Page 24 of Baby Daddy Protector

Es reached over and laid her hand over mine. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“Your highness,” the nurse said, dropping into an awkward curtsy before Es. “The doctor’s ready for you now.”

“I can wait out here,” I said, standing to help Es up.

“Don’t be silly. I want you back there with me,” she said, tugging me forward with her hand on my arm. “You know how scattered my concentration is these days. I need you to take notes for me.”

I did my best to stay on the periphery of the examination, not wanting to intrude or invade her privacy any more than I already had. They did all the usual stuff from what I could see—height, weight, blood pressure, medical history, then the physical. All normal. Once Es was dressed again and sitting on the end of the exam table, the doctor went over what she should expect.

“I’ll write you a prescription for something to help with the nausea, too,” the physician said. “We’ll also need to get some bloodwork before you leave to check your iron levels, glucose, etc. And check your urine.” She handed Es a plastic bag with cartoon baby toys emblazoned on the side. “There’s a script in there for prenatal vitamins as well. You’ll want to start on those right away, though be sure to take them with food. If you don’t, they can make the nausea worse. Since you’ve booked out the entire afternoon, we’ll go ahead and do a preliminary sonogram today as well.”

Es gave me an excited look, but then turned back to the doctor. “We want to be surprised about the gender. There won’t be anything in the sonogram that’ll give that away yet, will there?”

“No, no,” the doctor said, wheeling over the portable sonogram machine. “It’s far too early for that. But with luck, we should be able to pick up the heartbeat today.”

“Wonderful.” Es leaned back on the table and gestured for me to move closer. “He wants to see, too.”

The doctor smiled at me, and heat prickled up from beneath the collar of my white dress shirt. “You two make a nice couple. How long have you been together?”

“Oh, no—” I started to say, then stopped and scowled as Es pinched me hard on the arm. “Ow.”

“Thank you,” Es said, giving me a shut-up look. “We’ve been together about a while. But didn’t get serious until recently.”

“Babies will do that.” The doctor snapped on a pair of gloves then had Es raise the hem of her black sweater and lower the waistband of her jeans slightly to expose her lower abdomen. The doctor squirted a small mound of gel onto Es’s skin—cold, if the way she flinched was any indication—then pressed the sensor in place with one hand while fiddling with the computer keyboard and monitor with the other. “Move up your timeline, I mean. Same thing happened to my husband and me. We’d planned on starting a family one day, just not when we did. But love and children have their own schedule, don’t they?”

Onscreen, all I could see was a white circle filled with endless black. The doctor said that was the interior of Es’s uterus, but you couldn’t tell it by me.

“Now, the baby’s barely the size of a peanut swimming around in there at this point. We’ll only be able to pick up the heartbeat if he or she happens to swim close to this area of the surface where the sensor is located. Fingers crossed.” The doctor moved the sensor around from left to right, searching for nearly five minutes. My hopes dwindled. No luck today apparently. I was grabbing some tissues to help Es clean up from all that gel when the doctor held up a hand, stopping me.

“There! See it?” She clicked a few keys on the computer to zoom in and then there it was. The baby. My baby. With a tiny flickering light near its center. The doctor cranked up the sound and soon a rhythmic pulse beat echoed through the room. “We have a heartbeat! Congratulations, your highness.”

Es clutched my fingers so tightly, I thought they might snap off, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Tears shone in her eyes and I felt an unexpected prickle at the back of my eyes, too, as pride swelled up inside me. I’d made that. We’d made that. Our baby.

It felt like getting hit with a warm, fuzzy sledgehammer.

SEVENTEEN

Iputtered around the townhouse that evening, feeling restless and bored. Being pregnant was so different from what I’d expected. There was the sickness, sure, but then there were all the hormone fluctuations that made me giddy one second, weepy the next, and everything in between. Right then, I felt like I wanted companionship.

The doctor’s appointment earlier had been a big deal. At last, I finally had medical confirmation that there was indeed a baby growing inside me and that all was well—for the moment, anyway. And when the doctor had brought up that tiny ultrasound image of our baby’s beating heart… I sighed, hugging my hands over my heart. So, so precious.

Though not usually one to be overly sappy about things, I felt truly moved that Z and I had done it. We’d made a baby together. We’d given me a shot at keeping my throne and my country safe. We’d just done it a bit sooner than I’d expected. Now, we had seven-and-a-half months to get ready. Seven-and-a-half months to figure out how to make this awkward situation work between us without the baby-making sex to take up our time and attention.

A weird pang of longing squeezed through my chest. Truth be told, I’d miss that baby-making sex. No, not the sex so much as the connection I’d found with Z. He’d been surprisingly tender and attentive with me even though this had been nothing more than a way for him to get back to the SEAL team he loved. And yeah, okay. The sex had been pretty great, too.

My cell phone buzzed with more incoming messages from my father’s Prylean advisors. They wanted me to make a formal announcement about my father’s condition. They also wanted me to know that my plan would only work if the baby was a boy. They reminded me that my child would only inherit the crown if Z and I were legally wed before the birth.

All of those things were important, but none of them were what was foremost on my mind at the moment.

Through the open door in the hall, the one that led down to the basement where Z was currently working out, I heard the clank of his metal weights and the occasional grunt or groan from the man himself. My traitorous mind immediately flashed images of other times he’d made those same noises—when we’d been in bed together, him driving into me with such care and fierce protectiveness, the way his handsome face flushed right before he climaxed, the way the strong muscles in his arms trembled with his release.

The yearning in my heart intensified, along with the simmering want in my blood.

It was the hormones. Had to be. I was not usually so sex-obsessed, even around men I desired. But there was something about Z… So strong, so alpha, so damned gorgeous.

I was setting aside my nightly bedtime snack of apple slices and crackers and was on my feet before I realized what I was doing. Surely one little peek at the man downstairs, all sweaty and buff from his exertions, wouldn’t hurt anything, right? No one ever had to know. I could hide behind the stair railing and watch him a moment as he exercised.

But as I tiptoed down the steps, I heard a second male voice that stopped me in my tracks. Would Z’s friend spot me if I went the rest of the way? I couldn’t be sure, and I paused on the middle stairs and crouched to look through the railing. Z’s open laptop was perched on the counter in front of the weight machine. On it was a bald-headed, African-American man with a Navy SEAL tattoo. I wondered if Z had shared the happy news with him yet.

---