by Alison Bliss
She didn’t bother with a dramatic pause. No sense in making it into a bigger deal by pacing endlessly while trying to build up the courage to look at it. Physically, she had most of the signs of a common illness. Weak. Upset stomach. Hot flashes. Nausea. Never mind that most of the symptoms developed while she was counting the days since her last period.
Oh, fuck me.
Bailey was late. Really late. Basically, she’d missed boarding the menstruation train for the last damn month. But that didn’t mean anything, did it?
She glared at the calendar again with mixed emotions. Maybe she was an idiot and counted wrong. Or maybe she had counted right and was still an idiot. Because the last thing she needed was to get herself into a predicament with a man she’d never see again…even if a small part of her wanted to.
Tears burned her eyes, but she forced them back. To be certain, she’d have to take a pregnancy test. But the idea of going to the drugstore and making that humiliating purchase made her feel even worse than she already did. So she decided to wait it out over the weekend and see if it wasn’t just a stomach bug.
Surely she would know if she were pregnant.
Feeling better already, Bailey made herself a turkey sandwich, figuring it would be something she could hold down. Not a good decision. After going another round with the toilet, she brushed her teeth and settled on the couch wearing a comfy pair of old sweats and an oversized T-shirt.
She dozed in and out while listening to the sounds of the outside world vibrating through her walls: a low-flying plane, an eighteen-wheeler with obnoxious brakes, and her elderly neighbor shooing away a dog that had apparently lifted his leg on the man’s bicycle.
Then someone knocked on her door.
She ignored it at first, but the persistent person on the other side decided that polite wasn’t the way to go and started banging. “Christ, give me a second,” she yelled as she made her way to the door and flung it open. “Who the hell do you think you—”
He leaned comfortably against her doorway with an irritated smirk. “Nash Sutherland. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Bailey?”
What the hell?
“Nash, I…” A second went by before she registered his words. “Wait a minute. How’d you know my real name? And my address?”
He held up a thin piece of plastic she recognized.
“You stole my credit card?”
“No, the waitress who served you at the bar saw me recently and said you forgot it when you stormed out that night. I told her I’d get it back to you.”
“Oh.” Bailey shrugged. “Well, I called and reported it missing over a month ago. It’s no good now. But that still doesn’t explain how you found me.”
“Your real name’s on it, and I googled you to get the rest. Bailey Hobbs, twenty-six years old, resides at 315 Morgan Street, and wants every guy who takes her virginity to call her Sheila. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet these days.”
Her cheeks heated as the memory of that night flashed through her mind. “I was a virgin, damn it!”
His eyes glazed over, and he blew out a hard breath. “Sweetheart, you couldn’t have fooled me otherwise, even if you wanted to. But your name sure the hell isn’t Sheila. You lied about that.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t lie! At least not to you. You heard me give the other guy in the bar a line about my name being Sheila.”
“You didn’t correct me, though.”
“Because I walked out. And you never asked me my name, anyway. Guess you were too worried about getting into my pants.”
Uninvited, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Look who’s talking. You got what you wanted and hauled ass before I woke up. No goodbye. Nothing.”
“What? I said goodbye. The note on the mirror…”
“‘Thanks, I needed that!’ was not a goodbye.”
“Well, excuse me for not being an expert on one-night-stands. I thought that’s how it’s done. A clean break. You know, no awkward morning after.”
“You’ve seen too many damn movies,” he said, huffing out another breath. “The only thing that would’ve been awkward the next morning were all the positions I planned to put you in.”
Mentally, she gasped. Jesus. That’s like having the winning raffle ticket, but not knowing I needed to be present to win. Her pulse quickened, but she shook the images of his naked body out of her head. Damn it. They were getting off track. “Why were you looking for me, anyway?”
His blue eyes flickered over her face, and he frowned. “You look like hell.”
“Oh, to compliment me,” she said, scowling. “Thanks for that. Now if you’ll excuse me…” She tried to push him toward the door, but he didn’t budge.
“What’s wrong with you? You look…sick.” His eyebrow quirked into an abnormally high position and his gaze lowered to her stomach.
Oh, great.
She knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’m sick, not pregnant.”
“Well, maybe you should take a test to prove it.”
His immediate distrust pissed her off. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“No, Sheila, I don’t. But who could blame me after you gave me a false name and then ran out on me?”
“You’re a real jackass, you know that? You assumed my name was Sheila, then have the nerve to show up at my front door and accuse me of lying to you. If you do this with all the ladies you’ve slept with, then it’s no wonder you don’t get more than one night with a woman.”
His sighed and grasped her arm lightly. “Come on, I’m taking you to a doctor.”
“No!” she yelled, slinging his arm off hers. “Didn’t you hear a word I just said? I’m not pregnant.”
“Then you won’t mind proving it.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you. Go away and leave me alone.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I never close a door without seeing what’s on the other side first. So, Bailey, if you want me out of here, then you’re going to have to prove it to me first.”
She sighed with frustration.
