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AN HOMAGE TO VINCENT VEGA

SCENE 1:

THE DINER

“Sarah, I can't thank you enough for bringing me here.” Ian put his cup down, and settled more deeply into the naugahyde cushion. “Really … I mean … diners like this?” His gaze swept around the dimly lit interior. The chipped formica, the long counter with its ancient stools, the linoleum that had been scrubbed so many times that one could only guess at the original color. He half expected Mel to pop out of the kitchen any second now. And their waitress definitely looked like Linda Lavin.

“Mom and Dad … I remember, when I was a kid, eating at places like this when we went on vacation. This brings back some good memories.” Ian's gaze softened, his thoughts drifting back in time to long car rides deep into the night, the brightly lit signs that marked the diners and motels on the outskirts of the small towns on old Route 66. He remembered Tucumcari, the memory that of a small child half asleep in the back seat, struggling to stay awake, imagination fired by the bright lights rushing toward them out of the darkness.

“No, Ian … no. I'm the one who should be thanking you.” Gently shaking her head, Sarah leaned forward, trying to keep control of the conversation. There was so much that she wanted to say, and so much more that she wanted to ask. “I was so fed up with that stereo of yours, so angry. I was looking for a confrontation, the louder the better. Next stop the management office, another complaint, this time in writing … I wanted them to evict you!”

Sarah was a battle scarred RN, daily suffering the slings and arrows that any large, urban hospital serves up in abundance. Patients were sometimes a pain, but they came and went. Far too many of the doctors were out and out jerks, in it for the money and the endless opportunities to cheat on their wives with the young nurses who seemingly existed only to do their bidding. And those assholes were here to stay.

Night after night, Sarah had brought her frustration home with her, to be greeted with the heavy vibration coming through the ceiling from the apartment above her-- a stereo somewhere above her couch, making it impossible for her to relax. Once, she had mounted a stool to pound on the ceiling. She had left notes in the mailbox. She had made a verbal complaint to management, learned that her tormentor was a single male roughly her own age, divorced, a highly educated professional. She was astonished to discover that he was on the faculty of the university she passed every day driving to and from work. And East Asian languages? She had looked up the department's campus address in the phone book. The building was within easy walking distance of her office!

Or it would be, she thought, if the city would ever get around to plowing the damned sidewalks!

Minnesota winters were not for the faint of heart.

She had finally had enough, storming up the stairs to pound on his door. She was completely unprepared for what happened next.

. . . .

“What the hell?” Ian looked up from the counter, the pounding at the door startling him badly. Slicing up the avocado would have to wait. The good news was that he had somehow managed to keep his fingers out of the blade's line of fire.

“Yes?”, he said, easing the door open, not sure what to expect. He looked out at a young woman, about his own age, a bit taller …

And if looks could kill, he instantly realized, I'd already be dead! This has got to be the neighbor from Hell!

One of the ladies in the office had warned him that there had been a verbal complaint from the RN living below him. It was the same old, same old … turn the stereo down, or was it the TV? Some people simply didn't appreciate Carson's monologue.

Too bad, he thought, because we have a Grade A winner here. Nice features, blue eyes, great lips, maybe a natural blonde …

Ian's eyes drifted lower, then braked to a halt. Ian was big on foreplay, and this seemingly Scandinavian bombshell was singularly blessed with that asset with which he most enjoyed playing. She reminded him of Bonnie Holbrooke, the blonde beauty with whom he had fallen so deeply in love … in the ninth grade.

“Would you puh … lese turn it down, or better yet, turn it off?” Sarah angrily stepped forward, and Ian involuntarily stepped back. Her eyes were on fire, and he had zero desire to get burnt.

Still, genuinely puzzled, Ian glanced over his shoulder. Yes, the stereo was on, but it was hardly loud … and besides, who didn't like Fleetwood Mac? Lindsey doing the riff on Go Your Own Way? Oh, come, on!

Ian hated confrontation.

“Would you like to come in,” he asked in a subdued voice. It was hard not to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness. Migraines had played a part in the collapse of his marriage, conditioned him to surrender rather than fight for his convictions. And the more readily he gave in, the more shrill his ex's voice had become. His last migraine had erupted four days after their separation.

“I was just making dinner,” he added, “and I have a bottle of wine decanting. Please, let me pour you a glass, and, uh, if you haven't eaten, I'm preparing tacos. Do you, uh, do you like Mexican food?”

