Page 98 of Hidden By His Side

“It’s no problem. I’ll pay for it,” Ramiro interrupted. His eyes remained on Summer. “You want to see your little girl again, don’t you? Hear the heartbeat?”

Summer did want that, but she also didn’t.

“Do you want to know the gender?” the doctor asked. “It’ll be hard to tell from the ultrasound, but since you opted into the blood work, the gender is included in the report when it’s returned. You can know for certain whether the baby is a girl like you’re hoping.”

Summer flushed.

Ramiro’s gaze was still fixed on Summer. “What do you want?”

“I’d like to know if it’s a girl.” That part was easy to decide, but hearing the heartbeat had made what was inside of her more real last time. The image had been mostly a blob, though. Would it still look the same? Or would it have started to look like a person?

“We don’t have to see the baby again,” she murmured to him.

Ramiro hummed in his throat as he continued to study her. “We’ll do it,” he decided, taking the choice away from her.

Excited bubbles exploded inside of her stomach, and she pressed her hand over it, as if she could hold them all in.

Ramiro’s hand rested on top of hers. He seemed to listen to what the doctor was saying, but Summer couldn’t concentrate. She just continued to stare down at where their hands touched over the baby.

Her stomach still didn’t have a bump. That had worried Summer, but the nurse and the doctor said that was normal. She hadn’t done anything wrong yet.

She still couldn’t quite relax. The blood test they’d talked about checked for abnormalities, but she hadn’t even considered there could be any before, so her mind continued to spin over the idea of it.

Would adoption work if the baby was abnormal? There was no guarantee of love in anyone’s life, but wouldn’t it be even worse if something was wrong with her daughter?

No, the baby wasn’t hers. She kept reminding herself of that, but the baby was starting to feel like hers.

Ramiro kissed her forehead, and her breath shuddered.

“What are you thinking?”

She shook her head, but his hand squeezed over hers, and the words spilled out. “What if something’s wrong with her?”

“That’s worst-case scenario, but even if it happened, we’ll handle it together. I promise.”

Summer stared at Ramiro. He’d called the baby his. She couldn’t let herself think about them as a family. That was wrong. Ramiro couldn’t really want the baby. Summer still couldn’t believe he wanted her, no matter how many times in the past week he’d shown her he did.

Having her belly bare and gelled up felt vulnerable again, but then that rapid heartbeat returned, thrumming inside of her, wriggling under her rib cage and sinking deep into her heart.

“Look at that,” Ramiro breathed in awe, squeezing her hand. “She looks more like a little person this time.”

She did. There was a head and a nose and a curled-up rounded body.

Afterward, the printout they handed her felt like it burned her fingers.

She shouldn’t want to keep her daughter. She couldn’t be that selfish.

It’d been more than a week, but Ramiro still hadn’t switched them back to the main office. Nostalgia sometimes hit Summer, but it wasn’t that she minded working from home. Being in the same room together while working might not have been the most productive, but she also wouldn’t have changed that time for the world.

Whenever she got distracted and gazed at Ramiro, his smile would form and his eyes would grow so warm by the time they shifted to meet hers.

She’d started daydreaming about him spreading her over his desk and taking her in a frenzy. Whenever her mind wandered to that, Ramiro would ask her what she was thinking about. She hadn’t been able to admit to the fantasy yet, but each time she got a little closer.

The phone rang, and she reached for the receiver. “Rodriguez Security, this is Summer.”

She waited, listening, but the other side of the line was silent, as it’d been more times than she could keep track of over the last month.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” she asked.

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