“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes, fine.”
“You’re quiet.”
“So are you. I thought maybe being in a doctor’s office…” She was deflecting. Ben wouldn’t let something like his near-death scare result in a permanent phobia of doctors or their offices. He was too practical for things like that.
“Trust me. This in no way reminds me of my doctor visits.” He pointed to the pictures on the wall, which featured a steady progression of a growing fetus inside a woman’s uterus.
Finally the nurse came in to weigh her and Ben dutifully turned around. Then she took Anna’s blood pressure and glanced at the chart as she was writing it down.
“Blood pressure is a little elevated. Can you think of any reason for it?”
I’m embarking on a relationship with a man who I thought I loved for maybe six, but definitely at least four years, only to realize now I’m not sure what love is. Also, I’m going to have his baby.
“No, not really.”
“Well, it’s not too high. Nothing to worry about, but we’ll want to keep an eye on it.”
“Okay.”
“You can undo your pants and lift up your shirt. The doctor will be in shortly.”
The nurse left and the silence in the room grew worse. She forgot about the unbuttoning the pants part. The truth was there was nothing she would like better than to unbutton her pants. The push of the material on her stomach was making her want to pee and the grim reality was the pants were too tight before she’d needed to pee.
“Do you need me to turn around again?”
How awkward would that be?
“Hi, Doc, here is the father of my child. But I really don’t like him to see me without my pants on so I’m going make him face the corner. You cool with that?”
“No, that’s fine. Can’t be squeamish, right?” She undid the buttons of the casual black pants she’d worn and as soon as the zipper slid down she let out a sigh of relief.
“Getting too tight?”
“Mmm. Just a bit.”
He stood then and moved toward her, looking down at the belly still covered by what she called her granny whites because they were becoming the only underwear that fit. She looked down to see what he saw and the round bump that was now her stomach was glaringly obvious.
“It’s huge,” she moaned.
“It’s not. It’s a little mound.”
“I’m a porker already and it’s only month four.”
“It’s barely there. It’s not like your stomach was exactly flat before.”
That took a moment to process. “Are you saying I was fat before I was pregnant?”
He huffed and mumbled something about women under his breath. “You were not fat. At all. But if memory serves, and trust me it serves me too damn well these days, you had a little…a gentle roundness to your belly.”
“You are so dead.”
“I mean, come on, Anna, you have to admit it’s not like you could bounce a quarter off the damn thing.”
“You need to stop. Right now.”
He opened his mouth then shut it again.
“That’s right,” she nodded. “We’ll just pretend this didn’t happen.”
“I liked your stomach,” he said quietly. “I like it better now. Can I touch it?”
Could he touch it? No! Again, weird. Ben Tyler touching her stomach…that was filled with his baby that he put there because they had sex. Sometimes it was hard to remember that night because she thought about how she had been with him and what she’d done with him that she’d never done with anyone before. Almost like it hadn’t really been her.
Then other times it was impossible to forget. How easy it all felt. Like they had been doing it for years.
“Please.”
Anna held her breath and gave a tight nod. She leaned back a little on the table to give him access and watched his large hand descend on her lower belly. Skin touched skin. She could feel the warmth immediately and it seemed to heat up her whole body like he was some faith healer laying hands on her and she was being cured.
Then he started to make slow circles with that hand, pushing a little against her flesh, stroking a lot until his fingers dipped under the waistband of her embarrassing underwear. She looked at him, ready to question what he was doing but his face was intent on the place his hand covered.
Color rose in his cheeks and she could see his nostrils flare. Not that he was the only one impacted by his touch. Her heart started to pound heavier and her legs shifted in reaction to his touch. She could feel herself grow damp and she thought about what it would be like for him to slide those fingers a little lower, just a little lower…
“And how are we today?” the doctor asked as she entered the room.
“I’m the father!” Ben announced while he jerked his hand out of her panties.
The small and serious looking OB/GYN smiled. “Let’s hope so.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“DO YOU WANT TO HEAR the heartbeat?” the doctor asked Ben.
“Yes, please.”
Ben watched Anna lean back again and tried not to think about what he really wanted to do between her legs. It was almost unseemly given their current surroundings. He’d been worried since their date over the weekend that he was somehow losing his connection to her. After they had woken from their rest he’d sensed a change in her. A certain distance. Like every time she looked at him now she was reassessing her feelings for him. Examining them in some new light.
Maybe entirely rethinking her claim that she loved him.
She was probably right to question her emotions. He couldn’t recall one moment during their long working relationship when he’d done anything to merit her love. He was a fair boss. Yes, they were friendly with one another. Probably spent more time together than other employers did with their employees outside of work. He could honestly say the bounds of their relationship had transcended beyond that of merely professional. Certainly even more so when he’d gotten sick. He’d depended on her then. Leaned on her in a way he never had with another person before.
