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“I’m hurt you don’t want me to take care of my niece or nephew,” Dylan says with a warm smile aimed at Ivy. He has a way with women, and his smile disarms her. She smiles back at him in a way she didn’t with Jace, the more serious of the two.
“That’s what Alec wanted, but I voted him down,” Ivy says.
The conversation flows seamlessly as if they’ve known each other for years. Ivy is definitely a mystery, I muse, thinking about my earlier suspicions. I don’t understand what she’ll get out of this except being saddled with a baby she had not planned for.
Brad brings our food, which is the cue for my brothers to leave.
“They seem nice,” Ivy says when we are alone again.
“Nice is not a word I’d use to describe them, but they’re decent human beings,” I say, feeling unexpectedly emotional talking about my brothers. They’ve been my best friends all my life, and even now, with the most momentous thing that has ever happened to me, they’re by my side.
“Your family is very famous,” Ivy says in between bites of her salad.
“What do you mean?”
She frowns. “I looked you up online. You’re all very well-known, as is the clinic. Which makes me wonder how a mistake like this one happened.”
I’m tense. I don’t know where this is going. Will it be the moment when she lays her cards on the table and blackmails me?
“It must be scary when mistakes happen, and they get out,” she continues.
“It’s never happened before,” I say.
She shrugs. “There’s always a first time.” She doesn’t say anything else about that, and for the next few minutes, we eat quietly as I try to get my breath back.
I suddenly don’t trust Ivy Martin. How can she suddenly decide that she wants a baby? And this conversation about us being a famous family. Has it made her future plans change?
“Have you told your parents about the baby yet?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, and a wary look comes over her features. “I’d planned to, but now I don’t feel comfortable.”
“How come?”
“I guess I need more time to get used to it than I thought I would,” she says. A vulnerable expression crosses her eyes, confusing me.
She doesn’t look like someone who is plotting anything. She looks like a woman who is worried about her newly pregnant state. I don’t know what to think anymore.
“Do you tell your brothers and their wives everything?” she says.
I smile at that. “First of all, none of us are married. Secondly, they only know about this because the clinic is involved.”
“So, do you tell them everything?” she says with a twinkle in her eye.
“More or less,” I admit.
The rest of the lunch is pleasant. She asks me about my work and listens intently when I tell her about the case I worked on in the morning. She asks me questions with more than a casual interest.
“Does your book have a medical setting?” I ask her.
She grins in a way that makes my heart do somersaults in my chest, something that has never happened to me before.
“How did you know?” she asks. “I’m writing a medical thriller about this couple who meet when they first get into medical school. Actually, it will be a series and will feature the medical class of their year.”
“Sounds interesting,” I tell her. “If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer. I have quite a few stories about med school.”
Her eyes light up. “Really? I’ll take you up on that offer.”
We smile at each other. “No problem.”
