Dr Di Angelo's Baby Bombshell

Her face pinched and she found her voice. “What do you mean, how do I feel about that? I’m floored.”

Blake stared at her, wondering if he’d said the wrong thing. Hell, what was the right thing in this situation? Was he supposed to say he’d be there every step of the way with her? That he’d go to Lamaze classes and be in the delivery room? That he’d be an active father in their child’s life? Was he supposed to tell her that he was as floored as she was, but that this was their baby they were talking about and, floored or not, he’d be the kind of father he’d never had?

A million thoughts, a million questions, ran through his mind all at once. Questions he didn’t have the answers to. The woman who did have those answers stood before him with pink tingeing her cheeks.

“What do you expect of me?” Did she want him to propose? To give their child legitimacy?

She blinked. “Expect of you?”

“What do you want me to do, Darby? Marry you? Agree to support you financially?” Blake’s throat tightened, his hands sweated, his heart pounded. “Tell me what you expect of me and how all this makes you feel so I know what I need to do.”

Was Blake kidding? Darby stared at the man leaning on his desk and wondered if she’d ever known him at all. Had he really just asked what she expected of him? How she felt about being pregnant?

“Nothing.” She wished she had something to throw at him. Something hard. And sharp. Her gaze landed on the stress relief ball. That soft little thing wouldn’t begin to relieve the stress mounting inside her. Not even if the ball smacked him square between the eyes. “I don’t expect anything from you.”

“Every woman expects something from the man who’s gotten her pregnant.”

“You’ve already done more than enough.”

“It’s too late to point fingers, Darby. I take full responsibility. I know your baby’s mine.”

She hadn’t even considered that he might think other wise, so his comment stung even more.

She pressed her fingertip to her throbbing temple, hoping to calm the wild pulse hammering there. “You want to know how I feel? What I expect? I don’t know, Blake. I only just did the test, and I don’t know how I feel about any of this.”

“You missed your period? That’s why you did the test?” Give Sherlock a cookie.

“I’m a week late.” She glanced at him, tried not to wince at the tight lines of his face. How could he look so familiar, and yet so alien at the same time? “I kept telling myself stress was causing my missed cycle, but…”

“It wasn’t.”

She dug in her purse, pulled out the plastic kit from where she’d slid it inside the wrapper, and handed the confirmation of her suspicions to him.

“No.”

Blake studied the plastic wand with eyes darker than she recalled ever seeing them. So dark they paled the night sky.

“You’re pregnant.”

Yes, they’d already established that.

Her legs growing weak beneath her, she sat down on the edge of his desk, next to him.

“I’m pregnant.”

The rest of Blake’s evening passed in a blur.

No wonder.

He was going to be a father.

How had that happened?

He knew how that had happened, just… Blake knocked on Darby’s front door, wishing she’d hurry and let him into the apartment she’d lived in since they were in medical school.

An apartment that wouldn’t be big enough for her and a baby.

She’d need more space—a place with a yard big enough for a swing and a sandbox.