St. Patrick’s Baby (SEAL Team: Holiday Heroes Book 4)

by Laura Marie Altom

  “Take the test.” Her roomie, Delia, didn’t bother looking up from her latest blog post. ER Nurse by day and ghost hunter by night, her blog, SPOOK, had just passed the 100k followers mark. Stephie was thrilled for her friend’s success but didn’t believe it earned her the right to judge or be so bossy. “Take it now. To conserve your non-existent energy, I even left the box on the hall bathroom counter.”

  “I noticed and mind your own business. I already told you I ate bad sushi.”

  “Uh huh… You’re preggers. Take the test and then get to your doctor to confirm.”

  “There’s no possible way I’m pregnant. The last time Patrick and I were—you know—he wore a condom.”

  “Accidents happen.”

  “Not to me. I’m a careful person.”

  Delia sighed. “Please. If Patrick’s whole spiel about him being a possible genetic carrier for—what was it called?”

  “Anencephaly. And it’s tragic—beyond. I can’t begin to imagine what parents who hear this diagnosis go through.”

  “Okay, well, if he is a carrier and you are pregnant, for your own peace of mind you need to know your baby is healthy.”

  “But I’m not preg—” Nausea hit so hard and fast that Stephie barely made it to the hall bathroom before tossing her proverbial cookies.

  From where she knelt in front of the commode, she eyed the pregnancy test. Could she be pregnant? As much as she’d denied the possibility, maybe she should take the test if for no better reason than to get Delia off her back.

  “Take it!” Stephie’s roomie hollered through the closed door.

  After flushing the toilet, then wiping her face with a cold rag, Stephie once again eyed the test.

  Take it, her heart urged.

  But what if she was pregnant?

  Knowing Patrick’s thoughts on fatherhood, should she even tell him? She pretty much had to. For being the nation’s largest state, gossip traveled at an alarming rate. Many of her friends belonged to overlapping circles and she wouldn’t be able to hide a pregnancy for long.

  If she was pregnant…

  She eyed the box again, took it from the counter, read the directions, then steeled herself for the longest few minutes of her life.

  “Well?” Delia asked when Stephie emerged. “Did you take it?”

  Stephie nodded.

  “And?” She leaned back on the sofa.

  “I can’t look. But if you’d like to, be my guest.”

  Delia shook her head. “You are one of the bravest women I know. How can you let a little pregnancy test scare you?”

  “Oh—it’s not the test, but what comes after. If I am pregnant, what then? I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but a single mom?” She winced. “I know millions of women are great at it, but what if I’m not? Worse, what if Patrick does carry that killer gene? I’d be left with two unfathomable options—end the pregnancy now or carry our baby to full-term only to watch him or her die a few days later.”

  “Slow your roll, Doomsday Queen. You forgot the third option—your baby is a perfectly healthy cherub we will both spoil rotten and adore. If it makes you feel better, I’ll be the dad—at least until one of us finally catch a man worth keeping.”

  Stephie laughed, giving her friend a sideways hug. “At this point, that feels about as likely as you having a UFO land on the roof of one of your haunted houses.”

  “How cool would that be? My readers would be stoked.”

  “Swell…” Stephie eased onto the sofa. Making no sudden movements helped with the nausea.

  “Are you ready for me to check the results?”

  “No.”

  “Great. Be right back…”

  In the seconds Delia was out of the room, Stephie’s heart pounded loud enough for her to hear in her ears. She’d always wanted to be a mom, but not like this. Not with the father out of the picture.

  But then, honestly? The odds of her being pregnant were too high to calculate. No way she really was pregnant, right?

  “Want us to go in with you?” Colby had flown Patrick to the Anchorage genetic specialist to go over his test results. Supposedly for support, Tanner, Brody, and Hawk had come along for the ride—meaning what they really wanted wasn’t to hang out at a stuffy doctor’s office, but to grab a few beers of the variety not available in Kodiak Gorge.

