Page 84 of Heart of Stone (Dark Billionaires)

Her crooked grin lessened slightly. “We’rehaving a baby. Wemadea baby.”

His brain whirred into action.Now.She was only telling him thisnow, after Graves had been caught. After that option had been extinguished. Was that why she hadn’t escaped with Saffron? To try and pass the baby off as his, to gain a cushty position as mother to his child?

In her situation, he would probably do the same—except she didn’t know that Warren knew about her relationship with Graves.

But there was still a chance that the baby was his. Unlocking his phone, he pulled up his doctor’s number.

The man answered on the third ring.

“I need a pregnancy scan,” Warren announced without preamble. “Tonight.”

Warren sat like a sentinel, quietly observing Dr Baranovska fussing over Kate. An older woman with an Eastern European accent, she had been rather brusque with him, but appeared to view Kate as nothing more than a sweet lamb to be cherished.

If only she knew.

“This will be a bit cold,” the obstetrician said, squeezing a thick gel onto Kate’s stomach. There was no visible bump as of yet.

Kate jumped. “That is a bit chilly.” She glanced at him, an excited glint hiding in her eye.

Warren was saved from having to reply by the obstetrician’s question. “Are you wanting to find out the gender?”

“Yes!” Kate gasped immediately. “Are you able to tell now?”

Dr Baranovska shook her head. “We’ll take a blood test after the ultrasound. That’ll give you the results in about forty-eight hours. We need to check if there’s a baby in there first.” She glided what Warren presumed was the ultrasound scanner over Kate’s stomach.

After a few moments of silence, the obstetrician turned the screen towards the two of them. “Say hello to your baby,” she smiled.

The screen flickered, brimming with movement. But there in the centre sat a black-and-white blob that had Warren’s chest expanding painfully, just as his stomach dropped. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” The obstetrician smiled. “Around nine-and-a-half weeks, I would estimate.”

Kate’s teary-eyed expression wrapped itself around his chest like a boa constrictor. “Is that the heartbeat?” she asked. “That little flicker at the centre.”

“It is,” she pressed a button on her machine, and suddenly a rapid beating seemed to pulse through the room.

“Oh my god,” Kate whispered. “It’s so strong!”

“And fast,” Warren added.

“All perfectly normal,” Dr Baranovska confirmed gently. “You can see all the different chambers of the heart have formed, and here—” She moved the mouse to hover over the baby “—are the arms and legs.”

Warren swallowed. Nine-and-a-half weeks. What did that mean for the date of conception? He chewed on his thoughts whilst the obstetrician printed off copies of the ultrasound scan and took Kate’s blood sample.

To test the baby’s gender and, more importantly, its paternity. Not that Kate knew about the latter.

It would be another two days before the results came in. Two days of furious, endless waiting.

“Isn’t this amazing?” Kate asked him after the obstetrician had left, wheeling the portable ultrasound equipment out with her—in addition to the cheek swab Warren had surreptitiously handed over. Kate cradled the ultrasound with a singular reverence, smiling and dragging her finger over the image. “This is ourchild.”

Your child, he thought, closing the calendar app on his phone.And Graves’s.The last brief tendril of hope had been firmly quashed, and he grieved its loss.

Nine-and-a-half weeks.

The first time they’d slept together had been at Alison’s 60thbirthday party—eight-and-a-half weeks ago.

The week before Alison’s 60th, however, he’d been in New York, whilst Kate had been free to roam his home. He remembered sending a text to her every day.You’re not to touch yourself today.

He was an idiot. A cuckolded idiot.

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