“Silly,” she whispered. “So silly …” With a low moan, she lifted her hands and covered her face with them.
Really, there was no reason she should be such a bundle of nerves over this. She was either pregnant or not—and she just knew that she was. In a moment, the timer would go off and she would have proof.
No reason to be freaked out over it. No reason at all.
Rule tapped on the bathroom door. “Sydney? Are you all right in there?” As if in response to his question, the timer she’d set on the marble enclosure around the ginormous sunken tub started beeping. “Sydney! Are you all right?”
She went over and flipped the switch on the timer. It fell blessedly silent.
Rule didn’t. “Sydney, my God!” He pounded on the door.
She whirled, stalked to the door, twisted the lock and flung it wide. He stood there looking fabulous, wearing nothing but a worried expression. Through clenched teeth she informed him, “I am fine. Get it? Fine.”
He held out his arms.
With a cry, she threw herself into them, wrapped her arms around his lean bare waist and held on tight. She buried her face against his beautiful hard chest. “It’s time,” she said into that wonderful trail of hair that started between his perfect pectoral muscles and went on down, all the way to heaven. “I can’t look.”
“Sydney …” He said her name in that special way that only he could, so tenderly, so reassuringly. He stroked her back and then he took her chin and tipped it up. His dark eyes were waiting. “We both know what the test will say.” He brushed a kiss across her lips.
Her mouth trembled. Sheesh. She was a trembling fool. She bit her lower lip to make it stop and then she said, “I know we both know. But what if we’re wrong?”
He drew in a slow breath and dared to suggest, “Only one way to find out.”
She shoved her face into his chest again, feeling like Trevor, the day before, clinging to his precious Roo upon meeting his new grandparents. “You look. I can’t do it.”
He chuckled. Oh, wasn’t that just like a man? To chuckle at a time like this. He chuckled, and then he kissed the top of her head and then he gently took hold of her arms. “You will have to release me if you want me to be the one to look.”
Reluctantly, with another soft cry, she let go of him and stepped out of his way. “Do it. Now.”
He indicated the wand on the edge of the marble sink counter and slanted her a questioning glance.
She nodded.
He went to it, picked it up, frowned at it.
What? Suddenly, he couldn’t read? She said, “The little window, it either says ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant.’“
He made a big show of squinting at the wand. “Well, now, let’s see here …”
“I am going to grab that thing and hit you on the head with it. Just see if I don’t.”
He waved his free hand in a shushing kind of gesture. “All right, all right. It says … Well, what do you know? It says …”
“Rule. Stop it. I mean it. You stop it right now.”
And then he dropped the wand in the sink, turned and grabbed her, lifting her high, spinning her around. She squealed and then she laughed. And then he was letting her down, slowly, the short silk nightie she wore catching, riding up, leaving her bare from the waist down. Her feet touched the floor toes-first.
Finally, he leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Pregnant.”
Pregnant. The magic word.
She threw her arms around him. “Oh, I can’t believe it. It’s true. It’s really true. We’re having a baby. We really, really are. How amazing is that?”
“Extremely amazing,” he agreed.
And then he scooped her high in his arms and carried her back to the bed where they celebrated the positive test result in their favorite way.
Later, Sydney asked Rule if he would mind keeping the news about the baby to themselves for a while. She was only a few weeks along, after all. No one else needed to know for another month or so, did they? She wanted a little time to have it be just between the two of them.