But love? Had he been love-worthy? He never remembered her birthday, she always remembered his. His Christmas gifts to her were typically impersonal gift cards, while hers were always thoughtful. She’d found an out-of-print copy of a book that detailed spying strategies during the American Revolutionary War including those of Nathan Hale. The guy who regretted only having one life. Ben had loved that book.
She gave him six weeks of Italian cooking lessons once, because he’d made an offhand comment about wanting to learn how to make pasta. He had, in fact, learned how to make excellent pasta and he could remember having her over to dinner to enjoy his cooking, never once thinking that she thought those invitations might have meant something more.
Every year she found the thing he wanted most without knowing it.
Every year he gave her money to places like Ann Taylor Loft and Barnes & Noble.
It was a crazy idea that she loved him. But when she’d confessed why she’d taken his dismissal of what had happened between them so hard, he grabbed on to it with both hands. If she loved him, she wouldn’t leave him again. If she loved him, she would let him be with this miracle child.
If she loved him, she would marry him.
Yet when that didn’t happen instantly he had to resort to proving his worthiness and so far he found himself coming up short. Chinese food and some books on pregnancy seemed like a pale version of romantic gifts.
There was the other thing he’d bought for her when he feared he might die. He’d wanted to make sure she had security if he wasn’t around to provide it for her. But when she left him and he didn’t die, it seemed like a thing she might not want to have from him. Maybe too clumsy of a gesture. Maybe too much. He couldn’t say because he didn’t know women that well. Didn’t know Anna well enough.
But now he was here. The doctor was putting something on her stomach and then turning up the dial o
n a monitor. The whir and bump of something moving at a high speed caught his attention.
“That’s it?” he asked, feeling a creeping sense of awe fill his body. It was like seeing the Egyptian Pyramids for the first time, only so much more intense.
Bump, bump.
“That’s it. In four weeks you can make an appointment for your sonogram and at that point you’ll be able to know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Shhh.” He’d done it unconsciously. He didn’t want any noise interfering with what he was hearing. Was it normal that it beat that fast? Did it sound like a healthy heart? Did boys’ hearts beat faster than girls’ hearts and if so, how did this one sound? Because he wanted…he didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted this life.
“He’s still coming to grips with the whole thing,” Anna said.
The doctor took away the device and Ben almost snarled.
“Sorry, but she’s all checked out,” the doctor told him. “Make sure you pick up a sample cup before you leave and I’ll see you in four weeks.”
“Thanks, Dr. Connelly.”
“No problem. And congratulations.”
Ben nodded and waited for the door to close. When he looked at Anna, he thought he had no words.
She reached out and cupped his face and he pressed her hand against his skin. “I know. Crazy, right? It’s alive!”
He laughed as he imagined was her intent. But the intensity of the moment wouldn’t leave him. He’d been staring death in the face four months ago and now he’d helped to create life. It seemed so miraculous.
And yet completely mundane. Something couples did all the time.
“Please marry me,” he whispered. The idea of not having her and the beating heart inside of her body as his was incomprehensible to him.
When he looked to her for an answer, she smiled at him gently. “No. But I will go on another date with you.”
“I’ll take it. Let me take you to lunch.” He helped her off the table and watched her hide that precious belly under pants that he could now see were definitely too snug. Women, he decided, could be ridiculous about things like going up a pant size. He made a mental note to pick up some things for her. Something stretchy that she might like.
“Can’t. Have to get back to work.”
“Then dinner tonight. My place this time.”
She had to think about it and he wondered at the hesitation. She’d promised to give him a chance. That meant dates. Plural.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should keep it to a restaurant.”
“Last time I took you to a restaurant for dinner you upchucked in a public bathroom. I would think you would prefer the privacy.”
“It feels like we’re moving a little fast.”
This frustrated the hell out of him. Of course he was moving fast. He had only five months left to convince her to tie herself to him for the rest of her life. Reining in his impatience he used sound logical reasoning.
“For almost four months you practically lived with me. Now coming over for dinner is moving too fast?”
She shrugged. “That was work. This is a date.”
“I’m not going to pounce on you if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Not that he didn’t want to. Hell, he’d been a few steps away from sinking his fingers into her and making her come while she lay on an examining table in a doctor’s office, of all places. Pouncing was the least of all he wanted to do to her.
The very idea of having her in his house—potentially wearing a comfortable pair of yoga pants—was enough to make him salivate. But he was determined to move at her speed. Which meant what he wanted didn’t matter.
“Fine. Then a restaurant.”
“Wow, you caved pretty fast. That’s not like you.”
“I call it compromising.”
“That’s not like you, either.”
“I’m growing,” he growled.
She laughed and it sounded sweet to hear. How long had it been since she’d laughed with him? Even though she was mostly laughing at him. He was her straight man and in the beginning of their relationship he’d found it incredibly annoying that he was so amusing to her. After a while, he would purposefully say things he knew would inspire her humor. Just so he could hear her laugh.