Ian's nervousness was on full display. He was acutely aware of the bulk between his legs, and could only pray that his diaper and baby pants wouldn't leak.

. . . .

Sarah could only gape, feeling the anger leech out of her. In her imagination, her unseen neighbor was just another jerk, some Neanderthal who would happily join her in making a scene, and to hell with his professional credentials. Doctors had plenty of credentials, and the fancy degrees hanging on their office walls didn't keep most of them from being jerks. It briefly occurred to her that he might be playing her, deftly turning the tables to throw her off balance.

Well, if that's his game, it's definitely working! But wait … no … this can't be an act. No one's this good. Oh, God, Sarah, he's just some nice, ordinary guy, and you … you … guess what, you're the only jerk on the premises! God, he probably thinks I'm going to kick him in the balls, or something.

Sarah's eyes drifted lower, then braked to a halt. Over the past ten years she had changed thousands of adult diapers, and there was absolutely no doubt in her mind. The bulge was such a giveaway, and then there was the truck from the diaper service, making its weekly pick-up and drop-off at a building in an adults only complex. The two pieces fit so neatly together: she had to be standing face to face with their customer. She idly wondered where he kept his diaper pail, wondered whether his bathroom reeked of stale urine, or worse.

And the $64,000 question: is he incontinent, or does he have some kind of weird diaper fetish? No, he has to be a freak, has to be, because he's too young to have … and besides, this is the second floor, and there's no elevator, no way to get down in a wheelchair and, and, no crutches in the hallway. I would have noticed, and … and ...

As her preconceptions shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, a new and very different pattern began to emerge from the wreckage in Sarah Haikkonen's mind.

He's got to be about my age. Thirty-one, thirty-two, something like that. He's the right age and, and, East Asian languages? Oh, dear God!

Sarah took a deep breath, and slowly released it, hoping that he would misinterpret what he was seeing, hoping that he would think she was letting go of her anger. She had spent the first two years of her career at the Veteran's hospital out by the airport, the biggest in the state, but she had fled to the city because she wasn't hard enough, couldn't cope with the despair that awaited her every time she started her rounds. It wasn't the wounds, well, not the physical wounds at any rate. She was trained for that, and for the most part the young men in her care wanted physically to get better, wanted to get on with their lives. No, it was the emotional wounds, the psychic, that she had seen in the eyes of too many men her own age-- men who had come home to be spat upon by their neighbors, men who had come home to be called baby killers. She was badly out of her depth, and so she had fled.

There was a question that Sarah desperately wanted to ask ... but how to ask it?

“Thank you, um?”

“Ian … Ian Grady. And you are ...”

“Sarah … Sarah Haikkonen.”

“Finnish?”

“That's right,” she smiled, “from a long and not particularly illustrious line of Haikkonen's in the U.P. And yes, Ian, I'd love to share a glass of wine with you. It will,” she nervously laughed, “give me a bit of time to work up a decent apology for my outburst.”

“Sarah,” he grinned, “in the immortal words of Chick Hearn, no harm, no foul, so no apology is called for. Oh, granted, the circumstances are a bit unusual, but I am genuinely happy to make your acquaintance.”

Ian poured the wine, and they gently clinked glasses.

“So, a Lakers fan?”

“Die hard,” he grinned.

“Ian, there's something else I'd like to ask you. Can I?

“Why not? Now that we're old friends,” he teased, “you can ask me anything!”

“Well, it's my understanding that you're a professor at the U, teaching East Asian languages?”

Ian laughed, and shook his head.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Sarah, but I'm just in my first year … on probation, so to speak. A newly minted and poorly paid Ph.D.”

“Well, what I really want to know is … do you by any chance … do you speak Vietnamese?”

. . . .

The apartment mystified her. There was no dining room table, and no chairs. Clearly, Ian ate on the floor. She made a mental note to ask if he was a practicing Buddhist. Two oddly shaped tables in the living room housed the stereo components and a TV; the dreaded speakers were, as she had expected, positioned directly above her own couch. His was a plush, two piece design. It looked very comfortable.

She had asked for permission to use the bathroom, and he had agreed without hesitation. She flushed and then washed her hands, but her real objective had been to peek behind the shower curtain. The two pairs of vinyl pants hanging on a makeshift clothes line did not surprise her in the least. The labels confirmed that they were from a highly respected local manufacturer with a nationwide institutional customer base.

