Anything I was going to say was cut off by loud, familiar voices heading toward us. Voices that I’d know anywhere.
“Uh oh,” Jackson snickered, getting a glare from Marcus. “Looks like the backup has arrived. Prepare to get your ass kicked properly now.”
Sure enough, my parents and other brothers walked into the room, all of them glaring at me.
And then they let rip.In the end, the only way I’d been able to get them to shut up so I could get a word in was to show them the photos of the baby.
“God, she’s beautiful,” Mom murmured for the millionth time.
“Why is it that the men automatically call it he, but the women go for she?” Craig mused, having been introduced to them all while they were tearing me a new one.
“I think it’s a she,” Marcus shrugged, getting a nod from Ned.
“Mom, can you find a good OB/GYN in Sarasota? I’m going to move Sadie and Dobby to the house until Orson Riley’s been found.”
Looking up at me with unfocused eyes, almost like she was in a baby fog, she nodded then immediately went back to looking at the pictures. Dad wasn’t much better, but the grin on his face was almost comical.
“She’s beautiful,” he said through the grin, reaching around Mom to smack me on the back. “You did good, son.”
“You, too?” Craig huffed. “Mr. Rossi, you’re going against what I said only seconds ago.”
“And I’m doing it on purpose, Craig,” he winked.
“Wait, what’s that you’re looking at?” Ari asked, almost scaring the shit out of me, seeing as how I hadn’t even known she was there until her head poked out from behind my parents. “Is that— Whose baby is that?”
I swear my chest almost exploded with pride. “Mine.”
“You knocked Sadie up?” she choked out, glancing at Ned nervously. Then, she swung around and poked Parker in the chest. “And you didn’t think to tell me this when you rang and said she was in the hospital?”
“That would be a violation of HIPAA, baby. You know that.”
“How does HIPAA override the best friend data disclosure act?” she cried, swinging her arm in the air. “I’m going to see her.”
Shooting us all a glare, she marched down the hallway in the direction of the rooms, only stopping when it occurred to her that she didn’t know which one Sadie was in.
“Next door on your right,” I shouted out, looking back at Parker, who was shaking his head as he watched her shove the door open and disappear inside. “The best friend data disclosure act?”
“Never a dull moment, man. Never, ever a dull moment.”
Dad chuckled, but the humor fled almost as quickly as it arrived. “Want to tell us what’s going on with your woman? Jackson’s filled us in on some of it, but I’m thinking we’re missing a lot of the facts.”
So, with Ned helping me, we laid out all of the information about the fucker and her health. By the end, Mom and MeeMee had made plans for Sadie and the baby, and the men had made some for her safety.
No matter what, she was going to have everything she needed and then some.
SadieIt felt like I’d just closed my eyes when I was blinking them open again, squinting at the amount of light in the room.
Given how many people I’d had around me recently, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see someone in the room with me, but when I saw Ari watching me like a creeper, the squeak that came out of me proved it was still possible.
“So, you’re having a baby?”
Rolling onto my back, I dug around for the remote doohickey that raised the top of the bed, so I was sitting upright for this conversation.
First things first, though. I needed to ask a question about something that’d worried me earlier.
“How pale do I look right now?”
Sound vain? Well, try having hair that was naturally white blonde and your eyebrows and eyelashes being the same color. Then try having skin so pale you made milk look tanned. Add all of that together, and normally it was a strange look. But when you’d been hoiking your guts up for days on end, it would’ve been even worse.
Even being sick, I didn’t want to look like a freak, so I needed to know.
“Your eyebrows and eyelashes still have some of the color on them,” she waved her hand in the air.
She had beautiful dark eyelashes and eyebrows naturally, so she probably wouldn’t understand unless she shaved hers off or if she bleached them white. That said, it was a relief that you couldn’t vomit dye from your facial hair.
“Awesome,” I sighed, shifting around to make myself comfortable. “And, yes, I’m pregnant.”
Of all the things I expected from her, it wasn’t for her to jump up and throw her arms in the air, screaming, “Yes!”