Foolish Expectations (7 page)

“I had some minor cramping this morning. If I am pregnant, does that mean I’m losing the baby?” Bailey asked, unable to mask the worry in her tone.

Her fearful eyes met Nash’s from across the room, and his heart squeezed in his chest. She was as concerned as he was.

“The doctor will talk to you about that,” the gruff nurse responded as a man in dark blue scrubs entered the room.

“I’m Dr. Britton,” he said, not bothering to offer a comforting smile. “I don’t want to speculate at this point. Let me do a pelvic exam, get a blood test, and then we’ll see where we stand.” He pulled some purple latex gloves from a wall dispenser and snapped them on. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you while I take a quick look?”

The doctor was all business. Nash didn’t know which was worse—the nurse’s salty attitude or the doctor’s acidic voice. Dr. Britton instructed Bailey to lie back and place her feet in the stirrups as if she were going on a leisurely trail ride rather than waiting for news of a possible miscarriage. No feeling. No compassion. Just the doctor’s shitty, unfeeling tone, which was pissing him off.

Nervously, Bailey rattled off all of her symptoms.

“You’re a bit older than most girls we see for a pregnancy test,” the doctor said, sounding like a callous ass. “Are you married, Ms. Hobbs?”

Bailey told him no and closed her eyes, her cheeks reddening more and more by the second.
Damn it. The fucker is embarrassing her.
Nash’s need to know if she was pregnant outweighed his ability to whisk her out the door, but he’d be damned if he let anyone make her feel bad about what had transpired between them.

“Can we get on with it, Doc?” Nash said rudely.

Cold silence filled the room, but Bailey’s eyes lifted and met Nash’s gaze head on. Her lips turned up in a little appreciative smile.

The doc sat on a small stool and wheeled it over between Bailey’s legs. The thin, yellow sheet covering her waist suddenly seemed too small. Nash never dreamed he would be watching another man touch Bailey intimately. It felt perverse. Not only that, it grated on his last fucking nerve. And she didn’t seem to like the awkwardness of it any more than he did.

The nurse hovered in the background, forced to remain in the room while the doctor performed a pelvic exam on a female patient. She would probably hold that against them as well.

When the doctor finished his exam, he allowed Bailey to sit up. “Everything looks fine,” he said nonchalantly. “Just to be safe, though, I’m going to run a full panel of bloodwork, along with the pregnancy test.”

As the doctor wrote in Bailey’s chart, the nurse used her as a pin cushion, poking her with something the size of a knitting needle. Bailey bit her lip so hard that Nash would’ve sworn she punctured it. He almost wished she would have since the nurse could have just collected the blood from there and saved herself the trouble of finding the elusive vein. After bandaging the hole she’d drilled into Bailey’s arm, the nurse left the room, carrying two vials of blood with her.

Dr. Britton started out the door behind her, but stopped long enough to say, “Shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back just as soon as I get the results.”

Bailey sat there with a tense posture, staring at the floor with a heavy-lidded, tearful gaze that took his breath away. She was obviously distraught and overcome with emotion. And hell, he couldn’t blame her.

Nash moved to her side and rested his hip against the table. “You okay?”

She closed her eyes and only nodded, which he imagined was to keep herself from falling completely apart. Everything was cold. The room. The vinyl table. The medical staff. So he offered her the one thing he thought she needed most right now. He slid his arm around her, nestled her into his chest, then linked the fingers of his free hand with hers.

Bailey opened her eyes before she allowed her body to relax against his supportive frame. Then she sighed contentedly. The sound pleased him.

“My buddy’s wife is having a baby,” Nash told her, making conversation to pass the time. “She’d pee on one of those stick tests, and he’d get all tied up in knots while they waited for their results, every single time. Now I guess I know how he felt.”

“Every time?”

“Yeah, they were trying to get pregnant. Took a few months before it happened, but they finally did it.”

Bailey considered what he said for a moment and then looked confused. “You mean they did this to themselves…
on purpose?
”

He grinned. “Well, some people actually want children.”

