Page 21 of Time Out

“Good.”

Perfect.

We were both happy about this. Except she hadn’t said that. “Are you?”

A tiny line dug deep between her brows. “Am I what?”

“Happy. About this.”

“Oh.” A nervous laugh slipped from her, jumping over itself on the way out of her lush lips and a pink rose on her cheeks. “I guess, I’m not sure happy is the word I’d use, and definitely not how I saw it happening at all, by the way, but I’ve had some time to consider it, start to get used to the idea.”

Yeah, happy wasn’t really the word I was thinking either.

“How were you thinking it’d happen?”

“Well, I’d actually know the guy.”

Right. Knowing each other would have been the best first step.

She chuckled, a nervous little hitch in her laugh that had me joining her.

And it was just that easy for us. Ice broken. In the midst of the maelstrom of emotions racing through me at warp speed, this girl could make me laugh.

“There should be that,” I agreed, and a smile tugged at my lips.

“We’d probably be dating for a while. And then, you know, married.”

“All good things.”

She grinned.

I grinned.

Damn, I wanted to kiss her again.

I did not do that. Instead, I asked for a couple minutes and headed to the bedroom after making her swear she wouldn’t bolt. When I returned to the kitchen, she was at the kitchen counter and had her purse opened. I cringed at the earlier comment about no phones when I saw hers had been shoved to the center of the island. Had that been a dickhead thing to say?

Probably not all things considered, and now that it was just the two of us, I had no worries.

If she’d wanted money for pictures or any gossip, she’d had plenty of opportunity the last time she was here.

The palm of her hand was at her stomach, and her mouth was pressed into a frown.

“You okay?” I asked.

She jumped and then nodded. “Yeah, my stomach gets upset every once in a while. It should pass.”

I headed to the fridge. “I have two sisters, and one is pregnant, due any day, just so you know. And my sisters and I are close, so there isn’t much I don’t know, at least from their perspective, about pregnancy, so if you’re craving anything, or can’t eat something, let me know.”

I dug through the drawers and found blocks of pre-sliced cheese. I had guacamole I was pretty sure was safe for her, and some orange juice. I grabbed it all, set it on the island, and headed into the walk-in pantry, where I grabbed chips and crackers. Before dropping it at the island, I grabbed some plates off the open shelves.

“Help yourself to anything,” I told her as I opened a bag of chips, grabbed one, and plunked it right into the guacamole.

She reached for a chunk of cheese. “Thank you. So, did you want to see this?”

She slid a piece of paper in my direction, and on second glance, it was more than one page, but the one that made my heart start to race again was the curled edges of the thin, silk-like paper.

“You said you had a scan,” I muttered, staring at that paper and already knowing what I’d see. “An ultrasound?”

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