But I had to find a way out of this. I wasn’t ready to tell him about my pregnancy, so I dissembled, speaking fast.
“Yes, I went to Walgreens to pick up a number of things. I realized I had no groceries at home, so I went to get some fixings. You know, like for a burrito,” I said lamely. “Shredded cheese and whatnot.”
His brows raised, that handsome face skeptical.
“Let me understand this better. So you went to a drugstore to buy groceries, and not a supermarket even though there are supermarkets all around?”
Fortunately, I’ve shopped for groceries at Walgreens in the past.
“Yes,” I said quickly. “It’s a good way to save money because things like cereal and peanut butter are actually cheaper at the drugstore if you get them on sale. Plus, I have a Smart Shopper card, so I get two percent off of all purchases.”
Chase nodded slowly, but he wasn’t convinced. Those blue eyes pinned me to the sofa where I sat, demanding the truth.
“And that’s all?” he asked in a deceptively casual voice. “That’s all you bought at Walgreens?”
I cursed Corrie again in my head. I was going to have word with the blonde come tomorrow for giving away my personal business. But for now, I just wanted Chase to leave so that I could contemplate my next steps.
“Yes,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “That’s all I got. Some food for dinner. Why, is something wrong?”
And to my horror, Chase strode over to my miniscule kitchen in two seconds, picking up my garbage bin.
“We’ll see about that,” he said grimly, pawing through its contents. “For some reason, Connie, I don’t believe you for a second.”
“Stop!” I shrieked, jumping up and running over. I grabbed onto the rim of the cheap plastic can, and we tussled for a moment, Chase pulling it towards him while I tried to wrest it away from his grasp. “What are you doing? Why are you looking through my garbage?”
Suddenly, I lurched backwards because Dr. Roman had let go, already striding out of the kitchen. Evidently he hadn’t found what he was looking for, and he entered my bedroom next. One look at the messy bed and clothes scattered on the floor was enough. It was clear he wasn’t going to find anything in this pigsty.
“Stop!” I ran after him again, my arms flailing in his direction. “What are you doing? You don’t have a search warrant! You can’t just go around and shake down my place like you’re the police!”
But again, the physician is an alpha male, and he was determined to find what he sought. So in one second, the man spun on his heel and entered my miniscule bathroom. And that’s when he struck gold because the pregnancy tests were right there on the counter. Not one. Not two. But all five lined up, all of them with double blue stripes.
“So you are pregnant,” he growled, eyes fixed on the plastic indicators. “This is why you went to Walgreens, isn’t it? You’re pregnant with my child.”
At this point, there was no sense in denying it anymore. Not with the proof right there under the wan bathroom lights. So I nodded.
“Yes,” was my stiff reply. “I’m pregnant. So what do we do now? Is there a plan?”
Slowly, the alpha male turned, the blue of his eyes so hot that they gleamed like bright jewels.
“What do you mean, what do we do now? I thought you wanted a baby. That’s why you came to Sunset Medical that first time, after all.”
It was said as a statement and not a question, and in a sense he was right. I’d sought the services of his office in order to conceive, that was true. But ever since that first day, things had snowballed until they were hopelessly confusing with a multitude of issues and unanswered questions.
So I tried to be mature about it.
“Yes, that’s why I came to your office,” was my civil acknowledgement. “But you have to admit that things have gone off the rails.”
His brows quirked at that one, although that handsome face stayed smooth.
“Gone off the rails?” he echoed. “What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath.
“What I mean is that we never expected this to happen,” I said, gesturing at my belly.
He cocked his head at me, those blue eyes beginning to glow again.
“We expected it very much,” he said, his voice modulated so perfectly that I could sense the tension rather than hear it. “We wanted you to get pregnant. After all, you and I have been trying hard the old-fashioned way to make it happen, and you know you’re a fertile twenty-five year old.”
I almost choked then. His words were true but there was so much more to it than just that. So taking a deep breath, I summoned my courage.