He chuckled at her exaggerated accent. “Good, because I don’t think I could pass for a completely well-behaved guy if my life depended on it.” It was more or less a joke. He never had been a fan of all those uptight business tycoons, which was why he and Andreas had clashed on more than one occasion.
“Sounds like Eli can make all the messes he wants, blame it on Little One, and you’re not allowed to get mad at either one of us,” he teased, eyebrows raised innocently.
Elliot laughed when Rae detailed a mental picture for him of the grandma wrestling match. Given that two of those women were dead, the laughter didn’t last long, but the joke was appreciated nonetheless. He nodded at her reassurance. “That’s true enough. We support each other enough. We’ll be okay.”
Her usual response to his joke made his smile with every metal she described. “And besides that? Aluminum would be a hard nickname to repeat.” He laughed softly when she asked if her words were cheesy. “Everything is better with a little cheese,” he teased.
He was glad when she took comfort from his reassurance that she wasn’t useless. “It is and you do. You probably take care of me more than you should, but I’d be crazy to complain. I’m just surprised that you don’t complain about any of the stuff you have to do for me because I’m too lazy to do it myself. I promise I’ll try to make fewer messes, especially within the next… year or so… because we’ll have our hands full.” And he didn’t feel right making his pregnant girlfriend pick up after him.
Elliot blinked back to awareness when Rae squeezed his hand. He turned his head to look at her, lips quirked into a tiny smile. “Safe as can be,” he added quietly, gaze dropping to the slight swell of Rae’s stomach. “Little too soon to tell the gender, but…” His smile grew as he turned his head back toward the screen. “It’s safe and sound.”