Wife by Design

And couldn’t recall.

“You probably had it and can’t remember,” she said now. But Maddie was usually pretty good about her period. It was regular. And so something she counted on.

“I didn’t have it, Lynn.” Maddie would panic at the thought of having Grant read Kara a bedtime story, but she didn’t seem to be the least bit frightened of something that would strike terror in a lot of women.

“Okay,” Lynn said slowly, watching her houseguest. “Well, there are lots of reasons for a woman to miss her period. It’s nothing to worry about. You’ll probably get it this coming week.”

Maddie shook her head. “No,” she said emphatically. “I need an appointment with you, Lynn, because I missed my period and I’m going to have a baby.”

Oh, God. Not tonight. She was beat. To a pulp. Completely spent and in need.

Of Grant.

“You aren’t going to have a baby, Maddie. You know it takes a man and intercourse to make a baby.”

“I know that, Lynn. Darin is a man and we had intercourse.”

Lynn’s hands dropped to the bed. She stared at the mentally handicapped woman.

And knew that life had just taken an irrevocable turn.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE TEXT CAME shortly after eleven on Monday night.

You up?

Yeah, he was up. In more ways than one. With Darin safely home, but the day’s emotions still running amok, he’d been sitting in the dark thinking about the woman who’d been by his side through the second worst day of his life.

The first being the day Darin had injured himself trying to save his wife’s life.

He’d been thinking about the fact that their regularly scheduled sex date was less than forty-eight hours away. And determining that the odds were in their favor of actually consummating their agreement this week.

Just the thought had him hard.

Yeah. His thumbs typed the message back to her.

He was sitting in the dark in nothing but a pair of silk basketball shorts, prepared for a long night. He looked forward to Lynn’s next message.

His phone rang. Her moniker popped up on his screen.

“Hello,” he said, his voice low, a grin spreading across his face.

“Can you talk?”

The strangled tone in her voice made him sit up straight. “Of course,” he told her. “What’s up?” He’d help her handle it, whatever it was.

“Maddie and Darin had sex.”

“What?” Grant was on his feet before he realized it, and had to rein in his volume, as well. “There’s no way. No chance…”

And just as Lynn started to talk again, he remembered Maddie’s voice on the phone that afternoon, telling them how she and Darin had snuck away from the The Lemonade Stand to spend an early morning on the beach.

“There’s more.”

What more could there possibly be? They’d been through the entire gamut of life’s crises already that day. “What?” he asked, still stuck on the fact that his brother had had sex.

And was probably going to be wanting it again.

So much for his “just friends” speech. His ridiculous idea that he’d be able to distract Darin from Maddie.

With diving.

“I think Maddie’s pregnant.”

Her voice dropped on the last word. But it rang in his ear with the strength of a gunshot.

“You think she is or you know she is?” The numbness filtering through him was welcome. He’d take more of it.

He just wasn’t going to think.

“I went to the clinic for a home pregnancy test and ran it on her. It’s positive. It’s only been a week, and it could be a false positive, but it’s an early-detection kit. We keep them in stock because we need to know as soon as possible if an abused woman is pregnant by her abuser when she arrives at the shelter.”

She was talking too fast. Faster than he could think.

Because he wasn’t going to think. Ever again.

With the exception of the one hope she’d given him. He’d concentrate on that.

“What are the chances of a false positive?”

“Slight. More often it would be a false negative because a woman’s body produces hormones at different speeds. Maddie already has elevated levels of the hormone a woman’s body produces when she’s pregnant.”