The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,21

and I knew it. It wasn’t the way to move forward. It was a way to get stuck.

At that moment, my OB/GYN walked in, pulling me out of the vicious circle of my thoughts and back into the real world. She wasn’t the doctor I’d seen before—that time, another doctor had been covering her shift—so this was the first chance I was going to have to talk to her about the baby… and what I was supposed to do about it.

“So, Bella, I hear you’ve been busy. No pun intended,” she said, a smile curling the corner of her mouth.

I smiled as well. I’d known Dr. Madden since I’d attended my first Pap smear at twenty-five, and I didn’t mind her teasing me about this particular situation.

“Not intentionally,” I replied. “I’m more used to using all of my time for work. As you know.”

She turned to me, both eyebrows lifted. “And yet now, you’re doing an entirely different kind of work. You’re about nine weeks along now, yes?”

“Right,” I said.

A nod, and then, “And do you know who the father is?”

I snorted. “Of course I do, what sort of woman do you take me for?”

“Hey, these are the questions I have to ask, even if you’ve already answered them for someone else,” Dr. Madden said, jotting something down on her file—probably to do with me getting overly defensive about the question. Then she looked up, her face completely serious. “Are you keeping the baby?”

I nodded immediately. No matter what I decided about Ethan, this little one was coming into the world, and there was no argument about that.

She returned my nod, her face still serious. “And is the father going to be involved? Have you discussed that with him?”

I bit my lip. Obviously, I couldn’t tell her that the father actually wanted to buy the baby from me. But if I told him no… would he still want to be involved? Or would he cut and run? Honestly, I had no clue. The idea of him buying the baby had hit me so hard that I hadn’t even stopped to think about what he would do if I said no.

Did I want him to be involved? Did I want to try to have that sort of relationship with him?

A part of my screamed that hell yes, I absolutely wanted to have some sort of relationship with him. Because if he could offer me and the baby safety with the agreement he’d proposed, just imagine how much safety he could offer in person! Just imagine how much he’d do for the baby if he stayed involved, and if we both got to see them all the time!

And it was only for the baby. I swear. It didn’t have anything to do with his tall-dark-and-handsome good looks or the sparkling eyes or the way we naturally got on so well. I’m serious.

Of course, there was another part of me that was screaming that it could never work. That we were too different, our worlds too far apart, for anything like that to ever work. That it would be a failed experiment right from the start.

That I couldn’t afford the risk to my career. I couldn’t afford to be seen with him and start all the questions that would inevitably come about exactly how I’d won that court case.

And finally, there was a tiny, tiny part of me that knew that seeing him again would just be dangerous, plain and simple. Because I’d seen the way he looked at me and I knew how I’d responded to it. I knew that there were still nights—two months later!—when I fell asleep thinking of how his hair had fallen across his forehead when he ducked his head and laughed.

I knew that if I saw him again—if I had to see him too often—then those nights would become even more common. And I couldn’t afford to fall in love with a man I’d never be able to have.

And that part right there? That was the part that drove the answer I gave my doctor.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He and I come from very different worlds, and I don’t think we’ll be able to mix them. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

She gave me a sympathetic nod, as if she didn’t need to hear anything more than that, and then turned to the many-tubed machine sitting next to her.

“In that case, I won’t worry about asking if he wants to be here for this.