by Kristy Marie
Someone who bears my last name but isn’t really mine… she’s only mine—as she keeps reminding me—’until delivery do us part.’
How did I get here?
Could I really not find another caregiver in time?
No, I couldn’t.
Especially when Pops’s face lit up seeing Mac. This marriage gives him the opportunity to spend his days with his best friend, when he wouldn’t normally get to see her. He’s not shut in the house, miserable, with only the noise of the television to keep him company.
This was the right thing to do. I can handle losing Mac at the end of the pregnancy. It’s not like she’s suddenly going to catch feelings. She made that quite clear from the start, and that should make me seriously happy—not bothered by the comments she makes or the dance we shared.
I’m not a jealous man. I’m more than confident in my abilities to, not only please a woman, but keep her. But I don’t have time anymore. It’s been years since I’ve had a girlfriend. But here I am, stressed as fuck, in an OB’s office.
“I’ll show you guys to a room where we’ll do an exam and ultrasound.”
Mac looks straight on as if she’s in a trance.
“Hey.” I touch her shoulder, and I notice her eyes are watery. “I’ll wait outside, okay?”
“You can come in with her, Mr. Lexington. We encourage the fathers to see the babies too. It helps with the bonding process.”
Mac makes a noise low in her throat that sounds a lot like a groan, and I pull her into a hug like any good husband would do. “I appreciate that, Dr. Montgomery. Can we have just a minute alone, though?”
I need to see what the fuck is wrong with my wife. Where is the woman who teased me last night?
“Absolutely. When you’re ready, you can come here to room two.” He points to the door just ahead of him. “Mrs. Lexington, there’s a gown on the table for you to wear.”
Mac makes another noise and nods into my shirt, clinging desperately to me as Dr. Montgomery disappears down the hall.
“Look at me,” I tell her, grasping her chin in my fingers. “These people don’t matter, neither do their opinions.” I take a wild guess as to why she’s suddenly meek.
“I know they don’t,” she snaps, a bit of life coming back to her.
“Then why the panic attack? Pops claims nothing scares you.”
She blinks and a rogue tear drops onto my hand. “Pops lies.”
“I agree.” I chuckle. “But I don’t think he’s lying about this. Where’s that girl who threatened to hurt me with her wrench the other night?”
McKinley looks small and delicate while she sucks in her bottom lip. “She thinks this pregnancy suddenly feels too real.”
“Our shotgun marriage didn’t make it feel real enough for you?”
After all, that’s why we’re married. So she could get insurance, without me paying out of pocket for her medical expenses.
A slight grin emerges. “I like a little craziness in my life. Our marriage just felt like a blind date gone right.” She shrugs, and I find myself repeating the phrase, blind date. How many blind dates has she been on?
“I don’t know, I just didn’t think I’d feel so much… guilt. I swear it weighs heavier than the wrench stuffed in my purse.”
What the fuck? I drop her chin and snatch the purse off her shoulder. “Why are you still carrying around that damn wrench?”
“Because I don’t have the patience to wait for a gun permit?” she offers, teasingly. Her smile is what lures unsuspecting men into her insanity.
God, help me.
“I’ll hold your—” I shake my head, “—your wrench and wait outside while you go in there and do your thing, Aphrodite.”
I don’t bring up the comment about guilt. The office hallway isn’t a place to discuss whatever weighs on her mind. But rest assured, I won’t forget to ask later. Maybe the next time she spies on me in the middle of the night.
“Okay.” She nods.
“Okay?” I make sure before I turn her and gently nudge her toward the room. She takes a few steps and looks back.
“Hey, Coop?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you come?”
I eat up the few steps between us. “I find it absolutely irrelevant to discuss this now.”
“Irrelevant is my second language,” she returns, flashing me this smirk that shows off a dimple in her left cheek.
It’s more like sarcasm is her second language.
