Page 21 of Baby Daddy Protector

I’d never really thought about my mother as anything more than that—a mom. Married to my dad. A housewife, a cook, a caretaker. That was all a six-year-old noticed—and it’s not as if I ever had the chance to know her as an adult. But now that Es had mentioned the fact she’d been a person too, with her own wants and needs and foibles, I wondered if my mother had given up her own ambitions to marry my father and raise me.

And if she had, had she been happy to do it?

I had always thought so, but now as I stared at my ugly beach and remembered those long-ago days of my childhood—traveling the world, never settling in one place long enough to put down any sort of roots—I couldn’t help wondering if maybe she hadn’t been as carefree and untroubled as she’d seemed.

FOURTEEN

“Who are you going as? Oscar the Grouch?” I asked, looking Z up and down. Several weeks had passed since our night at the paint and sip, and now Halloween was upon us. Not that we were wearing costumes, per se. Well, if you didn’t count Z’s disapproving scowl.

He didn’t even crack a smile, just shook his head and turned away to check his weapons yet again. “I don’t like this idea. You have that on record.”

“It’s a haunted house, not an executioner’s chamber.” I cocked my head, considering. “Though I suppose they might have one of those there, too. Besides, it’s a little late for you to object. You’re the one who secured the invite to begin with.”

“That was before,” he grumbled, jamming his gun into the holster at his side then rebuttoning his ever-present black suit jacket. If I gave him a pair of black sunglasses, he could go as one of the Men in Black. “Things are different now.”

And that was the problem. I needed tonight to get my mind off the baby-making. All of the pregnancy tests I’d found stated you had to wait for one missed period before the test could be considered accurate, and I was already experiencing my usual bloat and lower back cramps. Most likely my next period would start any day now, and we’d be looking at another month of trying to conceive. Not that the sex with Z was a chore, but pleasure wasn’t exactly my end goal here.

Nope. I was going to this haunted house, and I was going to have fun even if it killed me. I crossed my arms and dug in my heels. “I’ll be just as safe there as I would be here, and you know it. Heck, you’ve all but ensured it, right? It’ll just be you and me going through it, and you vetted all the staff and actors involved. No worries, right?”

“What about the fear part?”

“What about it?”

“Someone in your condition shouldn’t be frightened like that. All the books say so.”

“My condition?” My cheeks heated with anger. “My condition is currently stressed out. And stress is just as bad as anything else for conception.” To prove my point, I stalked back to the bedroom and grabbed my favorite manual, flipping to the page of dos and don’ts. I held it up in front of his face. “See? Nowhere on here does it say anything about not going to a haunted house.” I closed the book with a resounding thwap, nearly catching the end of his nose in it, before setting it aside and grabbing my jacket and bag on the way to the door. “Now, I’m going out tonight. I’m going to have fun. Are you going to be there with me or not?”

Z looked as grim as a reaper as he followed me outside the townhouse then into the waiting limo. About twenty minutes later, we pulled up outside another townhouse, this one in much worse condition than the one we’d left. It was in the suburbs of the city, with a huge stone edifice and a spooky goth waiting on the crumbling stoop to greet us. Two huge glass light fixtures attached to the cement railing on either side of the front door cast the area in a dim, yellowish glow.

Z started out of the back of the limo, grimacing as death metal music and the occasional screech of a bat echoed from the sidewalk outside. He stopped and turned back to me. “You sure about this, princess?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. I’d always had a love-hate relationship with scary things, but tonight I just wanted to forget. Forget about the possibility of pregnancy. Forget my father still lying in the hospital, no worse, but no better either. Forget about my cousin back in Prylea, working day and night to destroy my country.

“Yes, I’m sure.” I took Z’s hand so he could help me out of the car. It was surprisingly warm for late October. Then again, that could just be my wacky hormones giving me hot flashes. “Let’s do this.”

I smiled at the goth who bowed then creaked open the massive doors to the dilapidated townhouse. Z scanned both directions and said something into his Bluetooth headset to his security team, then led me inside. At first, it looked like a typical horror-film set, blue lights beaming down on a damp and murky hallway. The walls were a mess of crumbling plaster and jagged wood with the occasional metal bar piercing through. We made our way down the corridor, Z tense beside me, dodging puddles as we went. I wondered where the water had come from, but then we emerged into the room at the end, and I wondered no more.

They’d certainly made the gore realistic; I’d give them that. The room was set up like a mock autopsy suite, complete with a sliced-open cadaver on the table. Not one to be overly squeamish about blood and guts, I was surprised to find my stomach churning at the sight. Internal organs and various parts were strewn about like limp pasta noodles, and the smell! God, whatever they’d used to recreate that chemical-mixed-with-rotted-meat stench was…

Yep. I barely had time to race to the corner before I lost the meager contents of my stomach. I was mortified. Z was perfectly composed and capable as always, rubbing my back and holding my hair out of my face for me. He didn’t even bat an eye when I was finished, all flushed and flustered, just handed me a handkerchief from his pocket to clean myself up and a breath mint.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to say, my voice trembling. “We shouldn’t have come here. You were right.”

“I usually am,” he said, but his tone was nothing but kind. “C’mon, princess. Let’s get you back outside and into some fresh air. It’s definitely rank in here.”

“Please don’t talk about it,” I said, leaning heavily on him for support as we made our way back down the blue hallway. Out of nowhere, a guy in a hazmat suit pounced on us, and Z nearly ripped the guy’s head off before I stopped him. Talk about a jump scare.

By the time we made it back to the limo, I felt cold and tired and unaccountably close to tears. This whole thing was getting out of hand. I needed to step it up and find out if we were having a baby or not.

Z helped me back into the limo then radioed his team again, telling them we were on our way back home.

“Um, can we make a stop on the way?” I asked as he slid onto the black leather seat beside me. “At the drug store?”

He gave me a weird look at first, but then I patted my stomach, and realization dawned in his blue eyes. “Right. Sure, princess.”

FIFTEEN

Iwaited outside the bathroom door in the townhouse while Es took care of business. It was early, I knew that, but given the way she’d reacted so violently to those putrid butcher’s leftovers in the haunted house earlier, maybe she really was pregnant.

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