She risked an even quicker peek into the single bedroom. The king sized bed was predictable, and the diaper pail was right where she had expected to find it. Breathing deeply, she smelled the all too familiar scent of dried urine. What she had smelled in the bathroom was more complex-- the unmistakable mixture of feces and urine.

So, she concluded with a slight shake of her head, he may be truly incontinent, both bladder and bowel. And he speaks Vietnamese ... how well we'll be able to judge when I get him to the hospital. And we do desperately need interpreters.

Sarah knew that she would have to proceed cautiously. The soldiers at the hospital had all behaved like members of a fraternity, only instead of secret handshakes they seemed bound together by a vow of silence.

No one wanted to talk about the battlefield.

No one.

There was still more that she needed to learn. The bedroom was odd, not for what was there but for what wasn't. No headboard. No dresser. No bedside table. Just a hard sided suitcase standing on end and housing an ugly, gray office lamp-- the sort of lamp that a down and out accountant might use. Was Ian poor, or had he come home to join some cult that demanded a vow of poverty? Oddball cults had sprung up all over the country in recent years, and there was even a nurse in her own unit who had joined some sect out in Oregon. The times, she grimaced, they are indeed a changing.

And then there were the paintings. Ian clearly loved bright, bold colors-- but why on earth would anyone have so graphic a painting of the sea giving up its dead hanging on their living room wall?

It was the one thing that gave her pause.

Sarah returned to the living room. She wanted Ian to put another record on, and then come downstairs to hear at first hand what she had to put up with night after night. All of her spur of the moment planning to seduce Ian Grady-- a nice, intelligent guy with a bright future and a disability that she could easily tolerate and gently manipulate-- would come to naught if she couldn't get a decent night's sleep.

. . . .

Ian sighed deeply, and turned to face her, palms up in the classic gesture of surrender.

“I'm sorry, Sarah. It never occurred to me that this might happen. Damn! I put so much work into getting the system set up just right.” He shook his head, the regret plain on his face.

“And the problem is …?” Sarah waited for him to fill in the missing piece.

“The bass. It's causing an harmonic vibration. That's normal, but it shouldn't be causing the ceiling to shake.” Ian glanced up. “Do you hear me walking around up there?”

“Unfortunately,” Sarah conceded. “So, what are we going to do?”

“I have an idea, something so idiotically simple that it might just work! Wait here … I'll be back in a few minutes!”

Ian headed out the door, never realizing that Sarah's eyes were riveted on his well padded posterior. Hmm, she wondered, is it my imagination, or is his diaper drooping a bit more than it was when I first noticed it?

Standing in the quiet of her living room, a quiet interrupted only by the pulsing vibration of the ceiling (Lindsey was currently pounding out I'm So Afraid), without warning Sarah suddenly started to giggle, one of those helpless fits that caused her to rush into the kitchen and grab a glass of water. She choked it down, with the predictable result.

She started to hiccup.

This is just too funny, she mused, frantically waving her hand in front of her face. Twenty minutes ago, I wanted to piss him off enough to start a fight, and now … now … how's he going to react when I offer to change his pissy diaper?????

. . . .

The racket stopped, just the same way it always began. Abruptly.

Sarah listened to Ian's footsteps fading away overhead, and rushed to the door. She knew that it would only be a matter of seconds, and she wanted him to feel welcome. He was obviously going all out for her, he was super cute, and she wanted to reciprocate.

“Well?”

“Just wait,” he muttered as she stood aside to let him pass. “Another thirty seconds, tops.” Ian stopped in the middle of the living room, and looked anxiously up at the ceiling. “I put on Led Zeppelin's When the Levee Breaks, the studio track. It's the one with the drum solo that John Bonham recorded out in the lobby. Mix in John Paul Jones on bass guitar, and there's a good chance the ceiling's gonna crack.”

They both continued to look up.

I just don't believe this, Sarah marveled, a groupie with a Ph.D. Like any sensible girl from the U.P., Sarah's taste ran to Country & Western. Roy Orbison was about as close to rock as she was willing to get.

Still nothing.

“It's okay.” Ian breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Really,” he said as he turned to her, “it's gonna be okay.”

God, he's adorable! The look on his face? He looks just like a six year old bursting with pride because he got the answer right!

“Okay, Prof, what did you do? What's your deep, dark secret?”

Ian roared with laughter. “What I did was … I took four bath towels … my only four, by the way … and I folded them up and put two under each speaker. Et voila! No more vibration!”

