Shame the Devil (Portland Devils #3) - Rosalind James Page 0,176

her hair back from her face, and said, “Hey, baby. It’s OK.”

“I just realized,” she said, her voice choked, “how much I want this.”

“Yeah,” he said, and kissed her forehead. “Me, too.”

When she’d first told him, his world had come crashing down. Pretty soon, though, he’d realized what his duty was, and he’d done it. Because he couldn’t stand to be the kind of man who didn’t.

When had he started wanting it? He couldn’t even say. All he knew was—he wanted it now. He was waiting and waiting, feeling Jennifer waiting, and nothing was happening.

Maybe you had to see something slipping away to realize how badly you needed it.

Come on, he prayed. Come on.

The doctor said, “Ah. Here we go.”

He was right there on the screen. A little Martian, his head too big for his body, his nose a flat blob of a thing, his chest sunken, his limbs skeletal. The dark triangle on his head that would be where the bone of his skull was still forming. The soft spot, that was called. He’d read about it.

The baby had his thumb in his mouth, and his skinny legs were kicking. Exactly like Harlan had pictured him the other night, and he had a moment of vertigo, like he couldn’t tell what was reality and what was his imagination.

That had been the moment. That had been when this whole thing had become real for him. He’d seen his boy, and he’d wanted him.

He wanted to be the kind of dad a boy needed. He wanted his son to know he could count on him. He wanted his boy to be able to look up to him, and he wanted to be the kind of man who deserved it.

He wanted to do it better. He wanted to do it right.

Jennifer’s hand was shaking. He held it tighter, and then realized that it wasn’t hers. It was his. He asked, “Is he … all right? Is that how he’s … supposed to look? His nose and everything? His hands? His eyes look … odd.” His voice wasn’t steady, either. He didn’t care.

The doctor said, “That’s a twenty-week fetus. He looks just fine to me. His eyes are finishing up their development now, and he won’t open them for another six to eight weeks. I’m going to take some measurements here, and some images. I’ll give you a thumb drive to take home, and you can look all you want.”

Harlan barely heard her. He was still staring at the screen. At toes and fingers. Arms and legs. Tiny feet. A penis. A person.

“He’s about seven inches long now,” Jennifer told him, and Harlan spread out his hand, the one that wasn’t holding hers, to imagine it. His hand was nine and a half inches long. Big. The better to grip a football with, he’d always thought. The baby was so much smaller than that, still. And so skinny.

He said, “I need to study menus more. Maybe get a cookbook.”

Jennifer groaned. “More kale?”

He had to smile. “Yep. Hey, you liked that crispy kind I did. Tell me what you want, though, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“You have minicamp next week,” she said.

He leaned over and kissed her. He didn’t care that the doctor was still doing her thing. He needed to say this. “I can have minicamp,” he promised, “and still take care of you. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

56

Further Questions

It had all been so emotional. Harlan’s hand had shaken, too. He’d been as nervous as she had, she’d swear it, and as affected by that picture on the screen. And then, when she was sitting up on the table again, he started asking completely different questions.

First, he told the doctor about her piercing. She wanted to hiss at him, “I was going to lead up to that!”

No leading up. He went straight there.

The doctor wasn’t fazed, at least. Judging by the leather pants, she might have some piercings herself. She said, “You’ll want to remove that for delivery, Jennifer, or if it gives you any discomfort. Otherwise, it’s fine.”

Jennifer had just breathed a sigh of relief at that being over when Harlan said, “Her orgasms with that thing are intense. I mean, really intense. And she has a lot of them in a row. Also, we sometimes do it more than once a day. Is that a problem? Could it start labor, or anything?”

Jennifer thought, Kill me now. Just kill me now. She couldn’t stand to look at the