Chapter 6

We kept the rings as a joke sort of…or as a sentiment, I'm not sure. We each bought little gold chains and made necklaces with them. I went out to buy her a real ring. Mark help me. Ha. Well it was really an engagement ring for her. We agreed to pick out the wedding rings together.

Now, just so you know, we were both Anne Rice fans. So what I'm about to say comes from her book The Witching Hour. It seems the best way to describe what happened. We were on the road, just about a month after we'd met…

'Late that night, he woke up in the big hotel bed alone. He found her sitting in the living room. He realized she'd been crying.

"Rowan, what is it?"

"Nothing, Michael. Nothing that doesn't happen to a woman once a month," she said. She gave a little forced smile, faintly bitter. "It's just that…well you'll probably think I'm insane, but I was hoping I was pregnant."

He took her hand, not knowing whether it was the right thing to kiss her. He too felt the disappointment, but more significant, he felt happy that she had actually wanted to have a child. All this time, he'd been afraid to ask her what her feelings were about such a thing. And his own carelessness had been worrying him. "That would have been great, darling," he said. "Just great."

"You think so? You would have been happy?"

"Absolutely."

"Michael, let's do it then. Let's go on and get married."' (782/83)

That was almost exactly what had happened between us. But our conversation had branched out a different way.

"What would its name be, the baby?" she had asked me.

Our fondness of Anne Rice came up again. "I don't know about a boy," I told her, "but if it's a girl we are naming her Claudia. And that's the bottom line-"

She laughed and finished the line. "Cause Stone Cold said so!" she laughed and I tussled her hair.

"Come back to be," she got up and we did just that, silent for a long time until I threw an idea at her. "Listen, Amber, I think we should lay off the sex until we're married. I don't know if some fate just saved us, but you can't be getting pregnant just yet. Your dad wouldn't like it and Vince wouldn't like it and it wouldn't be good right now. So let's just hold out, okay?"

She moaned. "Kane…that's like two months."

I laughed and kissed her forehead. "Hunger is a great sauce. Remember that."