There are times when I hate having sisters. Like, when we were all teenagers and fighting over the bathroom. Or whenever Sophie and Emma would come into my room to steal my clothes. I even hated that we would sometimes fight over the same boy, seeing as Sophie is two years older than I am and Emma's four years younger. Honestly, having sisters is hard work. 

Take now, for example. I'm trying to sort out the next two-week rotation rota for my staff and Sophie's decided that she wants to spend her rest day with me. She's running the London Marathon tomorrow and the day before, she likes to relax, but for the life of me, I can't work out having her lingering in my work's office is somehow relaxing to her. 

Sophie's been here since ten a.m. and already I'm planning to get rid of her. Not in the murderous kind of way, although I can't deny that those types of thoughts have run through my head, but in a more, 'Please, get out of my office!' kind of way. Where is her husband, anyway? Surely he could help her relax. Take her shopping. To the zoo. To anywhere that's not here. I really don't care where Sophie goes, as long as she takes her annoying mouth with her. 

"How's little Joey doing?" She suddenly asks, plopping into the chair opposite my desk. I look up from the spreadsheet on my computer and stare at her, wondering if this is where she's finally lost her flipping mind. It's overdue. When I don't entertain her with an answer, my sister points at my stomach. "The baby, Charlotte. How's the baby doing?"

"The baby is fine," I reply. I click to print preview the rota and frown when I see there are a few gaps. With Aimee's exams coming up, she's asked to scale back her hours at La Petite Pâtisserie, which now leaves me half a person down in my workforce. I'd blackmailed my cousin, Keira, into covering some shifts but she was useless and ate all my profits. Picking up a Post-It note, I scribble a reminder to advertise for new staff and then click to print the worksheet. When I've finished that, I turn to my sister and scowl. "Why do you call the baby, 'Joey'? We don't even know if it's a boy and even if it is, we're not calling it Joey."

Sophie laughs. "Joey is a baby kangaroo." Her laughter continues, even though I don't understand the joke. "You know,  Australia has kangaroos. Isaac's Australian. Kangaroo daddy, joey baby. Any of this making sense to you?"

"Unfortunately, yes," I say. 

Leaving my office to walk to the other end of the hallway, I hear a commotion coming up the stairs as two loud voices talk to one another. Not wanting to come between another Nate-Joanne argument over how the display should be styled, I duck into the secondary office and wait for the print job to finish. I'd forgotten that I'd sent about fifty pages of Health and Safety regulations to print earlier. Actually, that's lucky. The longer I'm out of the office, the longer I don't have to put up with Sophie. 

Taking my phone from my pocket, I see that I've received a message from Martha. Today, she was leaving to go back home to Australia with her mother and the crying emoji that littered all her texts since last night indicates that she is not happy about it. When Martha arrived two weeks ago, I thought that having Alyssa in the same city as Isaac would be disastrous. What if she wanted to initiate something with him? It shouldn't have bothered me, but it did. Thankfully, during their stay, I never saw Alyssa. 

Martha, however, I saw every day. She was so excited at the prospect of becoming a big sister that she would constantly ask if we could go shopping to stock up on baby things. We hit Oxford street a few times and she eagerly choose some maternity outfits for me but I refused to buy any clothes for the baby until we found out the sex. That is, if we find out the sex. 

I was all for knowing the gender before his or her arrival. I like to be prepared and having a fully stocked wardrobe and a nursery befitting a boy or girl was rather important to me. I don't want to be rushing around doing all that after the baby's born. Where would it sleep in the meantime? In an open draw? Isaac, on the other hand, didn't want to know. He wants it all to be a surprise. Like finding out that I'm pregnant wasn't enough of a surprise!

Martha agreed with me, especially after Dita's prediction that we would end up having a boy. The day after I met Isaac's family, Dita turned up at my apartment- along with Martha- brandishing a baby name book. Taking a highlighter from her bag, she threw the inky pen and the book in my direction and told me to get busy while she supervised Martha in the kitchen. An hour later, I was stuck in the 'H' section of the book but at least I had some deliciously fresh madeleines to help me through the next god knows how many letters. 

Smiling as I remember how pleased Martha had been with her baking skills, I felt a pang in my chest that she'd gone back home. I'd briefly spent some time with her yesterday morning but I quickly left so that Isaac could spend the day with her alone. I knew he was devastated that she was going back to Sydney so I didn't want to intrude on some father-daughter time. While I was going to miss her terribly, Isaac was going to miss her more. 

"You got arrested?" I heard Sophie gasp from my office. It was followed by a raucous laughter that almost made me stop, turn around, and run in the other direction. The only thing that stopped me was curiosity. Who had been arrested? "Congratulations, honey! Welcome to the family. Charlotte got arrested once. In the Hamptons last summer. Oh, good times."

