“The previous owners didn’t have a cat, Sin.” She looked at the cat worriedly. “Are you sure it’s real?”
I rolled my eyes and walked to the door myself, picking up the cat and bringing it back to her.
“It’s a black cat to boot,” she murmured. “It has two different colored eyes.”
“It does. Is that a problem?” I wondered, giving Snowball a good scratch.
Better to not tell her the name just yet.
“Did you know that the eyes are the window to the soul? And did you know that having two different colored eyes is an indicator that someone or something has been possessed?” she wondered.
My lips formed into a crooked smile. “I see that you really have an obsession with the supernatural.”
“If the lights flicker, I’m drawing a salt circle,” she commented with a dead face. “Also, if we ever encounter Dean from Supernatural, I’m leaving you and the baby behind if he’ll have me. Just prepare for that.”
My lips twitched. “If Lara Croft Tomb Raider ever walks off the screen and twenty years into the future, you’re going to be forever on your own, too.”
Her lips formed into a smile. “Go get dressed, weirdo.”
I rolled my eyes, gave her the cat, and walked to my room.
I came back moments later with her standing at the back door looking at the cat that was taking a shit on the lawn like a dog.
“The cat doesn’t even cover it up,” she mused as she heard me coming. “A dog for real. In a cat’s body.”
I chuckled. “I haven’t known Snowball long.” I waited for her reaction, and it wasn’t long in coming. Honestly, it was quite cute, the gasp and spin. “But I like her. She’s pretty cool. She’ll even fetch.”
“You’re joking,” she said.
I shook my head, picked a small purple ball off the floor with the word ‘Boo’ in orange letters all over it, and opened the door.
I called Snowball with a whistle and waited for her to come inside before I threw the ball across the room.
The cat darted after it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She came darting back and dropped it at my feet, waiting for more.
We did this for a few more minutes before Blaise said, “As much as I’d like to keep playing with this phenomenon you call a cat, we need to go. My doctor’s kind of a dick if we’re late. Not that she has any problem leaving me in a room naked with only a paper sheet covering me for twenty minutes.”
My lips twitched. “You don’t like her?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know her. But she was considered the best of Deep East Texas by the newspaper, and apparently that’s a big deal. My brother’s wife pulled a few strings to get me in with her. She’s a bit of a drive for me, though, since I have a house in Souls Chapel, and she’s near Bear Bottom, but apparently, she’s worth it. Anyway, today I’m seeing the on-call doctor so we shall see if all of the doctors are the same.”
I gestured toward the front door. “Come on. And when we’re done, you can use my truck to drive until yours is out of the shop.” I held the door open for her to exit, and she did, brushing past me and causing my body to jolt in surprise.
I know that she didn’t mean to brush my cock with her hand, but it was enough to cause things inside of me to tighten in anticipation.
“My dad’s looking at it right now. He can’t find the source.” She paused. “Of course. Every time he looks at it, he ‘can’t find the source.’ He thinks that I’m making it up because I hate the car.”
“Do you hate the car?” I asked curiously.
She shrugged. “Yeah. When he co-signed for a vehicle with me, he made me get what he thought was suitable. I call the car one of those little windup cars. You know the ones that you have to pull back the car to get it to go forward? That’s what it feels like when I’m driving it. I hate it. And it’s a front-wheel drive, so the traction is shit. And it sounds like a weenie.”
I chuckled as I opened the door to my truck for her and helped her get inside.
We both froze when my hands met her waist.
I had a problem letting her go.
“We’re going to be late,” she mused when I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and pressing my forehead against her sternum.
My face was practically between her breasts.
“I know,” I mumbled, not able to stop myself. “I’ve missed the hell out of you. Not seeing you these past few weeks was torture.”
Eventually I let her go, but not before I took one deep inhalation, savoring her scent.
“You mind if we roll the windows down?” she asked. “I don’t know what it is about cars lately, but I can barely handle the smell of one. Let alone driving in one.”
I immediately rolled the windows down, and on the way to the office, I talked to her about nothing consequential.
Which meant, the topic of her pregnancy, her life down here, or our non-relationship never got brought up.
Even though it was the obvious elephant in the car with us.
Forty-five minutes later, I wasn’t not talking about the baby anymore.
Because what I was hearing was scaring the shit out of me.
“Your iron count is down,” the doctor said, moving his gaze from me to the stubborn woman and back.
“I have a feeling that’s probably going to be a normal thing,” Blaise said, seemingly unaffected by the doctor’s stern glare. “My mother has a disease. A clotting disorder. Any time she went on her monthly, or she had a wound, she bled for a long time. I don’t have that exact problem, but I’ve always struggled with my iron count. It’s always been low when I have a period or cut myself. I clot, but I don’t clot like I should.”
The doctor frowned. “There’s no note in your chart.”
“I think there probably is. That was one of the first things that we discussed—my regular doctor and I—about what one of my fears were for this pregnancy. She assured me that we would keep an eye on it. She’s waiting to move me to the high-risk category until or if I need it. Right now, all I did last night was cut myself. It happens,” she explained.
