I could see his brows furrow and the confusion on his face.
“What is this?” I heard him ask.
I didn’t hear the girl’s reply, but whatever it was made him take a step back and nearly toss the bag that was holding the test.
Malachi started to chuckle, and the girl gestured my way.
Luca’s eyes jerked up and locked on me, and his face went utterly slack.
I raised my brows at him, gave him a thumb up, then a thumb down.
He understood immediately what I was asking and gave me a shaky thumb up.
My smile went wide just as Cheyenne came up to my side and said, “So let’s go fill out our paperwork.”
I grinned and waved at Luca who still looked stunned.
He watched me go as Malachi slapped him on the back before giving him a manly hug.
Still, Luca’s eyes never left mine.
I felt the heat of his stare as I turned my back on him and followed Cheyenne to fill out my paperwork.
Tears burned in the back of my eyes, though.
After four months of trying, and two failed IVF treatments, I was finally pregnant with his baby.
I couldn’t freakin’ wait to see whose eyes the baby had.
I hoped they were Luca’s with everything I had.
***
Five months later
I opened the curtain to the exam room, my eyes on the chart in front of me, and studied it.
“You’ve had a laceration to your forearm, Mr. Maldonado?” I asked.
There was an amused snort from my husband before I looked up and found him staring at me with his heart in his eyes.
He had a bandage on his forearm, and he had blood on his tight as hell pants.
My libido—which was always raring and ready to go—went on high alert.
Jesus, his smile was devastating.
“What happened?” I asked. “And why didn’t you call me?”
He gestured to the cut on his arm.
“I would have, but I was trying to keep pressure on my arm while also riding a motorcycle. Calling you would’ve been kind of hard,” he admitted.
I rolled my eyes and walked over to his side, gently peeling the bandage back.
I eyed the cut.
It was shallow.
“How did you do this?” I wondered.
He grunted out a reply of, “Caught it on a piece of metal when I hopped over a guardrail to help an old woman out of a wrecked car.”
I remembered the old woman coming in about twenty minutes ago, but I hadn’t been one of the ones to work on her.
“Bummer,” I said. “That’s going to need stitches. At least eight.”
Instead of getting the nurse to help with the cut, I did it all myself.
All the while my husband never took his free hand off my belly.
It was growing day by day, and he never missed a chance to feel me up.
“She’s on the move today,” I told him when he grinned at one particularly lively kick.
“I feel that,” he said. “She’s moving around like crazy.”
“I feel that, too,” he said, pressing in to try and determine what body part was where.
We never knew seeing as she was still kind of small, but it was fun to guess.
I finished with his total of nine stitches and cleaned him back up, giving him the go-ahead to return back to work.
“I have a break in fifteen minutes,” I said softly, pressing my body deliciously against his. “Wait in the break room for me?”
He understood without being told exactly what I was hoping to get.
He looked at his watch. “I have exactly twenty minutes before I need to be back.”
I grinned. “That’s plenty of time for you to get me off.”
With that, I left.
And he didn’t disappoint.
He got me off.
It only took him three of the five minutes.
Best. Day. Ever.
***
Luca
Three months later
“Today is the day!”
I glared at Malachi, my cheerful pain in the ass friend.
“I realize that,” I grumbled.
Malachi chuckled.
“You’re just mad that I was there when her water broke and you weren’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, okay?”
I walked toward the bed where Frankie was lying hooked up to all kinds of monitors and doo-dads and leaned over her before offering her a kiss.
She took the kiss, then pressed her forehead against mine.
“I’m okay,” she promised.
I knew that.
When Malachi had called after I’d asked him to stop by and check on my wife who I hadn’t heard from in a couple of hours, it was to get a call back an hour later saying that he’d taken her to the hospital.
“You thought you would labor at home all day without me?” I asked, voice tight.
She sighed.
“Baby, this is our first,” she told me. “First babies take forever to come.”
I honestly didn’t care.
I didn’t want her to spend a single second without me if she needed me.
The thought of her spending hours at home today without me while she went through labor made my jaw tense.
She pinched me and then pointed to some clothes.