Page 109 of Deceitful Oath

When I can finally think a little more clearly, I push the pool off of my head with a grunt and look down in dismay at my ankle. “I don’t think it’s supposed to bend that way,” I say weakly, almost throwing up again.

I bite my lip, pondering what to do next. Rafael is away dealing with business, but he left me with Enzo, who was supposed to call him if I suddenly went into labor. While it doesn’t seem like I’m about to do that, I’m pretty sure that my foot is going to need someone professional to look at it.

“Enzo!” I call weakly, surprised at how hard it is to draw a full breath. “Enzo!” I try again, a little louder.

The effort of shouting is making me dizzy, so I collapse back on the floor, glaring accusingly at the cheery little Dolphins looking at me from the edge of the swimming pool. “It was super rude to trip me like that,” I say, feeling a little delirious.

“Oh my God, Lux, what the fuck is going on?” Enzo cries as he comes my way from the kitchen area. He comes to a halt, looming over me, and catches sight of my ankle. His face gets a little pale.

“That bad, eh?” I joke with a weak laugh.

“Worse,” he says affirmatively.

“Thanks,” I grumble, closing my eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure legs bend like that…if you’re another species,” he says to me.

“Don’t tell Wolfie,” I say to him abruptly, seeing him digging in his pocket for his phone.

“Lux…” he says to me with a warning note in his voice.

“Humor me,” I plead. “He doesn’t need to be distracted while he’s working on a job. With my shitty luck, calling him would distract him and cause him to get killed. Bad enough the dolphins maimed me. I don’t want my husband dead too.”

“The dolphins…oh,” Enzo says, realizing I mean the kiddie pool dolphins. “I’m getting the car,” he says, stepping over me. “We need to go to the city.”

“The city!” I say, feeling dizzy all over again. “Surely we can just go to the local hospital. It’s just a little broken ankle…”

“That is not a little broken ankle,” Enzo argues and then he vanishes out the front door to get his SUV.

I lie on the floor, alone with the dolphins again. “You looked so cute at the store,” I say to them. “I didn’t know you were evil.”

I think of Rafael working on one of the only in-person business deals he’s handled since we moved out here to the suburbs and cringe. Hopefully he doesn’t have to hear about this at all until we are back home and he’s done with the job.

***

“Why didn’t you ask Enzo for help, Lux?” Rafael says to me, a note of scolding in his voice as he stands by my hospital bed.

I look at him over the temporary cast on my lower leg with a baleful glare. “It’s just a kiddie pool! It doesn’t weigh anything! I just wanted to see what it would look like in the living room.”

Rafael sighs and comes over to hold my hand. “I can’t pretend that I’m sad that you are going to have this baby here, in a hospital, like a proper person, now that you’ve done this.”

“I promised not to do anything else clumsy until the baby came,” I grumbled petulantly.

When we got to the ER in the city, they took one look at my leg and rushed me to a room. The baby was fine, but the doctor on call told me that they were going to induce labor in a few hours so that they could get me right into surgery for my ankle. They didn’t want my ankle to wait to be repaired, and they didn’t want to put the baby through a surgery.

“Lux, you can promise all you want, but you just have the worst…”

“Luck,” I say grouchily.

“Oh, don’t be down,” Enzo says cheerfully, coming into the room with a grin. “You guys had the good luck to find one another and the baby’s okay. Could be worse.”

“Yeah, she could have stepped on another pigeon,” Rafael says back. The men have a good laugh at this while I shoot death glares at them.

“That pigeon got in my way,” I assert with annoyance.

“I know,” Rafael says, coming over to press a kiss to my brow.

“But I am glad that we met one another and that Bean is okay,” I amend, looking down at my stomach and rubbing a hand over my belly.

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