Page 30 of Fatal Thrill
Reaching out, he touched her hair, slightly messy from sleeping in the plane seat. “Do you want me to make you sometea?”
He saw her visibly swallow, her jaws seeming to clench. “No, I don’t need anything. Well, that’s not exactly true,but…”
His hand dropped to her shoulder and he rubbed it. “But what? What do you need? Whatever it is, I’ll get it foryou. ”
She pressed past him so she could get to the bag and he moved back as far as he could, his backside hitting the vanity. The sound of her bag’s zipper seemed loud in the tiny room, the low ceiling adding to the enclosed feeling. “You know my stomach thing?” She sighed heavily. “I wasn’t being exactly honest about that. It’s not avirus.”
For one god-awful moment, he thought she was going to drop a bomb on him. Like she had cancer or something. He grabbed her by the arms and turned her to face him. “Jaya? What is it? Just tellme…”
In her hands was a slender package. She held it up,silent.
His eyes went wide and his eyebrows jumped skyward. The words on the box blurred, but he didn’t need to read them. The picture said it all andmore.
His heart did a funnythudthudinside his chest. His pulse raced like he’d just ran a four-minute mile. “You’re…?”
Another hard swallow made her slender throat work. Her voice was soft and timid. “That’s what we’re about to findout.”
“You haven’t taken italready?”
“I wanted us to do ittogether.”
Oh. “Okay.”
Her gaze came up, her gorgeous eyes searching his. A defiant look passed over her features. “Okay?That’s it? That’s all you’re going tosay?”
“I, uh…” What were the right wordshere?
He’d been in plenty of battles, hellfire raining down around him. Had himself in some tight jams where he saw his buddies being blown up, and believing he’d never see another sunrise. During all of that, his brain never stoppedworking.
But now? It was scrambled. Total fuzz. She didn’t seem at all happy about the situation, and he had no idea what words would be the correct ones to say at thismoment.
Maybe her unhappiness was because of the situation—theotherwith Finn and her dad—not because she might be pregnant with hiskid.
Right?
Deep down he knew better. No woman in her right mind would want him to father her child. No smart woman, anyway, and Jaya was definitely one smartgal.
Taking a deep breath, he figured he was damned no matter what he said, so it was best to reassure her and buy some time, because Jesus God, if she was pregnant with hischild…
How the hell had thishappened?
Dumbquestion.
He squeezed both of her arms. “I’m here for you, J. With you all the way, whichever way that is. You know I’m absolutely crazy about you and no matter what the outcome of that test is, you and I will figure out what to do together,okay?”
Her defiant face melted. She lowered the box. “You know what Shelby’s mom said? About me having no luck but bad? She’s right. Some Irish woman I am. I’m…”—the breath she drew came all the way from her toes—“scared.”
The last two words were no more than a whisper, barely there over the noise of the plane’s motor. She was scared to find out for sure she was pregnant and considered that bad luck. He didn’t blame her—getting tied to him by a kid was definitely notgood.
He was shitting his pants too, so that made two of them in the scared department. What did he know about being adad?
But she was completely overwhelmed. She had a mother living in a home with Alzheimer’s, a growing business with dozens of employees to run, her brother being held by kidnappers… Yep, she won in the overwhelmed, freaked-out department hands-down.
There literally were no words, so he pulled her close and huggedher.
Holy shit. Ababy.
Her hair tickled his nose and he buried it in the top of her head. As he held her tight and felt her relax into him, his brain swam.I’m going to be adad.