Her face turned three shades whiter, and she looked like she was about to pass out. Visibly shaken, she leaned further against him and clutched at her stomach, as if a sudden wave of nausea rolled through her.

“Hey, are you okay?” Nash steadied her and put the back of his hand to her forehead, checking for fever.

“I’ve been sick for a week. I thought I’d bounce back by now, but it’s not getting any better.”

“Sweetheart, if you
are
pregnant, you’re probably going to feel this way for a while.” He eased her forward and rubbed his hand up and down her back. “Is that better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He didn’t believe her, though, because she looked even more pale and brittle than before, obviously trying to hold herself together still. Nash reasoned that her feelings were probably being batted back and forth like an emotional birdie in a really fucked up game of badminton. God knew his were. After all, she could be carrying his…

Shit. Wait. Was it even his?

Nash smoothed a hand over his face. He hadn’t seen her in six weeks, and although he’d been looking for her since the day she’d snuck out on him, she obviously hadn’t done the same. After all, she knew where he lived. Was it possible she’d moved on and had been with someone else since the night they’d spent together?

The thought alone sent a chill through him and knotted his stomach. Call him possessive, but he didn’t like the thought of another man touching her like he had. And although he felt like a jerk, he needed to know for certain.

“Look, I know this is probably going to sound bad, but I don’t want to assume anything, so I need to ask you something important,” he said, preparing her for his blunt question. “If you are pregnant, is it…I mean, the baby…is it mine?”

The outrage in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. “I can’t believe you asked me that.” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “What kind of woman do you take me for?”

“I know you aren’t—”

“Don’t presume you know anything about me.”

Nash placed his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to upset you. I just wanted to be sure.”

“Well, how would you feel if someone questioned your morals? Maybe I should ask you the same question and see how you like it.”

He grinned, but said nothing.

“Oh, so now you think this is funny?”

“No, but if you ask me if the baby is
yours
, I promise not to get mad.”

She sighed. “Okay, so it sounded stupid. But I was making a point.”

“Point taken,” he said, nodding. “It’s insulting. I get it. But you didn’t tell me your real name. And you never mentioned you were a virgin, either.”

“What does that have to do with anything? You got what you wanted.”

He lifted a brow. “And you didn’t?”

“You’re making it sound like I asked for this, Nash. As if I wanted to wind up pregnant from one careless night with a total stranger.” Her voice wavered and her fingers twisted together in her lap as she became more upset.

“Look, I already said I was sorry the condom broke.”

Bailey looked like she wanted to cry, but her words came out laced with sarcasm. “Yeah, you were so sorry that you had me twice more afterward.” She glanced over, just as the corner of his mouth quirked a little. “Go ahead and smile, Nash. You’ve proven yourself,” she said in a mocking tone. “You’re a Grade A stud.”

His grin dissipated. “Okay, let’s not bullshit each other. The situation isn’t ideal. But if you are pregnant, we have a lot to work out and—”

“There’s nothing to work out. I know what I would have to do.”

Nash grimaced, realizing she had said
I
instead of
we
. Obviously, she wasn’t planning on including him in whatever decision she made. But what could he do about it? It’s not like he could make her have his baby if she didn’t want to.
Christ. Was that what she was getting at?

Panic gripped him by the throat, forcing his voice to soften. “Are you considering abortion?”

“No,” she said easily.

Relief washed over him and he inhaled a deep breath. He always knew one day he would have a child, but until this very moment, he hadn’t known he was ready to be a father. Yet, he somehow was. “Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to say—”

“You’ll need to sign over your parental rights.”

His head snapped toward her and fire flickered behind his eyes. “You’re not putting
my
baby up for adoption.”

“No, I…I’d keep the baby. But I’ll need to save up some money until the baby is born. I’ll have to move in with my father for a while and my dad lives in a remote part of Alaska. That isn’t going to keep us in proximity to you. It’d be the best thing for both—”

“Hold up. Just stop right there, Bailey. Where the fuck do you get off?”