Walking into my office, I was ready to give my sister a piece of my mind. How dare she tell people I got arrested? Yes, it was true, but that doesn't mean she can go around, announcing it to the world. In any case, I still maintain that I am entirely innocent of the charges they threatened e with. I never assaulted that police officer. The words were on the tip of my tongue as I rounded the corner but they never passed my lips. As soon as I saw who Sophie had been speaking with, I dropped the paperwork in my hands and blinked at a furious looking Isaac Fletcher and a bashful Martha Fletcher. 

"You're supposed to be on a plane," I say to the teenager, walking up to her and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. "While I'm glad that you're not on the aforementioned plane, why aren't you?"

Isaac frowned. "She got arrested."

"Arrested?"

"That makes it sound so bad," Martha said. The blue eyes she inherited from her father rolled skywards. "He's overreacting. I was detained, that's all."

"Except, airport security didn't detain you," Isaac snapped. "They arrested you! Martha, do you know how serious this could have been? If Daniel hadn't come down to the station-"

"Wait a second," Sophie interrupted. "My husband knew of all this? That ratbag didn't Snapchat me to tell me. Strike nine hundred and three, Danny Boy."

Leaving the room while taking a selfie using the rabbit filter on Snapchat, Sophie continued to grumble about how her husband had all the fun. Blocking her ramblings from my mind, I turned my focus back onto Martha. 

"What did you even do to get arrested?" I wondered.

"I didn't get arrested!" She protested. "Whatever. All I did was create a scene on the plane and you know... other stuff."

I opened my mouth to ask another question but Isaac's voice interrupted. "Please, don't ask her anything else. I need to go and fix all this mess," he said, rubbing the heel of his hands against his eyes. "Because she got into trouble- again- Alyssa's basically told Martha that she has to stay here. I'm sure that didn't come as a shock." He pointedly looked at his daughter. She simply shrugged and smirked. "Thought so. Look, Charlotte, I wouldn't ask otherwise but could you keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't get into more trouble today? I have to go see Daniel and sort out some legal stuff so that Martha can stay here."

"Yeah, course, anything you need," I say quickly. Part of my should have been disappointed in Martha for doing whatever she did to get arrested and for Alyssa to basically disown her, but bubbling under the surface was a lot of pride and happiness that Martha was staying. I kept that secret until Isaac brushed past me, kissing my forehead, and disappearing from sight. Ignoring the intimate gesture he'd bestowed upon me, I waited until I heard his footstep morph into silence and then turned back to Martha. "Good going, kiddo."

She beamed at me. "I know, right?" Then her smile fell and she narrowed her eyes on me. "Want to explain what that was with my dad right there?"

"Nope," I say, popping the 'p' sound. 

Before Martha had the chance to interrogate me more on the matter, Sophie swanned back into the office, our cousin, Keira, hot on her heels. I groaned when I saw Keira. If she was here, things were about to get crazy and I really didn't have the mental capacity to deal with it. Any of it. Sophie's sarcasm was one thing, Martha's another. But Keira? No, thank you, not today. Not ever. Just no. 

The girls, with some pushing from Sophie, began to discuss ways of celebrating Martha's extended stay in London. Keira thought that Martha thoroughly deserved a shopping trip to ease the distress of having been arrested. Stupidly, Sophie agreed. Suddenly, all three had decided where they were going and were pulling on their coats in no time. 

"Um, excuse me?" I say, leaning back in my office chair and staring at them. "Where do you think you are going?"

"Shopping!" Keira answered in her fabulously Irish accent. "Are you coming?"

I shake my head. "No, I'm not and you two aren't going anywhere," I say, pointing at Martha and Keira. In turn, I explained why they weren't to leave. "You're probably grounded and you haven't finished your shift downstairs yet. Sophie, you can bugger off, by all means."

My sister pouted. "Is Joey making you angry?"

I threw a biro at her. "Stop calling my baby a joey!"

"Now, Charlotte, having a baby messes with your hormones and I'm sure you're feeling very stressed right now," Sophie explains in a patronising tone. The only reason I was angry was because she was still here. If she left, I'm sure I'd feel so much better. "That it why I think you should join us on this shopping trip of ours. Shopping is a form of exercise and as Elle Woods professed to the world, exercise releases endorphins, endorphins makes you happy, and happy people don't snap at their sisters like you just did. Grab your coat, sis. We're going shopping."

Feeling too weak to argue, I let Sophie pull me up from my seat and throw my coat towards me before pulling me down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the door. I didn't even put up a fight when she hailed a taxi and directed the driver to Harvey Nichols. For the rest of the morning and well into the early afternoon, I protested very little.

In fact, I enjoyed every second of shopping with Sophie, Martha, and Keira. Even when we sat for lunch and I had to listen to the three of them bicker and snap and be sarcastic to everyone, I laughed and smiled. 

