JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

  “I’m not—” I started to say, but Nicolas cut in.

  “Is that bad?”

  “Well, sugar usually doesn’t spill into the urine until it is over 180. Normal is under 140. So it is a bit of a concern. I’d like to send her to our lab to have some more testing done. If it’s what’s called gestational diabetes, we can get it under control fairly easily.” He patted my hand again. “Nothing to worry about.”

  He picked up a device that looked kind of like a short, fat microphone and gestured for me to lie back.

  “Why don’t we listen to that baby’s heartbeat?”

  Nicolas scooted over and pressed his hand to my shoulder, helping me lower myself against the cheap, flat pillow at the head of the bed. Then, he watched as the doctor pushed aside the oversized t-shirt I was wearing. My belly was exposed, sticking up like a four-square ball, my belly button stretched and flattened like someone was pulling at it from multiple different directions. The doctor squeezed a little lubricant on my belly toward the top and pressed the tip of his probe against it.

  After a second, the room filled with these screeching, annoying sounds, like feedback from a microphone. But then a quick, steady thump could be heard. Thump-thump-thump. I smiled recognizing the confident heartbeat of the baby. Nicolas gasped, his hand seeking mine and squeezing as our fingers became intertwined.

  “That’s amazing,” he whispered.

  “You haven’t heard it before?” Dr. Bishop asked, a little frown crossing his face. He moved the probe some more, and the heartbeat came back, louder than before. And a little faster, too, if my sense of rhythm was anything like it was in high school. Dr. Bishop caught my eye and asked, “Have you had a sonogram, Ms. Martinez?”

  “Just once, when I was eight weeks. They said everything looked fine.”

  Dr. Bishop looked as though he wanted to ask another question, but he stopped mid-grunt. He stood and went to the door. A moment later he was back, wiping the lubricant from my belly.

  “I’m going to have the nurse bring in the sonogram machine so that we can take a closer look at what’s going on in there.”

  “Is something wrong?” Nicolas asked, quickly letting go of my hand.

  “I don’t think so. I just want to have a look.”

  But doctors don’t just take a look on a whim. He’d heard something within the heartbeat. And now my heart was pounding, jumping almost as fast as the baby’s. What if something was wrong? What if the baby had some sort of defect or something? Had I done something? Did I not eat enough fruits and vegetables? Should I have avoided tea, too? Was it the fast food tacos that I craved so much my first trimester?

  As these thoughts whirled through my mind over and over, the nurse brought in the sonogram machine. It seemed to take an hour for them to figure out all the cords and get it up and running. And then Dr. Bishop was squeezing more lubricant on my belly and pressing a new probe to my bump.

  I couldn’t really see what was showing on the computer monitor, but Nicolas was leaning over me like I was as inconsequential as a stack of books, staring at everything the doctor was doing. Then, Dr. Bishop turned the monitor so that we could both see it clearly.

  “This is the baby’s head,” he said, pointing at a rounded object in the center of the screen. “And here are the arms, the legs.” As he said it, I could suddenly see it, the perfectly shaped human being living in my stomach. The baby moved as he talked, jerking its tiny arms as though it had the hiccups or something. It made tears well in my eyes as the sight of this perfect creature suddenly made everything so incredibly real.

  “And now,” the doctor said, moving the probe lower on my belly, “here is another head, another set of limbs.”

  “Did the baby move?” Nicolas asked.

  Dr. Bishop smiled as the baby did something like a flip just under the probe, turning so that what we were now looking at must have been its back because I could see the spine as clear as day.

  “There’re two babies,” I said.

  “What?”

  Nicolas looked down at me, his eyes wide with wonder.

  “That’s right, Mr. Costa,” Dr. Bishop said. “You’re having twins. This sort of thing often happens with infertility treatments.”

  I never thought I’d ever see Nicolas Costa speechless. But he was. Absolutely, mouth-hanging-open speechless.

  I laughed.