  “Hell, no. It’s bad enough you talked me into doing this in the first place.”

  The five of them occupied an entire row of chairs in the otherwise empty beige-walled waiting room. Sunlight streamed through a picture window, but inside Patrick’s head, a storm was building. Everyone knew that good test results were sent in the mail. Bad ones needed discussing, which was no doubt why he was here.

  Every noise in the cramped space seemed too loud from the receptionist typing on her keyboard to the hurricane of air spilling from an overhead vent. Hawk’s zombie game sent Patrick over the edge.

  “Do you mind?” He eyed Hawk and his phone.

  “What’s the problem?” Hawk didn’t look up.

  “Could you mute the sound?”

  “I fight better when I hear the splats.”

  Patrick arched his head back and sighed.

  Tanner flipped through Good Housekeeping.

  Brody texted Lilianna.

  Colby answered emails.

  The consensus among his friends was that he was an idiot for letting Stephie go over an issue that was so easily fixable. He’d have a few genetic tests, find out his swimmers were fine, then voila, he could resume his life with the only woman who’d ever made him feel whole—better than he did when he was alone. He missed her silly emoji texts and nightly calls and weekend visits. He missed her laugh and lively debates and the sweet floral smell of her hair. When he’d agreed to the whole genetic testing thing, it had been for the sole purpose of getting Stephie back in his life.

  With his friends believing he was making too big of a deal out of a tragedy that would most likely never again happen, Patrick reluctantly made an appointment with the genetic counselor. Given an absurd amount of pep talks, he’d started believing his friends may be right—that he and Stephie may be reunited as soon as his negative results were in. He’d apologize for his alarmist attitude. She’d forgive him for dumping her without warning.

  She’d deserved better, and if necessary, he’d apologize and send flowers and give free backrubs for as long as it took to woo her back.

  As soon as this whole genetic mess was sorted out, he’d even buy her a ring.

  “Mr. O’Leary.” A nurse wearing pink scrubs stood in an open door at the room’s far end.

  “You’ve got this, man…” Colby held out his hand for Patrick to shake.

  The rest of his SEAL brothers did the same.

  Heading toward the smiling nurse, Patrick would have felt more comfortable charging into battle. But then this was a battle—one he’d waged ever since the day his baby brother died.

  The nurse showed him to a windowless room with green walls and posters touting the benefits of genetic testing. The sofa and arm chair set-up combined with side tables sporting tissues reeked of the kind of place where medical personnel corralled people to hear bad news.

  After asking him a few general questions, she said, “The doctor will be in shortly.”

  “Thanks.”

  He wiped sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. They were dirt-smudged from chopping wood. He’d gotten too used to Stephie doing his laundry. Since their break-up, he never seemed to have clean clothes. Just one more way she’d made his life better.

  The door burst open and a smiley blonde wearing slacks, a red sweater and white lab coat said, “Hello. I’m Doctor Brisbane.”

  “Thought you were a counselor?”

  “I am.” She closed the door. “But I also have a doctorate in genetics. Comes in handy for writing official notes when I get too chatty with my patients and am late picking up my kids from school.”

  “How many do you have?” Could she tel
l he was trying to stall the inevitable? He no longer wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “Two boys and a girl. All spoiled rotten and in constant time-outs. Their nanny threatens to quit every week, which is why she practically makes more money than I do.” She laughed.

  He couldn’t quite make his lips smile—not when he was clamping them tight to prevent nervous heaves. He wanted out of here. He didn’t want small talk or his friends being all up in his business. He just wanted Stephie. Unfortunately, like Colby said, he couldn’t in good conscience ask her to give him another chance until he was armed with facts—not just what may prove to be random fears.

  She sat in the armchair opposite his and crossed her legs. She consulted the iPad he’d only just noticed her carrying. “Since I’m pretty sure you’re not here to get a report on my naughty kiddos, let’s talk about what’s going on inside you…”

  Chapter Six

  “CONGRATULATIONS!” DELIA HELD out the positive test stick with enough flair to have been a The Price is Right model. “I’d run out for pink champagne, but one of us shouldn’t be drinking.”

