Page 31 of Her Bad Boy

And all she could seem to do was to cry inconsolably, which was the last thing she wanted to do in front of him. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry! I came here because I wanted to ream you a new one, but I never wanted to barf on you!"

His hands were gentle as he began to guide her in the direction of his bathroom, carefully skirting the throw rugs and anything else that might not be easily washable.

Once in there, he reached for the hem of her pretty flowered knit shirt, but she put her hand on his. "I don't really think you should do that."

Lucas did the brave thing and tipped her face up to his. "I really think I should—what if you get sick and faint in the shower, Allie? It's not like I haven't seen you naked. Think of it as another new leaf—showering with your ex."

He did have a point, and she did still feel a bit shaky physically, her tummy still wobbly, at best.

She glared up at him. "All right, but nothing goes on but us getting washed off."

"Understood."

Thirty minutes later, they lay panting in his bed.

Apparently, orgasms were a sure-fire cure for nausea.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, kissing the back of her hand.

"Good. Fine."

Lucas wasn't at all sure where this should go, but he knew where he wanted it to go.

He had been in a black Hell since he'd been forced to cut her out of his life in order to let her have her own, but he'd been working on a solution for the situation, although he wasn't at all sure that she would take him back.

Not that he wasn't fully prepared to take the choice away from her, if it became necessary. He was, after all, a bad guy. And he was of a mind that the stakes had just become that much higher.

He rolled away from her and picked up his phone. "Yeah, could someone go out to Rite Aid or whatever and get me a pregnancy test, please?"

"No!" Allie countermanded from behind him. "Put the phone down, please."

He turned and raised his eyebrows at her because of her tone, not having moved a muscle.

"Please, Sir."

That was the magic word. How quickly she'd forgotten.

"You don't think you're pregnant?" he asked, turning back to her.

"I don't," she said, scampering from the bedroom into the foyer, where she'd dropped her bag, and coming back to his bedroom with it. "But you also don't need to buy one when I have one."

He had to chuckle at her. "Is that something you usually carry around with you?"

"No, smartass, it's something Laura gave me a couple days ago because she suspects the same thing."

Lucas moved to surround her from behind with his body. "And why haven't you used it, little one?" he asked quietly, and his tone set off the all too close to the surface water works again, which she knew was yet another sign that they were probably both right.

"B-because I didn't want to know. I'm alone and unemployed, and—"

"Shh-shh-shh," he soothed, hugging her tight. "You are not alone. I will apologize to you until the day I die for what I did to you—what I had Joey do to you because I thought—wrongly, in retrospect, I admit—that it might be easier for you somehow to hear it from him rather than having to see me again. I'll tell you the whole sordid story later, but please believe me that I truly thought I had been given no choice but to shut you out of my life, and every day away from you has been another day of slowly bleeding out internally without you. I never, ever stopped loving you. I did what I did because I love you, and I wanted you to be safe and happy, and, deep down, I guess, I didn't think that I could do that for you, as much as I wanted to."

He cupped her face in his hands. "I love you, Allie. You're not alone. You never will be as long as I'm alive, and I even think I have a solution to all of our problems. Will you marry your bad guy, my good girl?"

His heart nearly dropped to the floor when she hesitated to respond to him, but that was because she was crying so hard at what he'd said. She reached her arms up to wrap them around his neck, whispering damply against it, "Yes, please, Sir."

Epilogue

"Didn't I tell you to stay in bed?" Lucas growled, climbing onto the bed to stretch himself out full length and cuddle up behind her.

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