  Chapter 11

  Did I say I don’t mind needles? I lied.

  I lay in a hospital bed, my belly itching like I had poison ivy, an IV in my arm, and a plate of half-eaten meatloaf on a rollaway tray beside me. The nurse peeked her head in through the door and shook her head.

  “You have to eat the whole thing or you’ll have a low blood sugar and we’ll have to infuse you with glucose again.” She smiled almost apologetic. “You want to get that IV out of your arm, don’t you?”

  “I do. I just don’t get this insulin thing.”

  “I know. It’s complicated.” She came to the bed and sat beside me. “My brother’s diabetic. I never thought about it until I went to nursing school. And then I was dumbfounded by how my parents kept his blood sugars under control back then when doctors knew even less about diabetes than they know now.”

  She stood and picked up the tray. “Why don’t I go see if I can find you an apple or something instead, huh? Might go down easier.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I watched her walk out of the room.

  Dr. Bishop sent me to have more blood tests after discovering the second baby hiding in my womb, and the tests came back the next morning showing that my blood sugar was way too high. So he put me into the hospital right away and I’d been here for nearly a week, trying to find an insulin regiment that worked with my body. I was highly reactive to insulin, he had told me, so even a tad too much made my sugars go too low and they had to intervene. He wouldn’t let me out of the hospital until I could go two days with a low. So far, the longest we had gone was four hours.

  The only good thing about being in the hospital was that I hadn’t seen Nicolas in two days. He didn’t want to visit too often. He was afraid it would attract the paparazzi. However, I suspected that wasn’t the real reason. I saw the discomfort on his face every time he walked into the room. He didn’t like hospitals.

  I wondered how he was going to survive forty-eight hours of labor—which is how long it took my mom to give birth to me. She reminded me every time I did something I shouldn’t have in high school.

  I lay back and closed my eyes, the low volume on the television like white noise from one of those fancy machines Kelly always insisted were the only way she could sleep in almost any time zone. I missed Kelly. She called a few days ago, but I told her to stay away. I really didn’t want her to meet Nicolas. I could just imagine the things she would say to him in an effort to help me. But it wouldn’t help. It would only make things worse.

  I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I knew, that kind nurse was standing at my side, injecting glucose into my IV line.

  “Fifty-two,” she said.

  I groaned. I was never getting out of this hospital.

  The nurse patted my shoulder sympathetically. “They bumped the numbers down another unit. I think they might have it this time.”

  And she was right. Two days later, I was pulling on the jeans I’d worn into the hospital only to discover they were too tight around my middle. I pulled my t-shirt down and it, too, was shorter than it had been before. I stuck my head out the bathroom door and caught the kindly nurse just as she was leaving with the debris from the IV she’d just taken from my arm.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a rubber band, or something, would you?”

  She glanced at my belly and managed not to laugh out loud. “I’ll go look at the nurse’s desk.”

  “You need new clothes,” Nicolas said from his perch against the wall by the door.

  “Thank you for reminding me.”

  He studied me for a second. “There’s a
maternity shop on Rodeo Drive. We can swing by there on the way home.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can afford…wait, I don’t think I can afford to walk through the doors at a shop like that.”

  “Who said you were paying?”

  “I don’t want anything from you, Nicolas.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s my kid—kids—in there. I can’t have you walking around with your belly hanging out, or wearing cheap clothes that might contain some sort of chemical that could hurt the babies.”

  I glared at him, ready to say something that wasn’t very lady-like, but the nurse came back then with a rubber band. She even helped me fasten my jeans with it, tugging them closed enough so that I wasn’t exposing myself when Nicolas led the way outside ten minutes later.

  When we drove down Rodeo Drive, I had flashes of every romantic movie I’d ever seen. And when we walked into the maternity shop and a sales girl looked down her nose at me, I had a very vivid image of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The only difference was, my Richard Gere was standing next to me.

  “How can we help you, Mr. Costa?” one of the sales girls asked.

