The Nurse's Baby Secret

Which was enough to have him scooting the table out to where he could get close to her. When he was settled next to her, she took his hand and placed it over her stomach where hers had been previously.

“I never know how quickly he or she will move. Sometimes it’s almost constant and sometimes he or she just stops the moment I start trying to let someone else feel.”

“Who else have you let touch your belly?”

“Don’t sound so jealous because we both know you’re not, that I’ve been right here for over three weeks. It’s not as if I’ve had an opportunity to hang out with other men and ask them t

o palm my belly.”

“I know that.” He did and yet her words did strike him with jealousy. Before he could say anything more, a little nudge bumped against his hand. Eyes wide, he glanced up at her. “That is amazing.”

She nodded. “I think so every time I feel him or her move. I can’t believe we’ll soon get to hold our baby.”

He glanced up and stared at her a bit in awe. “You really do want this baby, don’t you, Savannah?”

She looked at him as if he’d asked the most ridiculous question ever. “Of course I do. How could I not?”

How could she not? How did he explain how his own parents hadn’t wanted him and what a negative impact he’d had on their lives?

“Not every woman wants to have children.”

“Not every man wants to have children either,” she countered, arms crossing and resting on top of the little shelf her stomach made.

“Some men aren’t meant to be fathers.” Even as he said the words he couldn’t lift his hand away from the roundness of her belly, couldn’t remove his palm from feeling the miracle of life growing within her.

She placed her hand over his, tracing over his fingers. “I guess that’s something we should have talked about.”

“One of the many things we should have talked about.”

“It’s funny,” she mused, staring at where his hand cradled her stomach. “I thought I knew you inside out and really I didn’t know you at all.”

Her words, so full of hurt and a sense of betrayal, cut him. “You did, more than you think.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know the important things—that you planned to leave Chattanooga, that you didn’t want children, that your career was more important than anything else. I didn’t know a lot of things that I should have known.”

The baby moved against his hand, just a little fluttery feel—a knee? An elbow? A foot? A hand?—rolling against his palm. His gaze lifted to Savannah’s in awe.

“How do you sleep with all that going on inside you?” he asked, because he wanted to know and because he couldn’t respond to her comment. She was right. She should have known those things about him. There were things he’d purposely kept hidden.

She smiled softly, stroking her fingers across her belly. “Sometimes it isn’t easy. I can only imagine how it’s going to be these next few months, especially if he or she has the hiccups.”

His brow arched. “The hiccups? How can you tell?”

“I feel them. They’re these rhythmic little movements inside me. I researched it online because I kept thinking I might be too early to feel them, but apparently babies start hiccupping in the first trimester after the central nervous system forms. I probably feel them so easily because I was so small before pregnancy.”

“You’re still small.”

“Ha, not hardly.” She patted the round curve of her belly. “Next time I feel hiccups, I’ll let you know so you can feel too.” Her gaze met his and he’d swear he could dive off into the deep blue of her eyes and get lost forever.

“If you want,” she added, suddenly looking uncertain.

He pulled her closer to him, holding her as he wrapped his arm around her and put his hand back over her stomach. “I want.”

He did want. So many things that he couldn’t begin to label, or even acknowledge.

Life was better that way.

Her life. His life.