Page 59 of The Virgin's Baby
“Pretty good. Margo is having a crisis, but other than that I had fun with the girls.” I pushed my hair back out of my face then stretched and yawned as he’d woken me up when he knocked. “And how did your night go?”
“Pretty crazy, actually.” He got up and started pacing.
I knew it had to be bad and prayed it wasn’t about his grandfather’s health. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened, Ransom?”
“Because I don’t know how to.” He shook his head. “I’ve thought all night long how to say this to you, and I can’t come up with anything that’s good at all.”
“Is it about Lucius?” I had to know. I had to get myself ready if there was awful news.
I’d grown to love the old guy. Now, not only would I have to deal with my own grief, I would still need to be as strong as I could for Ransom. The man looked like a tower of strength, but I knew he was anything but that when it came to his grandad.
“Yeah, it’s about him,” he admitted. “He’s done something again. And this time it involves our kids.”
“So, it’s not about his health then?” I asked, feeling a tiny bit of relief.
Ransom took a seat at the end of my bed, looking at me with fear in his eyes. “Not really. But he did say that if the cancer returned, he wouldn’t put up a fight the way he did before. That really got to me.”
“I would imagine it did. It’s getting to me right now too.” I had no idea why Lucius would give up the fight after he’d proven that he could do it. “Maybe I should talk to him.”
“It won’t help. He’s a stubborn old man.” He threw his arms in the air. “And that’s what makes this so damn hard.”
“I get the feeling that you’re skirting around another issue. One that doesn’t concern your grandfather’s health?” I sat up, putting my hand on my stomach as my morning hunger was occurring and that meant I had to get something in my tummy pretty quickly or nausea would show up.
“You would be right.” He got back up and started pacing again.
I leaned over to get a sleeve of saltines out of the drawer of my nightstand. I had to get something in my stomach and fast. “So, stop skirting already and just spit it out.” I munched on a cracker, noisily.
“You make it sound so easy. It’s anything but.” He turned around slowly then came to me. “You know how I feel about you, right?”
“Has he told you something that has to do with me, Ransom?” I thought his grandfather liked me, loved me even. But I had this sinking feeling that he might’ve told Ransom something about getting rid of me for some reason.
“He has,” he said, confirming my suspicions.
I didn’t know what to think. But I did know that I was about to puke. Throwing the blanket off me, I jumped up and hauled butt to the bathroom that was a part of my bedroom suite.
Kneeling on the cold tile floor in front of the toilet, I barfed like crazy. Then Ransom’s hands were running over my shoulders, pulling my hair back. “It’s going to be okay, Aspen.”
Gasping, I pulled my head out of the toilet. “What’s going to be okay?”
Gently, he pulled me up then took my hand, leading me to the sink. Wetting a washcloth, he wiped my face for me as he looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “Who knows, you may even want this.”
“Want what, Ransom?” I took his wrists in my hands to stop him from cleaning my face anymore. I didn’t care what I looked like. I just had to know what was happening.
“My grandfather has changed his will again. If you and I don’t get married before the babies come, then me, you, and the babies will be cut out of his will.” He sighed as I released his wrists. “You’ll get what you wanted.”
My head felt light as I tried to process the information. “I didn’t want this.”
With a shrug, he said, “Didn’t you kind of want this?”
Blinking as I looked at him, I had no idea why he would think I wanted him to be forced to marry me. “What?”
“You look like you’re about to faint.” He took my hand and pulled me back to bed. “Here, get back into bed. I’ll go down and grab some breakfast for you and bring it up here while you absorb this information. Maybe a little later today, we can pick out wedding rings and decide how we’re going to do this.”
Words eluded me as I got tucked back into bed by the man who had refused to have sex with me. But now that his grandfather was demanding he marry me, he looked like he’d accepted it all, and he thought that I would too.
Well, he was wrong.
“My answer is no, Ransom.” I watched his face turn into a frown.
