Page 1 of Family Bonds: Alana & Brennan
PROLOGUE
“Anything I can get for you, Rene?”
“This kid out of me,” she snapped.
Brennan Austin’s girlfriend of fourteen months wasn’t handling her pregnancy well.
“Not much longer,” he said patiently. “Let’s put your feet up.”
He grabbed a pillow at the end of the couch in their shared apartment, lifted her excessively swollen ankles and feet and laid them down as if they were fragile glass just ready to shatter.
“I need to pee,” she said, swinging her feet to the floor and stomping them down.
She could have said that before he tried to make her comfortable.
He stood back as she struggled to get off the couch. Her tiny frame was off balance with the large watermelon in front of her.
If he offered to help her up, she normally barked at him to leave her alone. He was learning... slowly.
He couldn’t do anything right with Rene and hadn’t been able to since she found out she was pregnant.
“Okay?” he asked.
“No, I’m not okay. I can’t get my fat ass off this couch. Are you going to help me or stand there like an idiot?”
He sighed, reached for her hands and pulled her up.
He got it. He really did.
Her body was changing. Everything hurt on her.
She was downright miserable and itching to get back to work more than she was to hold their child.
Rene waddled down the hall with her hands on her lower back.
She wasn’t the only one who wanted their child out in three weeks.
He craved to hold his daughter. Cradle her in the crook of his arms, rock her to sleep, tell her stories. Kiss her hurts and wipe her tears.
Watch her grow.
Be the father that he never had.
He waited close by when the toilet flushed in case she yelled for assistance.
The door opened, he glanced over, she rolled her eyes at him and moved to the recliner, arching her back and moaning dramatically.
“Do you want the heating pad?” he asked. “I’m going to finish dinner, but maybe that will help.”
“Sure,” she said. Brennan moved the pad from the couch to the chair Rene had just sat in. She hit the button on the recliner and her feet went up. He’d been telling her for weeks that was easier for her to get in and out of, but she refused his advice. “This is horrible.”
“What is?” he asked. He wasn’t about to assume anything.
“This pregnancy. I’m not sure how I let you talk me into keeping it.”
Another knife through his heart when she said those words.It. Not a child. Not their child. Butit.
Maybe he’d thought she’d bond with their child as it grew inside her.