I frowned hard at her.
He looked at the paperwork in his hands again, then nodded. “I can see why she would say that. But I would feel better if we took a look at the baby via sonogram just to make sure.”
Blaise’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s so cool. Let’s do it.”
I had no clue what the big deal was until he was rubbing the wand thing on her belly, and I was seeing my child for the first time.
Though that child looked like an alien from another world.
But still, that little alien had the ability to make the beating heart inside of my chest take a stutter step.
“Growing great. Looks great for… eleven weeks. Is that the right gestation?” the doctor asked, looking at Blaise.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Eleven weeks and one day, I think.”
“Perfect then,” he said, going on to do a whole lot more things than just looking at the baby.
But I was frozen in my seat.
I looked at the grainy black and white screen and stared, in complete and utter shock, at the little person that Blaise and I had made.
In a prison.
My heart started to pound, and I couldn’t quite hear correctly any longer. There was a constant whooshing in my ears that was making it impossible to listen to the doctor and Blaise talk.
And as I stared at the screen, a few things really came into focus.
My friend’s words from last week did as well.
When I’d mentioned to a friend’s wife that I’d gotten a girl pregnant, she’d told me to stop being dumb and pull my head out of my ass. To do the right thing and stop avoiding her.
I hadn’t been avoiding her, but I sure hadn’t been trying to make time for her either.
And right then, looking at the baby that was growing inside Blaise, I realized why.
Because being a father
terrified the absolute dog piss out of me.
Why?
Because my own parents hadn’t been all that great.
Being one of eight boys, we’d always had it rough in our house. Food was scarce at times, space was limited, and I couldn’t tell you whether or not I truly had a good childhood or not.
My dad was an asshole. My mom was a cowed woman who would never, not ever, speak out against her husband.
Which meant when our dad told us that we were going to bed without dinner, we went to bed without dinner.
It also meant that whether my mother knew the punishment that we were getting was justified or not, she helped administer it because my father, above all, was the supreme ruler of our house.
Needless to say, when my parents had died within a couple years of each other when I was in my teens, I hadn’t much cared.
I mean, it was sad that I no longer had a structured life, and that Coke had to figure out a way to watch all of us younger brothers when he’d been in the military. But we’d all survived. And when I’d turned eighteen a few months later, we’d made it work even better.
But, saying that, all the best times of my childhood didn’t happen when I was with my parents. They happened when I was with my brothers.
We might’ve had it rough. We might’ve been poor as fuck. But we had each other.
“I want more,” I blurted.
Blaise looked over at me.
“What?” she asked.
“I was kind of hoping for there to be two in there,” I continued talking crazy. “I want a lot of kids.”
Her eyes widened.
“You should probably just focus on the one right now,” she admitted. “Since that’s the one I’m currently working on.”
My lips twitched, and I slowly started to get back online.
“Is there anything we should look out for with her bleeding disorder?” I asked, worry starting to flit through my veins.
“As of right now, no,” the doctor answered. “She just has low iron. Her being pregnant, that’s a normal thing, things being low. That baby is cooking in there, and it comes first most of the time. Low energy reserves are another common thing that comes with low iron, along with a multitude of other things. I would want you to pay attention to any extreme lethargy. Or a sudden onset of it. Any spotting or bleeding from the vagina, I would want to know about that immediately as well. But other than that, I think she’s a fairly healthy individual. I would suggest upping your prenatal vitamins to two a day, however.”
And then the doctor was putting the wand away.
Well, he was before I blurted, “Can I have a photo?”
The doctor grinned at me. “Always nice to see a man invested in his child.”
I hadn’t been. But I damn sure was now.
CHAPTER 9
Is it normal to hate the man that knocked you up for breathing really loud?
-Blaise to her mom
BLAISE
“You want to go grab something to eat?”
I looked up from the fidgeting I was doing in the seat next to him and stared.
He was wearing black jeans, the kind that looked so old and worn that they practically were see-through in places. When he sat in his truck, his foot moving off and on the brake, as we moved through the crowded hospital parking lot, I couldn’t keep my eyes off his muscled thighs.
“Umm,” I said as I finally dragged my eyes away from that beautiful piece of man meat. “Where?”
He switched on his blinker, and my gaze was attracted to yet another part of his anatomy. His muscular forearm.
See, Sin had a few things going for him in the sexy department.
His eyes were the color of moss—a green so beautiful that it sometimes took my breath away when he made direct eye contact with me.
He had great muscles—all over—and there wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t have them finely tuned.
His voice was to die for, and each time he spoke, I had to fight the urge to close my eyes and just let the beautiful sound filter through me.
Then there were his nipples.
They were hard and poking out of his shirt—all the damn time—and it took everything I had not to reach out and poke them with my finger.
Or run my finger over them.
Or my mouth.