"So, what was that with you and Dad earlier?" Martha asked while we were finishing off the fries at Five Guys, a stone's throw from Selfridges. Noticing Sophie and Keira's confusing, Martha took a sick satisfaction in telling them what had happened. "Dad kissed her forehead. It was cute."

"It was not cute," I tell them all. Picking up my cola drink, I sip it through the straw, ignoring the eyes that fell on me. "It was nothing."

Sophie scoffed. "Yeah, right. You and that man ooze sexual tension these days. Have you reached that horny phase in your pregnancy yet? Is that what this is? Is Joey making you feel hot and bothered by Isaac?"

"No, we don't. No, I haven't. No, that's not what this is. And no, the baby is not making me hot and bothered by Isaac," I sum up my answers to Sophie's questions. Then I add, "Stop calling the baby, 'Joey.'"

The girls all giggled. Including Sophie. No thirty year old should giggle. It's childish. 

Pouting, I finished my fries and cola and quickly instructed everyone that we were done shopping for the day. Ladened down by shopping bags, we jumped into a taxi and stopped off at Isaac's houseboat first. Well, it was close enough to Isaac's houseboat. I didn't want Sophie to know exactly where he lived because I didn't want to be greeted by graffiti on his door whenever I went over. 

Waiting until the taxi was out of sight, I escorted Martha towards her new permanent home, telling her that this shopping trip was going to have to stay between us. If Isaac found out I took her shopping as a reward for her arrest, he'd kill me. Not physically, but I'd definitely be on the receiving end of a cold shoulder, I'm sure. 

Opening the door to the houseboat, Martha says, "It'll be our secret, I promise."

"What will?"

Freezing in position, I wondered if this was all happening in my mind. No, there was no way Isaac would be standing in the middle of his living room, hands on hips, scowl on lips. His glare moved from Martha onto me, and then back again. With a quick wave of his hand, he dismissed his daughter, telling her that he'd speak to her later. 

"You took her shopping?" He asked, his voice quiet and eerily calm. I don't think I like this tone of his. It's definitely luring me into a false sense of security. "Charlotte-"

"It wasn't my idea," I quickly interject. "Sophie and Keira-"

"But you still allowed her to go!" He shouted. Running his hands through his hair, he sighed heavily and stepped closer to me. "She got arrested this morning-"

"Detained!" Martha yelled from her room below deck. "I was detained, not arrested."

Isaac pressed his lips together until they went white. I noticed his hands balling into fists before they released the tension held within them and they fell to his side. His shoulders deflated. "You two are going to be the death of me," he grumbled to himself. When his cool gaze fell on me, I winced. "I cannot believe how irresponsible you were, Charlotte. I'm trying to be a parent to her, give her boundaries, make sure that she knows what's right and wrong and you... you're... you... God, you're making it really hard for me to yell at you right now!"

I blinked. "Really? I thought you were doing pretty well on the shouting front."

"Charlotte," Isaac's voice rose to meet the volume mine had been set to. "You can't take her shopping after she's been-"

I'm not sure why I did it. It could have been the perfectly tousled hair. It could have been the accent. It could very well have been the fact that Isaac Lachlan Fletcher looked really fucking hot when he was angry... whatever the reason, I launched myself at him, planting my lips feverishly against his as I commanded him to stop yelling. 

It had the desired effect. The words stopped short on his tongue as he put all his pent up anger into dominating the kiss. His lips moved in sync with mine, forceful as if we were both vying for domination. When his hands snaked around my waist, I was gone. He could have me. 

Suddenly, it was all over. 

"What are you doing?" He grumbled when he pushed me away by my shoulders. Taking a step back, he ran the pad of his thumbs over his lips and locked his eyes on mine, the storm held within his bluest of blue irises clear to see. "You shouldn't start wars that you can't win, Lottie. Kiss me like that again and that'll be it, I won't let you go. Do you understand?"

Nodding, I take a step forward, eliminating the distance between us. Standing on my tip toes so, I lean in close, so close that I can feel the warmth of his minty breath against my lips. "Who said that I wanted to win the war?"

Before he could reply- not that I think he was capable of replying right then- I spun on my heels and slammed the door behind me. Taking my phone from my pocket, I called the only person who wouldn't judge me for what I'd just done. 

"Hello?"

"Sammy, it's me," I speak down the line to Sam Courtenay. "I think I may have just royally fucked up. Can I come over?"

"Yeah, why not?" Sam muttered in response. "Hey, Char, on your way over, can you grab a Chinese? I kinda burnt my kitchen down this morning."

It's a day early but hey ho! Hope you enjoyed the update.

So, I had a long list of names for the baby. Here they are (one for boy names and one for girl names)

I've chosen the boy name (First and middle) I'm going to use if the baby is a boy and I've narrowed it down to 2 girl names (different first names, same middle name), too. Wanna guess what they are?!

So, boy or girl?

What do you make of that kiss?

And Sam? Really, you burnt down your kitchen? Already? 

Sarah, xx