Page 54 of My Cowboy Temptation

It’squarter to one in the afternoon when I reach the doctor’s office where Callie’s ultrasound is scheduled the next day. There are probably four women in various stages of their pregnancy sitting in the waiting area already, none of them Callie, a fact that doesn’t surprise me since she’s never been one for being on time.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asks as I stand there, trying to decide if I should wait outside until she arrives.

“I’m a little early, it seems. My—” I hesitate a second on the label I should offer before plowing forward. “My girlfriend is scheduled for an ultrasound at one. Callie Castle?”

The woman smiles, not finding it strange that I’m standing here in a room filled with pregnant women. “No problem. Feel free to take a seat anywhere you’d like.”

I look around and decide on a seat against the wall where I can get a good view of the entire office. A woman two seats away from me smiles and nods before looking back to her phone, a motion repeated by the other women, who seem to approve of my presence.

I only hope the woman I’m waiting for feels that way too.

The last text message I sent her, just before I crawled into bed at five this morning, told her the generalities of the raid and how much I was looking forward to seeing her tonight for dinner after I got a little sleep.

I hope that my presence here will be a welcome surprise. A way to show her that I’m all in. That I’m going to be here for her and this baby every step of the way during this pregnancy and everything that comes after. That she can count on me.

Something that might be more convincing when I share with her the conversation I had with her dad.

I think back to Lucas’s reaction to my news last night and how, in the ensuing hours during and after the raid, he barely spared a word for me, his anger palpable. His anger wasn’t helped any with the discovery that just before the trucks arrived, Zeke Palmer was tipped off about the raid and fled.

The only reason I’m not still out there tearing the county apart is that I’m pretty sure Zeke’s only interest right now is in saving his skin and avoiding capture. If he were smart, he would be far away from Castle Falls and this county, if not this state. Still, Lucas is being safe and keeping everyone close with the security detail on both Everly and Callie for the time being, something I’m completely behind.

I glance down at my phone. Burke—who relieved Childs from his watch last night—texted me a few minutes ago that Callie was en route. So when the door opens a minute later, I look up expectantly, hoping to see her, but find another pregnant woman walking in and up to the front desk. “I’m Bree Harper. I’m here for an ultrasound?”

The receptionist begins typing and asking her questions, including whether she’s consumed the necessary fluid for the visit. “Yeah,” Bree says and laughs. “And I’m about to burst with the need to pee, so if we can move this along as fast as possible, I would be grateful.”

“We’ll get you in as soon as we can, hon. Go ahead and take a seat.”

Bree scans the room and heads over to take the seat opposite me. She doesn’t get comfortable, however, instead sitting on the edge of the chair and jiggling her leg.

“I remember what you’re feeling all too well,” one of the women two seats away says to her. “I drank like a million gallons of water an hour before the visit like they said, then ended up waiting another forty-five minutes before I was finally called back. It was torturous.”

I keep my gaze on my boots in front of me, not quite comfortable to meet either of their gazes at this more intimate discussion. Maybe this was why the other dads waited at home.

“Oh, God. I hope I’m not waiting that long. My bladder will definitely blow,” Bree says and laughs again. “I’m at sixteen weeks, and I swear my bladder has already shrunk to half its size. That’s how often I’m peeing.”

“But it will be worth it when you see the baby up on the screen, I promise. Are you going to find out the gender today? My husband didn’t want to know at my sixteenth-week visit, so he stepped outside while the tech told me.”

“Oh, I definitely want to know,” Bree says. “I even tried to get my doctor to schedule the ultrasound earlier so I could learn the sex, seeing as how my mom wants to start knitting the baby’s first blanket. But I was told nothing would be clear before the sixteenth week, and they wouldn’t schedule the ultrasound before then unless there was a medical need. Which I guess is something to be grateful in that there isn’t a need.”

Sixteen weeks? What the women are saying sounded pretty much like what I read on the internet. However, it also counters what Callie told me. “Sorry,” I ask, turning to them. “You all had your ultrasound at sixteen weeks? Not twelve?”

The two women and one of the others still in the room nod. “I’m here for my twelve-week visit, but the doctor usually has a sonar that allows us to hear the baby’s heart beat this early,” another woman adds, her tone hopeful as if to allay what she sees as my anxiety.

I study her and then Bree, then a few other women.

No pregnancy is the same. I know that. Just as I know some women might barely show, even up until their final month. But when I compare the women here to what I saw when I made love to Callie the other night, I see her looking a lot more like Bree.

The woman who is also here at her ultrasound, but who is sixteen weeks along.

Is it possible that Callie really is farther along in her pregnancy than she admitted to me? Could she really be sixteen weeks pregnant? If she were, that would mean…

I do a quick calculation.

The baby is mine.

No. No, that’s not possible. Callie wouldn’t keep something so important, so life changing like the fact I was going to be a father, from me. Would she? And for what purpose? Why hide it?

Fuck. I need to get out of here; I need to move and think.

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