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If only they’d left a few other clues earlier, maybe she would have been able to stop them.
“What have you done?” Bella asked, knowing the second she said the words that they were some of the stupidest she’d ever uttered.
She knew what they’d done, or rather who they’d contacted. They’d been hinting that she should call Heath since they moved to Kingdom City, into a building not two miles away from the Melt Me Enterprises’ warehouse and production center.
“Hansel did it,” Gretel said, her eyes growing wide and fearful.
“Gretel, calm down. Hansel, spill it.” Bella put her hands on her hips and tried to look tough, calm, and in control, despite the fact that her heart and stomach were in a race to see which could be the first to leap out of her throat.
“He really loves you,” Hansel said with his ultra serious, “I’m a man” face that broke her heart, making her ache for the childhood he’d never had. “I called him yesterday and I don't regret it. It's time for you two to make up and be happy together. Now Gretel and I are going out for dinner.”
“You are not going out into the streets of Kingdom City by yourselves. No way! I don’t care what you have planned.” Bella forgot her panic for a moment. She sometimes had to play “mean mommy” with her siblings, no matter how much she loved them.
Hell, because she loved them. No matter how much she would like to be nice all the time, raising kids wasn’t always a “nice” job.
“I’m thirteen. I can take care of us.”
Bella narrowed her eyes. “Hansel Proctor, don’t you dare walk out that—”
“But I knew you’d say that,” he said with a sigh, “so Mia is meeting us at the pizza parlor downstairs.”
“Mia’s in on this?” Bella asked.
“I am!” Mia was panting as she pushed open the door to the stairs that led up to the loft. “But I decided not to meet you guys downstairs. I saw a certain somebody and I think he might be on the way up as we speak.”
“But I didn’t buzz anyone in,” Bella said, dizzy.
This couldn’t be happening. It was so wonderfully terrible that she was going to throw up the marshmallow truffle she’d sneaked earlier in the afternoon.
“I might have let him in with my key.” Mia’s freckled face blushed a bright red before she shooed Hansel and Gretel down the stairs in front of her.
“But Gretel’s in her pajamas!” Bella wailed, her mind refusing to focus on her bigger problems.
“We’re going to a pajama party showing of The Littlest Princess after pizza,” Mia said.
“Hansel too?” Bella asked, shocked.
“He’d do anything for true love,” Mia said with a smile.
“Except wear pink pajamas,” Hansel called from down the stairwell before Mia’s head disappeared, leaving Bella alone in the apartment with nothing but the sound of the all-too rapidly approaching elevator to keep her company.
She suddenly found it even harder to catch her breath.
He was here. He was going to be in this room in less than twenty-five seconds.
Why in the world he had come, and how much did he know about her “delicate condition?” What if Hansel had told him about the baby and he was angry with her? What if he’d come here to tell her that he was going to sue for partial custody? What would she do? What would she say?
Or what if this had nothing to do with the baby? What if he really loved her like Hansel had said? What if he was coming to tell her that he’d made a mistake and he wanted to be with her? What would she do when he’d told her himself that he wasn’t well? Was she weak enough to risk her new family’s well being for the man she couldn’t keep out of her thoughts?
Bella supposed the onslaught of questions was too much for her mind to handle. Or maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or the chocolate deprivation, or maybe she just hyperventilated.
Whatever the cause, she started seeing stars before the elevator door swung open and nausea followed soon after. Before she could see if Heath looked as delicious as he had the first time they’d met, she had to make a run for the bathroom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Heath
“Bella?” Heath asked for what felt like the hundredth time, though he knew it had only been about a minute since she’d dashed for the bathroom and slammed the door.
