Page 52 of Billionaire's Accidental Marriage
I wiped away her tears dripping down her cheeks. “No, I don’t. Did I plan on having a child right now? Nope. Did I think it would happen in the near future? Absolutely not. Do I think it’s a terrible thing? Not one damn bit.”
She closed her eyes. “There are just so many things I want to do. I can’t be pregnant. Not right now.”
I gripped her chin, forcing her to look at me. “Why can’t you be pregnant right now? Tell me what’s really going on.”
She paused for a while before she spoke. “Are you fucking serious?”
“About what?”
She found the energy to sit up in her hospital bed, but when she pulled herself away from me, I knew what was coming. So, I braced for the conversation.
“Michael, none of this is real. None of this between us is real. We were married on accident, and now we’re pregnant? What the hell are we supposed to do with that?”
I shrugged. “Why can’t our marriage be real?”
She looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. “I’m sorry, but what?”
I smiled softly. “Why can’t our marriage be real? I mean, we care about each other, right?”
She balked but nodded. “Yeah, but that’s for love and stuff. Dating and proposals. We didn’t do any of that.”
“Well, do you love me? Because I love you.”
Her face paled again before she swallowed hard. “You—you do?”
I nodded. “Yes, I do. And I won’t hide that any longer. I love you, Maggie. I don’t know when it happened or when the turning point was, but it happened. I woke up one morning and realized you were the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So, I ask you again: why can’t our marriage be real?”
She stared at me for so long that I thought maybe she was about to pass out again. However, when she licked her lips, I knew she was about to answer. As she shifted around, getting herself comfortable for the conversation about to take place, I braced myself for the inevitable. I knew this conversation would come around sooner rather than later, and I knew there was a damn good chance I could lose her in the process—and my child, for that matter.
But, the risk was worth the reward if I could pull this off. If I could convince her to give us some time—to give us some genuine, bonafide time with one another—I could make her love me. I could show her exactly what she deserved, and we could be the kind of family we were both searching for after the death of our parents.
I should have known something would have interrupted us, though.
“Knock, knock!”
Her hospital room door opened, and in came a very cheery, rosy-cheeked ultrasound technician wheeling in what looked like a portable video game console strapped to a plastic mount. She sidled right up to Maggie’s opposite side and started rolling down her blanket before pulling up her gown, exposing her belly button.
“Mike, can you—just—with my legs? Please?”
I stood up. “Of course. Are you thirsty? I could get you some water as well.”
She shook her head. “I’m scared. Please stay.”
I covered her legs and quickly sat back down at her side. “I’m not going anywhere, Mags. Don’t you worry about that. Okay?”
And as she gazed into my eyes, I could’ve sworn I saw the shadow of a smile tick her cheeks before the ultrasound technician started walking us through the process of viewing the first-ever pictures of our growing child.
19
Maggie
Did he just say he loved me?
I couldn’t even focus on the ultrasound. Even as the woman pressed the wand against my stomach and shoved something between my legs to check whatever the hell she wanted to see, I couldn’t focus. Did Mike really just admit that he loved me? Since when?
“Wow,” Mike whispered.
I looked up at the black-and-white ultrasound screen and didn’t see, well, anything. I saw a fuzzy, white screen with a black circle in the middle, and that was it. I heard the technician taking notes and clicking around on some sort of keyboard, but I had no idea what I was looking at. I had no idea what had Mike so entranced.