  “We need a complete wardrobe, including lingerie and formal attire. Do you think you can handle that?”

  The woman bit back a smile. “Of course.”

  And suddenly I was a princess, pushed into a soft chair and plied with tea and cookies and everything I could ever want. Models who were much taller, much thinner, and definitely not pregnant, paraded into the room in a variety of clothes, talking about things I would never understand—like cut and seams and the different fabrics—until my head was spinning and I was just saying okay to make them stop. Nicolas stood at a distance, watching. He did that a lot, watching me and the people around me from a distance, like he was directing the action around him instead of participating in it. I would have preferred him to sit by my side and offer his opinion on my choices, but that wasn’t Nicolas.

  When they brought out the lingerie, I blushed and decided I’d had enough.

  “I’m tired,” I said, standing and nearly toppling the low table that held the tea cups they kept refilling. “Could we just…”

  Nicolas was immediately at my side. “Of course.”

  He guided me to the door, then turned to speak to one of his bodyguards. The man disappeared inside as we got into yet another SUV—this one a white Cadillac—and merged into the late evening traffic.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded. “But I’d have to take a shot, and I’m not sure about doing that in public.”

  “Then we’ll pick something up and go back to the house.” He glanced out the window—actually looking up from his smartphone—and said, “It’s a nice night. We could eat on the back veranda.”

  “That actually sounds nice. I feel like I’ve been cooped up inside for too long.”

  Nicolas looked at me, actually holding my gaze for a full minute before his eyes slid down to my growing belly.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Tired.”

  He reached over to touch my belly, but he stopped himself just before he made contact. “Have you felt them move yet? You’re almost eighteen weeks.”

  “Not yet.”

  He nodded, a dark look crossing his face. Did he think I was lying to him? Or was there something else?

  He was such an enigma that it drove me nuts. I wanted to reach over there, grab his face, and make him tell me everything that was going on in that head of his. But I didn’t. I stared out the window and watched the scenery as we sped across the city, headed back to his house.

  I was actually looking forward to being there. I guess it was true that almost any place could feel like home if you were lonely enough.

  And I was definitely lonely enough.

  Chapter 12

  He ordered from some Chinese place and I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how many carbs I was going to eat out of the noodles, egg rolls, and sweet sauces that he’d ordered. I finally made an educated guess and filled the syringe with insulin, but then my hand shook when it came time to actually inject it. They made me do it a dozen times in the hospital, but there was a difference between injecting a potentially lethal substance into your body in a hospital setting where nurses were waiting to bring you back to life with an injection of sugar, and doing it in the privacy of your own home where only you and the father of your child—both quite uneducated about this condition—were there to provide sugar if a mistake was made.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Nicolas asked.

  He seemed sincere, so I handed the syringe to him.

  “Where do I…?”

  “A fatty area,” I said. “I was doing them in my hip in the hospital.”

  He nodded as he came to stand beside me. I tugged at a corner of my jeans and pulled them down just enough to expose the area where I had intended to inject myself. Nicolas picked up the alcohol pad I’d already prepared and pressed it to my flesh, making me hiss a little with the suddenly cold. And then his fingers were moving over my hip, pushing back my clothes, the contrast between the cold alcohol and his hot fingers distracting.

  Would I always feel this sort of reaction whenever he touched me?

  He carefully injected the insulin, moving quickly, but proficiently, making me wonder if he had experience with needles. And then thoughts of Aurora filled my mind, of her illegal drug use and the substances he’d supposedly seen her take. Did he help her inject herself with meth or heroin? Did he help her boil down crack cocaine and inject it into a vein?

  Those thoughts made me shudder. Nicolas must have thought it was a reaction from the shot because he tugged my jeans back into place and whispered, “All done,” in my ear.

  I pulled away from him, the scent of his cologne so intoxicating that I wasn’t sure I could control myself if I didn’t.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts. And then he poured himself a glass of wine, staring into its depths rather than drinking from it.