“Only, now you have no bath towels ...”

“Yeah ...”

“And that old beater you were driving … the one that's been buried in a snow bank directly outside my living room window for the past month … DOA?”

“Yeah … the alternator. I just don't have the money right now.”

“Which is why I see you waiting for the bus when I'm leaving for work.”

“Yeah … cue the Hollies.”

“Okay … well, here's what we're going to do. After we get you changed, we're going to the store to buy you some new towels … my treat. Then, I'm going to take you out to dinner … your choice, but also my treat.”

“Sarah ...”

“No, Ian, and please let me finish. You kept me from making a complete fool of myself today, and from doing something that I would later have come badly to regret. This is just my way of thanking you for being so … so nice.”

“But Sarah? Get me changed?”

Sarah pointedly looked down at Ian's crotch, and then looked him straight in the eyes.

“Your diaper, Ian. I don't want you leaking all over my car seat, so before we go, we are going to change your diaper. And I want you to bring a couple of extras. Do you have a diaper bag?”

“Yes, but ...” Ian began to blush, but he quickly got it under control. He prided himself on his poker face … a face perfected in conferences with senior officers in Saigon who didn't have a clue, hangers on from the Korean conflict whose idiotic orders far too often cost the lives of men in the field that they could ill afford to lose. The bitterness ate at him like acid, the memories sometimes so overwhelming that it felt like he was drowning … the casual construction of strategy over aperitifs on the rooftop of the Hotel Caravelle, the details elaborated behind the barbed wire and the sandbags, the generals and the spooks ignoring the hardened French planters who had been fighting this war for generations … men often seated at the next table. It was Henri Duplessis who had schooled him in the difference between language and culture, Henri who had showed him how the French had lost their empire not in Viet Nam but in Algeria, warned him that America was making the exact same mistakes, the cycle repeating, Saigon the new Algiers, the Pentagon the new ...

“No buts, Ian; the subject is closed.”

“No, it isn't. Sarah, I've … I can change my own diaper, damn it!”

“And you will. Ian, I am not going to interfere, but I am going to watch. In the past ten years, I must have changed at least 3,000 adult diapers, so I'm certainly qualified to carry out an Assessment.”

“A … a what?

“An Assessment. I am going to evaluate how well you clean yourself, how tightly you pin your new diaper, whether there is any cloth sticking out from your rubber or vinyl pants. And above all, I am going to evaluate how you wash your hands after the fact … even the kind of soap that you use. I'll offer you suggestions if there are things you need to improve on, but the only point at which I would intervene is to refasten your diaper if it looks like it's just going to fall off as soon as you stand up. You will be lying down when you change, right?”

Sarah kept her voice detached and professional. She could, and in the future would make this really fun for Ian, but now was not the time. Now, she had to take control, put him in his place, and begin the long, drawn out process of gaining his trust.

Ian stared hard at the floor. He couldn't bear to look in her eyes. “I'm trapped twixt and tween, Sarah,” he said in a voice so soft that she had to strain to hear him. “I really am. I can see what I'm doing if I'm standing up, but there's a motion involved that is so dangerous … it terrifies me. But lying down, it's all by feel, and you're right … you're so right. I think everything's okay, then I stand up, and the damned diaper is down at my knees! Ugh!”

Sarah reached out and gently cupped Ian's cheeks in her hands, forcing him to look up, into her eyes. She was savoring her moment of triumph, but the look that she gave him was innocence personified. “Ian, I can and will help you, but I won't force myself upon you. All you have to do is ask … and, yes, I know that it's hard for a man, any man with an ounce of pride, to ask for help, especially with a problem that's so intimate. I can change your diaper, and keep it strictly professional the whole time. Or we can talk about the weather, your favorite sports team, anything you think would help to distract you. I can even make it light and a bit of fun for you; many of my patients liked being teased when I was changing them because they had the ability to laugh at themselves and the absurdity of the situation we were both trapped in. But you have to talk to me, Ian; you can't shut down or I can't help you. And yes, I know how hard it is … believe me, I've been here before. But I have to know what happened to you out there., what it is that's so dangerous, what I have to avoid.”

Sarah reached down and firmly grasped Ian's hands in her own.

“Now, let's go change your diaper.”

. . . .

“Ian, you need to take more time when you're wiping.”