Luckily for her, I speak it fluently. “Fine, I felt confident someone would report the rusty death trap in the parking lot. I figured you might need a ride home when Lu was towed.” I grin and she shoves at my shoulder, and I take the opportunity to grab her hand. “Our deal might be unconventional, Mac, but our vows were not. I honor my promises.”
Her chin quivers, and I wipe a tear from her face, adding, “We’re a team, right?”
She nods. “But you’ve been ignoring me.”
“I ignore everyone.”
“Not Pops.”
I sigh. “That’s because he won’t let me.”
“Why can’t that work for me too?”
I shift my weight, remembering last night. “Trust me, you get my attention plenty.” And because this conversation can’t end fast enough, I turn her by the shoulders and give her a little swat to the ass. “Now get in there. I have to pick up another pain in the ass soon.”
“Will you stay with me? I’m not scared or anything, I just—” She doesn’t turn around to face me, only the slump of her shoulders tells me how desperate she must feel to ask for my help.
“If that’s what you want.”
She nods only once, and I step forward, opening the door and reaching out behind me, so she can take my hand and follow me through the door where I pull to a halt.
In the center of the sterile-feeling room stands a frightening table equipped with stirrups. “I can see why your palms are sweaty,” I note, dryly.
McKinley snatches her hand away. “My palms are not sweaty! Must be yours.”
Tearing my gaze from the monster table, I level her with a serious look. “My hands don’t sweat, it’s bad for business.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ve seen some shitty pitches you’ve made. You can’t tell me your hands weren’t sweaty when those throws veered off behind the catcher.”
“No wonder you were fired. Clearly, your focus was elsewhere.”
“Yep, watching The Closer almost not save a game.”
“Now, you’re exaggerating.”
Under severe stress, and before I learned to manage the lack of sleep, she might have been correct, but I haven’t thrown a wild pitch in quite some time. It’s why I’m one of the highest-paid closers in the league.
“And you’re delusional.” She smirks, her earlier fear of this room all but forgotten with our bantering.
“And you’re stalling,” I chide, eyeing the pink gown folded on the table. “I’ll wait outside while you change.”
Just because we are husband and wife doesn’t mean I’m entitled to see her body—even if I want to. Like really, really want to.
Mac pauses, swallowing hard. “Maybe you could just turn around?” Her eyes drop to the floor as if she hates asking me to stay.
“If that’s what you want.”
I came as her husband—to ease her anxiety. If she’d prefer me to stay, then I will, no matter how uncomfortable I might be.
“I’d like that.”
I nod once, pulling my hat lower on my head and turning around, facing the wood-grained door. I hear rustling and then nothing. “Okay. You can turn around now.”
I give myself a few seconds to breathe and not be a total man by imagining her naked body hidden beneath the thin gown held on by only a few strings.
It doesn’t work, though, because when I face her, the gown hangs off her shoulder, and her bare legs and healing knee demand my eyes to drift along her entire body, up to her unrestrained breasts a
nd nipples, hard against the thin fabric.
It’s an absolute nightmare when my dick twitches.
I shouldn’t react to her body. She’s carrying another man’s baby. A man that I’m not sure she isn’t still in love with. She hasn’t bashed him or even mentioned his name. And here I am at the first doctor’s appointment with her, without knowing anything of her past.
Oh, God, what am I doing? What have I done?
I must look panicked because McKinley grabs my hand. “I’m sorry for worrying you earlier. I’ll be okay if you want to leave. I understand this is weird and really freaking awkward. I appreciate you coming and playing the role of the dutiful father-to-be. I’ll tell the doctor soon, so you don’t have to do this anymore.”
And now I feel like a complete asshole…
“I’m fine,” I lie. She doesn’t need to know I’m freaking out because I’d love to pull those ties at her side and watch the fabric fall open and bare her body to me—my wife’s body.
Never have I imagined that word wife would have such a powerful effect on my dick. Had I known the word would keep my dick in a constant state of hardness and my mind swimming with territorial tendencies, I would have told Aspen to send as many caregiver applications as she could my way.
