too true to his word. I have literally only seen him twice in the past few weeks. He’s working crazy hours, he goes to the gym to work out, and he shops for our groceries. I don’t ask where else he hangs out, but it’s not at my place.
“I told you that I wouldn’t bother you. I just want to be there in case you need me.”
The next words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. “How will you know if I need you if you’re never there?”
He focuses really hard on my eyes, maybe trying to read my mind. “Are you saying you want me around more often?”
I shrug, looking out the front window. “I’m not saying anything. I was just making a comment.” Admitting to him that I might actually want him around is way more difficult than it should be, probably, but I have a problem showing weakness, and that’s what this feels like.
I can hear the smile in his voice. “I can be around more often if you want. If you need someone to rub your feet or your back . . .”
I pull my wrist out of his hand and open the door. “Shut up.” I know he’s just joking with me. I cannot even imagine him sitting there at my feet rubbing them. I don’t think he’s ever even seen my toes before.
Lucky shuts his door and meets me on the sidewalk. His hand moves to the small of my back as we walk up to the front door together. Women walking by us do a double-take and stare. Even with the stupid beard he’s started to grow, he’s still too good-looking.
He opens the door for me, and I roll my eyes at him glaring when I’m done.
“What’s wrong?” He strokes his chin. “You don’t like my beard?”
“Of course I love your beard. Who doesn’t love giant tufts of pubic hair on a man’s face?” I leave him standing there in the entrance, thrilled that I got the last word in about his stupid attempt at making himself ugly. As if he could ever be anything other than gorgeous.
I walk up to the front desk and give them my name, and I’m asked to sit down, fill out some forms, and be patient.
“Of course,” I say as I take a seat and pick up a magazine, handing Lucky the papers.
Lucky sits next to me. “Of course what?” He starts filling out the forms. He knows way more about me than I realized.
“Of course I have to be patient. It’s not like you can say you have an appointment at ten o’clock and have the doctor actually see you at ten o’clock. No, that would make too much sense. That would be too easy. Ten means eleven, probably.”
Lucky looks around the room and drops his voice. “I think it would be some kind of miracle for a doctor to stay on schedule with the kind of stuff they deal with every day.”
I laugh to myself as I page through the magazine. He’s probably right. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned pregnancy to get a woman panicking. I’m normally pretty cool about stuff, but even I worry about the weird things I’m reading about in the books. I don’t even want to think about the childbirth part of things. I’ve pretty much just been blocking that out of my mind entirely.
I hear my name being called five minutes later and look up to find a girl wearing a set of pink scrubs smiling at me and gesturing for me to enter the inner sanctum. I get up and Lucky follows.
I talk to him under my breath. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yep. Absolutely.”
We follow the girl into an examination room that has a big machine in the corner. The lights are very dim.
“Go ahead and take everything off from the waist down and then lie on the table. You can put that paper over you.” She smiles once more and then disappears. I look at the closed door, at Lucky, and finally at the table. “Is she serious?”
Lucky rubs his hands together and smiles. His teeth practically glow in the dark. “Now, this is what I’m talking about. X-rated doctor visits.”
I hiss out a breath of annoyance. “Shut up. If you keep acting like you’re twelve, I’m going to kick you out.”
He immediately stops doing his imitation of a fifth grader. “Fine. You want mature? I can be mature.” He folds his