  Stephie groaned. “This isn’t happening.”

  “But since it is, let’s start talking nursery colors. I’m a big fan of pink or blue, but we could go gender neutral with green. Thoughts?”

  Stomach roiling, Stephie’s only thought was a prayer to run fast enough to make it to the bathroom…

  “Aw, hon. This is good news.” Delia barged in, delivering Stephie a fresh cold cloth.

  “It’s h-horrible.” Since losing her parents, she’d wanted nothing more than to finally, once again have a family of her own. A sweet baby to hold and love and adore along with a husband to share in every burp, smile and coo. Of course, she still desperately wanted this baby, but what if what Patrick feared came to pass?

  Cupping her hand to her as yet non-existent baby bump, she didn’t even try stopping silent tears.

  Delia sat on the bathroom floor alongside her, tucking fallen locks of her hair behind her ears. “I can practically see the gears turning in your pretty head. You’re terrified Patrick’s family disease has been passed along to your baby and is right at this very moment festering inside you. Am I right?”

  Stephie nodded.

  “Stop. You and I both know these kinds of things are as rare as they are tragic. You’d be far more likely to be struck by lightning or suffer a shark attack in our living room than for your adorable baby to suffer such an abominable diagnosis. With that in mind, how about drawing a few nice, deep breaths, then making an appointment with your OB/GYN. Once tests are run and you discover all is right in you and your baby’s world, I promise, this fear will pass as surely as a bad storm.” As she spoke, Delia smoothed Stephie’s hair. Lulling her into her calm.

  “Yes, you’re right.” Stephie closed her eyes, nodding, easing her lips into a fragile smile. “I’ll have a bunch of tests and once I’ve proven to Patrick that we have a perfectly healthy baby, I’ll bet we’ll be back together by the end of the week.”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “Thank you.” Stephie took her friend’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “I needed a voice of reason to force the monsters from my head.”

  “Don’t thank me just yet. I have a big favor…”

  Stephie groaned. “Please tell me you’re not going out of town? Rambo and Rapunzel hate me.”

  “They’re sugar gliders. With sugar in their names, how could they possibly hate anyone?”

  “They do hate me. Where are you going?”

  “Dr. Parker from Pediatrics asked me to go skiing with him this weekend. Are you staying home?”

  “Where else would I go?”

  Delia shrugged. “I thought you might make a run to Kodiak Gorge to share your news.”

  “No…” Stephie shook her head. “It’s Patrick’s turn to come to me. I’ll tell him we’re expecting, but not quite yet. I need more time for myself for it to sink in.”

  “Fair enough. But you’re good to watch my babies?”

  Stephie rolled her eyes but nodded.

  Patrick heard the doctor’s words, but as if they were being whispered from the end of a long, dark tunnel from which he’d never find an escape.

  “…Just because you carry the gene, doesn’t mean your children will. As rare as this disease is, I’ll be first to admit there’s far more we don’t know about it than we do. But what I can tell you with reasonable certainty is that just because genetically speaking you have a predisposition toward having a child with neural tube defects, that doesn’t necessarily cause them.”

  “But I could…”

  “Bottom line—I’m sorry to say, but yes. That chance does exist. That said, the odds are in your favor to father a perfectly healthy son or daughter. Don’t let this finding keep you from living a fulfilling family life.”

  It was all Patrick could do to keep from snorting. Easy for you to say.

  She hadn’t lived through watching her entire family collapse from the pain of losing a newborn to this awful disease or genetic defect or whatever the fancy label.

  His bottom line?

  Patrick was more convinced than ever that the responsible thing for him to do would be to get a vasectomy ASAP. No way was he ever risking causing a woman he loved the kind of agony he’d witnessed his mother go through.

  After perfunctory polite goodbyes, Patrick left the office to face his friends in the waiting room.

