Page 47 of Reunion With Benefits

He dug right in. “About time.”

Through the controlled chaos, Derrick let out a loud exhale. Abby never knew her dad but she assumed this was the ultimate dad move. Make a noise and get everyone at the table listening. Smooth.

“This nonsense is going to stop when the baby comes,” he said.

“We’ll be too busy fighting over who gets to hold him to argue about anything else,” Spence said as he tried to steal the bowl of peas back.

Carter moved it out of reach.

Ellie eyed them all over the top of her water glass. “Or her.”

“Speaking of which—” Carter cut into his roast “—are you still trying to sell that faulty birth control story to explain your current state?”

“My pregnancy doesn’t need to be explained,” Ellie said, emphasizing each word.

“Carter.” Abby was pretty sure Spence kicked his brother as he said his name.

Ellie wasn’t quite as subtle. She fixed Carter with a you’re-right-on-the-edge glare even though she looked like she was fighting back a smile. “Don’t make me burn your clothes in the fireplace.”

He winced. “Hormones?”

She waved a knife at him. “Don’t test me.”

Abby felt a fog roll over her. The conversation picked at a memory she’d shoved to the back of her brain. A piece of information she didn’t want to deal with that now came screaming back to her.

The Pill. Sex. Antibiotics. She’d started taking the meds that were in her bathroom the second she started feeling sick. That happened before she had sex with Spence. Before, during and after.

Antibiotics and birth control pills were a bad combination. Still a long shot for getting pregnant, but it could happen. Some medications played with the effectiveness of the pill. When she climbed out of her sickbed and remembered that, she’d rechecked on the internet. The news was not as negative on the possibility of getting pregnant as she’d hoped.

Good grief.It wasn’t possible...was it?

Abby tried to remember Ellie’s list of pregnancy symptoms, all that she had to fight off and go through.

“Faulty birth control?” Abby didn’t mean to say the words out loud, but they were the only ones in her mind right now.

“Is this appropriate dinner conversation?” Derrick asked.

“It is in this house.” Spence shrugged as he made another grab for the peas and reached them this time.

His look of triumph over something so simple made Abby smile. Or it would have if she wasn’t busy counting days on the calendar in her head.

“The pregnancy is high-risk because my IUD failed,” Ellie explained. “It’s still in there.”

Carter whistled. “Damn, Derrick.”

“I didn’t do it.”

Spence glanced at Derrick. “Well, technically...”

“It kind of depends what the ‘it’ is in that sentence.” Jackson froze in the middle of moving the roast closer to him. “Is that the doorbell?”

The bell chimed a second time.

“Isn’t everyone here?” Derrick asked the question to the room in general. He clearly didn’t expect an answer because he was up and out of his chair, on the way to the door.

A terrible thought ran through Abby’s head. She leaned in to whisper it to Spence. “If your father is back in town—”

Carter nearly dropped his water glass. “Don’t even joke about that.”

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