Or…
“Earth to Blaise,” Sin teased. “Do you want to go grab lunch at Nanny Goats?”
Nanny Goats wasn’t my favorite.
In fact, Nanny Goats was boring.
At least lately.
They didn’t have a ‘fried’ menu, which seemed to be the only thing I was gravitating to lately.
Fried. Covered in sugar. Or pickles.
There were no in-betweens.
“I’d love you forever if you went to Raising Cane’s, or Chick-Fil-A,” I admitted.
His nose wrinkled.
“Those are both kind of unhealthy,” he admitted.
I looked over at him with a bored look. “Listen, I can’t do chick food right now. I have to do real food. Food that has some heft. Or I want to barf. All the damn time. So if you want me to go out to lunch with you, you’ll have to go somewhere that has good, real, hearty food. Because the idea of having a sandwich or a salad right now makes me want to vomit.”
His lips twitched. “Literally?”
“Literally,” I confirmed.
“How about Circle Five?” he asked.
I frowned. “There’s no way in hell you can get into Circle Five without a reservation.”
He looked over at me with a grin. “Bet I can.”
Excitement started to pour through me then.
I’d only been to the place once with my brother when he’d first moved to Texas.
The place was really nice, had great food, and even better, it had some bomb ass desserts.
Desserts that, might I add, were really, really appetizing right then.
“Bet.” I held out my hand.
“What do we wager?” he asked, blindly reaching out and taking my hand in his, giving it a small shake.
Except, when I expected him to put it down, he didn’t.
He held on and placed it on the top of his thigh.
His very hard, very hot thigh.
He placed the top of my hand over a hole in his jeans, too. I could feel his leg hair poking out of the hole and felt my heartbeat starting to accelerate.
I didn’t pull my hand away, even though where he had my hand kind of sort of made my arm stretch out a little more than was comfortable just holding there.
We stayed like that until we were in the parking lot of Circle Five.
Circle Five was a rather large steakhouse in the middle of nowhere.
It was halfway between Souls Chapel and Bear Bottom and had clientele from all over Texas coming to it.
When I walked up to the front door with him, I saw the line out the door, and had a feeling that we weren’t going to get in here.
Which sucked because I really, really wanted their chocolate cake now.
What sucked even more was, the moment that we breached the front door, bypassing all of the people, a woman spotted him and clapped.
She hurried around the podium and all but fell on Sin.
He looked like he’d rather do anything but hug her, but he endured it and patted her back before nicely stepping away with a forced smile.
I, on the other hand, was still holding his hand. And wished to let it the fuck go.
Because I didn’t want to come here anymore.
All of a sudden, I knew the reason he’d be able to get in here.
He’d slept with the damn hostess.
Goddammit.
He held onto my hand, though, and pulled me into his side.
“Marnie, this is my girl, Blaise. Blaise and I are celebrating our finding out she’s pregnant. Can you talk to my brother, ask him to fit us in?” Sin drawled.
The girl, Marnie, took a step back looking stunned.
<
br /> “I’m sorry,” a deep male voice said. “I don’t think I heard you right. Did you say pregnant?”
I turned to see a sexy man that looked a whole lot like Sin all but stalking toward us.
He had a beautiful head full of silver hair that, had Sin grown his out and didn’t keep it buzzed short, I had a feeling would look exactly like Sin’s.
“Bellini,” Sin grinned and finally allowed my hand to drop as he took two steps in his brother’s direction and all but crushed his head in between his arms. “How the fuck are you?”
“I’d be a fuck of a lot better if you would’ve come to visit me sooner,” he grumbled as he squeezed his brother just as tight around the chest. I heard Sin’s back crack with the force. “What the fuck do you mean pregnant?”
Sin sighed and would’ve stepped back, but Bellini held onto his brother, in the middle of a crowded foyer, with onlookers galore watching their every move—because hello, both men were incredibly sexy as hell.
Sin laughed and wrapped his arms back around his brother’s head but didn’t appear as if he was trying to take it off any longer.
“I mean,” Sin spoke, “my girl is pregnant.”
“Your girl.” Bellini finally let his brother go and turned to look at me. Recognition lit his eyes, and then he grinned. “Your girl.”
Sin’s and my story wasn’t a secret. A lot of people knew me by sight because of the media that had latched onto Sin’s case.
My face, as well as Sin’s face, had been plastered all over the television screens for a month and a half while shit had gone down.
Needless to say, I was sure that everyone knew me well.
I hadn’t changed all that much.
That, and Sin had been visited by all of his brothers while in prison. I was sure it hadn’t gone unnoticed that the girl that had gotten him there had followed him into the prison system in the only way that she could.
“My girl,” Sin confirmed.
“Come on, you can sit at my table,” he said. “Jim and Bronx were supposed to be coming in an hour, but you can sit there with them if they show early.”
Jim and Bronx. Two more of his brothers.
I started to get nervous.
I knew of all of his brothers, but I hadn’t actually met all of them yet.
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