Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(45)

And tomorrow’s appointment was actually today. Four hours to be exact. She rubbed her belly, not sure if she was more nervous about seeing the baby or Cole.





Chapter Thirteen


Cole was late. He hated being late but especially for this. He vaulted up the stairs to Tess’s doctor’s office two at a time and hurried into suite 244. All the women in the crowded waiting room and the bored receptionist looked up when he strode in—none of them was Tess.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.

“You looking for someone?” the receptionist asked, her gaze already back on her computer screen.

“Tess Gardner,” he said, keeping his voice barely above a whisper in the silent room.

“She’s already gone back,” she said, still not looking up, her fingers flying across her keyboard. “Hold on and one of the nurses will walk you to the ultrasound room.”

Cole looked around while he waited, too nervous to sit down in one of the chairs even if there’d been one available. That’s how he clocked the woman in the corner doing a not-so-subtle job of taking a creeper shot.

Shit.

Yanking down the brim of the ball cap he’d worn in hopes of disguising himself, he did his best to shrink back into the corner. However, at six foot three and the only dude in the room, he wasn’t exactly blending.

He’d have to let the team PR guru, Lucy, know. The press would have a field day figuring out why he was here, who he was with, and everything about Tess. He wasn’t about to let that happen. She hadn’t signed up for that kind of scrutiny any more than she’d asked him to use expired condoms.

Way to just totally fuck up someone else’s life plan, Phillips.

The door to the hallway leading to the exam rooms opened up and a guy in scrubs with baby rattles all over them peeked out. “Tess Gar—”

“That’s me,” Cole said, rushing forward before the guy could announce Tess’s full name to Ms. Nosy and the rest of the room.

They went straight to the door at the end of the hallway, where Mr. Rattle Scrubs knocked, waited for Tess’s “come in,” and opened the door for Cole to walk in first.

Tess was lying down on an exam bed, her bottom half covered with one of those paper sheet things. She was gnawing on her bottom lip, her eyes huge behind her glasses.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he loitered in the doorway, not sure where to go or what to do. “Traffic coming in from across the bridge was a nightmare.”

“More than three hundred thousand cars go over the bridge every day,” she said. “It’s the only fourteen-lane suspension bridge in the world.”

He walked toward her, stopping at the foot of the exam table. “And I would have done commuter battle with all three hundred thousand to get here for this.”

She gave him a little nod, and some of the tension in his body loosened.

“If we’re ready to do this, then you should go stand over there near Tess’s head. There’s a chair if you want to sit down, or you can stand,” Mr. Rattle Scrubs said. “Then I’ll dim the lights and we’ll get started.”

Cole did what he was told, reaching down and taking Tess’s hand in his, giving her a reassuring squeeze even as his own nerves were going crazy. She gave him the smallest of smiles and squeezed back.

At first the black-and-white screen on the ultrasound machine just looked like a barren planet, but then a small black circle appeared with a little alien-looking blob inside it. The tech clicked the mouse a few times and made some noncommittal uh-huh noises while Tess’s grip on his hand got tighter and tighter.

“That’s your little peanut right there, and that”—a whoosh-whoosh sound came from the machine—“is their heartbeat.”

Cole plopped down into the chair beside the exam table. He hadn’t meant to, but his legs just stopped working while his body felt like he was floating and falling at the same time.

They were having a baby.

He’d known it before, but now it was as if he knew it in a whole different way. Bringing Tess’s hand up to his mouth, he kissed her knuckles. Their gazes locked, and when he saw her huge grin, something shifted inside him. It was as if absolute joy and terror had shoved aside his well-ordered routine and declared a new sheriff was in town.

…

The rest of the appointment after seeing the baby was a bit of a blur. It was almost like she’d just driven home by instinct and adrenaline. Emotions too high for trivia, she’d begged off going to Marino’s and had beaten him home. She was coming out of her room when she heard him talking in the kitchen.

“Yes, Mom, I know this is unexpected, but it’s good news. Really. And no, you can’t tell anyone else yet. Tess and I need to talk about when she wants to let people know.”

Oh God. She hadn’t even thought about other people wanting to know about the baby. Everyone she cared about, her girls, already knew. And her mom? Last they’d talked, she was living her best single life with some guy in Vegas, and that had been a year ago. The rest of her family was here in Waterbury but they…well, they weren’t close in a family way. But Cole? He had family and friends and a whole life full of people who’d want to know.

“No, Dad, there is no reason for a prenup. One, she doesn’t want to get married and two, this wasn’t something she planned as a way to trap me into marriage. Tess isn’t like that.” He paused. “Yes, I know that about her even if I haven’t known her that long.”