“But you have an implant,” Callan pointed out.
“I know, and because of it, I don’t get a normal period, so not having one wasn’t exactly a big worry for me.” She pulled out a plastic stick from the box. “I’ve done three of these tests,” she said, “and they all say the same thing.”
She held up the test, and it had two very clear lines. Positive lines. My mouth dried out completely. “You’re pregnant,” Callan said dazedly.
Adrianne looked back and forth among us, trying to gauge our reactions. “I think so,” she said. “I need to go to the doctor to confirm everything, obviously, but I think I am.”
I couldn’t describe the emotion that welled up within me. Fierce loyalty and the need to protect her... and a weird sense of masculine pride. None of us had set out to impregnate her—I doubt any of us had ever considered babies as a possibility—but it had happened anyway. We were too virile. It was a caveman thought, and I knew it, but the feeling was there all the same.
I closed the distance between us and tipped her head back so that she looked up at me. “Are you going to have our baby?”
The word ‘baby’ sparked a light in her eyes. A small smile tried to curl onto her lips, but she looked so scared. “Do you want me to?” she whispered.
I kissed her, long and deep, and when I pulled back, she smiled. “I’m here to support whateveryouwant to do, Adrianne,” I said. I looked at Callan and Ethan, who looked equally shell-shocked. “We all are,” I said.
Callan rushed to agree. “Of course,” he said. “We’ll be here no matter what you want to do.”
“We should confirm it,” Ethan said, “before we all get ahead of ourselves.” His voice was gruff, and it only took one look at him to see how freaked out he was by all of this.
Adrianne picked up on it, but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she said, “I agree about getting it confirmed, but what can we do from here? I figured that I would make an appointment with my GYN when we got back to the States.” I frowned—that was nearly a month from now, after filming was wrapped. We couldn’t wait that long to know.
“Our travelers’ insurance should cover a trip to the clinic,” Ethan said. “One of us will take you.”
“We should all go,” Callan interjected, but Ethan shot him down.
“And draw even more attention to her?” Ethan asked. “Let’s keep everything as lowkey as possible.”
Adrianne nodded. “I agree... and actually, we need to talk about that before we do anything else.” We all sat on the bed, and she looked like a queen holding court with her knights. “We have to be more careful,” she said. “Not that I like hiding anything—I want to scream it from the rooftops—but we can’t be careless. What happened in Coober Pedy shouldn’t have happened. I got carried away, and I didn’t think about it. But we can’t do that, especially here. So, in the hotel, we can do whatever we would do at home, but outside it, I’m just one of your clients, okay?”
We all agreed that there was too much at risk right to be reckless. “So, who’s going to the clinic with me?” she asked.
Ethan still had that edge of panic on his face. He was no good to Adrianne like that. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m better at the ‘boundaries in public’ thing than you, Cal. No offense.”
“Offense taken.” Callan sulked, but he relented to the idea of staying behind.
While she changed, I called the nearest clinic and dropped Adrianne’s name... and there was suddenly no line ahead of her. “The clinic is three blocks away,” I said. “Is it more attention-grabbing to call the car or to throw a hat and shades on her and walk it?”
“Walk,” Adrianne voted. “I’d like a little sunshine, I think.” She put on a pair of sunglasses. Ethan donated a ball cap, and Callan gave her a hoodie to put on. While she still looked like Adrianne Montoya, it would give her enough coverage for us to get down to the clinic and back.
Exiting the hotel was actually fun. I took her down the back elevator and out a service door in order to avoid any lingering photographers. It felt almost like doing a covert mission again for the SEALs. As we walked down the street, she stood close but not overly near me. She was more a weight against my side. “Are you going to be... disappointed if I’m pregnant?” Adrianne asked softly. “Or would it be worse if I weren’t?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t think I’ve completely wrapped my head around any of it,” I said as honestly as I could.
She chuckled. “Me neither.”
“I wish you wouldn’t have holed up like you did. We could have talked this all out days ago.”
I tried not to stare at Adrianne while we walked, but it was hard not to watch her face. “I was worried about nearly getting caught,” she said, “and then after taking the pregnancy test... I just needed some time to think.”
“And what did you think about?”
She shrugged. “What I wanted,” she said. “What I thought I could handle.”
“So, just trivial stuff then,” I joked, and Adrianne laughed and nodded. “Seriously, though, we’re here for the big stuff.”
“I know. I hired you all because I had a stalker problem, remember?”
“Hard to forget,” I said.Though, thankfully, distance has made that easier to deal with, I thought. Putting an ocean between Adrianne and her stalker was the best thing on that front, but we wouldn’t solve that issue here. It was still waiting for us at home.Another problem for another day.