Pulling my wallet out, I hand her my black card. “Here, you’ll need this.”
“I can use my own money,” she argues, "you just need to give me my purse."
“No, you can’t. That is your brother’s money. I am yourhusband. I am the one who takes care of you now,” I say sternly.
“Is that so?” she muses, grinning up at me. “I’m very expensive, you know,” she says, teasing me.
“I think I’ll manage,” I laugh.
She takes my card and gently kisses my cheek. I grab her jaw in my hand and pull her face forward, kissing her lips instead.
“Thank you,” she giggles against my mouth. “I really need to get out for a bit, so I really appreciate it.”
“Have fun, and when you get home later, you can give me a fashion show and model everything you got?”
“It might be difficult to model it if all I decide to get are some books or art supplies,” she laughs.
“Oh, I’d love to see you model nothing but a book,” I growl huskily.
“I’ll see you later,” she says, her eyes glimmering with mischief. “Maybe we can get Chinese for dinner?”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll pick it up on the way home.”
She turns to walk away from me, and I can’t resist the urge to slap her ass.
When she leaves the kitchen to get ready, my heart feels light and at ease. It’s incredible to be able to trust her with this. It feels amazing.
I pull my thoughts off Izabel and onto my meeting for the afternoon. It’s one I’ve been waiting for a while.
Chapter 16 - Izabel
Thank goodness he got that call.
My mind was racing with reasons or arguments to try to get him to let me go out alone today. The last few days, I’ve been trapped in a mental loop, and the only way out of it is to face it.
I got very lucky when he got the call and had to go to a meeting.
And now I’m alone at the mall with one security guard.
Escape isn’t even on my mind, though.
What’s been worrying me is that twenty-four-hour bug I caught a few days. The twenty-four-hour bug that has now shifted into certain other symptoms that are impossible to ignore.
My boobs are tender. I have strange cramps. My body feels different. My mood is wobbly, and the nausea, while nowhere near as terrible, keeps coming back and then just as fast…completely disappearing.
These are all signs or symptoms of being pregnant if I take a moment to just listen to my body.
But when I first realized that, all I could actually do was flat-out panic.
The morning after being so sick, I woke up without even the slightest hint of the tummy bug at all, and I thought that was strange enough. But I was relieved, so it didn’t matter. But later that day, my boobs started hurting. Then the nausea again. Then certain food smells would make me feel a bit icky, and others wouldn’t.
It was when I counted back the days to figure out if I was late or not that it really became something scary for me.
Two weeks late. And hey, that might not be an issue on its own. My life has been a bit of a roller coaster lately. But with the other symptoms, it was too much.
I’ve been roaming around the mall with this security guard following me diligently. He’s watched me buy a coat and some soft leather gloves. He watched me buy a new pad of art paper and walk around the bookstore. But I’m dragging out time too much here, and I need to do what I actually came here to do.
“I’m heading into the pharmacy. I need some lady products,” I say, finally finding the courage to carry out my plan.