  “I have a new project coming up in a month. It films here, so I’ll be close, but I won’t be at the house for the majority of the day.”

  “Okay,” I said, as I picked at a spicy egg roll. I thought I was going to eat a lot, but the babies had shifted and my stomach was already screaming that it was full.

  “Constance will be around if you need anything. And one of my security guys will always be within screaming distance.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “I just…I didn’t know that you would be having health problems when I agreed to this project.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “I know.” He put the wine glass down and studied me for a second. “This has just made the whole thing a little more real for me.”

  I looked away. It had always been real for me. So real I’d called a lawyer while I was in the hospital. I wanted to know what my options were after the babies came. But his advice hadn’t been very hopeful. He’d promised to look over the contract, but he didn’t think I’d be able to keep the babies or even share in any part of their lives if Nicolas didn’t agree to it.

  Not very encouraging.

  “Aurora was pretty excited about it,” I said suddenly, needing to hurt him in some way for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain. “She talked about decorating the nursery and buying all these cute little outfits. She even showed me one once, a pretty little sailor suit she couldn’t pass up in a department store.”

  “It was just a passing infatuation with Aurora,” Nicolas said. “A new thing to keep her busy for a while. She was always flitting from one thing to another.”

  “When she talked to the doctor and learned her eggs were dividing, she’d been so excited.”

  “Yeah. And then she went upstairs and snorted so much coke up her nose that she passed out with her head on the hors d’oeuvre plate.”

  There was such bitterness in his voice that I wanted to slap him. How could someone be that
bitter about the woman he swore to love, honor, and obey for the rest of his life? Was that really how he looked at the marriage vows?

  “You know, you don’t have to constantly prove what an asshole you are,” I said, dropping my napkin onto my plate and pushing away from the table.

  I didn’t get far. He came up behind me and grabbed my arm, spinning me around so quickly that I got dizzy and nearly fell. As it was, I had to snatch at the front of his shirt to keep from toppling over.

  “I hate you,” I said, pushing back in an attempt to get away from him. “I hate everything you’ve done to me and everything you did to Aurora. I hate that you’re going to take these babies from me and raise them to be little self-centered asses just like you.”

  “You don’t hate me,” he said, his voice dangerously low as he moved closer to me. “And your body definitely doesn’t hate my touch.”

  I glanced down and realized my nipples were once again betraying me, standing up straight against the thin material of my tee.

  “My body’s not itself,” I muttered in disgust. “It’s so confused it doesn’t recognize a snake despite all the warnings my brain is sending.”

  His mouth curved in a brief flash of humor before he took a step, closing what little distance there was between us, his body pressed against mine.

  “You want me,” he said softly. “Despite everything you’ve said and done, you want me. I know it. And you know it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh, you do.”

  I stared at him, and I knew I had my mouth hanging open. The nerve of the man! Did he really imagine I was going to have sex with him? I would not sleep with him again—even if he were the last man on Earth. Who the hell did he think he was? I tried to move away, but he held tight to my arm, jerking me even closer to him. If not for my belly, we would have been chest-to-chest, lip-to-lip. And then his arm snaked around my waist, and he pulled me closer until I couldn’t breathe. I felt the length of his erection against my lower belly, and I stilled. I looked up at him, and his pupils were dilated, his breathing ragged. My legs immediately turned to jelly. I curled my hand where it still held onto his shirt, burying itself there. His mouth was on mine, and we were kissing with such deep hunger that it shook me to the core. He slanted his mouth over mine and sucked my lower lip. I moaned deep in my throat and moved impossibly closer, searching for more. When I gasped for breath, his tongue slipped in and began to slowly drive me crazy. I kissed him back with everything I had, sucking on his tongue with such hunger that he groaned and pressed against me. I slipped my hand beneath his shirt and touched him everywhere I could. I writhed against his erection, but it was not enough. I wanted more.