Not only was Nash Sutherland the most demanding and infuriating man on the planet, but he had the worst timing ever. Wreckage from the last head-on collision she had with a man still littered the ground around her. There was no room in her life for another brick wall. Even if she did have his baby on board.
Just the idea of being possibly knocked up by him made her stomach hurt more. She needed time to figure this out before she brought him in on any of it. And the only way to get that time was to make him leave. Now. “Look, I already took a pregnancy test earlier today.”
He rolled his eyes dismissively. “Yeah, right.”
“Again you don’t believe me? Wow, you’re a real jackass, you know that?” She gestured nonchalantly toward the bathroom. “Go look for yourself. The test is in the box in the bathroom trashcan. Oh, by the way, it’s negative, you lunatic.”
She thought for sure with all of her bravado that he wouldn’t actually go and look for himself. But the untrusting bastard did just that. Shit.
He stormed into the bathroom and seconds later marched right back out with an empty trashcan. “I may be a lunatic, sweetheart, but at least I’m not a fucking liar.”
Chapter Six
Nash was furious.
He had never spoken to a woman like that before, but he couldn’t believe she had lied so easily to his face about something so important. Especially after what they’d shared. For over a month, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. He’d wanted to see her again, touch her again. Now, it felt like she’d punched him in the gut. “Come on, I’m taking you to my family’s doctor.”
“No.”
“Goddamnit, Bailey. Why the hell not?”
“I’m not pregnant, okay? I woke up cramping this morning, so I’m sure I’m about to start my period any time now. If it doesn’t start by Monday, I’ll go get checked out.”
Dread fille
d him and his heart pounded harder. “But if you are pregnant, you could be miscarrying. That’s one of the signs.”
Bailey paused, as if she hadn’t even thought of it as a possibility. “Okay, fine. Then I’ll go to the low-cost clinic around the corner.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can pay—”
“No! I don’t want you to pay for anything. I already told you, I’m not pregnant.”
He sighed. “Fine, but I’m driving.”
“No, I—”
“Damn it. Don’t fight me on this, Bailey. Just get into the damn truck.”
Surprising enough, she did as he asked without arguing. Thank God. But they sat in silence all the way over to the clinic. No doubt she was scared and probably didn’t want to be alone, but Nash had his own selfish reasons for driving her. He needed to know if this woman was carrying his unborn child or not, and apparently, he couldn’t trust her to be honest about it.
Not only that, but he was worried…for her. Even if she wasn’t pregnant with his child, the desire to make sure she was okay was unnervingly strong.
After registering at the front desk as a walk-in, they waited for a half hour before her name was finally called. She didn’t seem surprised when Nash stood and followed her back. A short, plump nurse wearing pink scrubs and a serious face showed them to a back room, stopping him from entering until after Bailey had changed into a gown. Once she allowed him entry, the nurse pointed to a chair in the corner and banished him to it.
The nurse checked Bailey’s vitals, noting that her blood pressure was a little high. “Probably stress-related,” she said, never looking up from her chart. It was as if she were speaking to herself rather than the patient.
Bailey tolerated the nurse’s abruptness, but Nash couldn’t help but grind his teeth across the room. He didn’t like it one bit. Or the nurse. The woman had the sourness of a pickle. But what did he really expect? Bailey was an uninsured patient with an unconfirmed pregnancy who was at a low-cost clinic because she couldn’t afford to pay for her care. At least that’s how the nurse probably looked at it.
But Nash could afford it. Not only did he have his own law practice, but he was a goddamn Sutherland. His family had made billions in the oil field after his grandparents, Bud and Celia Sutherland, struck it rich during the oil rush. Once they’d turned Sutherland Industries over to their five children—one of whom was Nash’s father—his grandparents retired to live out their days on White Willow Ranch just outside of Houston.
His family would be horrified if they learned he’d taken the possible mother of his child to a low-cost clinic when the Sutherlands had their own private doctors and team of specialists in nearby Houston.
“I had some minor cramping this morning. If I am pregnant, does that mean I’m losing the baby?” Bailey asked, unable to mask the worry in her tone.
Her fearful eyes met Nash’s from across the room, and his heart squeezed in his chest. She was as concerned as he was.
“The doctor will talk to you about that,” the gruff nurse responded as a man in dark blue scrubs entered the room.
“I’m Dr. Britton,” he said, not bothering to offer a comforting smile. “I don’t want to speculate at this point. Let me do a pelvic exam, get a blood test, and then we’ll see where we stand.” He pulled some purple latex gloves from a wall dispenser and snapped them on. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you while I take a quick look?”
The doctor was all business. Nash didn’t know which was worse—the nurse’s salty attitude or the doctor’s acidic voice. Dr. Britton instructed Bailey to lie back and place her feet in the stirrups as if she were going on a leisurely trail ride rather than waiting for news of a possible miscarriage. No feeling. No compassion. Just the doctor’s shitty, unfeeling tone, which was pissing him off.
Nervously, Bailey rattled off all of her symptoms.