But it’s too late now; McKinley is my wife. More than likely for a year, until she’s on her feet with a healthy baby in tow. And until I can find Pops a caregiver he can tolerate. The boners and caveman behavior will just have to be dealt with as quickly as possible.
“I can stay, and then we can go pick up Pops,” I offer in return.
It sounds like we’re already raising a child together, and I guess we are in a sense—a crotchety child that won’t hesitate to smack me in the back of the head if I were to tell him that.
The tense lines in Mac’s face relax, and I know she just needs a friend. I can’t imagine how my mom dealt with doing everything alone for me and my brother. Though my father was present occasionally, it was only when it benefitted him. A soccer game with potential clients in the bleachers? He was there. The day I had a 104 fever and my mother rushed me to the emergency room? Nah, he preferred text updates that he never answered.
McKinley’s baby’s father might be absent, but I promised her that I would be with her in sickness and in health. We may have married for the wrong reasons, but I will honor our vows until we dissolve them.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Now that we’ve gotten the awkward out of the way, I head to the table and grab her discarded clothes and carry them to the chair in the room, placing them in the seat. I try ignoring the silk bra and matching underwear but fail, while returning to her side and searching for a distraction.
“Let me help you up.” I find the sheet on the table and grab it. “I’m sure the doctor will be here soon.”
Extending my hand, McKinley looks at it for a moment and then takes it, her palm’s definitely sweaty as I guide her forward and help her up onto the table.
When she’s situated, the paper crinkling under her as she adjusts the gown, I shake out the sheet and drape it over her legs, so she’s fully covered. “Thank you,” she says, her voice trembling.
“Anytime.” But I hope it’s not often.
“Hey, Cooper?”
“Yeah?”
“When we get in the car, will you say something rude that pisses me off?”
I can feel my forehead wrinkling.
She chews on her cheek. “I just need—”
The knock at the door stops her mid-sentence, and she grips the sheet, a wave of fear thickening the air around her as she swallows and calls out, “You can come in.”
Knowing this will be just as painful for her as it will be for me, I stand there in a state of uncertainty as the doctor and female nurse come in, dragging a machine behind them.
“Alright. Let’s check on this baby.”
McKinley looks at me with wide eyes.
Stepping to the table, I grab her hand like a husband and a first-time father would do. Her grip is tight as we both watch as the doctor opens drawers, turns on the light by McKinley’s legs, and pulls out these huge Q-tip things and a bottle of clear liquid.
“That looks terrifying,” I whisper.
“I’m sure it does to you. Men aren’t known to handle pain well.”
“Ha. Ha. I’ll have you know—”
The doctor pulls out another torture device from a package and lays it on the table. It looks like a duck’s bill and has me immediately shutting up.
McKinley’s right; men aren’t meant to endure shit like this.
I groan, and McKinley squeezes my hand like it’s me who is suffering. But, then again, I need it since the next sentence out of the doctor’s mouth stops my breathing.
“All right, Dad, if you’ll help Mom put her feet in the stirrups, we’ll get started.”
Cooper
McKinley and I both freeze.
“I wasn’t expecting to participate,” I mutter, earning a grin from my wife.
“I think it’s only fair you do something. I’m the one giving up bladder space and cute underwear. What’s a little assistance with stirrups?” She glances down at the bulge in my pants. “Unless taking a few steps will be a problem for you?”
I force a grin, my teeth clenched as I will the boner away while the doctor and nurse wash their hands. “You seem to be feeling better,” I note, taking a step closer.
McKinley chuckles, holding her foot in the air for me to take. “I am. Though now, I’m a little worried about you. You look very stressed.”
I narrow my eyes, grabbing her ankle. “I can assure you, I’m fine.”
