I stared at him, wanting to say yes and make this go away but unable to fight the turmoil in my chest. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have started off our relationship under false pretenses.” I swallowed hard, determined not to falter now. “I thought for the first time that I had something that had nothing to do with who I was or where I came from, but as it turned out, it hadeverythingto do with it! I thought when we met that for once, I had something pure, something that was really mine.” My eyes welled with tears that slid unchecked down my cheeks. “A baby was nowhere on my radar, but she is everything to me. I will give her the love my parents gave me before they died. I will give her everything I never had, including embracing her family name and knowing it can mean something good.” I was openly crying now, my emotions haywire.
He swiped a thumb against my cheek with a tenderness that only made me cry harder. “Why are you so sure it’s a girl?” he asked gently.
I shrugged. “I had a dream. It felt so real. Maybe I’m wrong….”
“I had a dream too,” he admitted. “A gorgeous little girl as beautiful as her mother,” he murmured reverently. “Baby.” He continued after a beat of silence. “I love you for who you are, and that includes your name. How your uncle chose to live his life has nothing to do with your goodness and everything you’ll pass down to our child. I wouldn’t change a thing.” His nostrils flared as he stared at me with blistering intent. “I am yours, Francesca, and you are mine.” I knew his use of my formal name then was deliberate, showing me my life was mine, including the name my parents had given me. “Don’t get that twisted just because I wandered into your bakery based on a simple curiosity. Every moment after that was all you and all me.”
I stared into his face, his expression lit with determination and love.
“I should have told you sooner, that’s on me,” he continued. “I was trying to protect you—even from a shit decision I made. It won’t happen again. I need you to believe that.”
“I do,” I admitted after a beat. “I’m still mad at you, but I do trust that.”
He blew out a relieved breath, wrapping his arms around my waist. “You being mad at me, I can deal with. You not believing in me, in us… couldn’t live with that, baby.”
My stomach chose that moment to protest and I raced for the bathroom. I dropped to my knees just in time, losing the contents of my stomach.
His hand rubbed my back in soothing strokes as I fought for breath, my stomach muscles aching.
“I want a second opinion,” he growled.
“It’s just morning sickness, Mad,” I panted.
“Maybe. Still want a second opinion. I’ll call Scarlet, see who she recommends.”
Obviously there was no arguing with him. “Fine.” I groaned, bracing my forehead on my forearms over the toilet bowl. I’d become way too familiar with this position as of late. “A specialist is probably going to be in Las Vegas,” I reminded him once I was fairly sure I was done being sick—for the moment anyway.
“Then we’ll go to Las Vegas,” he responded swiftly.
I raised a brow. “I thought I wasn’t allowed within a hundred miles of Vegas?”
He helped me up, wrapping an arm around my waist and propelling me from the bathroom. “When it comes to the health of you and our baby, I’ll move heaven and earth, sweets.”
“I wish I wasn’t mad at you so I could just ask you to snuggle me and make everything go away.” I groaned, any sort of filter deserting me given the way I was feeling.
He kissed my temple. “Well, good thing you don’t have to ask then.”
****
“Come on, baby. We gotta roll.” Maddox’s soft order came entirely too early the next morning.
I hadn’t wanted to go home, not yet, but Maddox wasn’t taking no for an answer and I was too tired to fight him on it. And whether I wanted to admit it or not, I had begun to think of his apartment as home and there was some measure of comfort in being back in my own bed, surrounded by the smell of the man who, despite maddening me, I loved beyond reason.
I groaned, pulling a pillow over my face. He was on a mission to get a second opinion about my sickness, and though the baby’s health was the most important thing to me, I trusted the first opinion we’d gotten. I didn’t need to drive five hours to be proven right.
Unfortunately for me, my man was not to be deterred.
“You’re gonna have to bring a barf bag,” I warned as he helped me sit up and offered me a few crackers. It seemed to help a bit if I ate something simple first thing. I’d told him that in passing and clearly he’d remembered.
“I’ll bring a barf bag,” he agreed, watching me intently.
“I’m not gonna barf right now.” I laughed at his wary expression.
“I just want to be ready,” he replied seriously. “I even have a hair tie and everything,” he added proudly, pointing to the elastic band around his wrist.
I patted his chest, moving past him, headed for the bathroom. “Good thinkin’, babe.”
Hours later, a thankfully unused barf bag in the truck, I lay on an exam table with Maddox at my side. Scarlet had called in a favor to an old colleague of hers, a prenatal specialist in Las Vegas.