“You’re a bit older than most girls we see for a pregnancy test,” the doctor said, sounding like a callous ass. “Are you married, Ms. Hobbs?”
Bailey told him no and closed her eyes, her cheeks reddening more and more by the second. Damn it. The fucker is embarrassing her. Nash’s need to know if she was pregnant outweighed his ability to whisk her out the door, but he’d be damned if he let anyone make her feel bad about what had transpired between them.
“Can we get on with it, Doc?” Nash said rudely.
Cold silence filled the room, but Bailey’s eyes lifted and met Nash’s gaze head on. Her lips turned up in a little appreciative smile.
The doc sat on a small stool and wheeled it over between Bailey’s legs. The thin, yellow sheet covering her waist suddenly seemed too small. Nash never dreamed he would be watching another man touch Bailey intimately. It felt perverse. Not only that, it grated on his last fucking nerve. And she didn’t seem to like the awkwardness of it any more than he did.
The nurse hovered in the background, forced to remain in the room while the doctor performed a pelvic exam on a female patient. She would probably hold that against them as well.
When the doctor finished his exam, he allowed Bailey to sit up. “Everything looks fine,” he said nonchalantly. “Just to be safe, though, I’m going to run a full panel of bloodwork, along with the pregnancy test.”
As the doctor wrote in Bailey’s chart, the nurse used her as a pin cushion, poking her with something the size of a knitting needle. Bailey bit her lip so hard that Nash would’ve sworn she punctured it. He almost wished she would have since the nurse could have just collected the blood from there and saved herself the trouble of finding the elusive vein. After bandaging the hole she’d drilled into Bailey’s arm, the nurse left the room, carrying two vials of blood with her.
Dr. Britton started out the door behind her, but stopped long enough to say, “Shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back just as soon as I get the results.”
Bailey sat there with a tense posture, staring at the floor with a heavy-lidded, tearful gaze that took his breath away. She was obviously distraught and overcome with emotion. And hell, he couldn’t blame her.
Nash moved to her side and rested his hip against the table. “You okay?”
She closed her eyes and only nodded, which he imagined was to keep herself from falling completely apart. Everything was cold. The room. The vinyl table. The medical staff. So he offered her the one thing he thought she needed most right now. He slid his arm around her, nestled her into his chest, then linked the fingers of his free hand with hers.
Bailey opened her eyes before she allowed her body to relax against his supportive frame. Then she sighed contentedly. The sound pleased him.
“My buddy’s wife is having a baby,” Nash told her, making conversation to pass the time. “She’d pee on one of those stick tests, and he’d get all tied up in knots while they waited for their results, every single time. Now I guess I know how he felt.”
“Every time?”
“Yeah, they were trying to get pregnant. Took a few months before it happened, but they finally did it.”
Bailey considered what he said for a moment and then looked confused. “You mean they did this to themselves…on purpose?”
He grinned. “Well, some people actually want children.”
Her face turned three shades whiter, and she looked like she was about to pass out. Visibly shaken, she leaned further against him and clutched at her stomach, as if a sudden wave of nausea rolled through her.
“Hey, are you okay?” Nash steadied her and put the back of his hand to her forehead, checking for fever.
“I’ve been sick for a week. I thought I’d bounce back by now, but it’s not getting any better.”
“Sweetheart, if you are pregnant, you’re probably going to feel this way for a while.” He eased her forward and rubbed his hand up and down her back. “Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He didn’t believe her, though, because she looked even more pale and brittle than before, obviously trying to hold her
self together still. Nash reasoned that her feelings were probably being batted back and forth like an emotional birdie in a really fucked up game of badminton. God knew his were. After all, she could be carrying his…
Shit. Wait. Was it even his?
Nash smoothed a hand over his face. He hadn’t seen her in six weeks, and although he’d been looking for her since the day she’d snuck out on him, she obviously hadn’t done the same. After all, she knew where he lived. Was it possible she’d moved on and had been with someone else since the night they’d spent together?
The thought alone sent a chill through him and knotted his stomach. Call him possessive, but he didn’t like the thought of another man touching her like he had. And although he felt like a jerk, he needed to know for certain.
“Look, I know this is probably going to sound bad, but I don’t want to assume anything, so I need to ask you something important,” he said, preparing her for his blunt question. “If you are pregnant, is it…I mean, the baby…is it mine?”
The outrage in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. “I can’t believe you asked me that.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “What kind of woman do you take me for?”
“I know you aren’t—”
“Don’t presume you know anything about me.”
Nash placed his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to upset you. I just wanted to be sure.”
“Well, how would you feel if someone questioned your morals? Maybe I should ask you the same question and see how you like it.”
He grinned, but said nothing.
“Oh, so now you think this is funny?”
“No, but if you ask me if the baby is yours, I promise not to get mad.”
She sighed. “Okay, so it sounded stupid. But I was making a point.”
“Point taken,” he said, nodding. “It’s insulting. I get it. But you didn’t tell me your real name. And you never mentioned you were a virgin, either.”
“What does that have to do with anything? You got what you wanted.”