reached immediately for the box I was carrying.
“Oh, but I do care,” he said. “I care about big this story is going to get before it’s all said and done. You think you got away with the whole pie, but there are plenty of pieces left. And next time you see me, I’ll be the one eating them.” He made an obnoxious, vulgar display with his tongue to punctuate his point before he left.
“What an arsehole,” Sean muttered as he returned to my side.
I had to laugh. “Totally.”
With that, I climbed into the car, bidding goodbye to the last of my old life.
Chapter Twelve
Thanks to PING, my life changed in ways I hadn’t predicted. For instance, I could no longer just go to the obstetrician. It became a mission that one had to execute with military precision or else it would have become front page news.
Why? I didn’t know. There was nothing remotely interesting about my life that demanded that kind of scrutiny.
Well, I suppose that was untrue. I was keeping company with a prince, and that wasn’t something that happened every day. Auggie had made it all seem easy somehow, even with all the opulence, that I was taken off guard how my entire life would be impacted.
I canceled the previous appointment under my name and allowed Audra to make a new appointment with the physician’s group that looked after Auggie in Los Angeles. We used an alias for obvious reasons, and Sean set everything up for me so that I didn’t have to wait in a public waiting room, scheduling the appointment before office hours. I went alone, since Fern was now also recognizable, which broke my heart. I didn’t want to do this without my family, but they were mine to protect now every bit as much as my little Peanut.
I held my head up and plowed forward, doing what needed to be done. I was whisked right upstairs to a private office where Dr. Saoirse Hamish met with me for our first consultation.
On paper her current area of expertise was general medicine, but she had interned and trained as an OB/GYN PA for fifteen years beforehand. I would come to learn later that she was the one who treated the royal women whenever they wanted to keep certain conditions under wraps for whatever reasons.
Hence why I was there that early morning.
She stood tall and thin, with long hair that was dyed silver-gray. It matched her eyes. “Good afternoon, Peaches,” she greeted with an outstretched hand. Like Auggie, her accent lingered around the edges. I knew at once she was Aldaynean.
“Hello, Dr. Hamish.”
“That’s an unusual name you have there. Is it a nickname?”
“No, I just have a radically creative mother.”
Dr. Hamish chuckled and so did I. She sat on the tiny stool. “Sounds fascinating. Why don’t we start with your family history, then?”
I nodded and proceeded to tell her everything. No diabetes or heart disease in the immediate family, no high blood pressure, no history of migraines. No mental illness, just a lot of quirky eccentricities. Never smoked, occasionally drank. No prior surgeries. Last period was January 24th.
“Ah, a Halloween baby,” she noted, and the way her accent cradled the word ‘baby’ made me smile. “That should be lots of fun.”
I nodded. I already had ideas of how to celebrate the greatest Halloween treat of my life.
“And the father. What can you tell me about his medical history?”
“Nothing,” I admitted sheepishly. I wasn’t ashamed of my sexual history, but I was mortified that history included someone icky like Christopher. “It was a one-night-stand.”
“I see,” she said, noting her file before closing the folder. “What I’d like to do is perform a battery of tests to see where everything stands currently. Blood sugar, sonogram, that sort of thing. You haven’t eaten yet?”
I shook my head. “Not since midnight.”
“Excellent. I’ll send the nurse in to draw some blood.”
I must have made a face because she took immediate notice. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’ve had a really tough time with morning sickness,” I admitted.
“Don’t you worry. We can take care of all that.”
I sighed in relief.
The nurse came in for the bloodwork. I gave urine and they had me lay back for a physical examination that culminated in a pap smear.
Finally, they hooked me up to an ultrasound machine. Dr. Hamish squirted cold goop all over my tummy, before using a wand to pick up a visual on the monitor. I watched with eager anticipation, even though I had no