ready. You
remember when Tess shared with us that she and Nigel have been
working with a fertility clinic in California having her eggs
harvested so a surrogate can carry the child for her?”

I nodded.

“
Well, there apparently is
more to the plan. Nigel asked both Trey and Tristan if they would
be sperm donors for the cause.”

What??

“
What?”

“
You heard me
correctly.”

“
Well, what does Tristan say
about all of this?”

“
He's being the sweetheart
that he is. He says he'd really like to help his brother out, but
he doesn’t want me to feel uncomfortable about it.”

“
Well, so there you go,” I
said. “Tristan's willing and I’m sure you aren’t uncomfortable
about it so problem solved.”

“
Whoa, wait a minute, Ty.
I’m not comfortable with it any more than I know you are, but
that's not really the point.”

“
Then what is?” I hissed
still feeling the ache in my head.

“
He asked for
both
of them to be
donors. Not just one or the other.”

“
What’s the rationale in
that? It only takes one random sperm to fertilize an
egg.”

“
I think the whole point of
this is Nigel and Tess would like their baby to have Sinclair DNA,
but not know exactly who the source of it is.”

“
What?” I asked, my head
throbbing in confusion.

“
Look, understandably it's a
complicated situation. So, in order to make it a bit less
complicated, both brothers donate and it'll be difficult to
pinpoint which sperm actually succeeded in fertilizing the egg.
Therefore, the paternal trail is somewhat muddled, but yet it's
Sinclair DNA.”

Is that supposed to make me feel better?

“
Tristan explained it all.
They somehow mix it together and spin it to make sure only the
heartiest sperm survive to fertilize the egg. This makes for a more
robust conception.”

“
I can’t deal with this
right now, Gina,” I said, suddenly feeling ill all over
again.

“
I'll let you get some
rest,” she said getting up to leave the room.

“
Please ask Trey to come
back up,” I asked.

“
You aren’t going to tell
him I told you about this are you?”

“
Why not? If I hadn't been
so fucking drunk last night I might've been privy to it then.
You’re damned straight I’m going to address this with
him!”

Gina skittered from the room without saying
anything else. I sank back down further into my pillows. My head
was reeling now more from the information Gina had shared just now
than from my hangover.

Several minutes later, Trey was in the suite.
“Gina said you needed to see me. Are you okay?”

“
No, Trey, I'm most
certainly not okay. Is there something you need to tell me about a
conversation you had with your brothers last evening?”

He sank down on the bed sitting next to me.
He took one of my hands into his and studied me intently for a
moment trying to organize his explanation in such a way I wouldn’t
find the whole issue deplorable. He wasn’t going to have much luck
with that.

“
Tylar, I was going to
discuss this with you, but there really hasn’t been much of an
opportunity between the time Nigel discussed this with Tristan and
me until now. You were a bit distracted last night,
remember?”

“
I’m fully attentive now.
Let’s talk.”

“
Why do I think you already
know the gist of it?” he asked.

“
Yeah, Gina filled me in, so
what? You aren’t seriously considering this, are you?”

“
Why wouldn’t I consider
this? Nigel's my brother. He’s asked something of both Tristan and
me that we're equipped to give. I love my brother.”