Ian was lying down on a changing pad, his used diaper long since banished to the pail. He was blindly wiping his genitalia. Everything was by feel, and he knew that he wasn't getting it right.

“Sarah, thank you so much. It was a really great suggestion, and right now I feel more dumb than I usually do for not seeing it myself.”

Sarah had said that it would be a lot easier for him to wipe his bottom if he moved the changing mat close enough to the wall that he could walk his feet up it, and fully expose his rear. For the first time, he felt like he was making real progress in managing his incontinence.

For her part, Sarah was horrified by what she had learned. The bullet had shattered on impact, and the MASH unit had methodically and efficiently dug out all but one fragment-- a piece lodged so close to the spinal cord at L5 that they judged it best left alone rather than undertake a high risk surgery which, if it went wrong, could leave him paralyzed for life from the waist down.

Angry and horrified. She was angry because of the risk that he was running every time he changed his diaper, especially the messy ones. Ian had grudgingly admitted that it was hard to avoid getting a jolt along the sciatic nerve when he bent over and twisted to survey the damage, and using baby wipes to clean his bottom merely aggravated the risk. A shower was the obvious answer, but he routinely had three to five BM's daily. So … obvious but impractical. Now that she at least had a handle on what she was up against, Sarah was also infuriated. She was good at her job, and a messy diaper was an easy cleanup. She could make a lot of Ian's risk go away if he would simply let her take responsibility for his well-being in general, and his diaper changes in particular. And therein lay the problem. In fact, it was crystal-clear: in Ian's mind, getting help was a mutual transaction-- help received equals independence lost.

But Sarah had learned something else today. Ian Grady was a nail biter, and spectacularly so. Twice in the brief time that they had been together, she had caught him chewing on fingernails, all of them already bitten to the quick. His oral fixation was so strong that he seemed completely oblivious to what he was doing. There were things that she could and would do to put a stop to it-- the bulbous mittens that they employed post-surgery to keep patients from pulling on their catheters or attacking itchy sutures, and an orthodontic device for tube feeding patients unable to feed themselves. It looked amazingly like a baby's pacifier, and with that she began nibbling around the edges of an intriguing idea. His long-term prognosis would be much improved if he would simply admit to some degree of dependence on others, but the adult male would fiercely resist any attempt to take him down this path.

Well, what about the baby that lurks inside Ian Grady the same way it does in every man? If the adult won't yield to a caregiver, will the baby fully entrust himself to his mommy? Let's face facts, Miss Sarah Haikkonen: the sexual possibilities in this scenario for both of us are well and truly off the charts! I have got to talk to Mom about this!

. . . .

“All things considered, Ian, I think that went very well. Of course, it was to be expected that I would have to redo your diaper. Pinning your own diaper tight enough when you're laying down is about as likely as winning the lottery. Babies don't change their own diapers, and neither should you.”

Sarah glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “It's strictly mommy's work,” she added deftly, planting the thought in his mind.

“And when I'm at work,” he quietly rejoined, “who's going to change me there?” Ian slowly shook his head. “Sarah, I am truly grateful for everything that you're doing for me, but what you're suggesting simply isn't practical. On the weekends? Yeah, maybe. But Monday through Friday? No. Five days a week, I'll just have to muddle along the best I can.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded. “So, why don't we start with the basics? First, do you want my help? Yes, or no?”

“Yes.” Ian decided to leave it at that.

“Good. So, why don't we begin with what is practical, namely the weekend? From now on, I will pick you up at your office on Friday afternoon at 4:30, and return you to work Monday morning. In fact, you will no longer be taking the bus at all. It's silly for you to do so when we have nearly identical work schedules. You can do without using your baby diapers as stuffers until you get to the office, and save a little money in the process.”

“Sounds good,” Ian agreed. He hated the bus.

“Second. From Friday afternoon until I drop you off on Monday, I will assume total responsibility for your diaper changes … which reminds me. I want to take one of your diapers with me to the hospital on Monday. I have a feeling that, when I put them side by side, it will turn out that ours will be both bigger and more absorbent. If you use ours on the weekend, you can reduce your order with the diaper service. More money saved.”

“Also good, but how are we going to launder them?”

“In the basement. Ian, you know perfectly well that we have four washers and driers down there. You need to start doing your own diaper laundry, and the money you're saving on bus fare alone should cover the costs.”