  Colby was instantly on his feet. “How’d it go?”

  Patrick shook his head. “I need a beer—or twenty.”

  “Sorry, man.” Brody clasped his shoulder, giving him a squeeze. “We were all hoping for better news.”

  “It is what it is. Let’s get drunk.”

  Chapter Seven

  “PATRICK?” PAST TEN on a Friday night, he was the last person Stephie expected to find peering into her front door’s peephole.

  Another knock sounded. “Steph?”

  Colby?

  She opened the door. “What are you two—” Correction, make that five ex-hulking SEALs teetered on her apartment’s front porch landing. Brody, Hawk and Tanner brought up the rear. “You all smell like a brewery.”

  “Yeah, well…” Patrick folded his arms, averting his gaze.

  “I’d planned on flying us home tonight,” Colby said on a cloud of beer-scented breath. “But then the weather turned bad.” He gestured to gumball-sized, wind-driven snow. “Since we’d all had a bit much to drink, and Hawk said your roomie is out of town for the weekend, we took an Uber here. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Frowning, wondering since when had Hawk and Delia become besties, she stood aside to let the shivering crew inside her cozy apartment. “Take off your boots. I don’t want snow on my carpet.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they all said in a joint mumble. Her apartment may have been filled to the brim with hunky men, but she only had eyes for one—Patrick. Who hadn’t so much as looked at her.

  She made a quick visual sweep of the room to ensure none of her newly purchased baby books were on the coffee or side tables.

  “Got anything to eat?” Hawk asked.

  “Help yourself…” She gestured toward the kitchen.

  “Cool.” Tanner, Brody, and Colby followed, leaving her in the awkward situation of being alone with Patrick.

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  “Good,” she lied.

  “I’m glad. Me too.” He nodded toward her room. “Mind if we talk?”

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  He was again nodding, this time toward the kitchen. “I think it would be best if we had privacy.”

  Stephie sighed. “I’m over it. You made your position painfully clear.”

  “Yeah, well, I have new information.”

  “Do I really need to hear?”

  “Yes.” Without waiting for an invite, he strode to her room. Lord knew he was familiar with it. The whole time they’d been a couple, most weekends they’d alte
rnated between her place and his.

  Though there was no way he could possibly know her doctor pronounced her eight weeks pregnant that afternoon, she felt gangly and bloated and self-conscious about being alone with him. Would he intrinsically know she carried his son or daughter? And that her due date was in November?

  Her breasts were bigger.

  Her hips wider.

  She’d already put on ten pounds.

  “Close the door—please,” he asked once she’d entered behind him.

  Stephie not only closed the door, but the gaping wound in her heart stemming from still loving him despite having repeatedly told herself she no longer cared.

  He perched on his usual side of the bed, patting the mattress beside him. He always slept on the right because he claimed not only did he snore less, but it was easier for him to spoon her.

  Eyes ever-so-briefly closed, she also denied the memory of how good and warm and right it had felt to be held by him.

  She piled the throw pillows against the padded floral headboard she and Delia had made following Pinterest instructions, then sat as far from him as was possible on her queen-sized bed.

  “Okay…” Stephie licked her lips, willing her pulse to slow. All she wanted was to share everything she’d been going through. The morning sickness. Mystery cramps. Exhaustion that had her sneaking catnaps during breaks from her burn ward shifts. “Why are you here?”

  “I-I didn’t plan to be, but the snow…”

  “Colby already explained that.”

  “Actually, I’d planned to call you with this information, but circumstances being what they are, I figure I owe you at least as much as to tell you this face-to-face.”

  Her stomach knotted.

  Tamping down a hot, crampy nauseous wave, she said, “Whatever you need to say, get it over with. It’s been a long day and I’m ready for bed. I don’t mind if you all stay through the storm, but you’ll have to draw straws for Delia’s bed and the pull-out sofa. I suppose someone could sleep in Delia’s dad’s old recliner. It’s not so bad if—”