Kelly’s gaze glued on the monitor. Her expression was priceless.
“Doc, can you give us a minute?” Marc asked, inserting a bit of his persuasive tone into the conversation. The doctor nodded. He and the entourage were gone a moment later. He saw Kelly was still staring at the monitor in shock. He slowly put his finger under her chin and drew her face to his. “So tell me. What questions do you have for me?”
She wrinkled her nose. “The doctor’s wrong. I can’t be six weeks along. “
Marc squeezed her hand again. “I figured you’d ask that.”
CHAPTER SIX
“We just had sex for the first time like a week ago,” Kelly said. “How is it possible that we can even see anything on an ultrasound? It is physically impossible for me to be six weeks along. I haven’t had sex before you in…longer than six weeks.” Kelly flushed at her inadvertent confession. Before Marc, it had been longer than six months.
Marc nodded. “Here’s what you need to know, gestational times for werejaguars are different than humans. If you were carrying a human child, you would be pregnant for nine months, as I’m sure you know. Jaguar’s gestation time is only 93 to 105 days. In this case, you’ll be pregnant for about three to three-and-a-half months. Personally, I think that makes a lot more sense, don’t you?”
Kelly tried to absorb this information. If what he told her was true, the baby was already growing at an accelerated rate. Freaky. A little panic and fear slipped into her head. She tried to wrap her mind around this. “When it comes out, what will it look like?”
Marc smiled at her indulgently. “It looks just like a normal human baby. And probably the majority of the time, once it learns how to control the change, it will choose to be in human form. Werejaguar babies do not shift until somewhere around their first birthday. So you don’t have to worry about that at all.”
“Is there any risk to me being human and you being a shifter? Anything that would hurt me or the baby?” Kelly asked.
“Not at all,” Marc said. “It’s a benefit as part of our mating bond, which I realize you can’t feel as strongly as I can. You may experience some of the regular kinds of side effects of pregnancy, but there is nothing about human physiology versus mine that would put our baby at risk.” His hand tightened around hers.
She quieted for a long moment. “I am going to be a mother.” She never expected that she would be able to say those words. I am going to be a mother. Kelly felt an immense joy welling inside of her.
As the tears began to fall, she saw Marc’s look of panic. “What is it? What’s wrong? Do you feel all right?”
She was crying and laughing at the same time. She tried to put into words what she was feeling. “You don’t understand. I never thought that this could happen to me. I thought that I was infertile, and I would never be able to be a mother and carry a child. Everything is different now, and I’m still trying to process it, but I’m so happy. I’m so happy.” She smoothed her shirt down and hoisted herself into a sitting position. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me this gift.”
His strong arms tightened around her, and she felt every bit of his love for her. It was crazy and illogical, and everything about the situation should have thrown warning flags in her head, but seeing the baby’s heartbeat and knowing that she was going to be a mother had changed everything for her.
She and Marc got copies of the pictures from the ultrasound, and she kept them clutched in her hand as they went back out to the limo. Just when they had settled inside, her phone started to ring. She saw by the caller ID that it was Becca. She gestured to Marc to let him know that she needed to take the call. He nodded and pulled out his own phone, and she knew that he was busy with work. She hated that she had already taken so much time away from him considering how busy it sounded like he was.
She hit the answer button on the screen. “Hey, Becca,” she said.
“Listen, girl. You are not going to believe what I just heard,” Becca said. “By the way, where are you? You missed bowling last night.”
Kelly found that she wasn’t ready to tell her friend that she was back in Las Vegas or anything about Marc quite yet. She was still processing it all herself. “I’ve been feeling a little under the weather. It’ll probably be a couple more days before I can even leave the house,” she said. She made a mental note that she was going to have to make a decision about her future soon, because Marc was already pressing her to quit her job and move to Vegas permanently. “What did you hear?” she asked to distract her friend.
“Well, I hope you feel better soon,” Becca said. “You won’t believe this. I heard that Adam’s secretary finally fessed up to him that the baby she’s carrying isn’t his baby. Apparently, she messed around with guys besides your-ex. This whole thing came to light because one of her boyfriends wanted a paternity test.”
“Paternity test? Why?” asked Kelly.
“Well the guy’s a good-for-nothing leech. He wanted child support from that bitch now that she snagged a rich husband. If the baby was his, they would have to share custody and she would have to support him. Long story short, they had it and the baby wasn’t Adam’s.”
Kelly closed her eyes. Her ex-husband dumped her for his young, hot secretary, and it turned out, he got duped by her. She opened her eyes. Her throat felt rough and dry. Jesus. What comes around goes around.
“Listen, Kelly, I don’t think you were the one that had the problem in the bedroom. Based on what I heard, Adam’s shooting blanks. Isn’t that hilarious? Serves the asshole right. Karma’s a bitch.”
“Just hilarious,” Kelly said faintly. Her brain still coped from the massive revelation. All of this time she had been thinking that she was the one with the problem, and all along it had been Adam. She had let that one thing dictate so much of how she had lived her life over the last four years, and mostly in a negative way.
She looked across the limo at the man who sat there talking quietly on another call. Marc. He had changed her life in so many ways. She felt something for him that she never expected. Kelly put her hand over her stomach. She was on the verge of starting a completely new life. It wasn’t going to take much to convince her of where she belonged.
“Becca, I have to go,” she said coughing into the phone in a fake cough. “I’ll call you later.”
“All righty. Should I come and bring you some chicken soup or something?”
“No, no. I’m at the doctor’s office. I had an appointment.”
“Appointment? What’s wrong?”