“But the whole point of the diaper service …”

“Ian, stop it. All right? Just stop it.” There was a red light coming up, and as she braked Sarah decided to take advantage of it. “Look, I know you don't want to hear it, but the blunt truth is that, unless and until there is a revolutionary breakthrough in surgical procedures, you are going to be incontinent for the rest of your life, which means that you are going to be wearing diapers for the rest of your life. The diaper service will be a constant drain on your finances … and how are you going to manage when you're traveling? You will be, you know … lectures, conferences … a lot of people are going to want a piece of you. You are going to have to rely on your own resources, and your own resourcefulness. I can help, and I plan to, but unless you choose to throw it all away and spend the rest of your life hiding under the bed like a small child, the burden is going to fall largely on your shoulders. Mind you,” she giggled, “I think that you'd make an adorable baby. Honestly, you are beyond cute when you've got nothing on but your little diapee and your baby pants! I would give anything to see you crawling around on the floor like a wittle, wittle baby!”

The light changed, and Sarah hit the accelerator, her devilish laughter still hanging in the air. She mentally congratulated herself for playing the baby card with real finesse.

Ian prudently decided to say nothing. The diner was just a few minutes away, and he was starting to have visions of a patty melt, onion rings, and fries in his immediate future. A chocolate shake was definitely in the offing. Sure, he'd undoubtedly have a messy diaper by the time they got home-- greasy food was his archenemy-- but what the Hell. For now at least, he was off the hook.

He stole a glance at his erstwhile chauffeur, and gave thought to what she was clearly offering. She's drop dead gorgeous, talented and smart, and at least a bit kinky, so with any luck at all she'll despise the missionary position as much as I do. And those tits? Man, those are well and truly to die for! How did Bob Seger put it … 'points of her own, sittin' way up high, way up firm and high'? And the best part of it all? It sounds like she wants to take outright control of my life. Well, my dear, you can do it with my blessing, because there's a few things about me that you haven't caught on to yet. I'm done with making decisions. I will walk around a problem and study it from a thousand different angles, and then tell everyone that I'm sure I've missed something, and need to start over from scratch. But the reality is that I'm stalling, hoping that the problem will resolve itself without any help from me, or just simply go away, vanish on the breeze. Hell, if Emily had just cut out the passive-aggressive crap and become as dominant as she was decisive, we'd still be married! But no, when things went well, she took all the credit. And when her decisions blew up in our face, like not selling the condo when we had the chance? Why the fault was mine and mine alone because I didn't stand up to her. Yeah, sure.

And the irony of it all is that I straight up offered Emily what Sarah is only hinting at. I was in diapers anyway, so I'd become her baby or her baby slave, whatever … but no more blame shifting. She'd get all of the credit, but she'd also take all of the blame. That was the deal, and she refused to take it. So, adios and sayonara, babe. I am so out of here.

And here's (imaginary drum roll, please) … Sarah (thank you, Ed McMahon), all but offering me the golden ring. But how are we going to jump the hurdles? The logistical problems are daunting, and it doesn't look like there are any quick fixes. I'll just leave it to her to sort it all out. Just go with the flow, my friend … just go with the flow.

. . . .

“Before we go, Ian, there's just one more thing.”

“More coffee?,” he offered in return, ever hopeful.

“No, silly, it's about your hands. Just look at them!”

Ian did precisely that. He held them up in front of his face, and took a count.

“Ten digits,” he nodded; “all present and accounted for.” Well, almost. Ian had learned about recoil the hard way.

“No, silly. I'm talking about your fingers.”

“What about them?”

“You bite your fingernails, and it's disgusting. There's germs crawling all over everything you touch, and yet you persist in putting your fingers in your mouth. Just like a toddler. Honestly, it makes me wonder whether you're still sucking your thumb in your sleep.”

“I haven't a clue, honestly times two. But you're right, Sarah, it's a nasty habit. And I have tried to break it … many, many times. Nothing's worked.”

“Well, we have mittens at the hospital that will help. When we're at home and you're in my care, you will wear them whenever you're out of my sight, especially when you're sleeping. But if your mouth gets lonely, we have an orthodontic device that you can suck on … really, it's just a great, big pacifier. You'll love it.”

“Maybe so, but there's definitely something else around here that I would rather suck on.” Bold as brass, Ian stared steadily at Sarah's breasts. “After all, as we both know, babies explore everything with their fingers and tongues.”

“True. All too true. And I have big plans for your fingers and tongue.”

Sarah's gaze was equally steady.

“Big Plans.”

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