A sly smile, inappropriate at a time like this, widens on my wife’s face. “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure you just said sweaty hands were bad for business and your hands…”
Fuck. “—Aren’t sweaty,” I assure her, placing her foot in one of the stirrups before repeating it on the other side.
She shrugs and lies back, scooting down the table. “Whatever you say. Oh, will you fix the sheet while you’re down there?”
While I’m down here… between her spread legs…
Swallowing, I step forward and place my palms over the sheet at her knees, meeting her gaze. If I don’t do this, I’ll blow our ruse.
McKinley scoots down the table, her eyes on mine as I pull the sheet lower, covering her as her knees open, creating a space for the doctor to look at the most coveted part of her.
God help me, I step forward, gripping her knees and preventing them from opening any farther.
“Okay, Mom and Dad. Let’s get started.”
The doctor approaches my side, but something wholly possessive has taken over me. I can’t move—I’m glued to the floor, my hands clenching Mac’s knees.
“Coop.” Mac opens her hand, somehow sensing my struggle. “Hold my hand?”
Her fingers beckon me toward her, but my hands don’t move from her knees. Why can’t I move?
“Don’t worry, Mr. Lexington, I’ll be quick.” I glance at Dr. Montgomery, offering me a patient smile. Hopefully, I’m not the only husband who feels like he could tear this room apart with another man seeing his wife’s… my hands clench on Mac’s knees. This was a really bad idea. Not just marrying Mac but coming here, watching another man see what’s mine…
“Cooper.” Mac sits up on the table and grabs my wrist. “Let go. It’s okay.”
This is very much not okay. At least not for me. Mac is not my real wife, yet, for some crazy reason, I feel unhinged.
“We’ll give you two a moment.” The door clicks shut and Mac and I are left staring at each other.
“What are you doing, Lexington?”
A muscle in my jaw clenches, and I’m positive it’s the reason I can’t answer her.
“You do know babies don’t come from storks, don’t you?”
I flash her an expression she knows all too well and roll my eyes, still not speaking.
<
br /> “You’re going to have to move so the doctor can look… down there.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, which only makes her burst out laughing.
“Well, great. I’m happy to know you’re fine and acting completely sane right now.”
“Very funny.” I step away, raising my hands from her knees, showing her my palms. “I’m going to wait—” There’s a quick knock at the door before it opens, Dr. Montgomery entering with another doctor and the nurse.
“Mr. Lexington, this is my colleague, Dr. Cameron. She’s going to take over for me. I have an emergency at the hospital.”
He flashes me a wink and I’m absolutely horrified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
He claps me on the shoulder. “Believe it or not, this happens a lot. We’ll ease into it.” Turning, he faces Mac and smiles. “I’ll see you at your next appointment.”
Mac, the traitor, chuckles and waves. “I promise to leave him at home.”
With that, Dr. Montgomery steps outside, closing the door behind him, leaving me with three grinning women. “Mr. Lexington, if you’ll—”
“My apologies.” I step up to the head of the bed and grab Mac’s hand, ignoring the stupid face she’s making.
“And here I thought it’d be me who embarrassed us at the fancy office.”
I don’t even make eye contact as the doctor lifts the sheet and settles between Mac’s legs.
“Breathe, Cooper.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying my discomfort,” I grit.
“Immensely. Who would have thought the big bad Closer would be so uncomfortable in an OB office?”
“He was going to look at your—” I look to the doctor between her legs, busy doing heaven knows what and passing a brush-looking thing to the nurse.
“Pussy,” she whispers. “Again, that’s how babies—”
I cover her mouth. A) Her saying the word ‘pussy’ made me rock-fucking-hard, and B) I’m tired of her sarcasm.
“I know how babies are born.”
I’m not stupid, just possessive as fuck. And it’s irrational, which makes all this so much worse.
“Everything looks great, McKinley.” The doctor stands, pulling down the sheet and taking off her gloves. “I’m going to leave you in stirrups while I do the breast exam, and then we’ll do the ultrasound, okay?”