He brushed her lips with his. ‘Glad to be of help.’ He turned off the shower and stepped out, picking up one of the bath sheets from the towel rail and holding it out for her. ‘Come here and let me dry you.’
Elodie stepped into the warm folds of the towel and he proceeded to dry her. It was a thing he had never done, and it shifted something in their relationship. She had never allowed herself to be so vulnerable before. Seven years ago she would never have allowed him to see her hunched over a toilet bowl being sick, or bent double with period pain...
Period pain.
An invisible hammer swung against her heart, knocking it sideways in her chest. When was the last time she’d had a period?
She gave a jolt and Lincoln looked up from drying her feet.
‘Sorry, was I too rough?’
Elodie stared down at him, kneeling at her feet, her mind whirling with dawning realisation. The nausea. The dizziness. The light-headedness. The sudden aversion to things she usually enjoyed, like champagne.
She swallowed and somehow got her voice to work. ‘No...no... I was just getting a little cold.’ She was, in fact, now shivering. Shivering with alarm. Panic. Despair.
How could she be pregnant? They had used condoms every time. Lincoln was pedantic about safety—it was something she admired about him. He would never intentionally put her or indeed any of his partners at risk.
Lincoln straightened and wrapped her in a fresh towel, warm from the towel rail. ‘Go back to bed for a while. I can change our flights to London to a later time.’
‘No, it’s okay. I want to get back to work tomorrow.’
And get her hands on a pregnancy test as soon as possible.