“Okay. I’ll come to dinner at your house. But we agree no funny stuff. I’m not ready for that yet. Not like you had a chance after you called me fat anyway.”
“I didn’t call you—” Enough. He’d won. She was coming to his house for dinner. It was all that mattered.
*
ANNA LOOKED AT the computer screen on her desk then at her cell phone she placed next to it. Then at the screen—which hadn’t changed—then at her phone again.
It would be the easiest thing in the world. She could call him and tell him she wasn’t feeling good or was too tired and simply cancel their night together. It happened. Dates got canceled. It wasn’t like she was shutting him off completely. He would, no doubt, ask for a rain check and she would gladly give it.
They could reschedule for the weekend when she had more free time.
They could reschedule for next month when she wasn’t so freaking freaked out.
Anna dropped her head back and moaned. That’s what was happening. She was scared and she couldn’t really define why. Watching his face when he realized he was listening to the beating heart of his child was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Not out of Ben Tyler.
Ben Tyler was stoic. He was whiplike smart. He was responsible and in charge of every element of his life.
A man in firm control.
That he should find awe in anything didn’t feel right. Not for him. Yet it had been plain to see he’d been shaken to his core by the sound of a heartbeat.
Then he’d proposed again and she knew with that proposal only the child occupied his thoughts. She couldn’t blame him. When she listened to the sound of that beating noise for the first time it got to her, too. She instantly wanted to take it out of her belly so she could hold it and sing to it and say, hey, you’re my baby.
It was crazy because she never thought of being a mother. Maybe it was a result of being raised in different foster homes. It wasn’t like she felt any link to her past that needed to be continued into the future. She was Anna. She was on her own. She’d never felt any urgent need to procreate.
Added to that were all the other natural concerns. Many people parented their children the way they had been parented. Anna’s mother and father abandoned her. While she didn’t see that being something she could possibly do to her child, she knew in the deepest corners of her heart that, in many ways, she’d abandoned Ben when he needed her most.
She could tell herself all day that she’d left him because she’d given him her heart and he’d dismissed it out of turn. But deep down in her soul where she didn’t like to go very often because it was a scary place, she knew that part of the reason she left was fear.
Fear of losing him. Fear of being left behind. Again.
Running from that fear made her a coward.
Sort of like canceling on him at the last minute would make her a coward.
So fine. She would go but she wouldn’t pretend that anything he said or did wasn’t all about the baby. It had nothing to do with her. It would be crazy to think otherwise. Not after all the years when she hadn’t meant anything to him other than being a competent employee.
A competent employee who looked decent in a pair of yoga pants apparently.
*
LATER THAT NIGHT Anna rang the doorbell and braced herself. She was edgy. Once she’d made the decision not to cancel, she’d started feeling as if any minute she might snap at someone. Like suddenly all of her patience was gone, and she was this raw live nerve. She’d gone home after work and changed out of her uncomfortable pants, deliberately putting on a pair of stretchy pants that, while they were not the yoga pants, were pretty darn close.
Looking down at herself
she could see the bump of her belly under the tank top she wore. That the thing making the noise in the doctor’s office was, in fact, growing inside of her body.
It was so utterly strange when she thought about it.
The door opened to Ben who wore a loose, short-sleeved shirt and jeans. He looked good. Better today than when she’d first seen him after his stretch of quarantine. And he would only continue to grow stronger and fill out even more. Back to the old Ben with the broad chest and the steely blue eyes that she could get lost in for hours when he spoke.
It dawned on her that this could be problematic. She’d been able to get away from Ben at half strength. Ben at full strength? It was hard to know.
“Come in. I’ve got the grill on out back. The humidity has died down so it’s not so bad out there.”
She followed him through the house for a stop in the kitchen where he offered her a variety of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated drinks. In the end she went with club soda and lime. Following him outside, she picked a lounge chair on his deck and settled herself in to be wowed and amazed by the act of Ben cooking. For her.
No, for the baby. This was all about the baby. She needed to repeat it over and over again like a constant loop running in her brain so she wouldn’t think that he was doing any of this for her.
“How did the rest of your day go?”
“Fine,” she muttered.
“Any new interesting cases?”
“Nope.”
She watched him take out the tongs to turn the grilling meat, probably thinking up several more innocuous questions that might trigger a pleasant conversation.
“Mark told me he’s helping you find your birth parents.”
“Yes, so?”
He tensed then slowly shut the lid on the grill. “I would have helped you if you had asked.”
“I didn’t.”
“Why now?”
“You know.” She pointed to her belly. “The whole genetics thing. I mean, if I have relatives out there somewhere, I should probably know about it. If there are any medical conditions we need to know about, it’s important to have that information.”
“I’ve thought about that. I’ve been doing some reading and we can save the placenta after the birth. Freeze it and, in case there is ever a need, the baby will always have its own stem cells to use.”
An Act of Persuasion Page 13