Prognosis Baby Daddy - Amy Andrews Page 0,43

the best.

And, anyway, he wanted to be the father in the room, not the doctor.

Katya knew the moment the screen flickered to life and her baby appeared in a grainy black and white image that the ultrasound was the worst thing she could have agreed to. She held Ben’s hand and barely heard Rocco or Ben’s translation at all.

She was totally and completely mesmerised by the tiny little life she could see on the screen.

It was no longer ‘the baby’ or ‘it’. It was a real, living, breathing, kicking, squirming baby. Her baby. All this baby needs is for you to love it. That’s what Ben had said. And she did. Right now, her love for this tiny human being filled her completely.

Overwhelmed her.

Katya felt connected, truly connected with her child for the first time. Feeling it kick had nothing on this. She was actually seeing inside her womb. Actually looking at her baby. It had been so easy to think of it, make decisions about it when all she’d had to confirm her pregnancy had been a pink line on a test kit and greeting the toilet bowel every morning.

But this? Actually meeting her baby. Seeing its ten fingers and ten perfect toes. Watch it as it sucked its thumb. Follow the curve of its perfectly formed spinal column. See its tiny, fragile-looking heart beat sure and steady. This was real.

Rocco pushed a button and the room filled with a magical pulsating. Whop. Whop. Whop. A symphony. A concerto. There really was a baby inside her. It wasn’t an abstract concept any more. An inconvenient hiccup in her life plan. It was real.

She was a mother.

‘Rocco says the baby is a good size and that your dates are spot on. He says everything looks fine.’

Ben almost winced at the grip Katya had on his hand. He looked down at her, her eyes glued to the little screen. She had a strange, intense expression on her face. ‘He wants to know if we want to know the sex?’

Katya nodded distractedly but she hadn’t really heard him. She couldn’t take her eyes off her baby. She was mesmerised by the tiny central flicker in its chest.

‘Katya?’

‘Hmm?’ she asked, dragging her eyes away reluctantly from the screen. ‘What?’

‘Do you want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl?’

Katya blinked. Did she? She hadn’t thought about it in any real sense until now. The baby’s sex was just another one of those things she’d blanked out of her mind. Hadn’t permitted herself to think about too much.

And if Rocco had asked her yesterday she would have given him an emphatic no. She would have classified that as information not necessary to her goal. But now, her baby on the screen in front of her, she was overwhelmed with the urge to know.

‘Do you?’ she asked.

Ben smiled at her sheepishly. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he admitted.

He, too, had been surprised by the power of the tiny image on the screen. Feeling the baby kicking had been amazing but this was so much more incredible. He was going to be a father and his curiosity to know everything about this tiny precious human being was incredibly strong.

Katya nodded at Rocco. He smiled at her. ‘Ragazzo,’ he said. ‘A boy.’

Katya looked at the screen again. She was having a baby boy. A son. Ben’s hand gripped hers and his grin was crazy big in profile. He seemed as taken by the image as she. Would he look like his father? Would he have dark brown eyes, killer eyelashes and a quick lazy grin?

Rocco said something to Ben and Ben nodded. ‘Rocco has to go,’ Ben announced.

No! She wasn’t finished looking yet. The baby was still moving around, his tiny movements endlessly fascinating. She didn’t want Rocco to turn it all off. She wanted to watch her baby forever.

‘Katya?’ Ben prompted.

Katya nodded reluctantly. She reached forward and touched her hand to the cold screen to prolong contact with her baby boy for just a little while longer. Rocco removed the transducer from her abdomen and the image went blank. She kept her hand flat against the screen, not ready to break contact.

Her baby. Her son.

‘There, see,’ Ben teased as Katya slowly withdrew her hand, ‘I told you the baby was fine.’

‘He,’ Katya corrected.

Ben nodded and grinned at the wonder in her voice. ‘Our son.’

She looked absolutely smitten and for the first time Ben felt a little ray of hope. Had seeing their son’s image been