“Oh, come on. You know it would be the most sensible thing to do. It would be easier for you, me, and the baby. What else would we do—shuffle the kid back and forth between us? It would be confusing to a child.”

“Forget it. It’s not going to happen,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d never sign away the rights to my own child. And you’re not taking off to Alaska so my child can be eaten by a bear or attacked by a fucking moose. I’m a lawyer. I know all about my parental rights, and I’ll get a court order to keep you here if I have to.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open slightly. She was clearly stunned and didn’t know what to say. Nash hadn’t meant to threaten her with a court order, but he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving and taking his child away from him…even if it was only a fictional baby at the moment.

His own parents had split up when he was only two, and though he completely understood why his mom had left his dad, he couldn’t bear to think his own child would grow up while living in a separate household from him. There had to be another way.

“Nash, please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is. I won’t be able to afford my apartment. What happened is done, and we can’t undo it. You hooked up with a woman and got lucky. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that for you.”

Unable to contain his anger, he shot up off the table. “That’s bullshit and you know it.” He paced back and forth before stopping directly in front of her. “If I had that attitude, I’d be considered a douche bag, deadbeat father. But since you’re the woman, you can say it and make it sound like you’re doing me a favor. It’s a fucking catch-22.”

“I know it’s an uncomfortable situation we’re in, but I
am
doing you a favor. I’m absolving you of any responsibility to this child.”

“I didn’t ask to be absolved of anything, did I? My ingredients were used in the mix, which means this baby is half mine. If you don’t want to co-parent, that’s fine. Then you can pop it out and hand it over.”

Bailey blinked at him. “I’m not an Easy Bake Oven, you jackass! And you’re
not
taking the baby away from me after I carry it for nine months. You can forget it.”

Nash shrugged. “Well, partner, then it looks like we’re in this together.”

Chapter Seven

Bailey held her breath and stared impatiently at the door. Several minutes had passed and Nash hadn’t said a word. He only measured her with his eyes and seemed to be rolling something around in his head. That worried her even more.

She hadn’t expected him to get so upset and react the way he had when she’d asked him to sign over his parental rights. Hell, she’d given him an out…and he hadn’t taken it. And his refusal to do so was seriously one of the most admirable and sexiest things she’d ever seen.

No, wait. I don’t want him to want the baby. It would only complicate things.

Why couldn’t he be one of those guys who walked away? Lots of women got into situations where the father of the baby didn’t want to be involved. Of all the guys she could’ve slept with, how did she end up with a
man
who wanted to act like one?
God, he’d never leave her alone now.

The moment he’d thrown the court order in her face, she knew she was in trouble. Nash would win any custody battle she threw at him. He was a lawyer, for goodness sakes! Surely, he knew the law and any loopholes in it. He would be familiar with the judges and know exactly which ones would be most sympathetic to the father over the mother. And if that wasn’t enough, he’d certainly bring their financial situations and living arrangements into play. In the end, he would walk away with sole custody.

Unless…

Maybe she could convince Nash that the baby wasn’t his. When he’d asked her, she hadn’t actually said the baby was his. She’d only suggested it. But if she mentioned the other man in her life, Nash would probably assume the worst. Thus far, he’d always seemed to when it came to her. Then again, knowing him, he’d probably just insist on a paternity test. She had to try, though.

Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the doctor stepped back into the room. “You’re pregnant. About six weeks along, going off your last menstrual cycle.”

Jeez. Thanks for blurting that out.
Perfect timing, asshole.

“Okay,” she said, trying to hide her irritation.

“I’m putting you on bedrest for a couple of days, which may help with the cramping. Your bloodwork came back normal, and I’m giving you a prescription for some prenatal vitamins. If your cramps worsen, you develop fever, or have any bleeding, then go to the nearest emergency room. And don’t forget to follow up with your regular OB doctor as soon as possible.”