fair, his expression was somewhere between embarrassed and sheepish. “She’ll want you if she cries.” His smile faltered. “To her, I’m still some bloke.”
I pressed my lips together and told myself there was nothing to feel bad about. But when those lids slid over his honey-colored eyes slowly and I saw his Adam’s apple bob, I opened my mouth to tell him that wouldn’t always be the case.
But he beat me to it.
“Not for too long though, yeh?” he asked me, or Mo, or maybe both of us.
Since I was the only one who could answer, he was lucky I nodded.
Fortunately, the buccal swabs didn’t take long at all, and even more luckily, Mo didn’t fuss. She was too busy pulling on my hair, and I was too busy telling her “No, no, no” to pay that much attention either.
Jonah stood right at my elbow the whole time, a physical eclipse of muscle blocking the overhead lights, as he’d burned a hole into the technician helping us.
“This won’t hurt her, will it?” the kinda-new dad had asked, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
The woman gave him a knowing smile. “Not at all.”
Then we were out of there with promises that we would be contacted with the results. The formal results at least. I was positive that the Fucker trusted I wasn’t lying about him being the father.
It wasn’t until we were walking down the hall to head out of the building that my stomach grumbled, and literally a split second later, I heard his grumble too. I remembered that from back in France. We’d had that in common—we were both always hungry.
This was the rest of my life.
And I wasn’t going to fucking ruin an hour of it, even if he did deserve a twenty-four-hour case of the shits.
Fuck it.
“I haven’t had any lunch,” I told him, even though I didn’t want to. But I knew I had to practice being decent to him. Not nice, just… okay. “You?”
He held the door open for us. “I had second brekkie about ten.”
Second breakfast had been my favorite thing back when I’d been trying to compete in a higher weight class. I missed those days of eating even more than I usually did and knowing it was for a good cause. “Want to go get some? I can probably drop you off at your hotel afterward if it isn’t too far. I need to get back to the gym.” I really didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
I could hear him directly behind me as we approached my car. “I’d love to. The hotel isn’t too far of a drive from here, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“All right.” I was doing this for Mo. I was doing this for Mo.
After we were all buckled in, I took my phone off airplane mode and found three voice mails from Grandpa Gus. Turning on the engine, I made sure the car’s Bluetooth didn’t pick it up and blast him over the speaker, and then called him back. He picked up immediately.
“Where are you?” he answered before I could make a sarcastic comment about being a stalker.
“We just got done at the lab….” I trailed off, hoping he wasn’t going to go on another rant about Jonah.
Grandpa mumbled something under his breath before asking in a stilted voice, “Can you take your time coming back?”
I frowned down at the steering wheel. Take my time going back to the gym? “Why?”
There was another pause, then, “Because.”
Because? Uh. “No promises?” I offered him as my brain took his tone and his question and ran with it. What the fuck was going on that he didn’t want me to see?
“Okay,” he replied before hanging up again.
What the hell was that about? Of course now I was going to drop by. He couldn’t say something like that and expect my red flags not to go up. What the hell was happening? I wondered as I put the car into reverse and said, “I have to run by the gym for a second. We can eat afterward, and I’ll drive you back to your hotel then.” Or I’d call him an Uber. Whatever. We could see what happened. If he got on my nerves, he could walk.
“Sure,” he agreed as I set the car into drive.
I wondered what the hell was going on with Grandpa Gus, and I kept on wondering as I drove us out of the parking lot with a quiet Jonah and a quietly babbling