Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(68)

“Little bit of cold here.” The technician squeezed clear, freezing cold goop onto Carmen’s bare belly. Then she put the sonogram sensor in the goop and adjusted the monitor with her other hand. “Okay, let’s see what we got.”

Theo gripped Carmen’s hand and leaned over. Carmen watched him instead of the monitor. His expression was deeply rapt, as if he thought he could see more on that screen than the technician would point out.

“Okay!” The technician’s voice was excessively perky for first thing in the morning. “We have a head.” She tapped some keys, and little cursors moved over the screen. It looked like she was measuring. She did the same thing, moving the sensor, pointing out the heart, legs, arms, fingers. “We’re getting a nice look. Baby’s not shy at all. Doctor will want to confirm, but I’m showing twenty-two weeks, two days.”

That adjusted her due date closer by at least a week. Good news—she was already tired of being pregnant. “Can you tell what the sex is?”

“Well, let’s see.” The technician rooted around some more with the sensor. Sometimes, she pressed pretty hard but didn’t seem to care that she was hurting. Carmen could think of a couple of things that would make her care.

“Are you sure you want to know?” Theo had turned away from the screen to look at her. “You don’t want it to be a surprise?”

“It’s a baby, not a Christmas present, Theodore.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Fair enough.” They both turned back to the monitor.

“Okay. Got a good look. Right…there.” The technician held the sensor in place, tapped some keys, and an arrow appeared on the screen.

Carmen squinted but saw nothing.

“I don’t see anything.” Theo echoed her thought.

The technician smirked. “Exactly.”

“So…it’s a girl?” Carmen felt a flare of hostility toward this perky little twat in pink scrubs who was turning an ultrasound into a guessing game.

“Exactly!”

Theo’s hand clenched hard on Carmen’s. Carmen, however, was too pissed at the technician for the information to sink in.

Giggling at her own cleverness, the pink twat struck some more keys. A grainy strip of photographs rolled out of the machine, and she handed it to Theo. Then she wiped off the sensor and handed Carmen a wad of tissues. As she put the machine to rights, she said, “Once you’re dressed, you can go back out to the waiting room. Dr. Heath will want to talk to you to confirm the scan. Congratulations!” Then she bopped out and left Theo and Carmen alone in the dim room.

“Jesus, what an insipid little shit,” Carmen grumbled, swiping the slime off her belly with an angry flourish.

Theo grabbed the wrist of her hand holding the gunked-up tissues. “Carmen, stop. Take a breath. Be in this moment. We’re having a little girl.”

Carmen stopped and took the breath. She had a little girl growing inside her. A daughter.

“Holy shit.”

Theo stood and kissed her belly. Then he met her eyes and grinned. “Exactly.”



oOo



That night, they spent a quiet, domestic evening at her cottage, away from her family, cocooned in their mutual bliss. She called her family, and he called his sons, with the news. Her family wanted to meet at the house on Caravel Road to celebrate, which was the thing that they always did when good news was to be had, but Carmen told them to back off. They wanted to be alone together on this night.

She kept picking the black and white photographs off the refrigerator and staring at them. Her child. Her child. She had a man and a child. A family of her own.

Her blood fizzed happily.

After a quiet dinner of Chinese takeout and a movie watched while snuggled together on the sofa, Theo, who’d been getting a little restless, went to take a shower. Carmen cleaned up their dinner mess, putting the cartons in the fridge for breakfast. Cold Chinese was probably not the world’s healthiest breakfast, but it was delicious.

She closed the fridge and, again, pulled the photographs down.

She and Theo were making a child. A daughter.

Suffused with an unfamiliar kind of happiness that simply had to be expressed, she stripped out of her leggings and oversized t-shirt, dropped them and her bra to the kitchen floor, and crossed to the bathroom.

She opened the door and then stopped. Through the thickening haze of steam, and the beads of water on the clear glass door, she saw Theo with his forehead on the tile, simply standing there, his hands on the tile at either side of his head, letting the hot water spray over his back.

He didn’t look like a man who shared her happiness.

She opened the shower door and got in. He stood straight immediately, turned, and smiled at her. “Hey. Fancy meeting you here.” That smile was weary, though. Too weary.

“Thought you might like company.”

His smile sharpened, became more real. “Always.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her close, lowering his head to kiss her. She felt him harden against her belly.

Reluctantly, she broke the kiss and stared into his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. Can’t you tell?” He flexed his hips, pressing his erection on her.

Deciding that the shower was the wrong time and place to attempt a serious conversation, especially while his fingers teased at her nipples and his teeth plucked lightly at her neck, Carmen abandoned the question and wrapped her hands around his gorgeous cock. Leading him thusly, she turned them until the water was out of her way. Then she bent her knees and knelt at his feet.