Trust in Me (11 page)

He couldn’t allow that.

So he kept everything light. Made her laugh when he could. Fed her as often as he was able. Let her be grumpy and run her claws up one side of him and down the other if that was what she wanted. Sure his brothers called him crazy and Amanda said he was going to stifle any chance he had with her. None of them knew the truth and that was how they were going to keep it. She needed him to feel safe and he needed her not to leave with his heart and his child. If the baby was going to have a fighting chance—hell, if their future was going to have a chance—there was no other way. Moments like this, though, when she was so vulnerable and raw and afraid, keeping it light took every bit of his concentration.

“I’d blame you less if you’d return the favor.”

Now this was a surprise. “You
want
me to walk around naked?”

All week long, though she’d allowed him the freedom to touch her at will, gave kisses that turned him back into a teenager desperate for the backseat of a car and took her own liberties that had him seeing God, she’d firmly maintained no sex until after she had the okay from the doctor. Since he was the dumbass who’d insisted she see the local doctor, they’d had to wait until Penelope had room in her schedule.

She laughed, getting up on her elbows to look at him as if he was being ridiculous. She really wanted to see him wandering around in the buck, just for the pleasure of looking?

Suddenly he had the urge to preen. “Where would I be doing all this…walking?”

“Oh, sure, like you’d actually do it for me. You won’t even come out of the shower stall without a towel wrapped around you. Which hides
nothing
, I might add.” Her frustration at that came through loud and clear. The paper beneath her crinkled as she dropped back down on a huffed breath, stroking his ego further. She kept this up, he was going to have to slap himself to make sure he was awake.

“I never really thought about it. Probably habit more than any sense of modesty. Couldn’t exactly air dry with Amanda running around the house.” And his mother would have haunted his ass for teaching any of the boys to do something so inconsiderate. Especially after she’d had such a hard time getting them all to keep their clothes
on
.

“Really? Not even after she left? Or when no one else is home?”

He frowned. Wait a minute. Did that mean she’d been running around in her apartment stark naked all this time and he’d been across the street, completely oblivious? “No…”

Susie’s surprise at his answer probably matched his own at the thought of her cruising nude, but she recovered faster. Her gaze raked down his entire length slowly, hungrily, and damn if his mouth didn’t go dry by the time she got back up to his face. “You could always do it at my apartment,” she replied huskily.

He could. But the idea of another night in her torture chamber of a bed had his back twitching. “How about—”

“I knew it!” she crowed before he could finish. “I
knew
it was too good to be true.”

“I’m not saying no,” he pointed out.

“Uh-huh.
Suuuure
you’re not.” Suspicious woman. Of course, she was right to be.

“Today’s Friday. We could get the brats to watch the stores and take the weekend off. Have a little time just for us.”

“Just for us to
what
?” Cruel, cruel woman. Like she didn’t know.

“Were you planning on me walking alone?”

“Actually, I kind of was.” She blinked a few times, clearly mulling pros and cons. “You know what would happen if we were both naked.”

Yes, yes he did. And he wanted to be as close as possible to his giant four-poster bed when it did.

He watched her steadily as she came to grips with what he was telling her. He didn’t hide his greed for her any more than she had for him. It didn’t take long for her to feel it. Her breath went shallower, her gaze darkening and her eyes taking on a sleepy, sensual gleam that had him wondering if this exam room door had a lock.

“Just for the weekend, right?”

He nodded. To start… Two nights stretched out in a warm bed with a fireplace and a private bathroom that bore the real clincher—a Jacuzzi tub that could soak him and her with room to spare. He’d bet real money she’d be as happy to return to her mean little bed as he was.

Was he being underhanded and sneaky to seduce her into moving in with him by any means possible? Absolutely. He’d promised to be patient, not fair. Step by step, he planned to lure Susie to her permanent place in his life. If everything went as he hoped, she’d wake up one day and happily notice that they’d been married for twenty years.

She opened her mouth to answer but right then, a polite knock at the door and the knob turned in his hand.

The doctor had arrived.

For a man who supposedly knew so much about babies, he sure was asking a lot of questions. Susie played a visual tennis game, her gaze bouncing from her lover to her new doctor until she started to get dizzy.

“Locke, we have six more months of appointments,” she finally growled, grabbing his hand and squeezing his fingers as tight as she could so she could drag his attention from the pretty little brunette who seemed to be doing her level best to give him an answer he’d accept. “Please don’t make me kill you before we get to the second one.”

“I just want to be as sure as possible that you’re both safe.” Yup, she could practically knock on the lack of remorse in that sentence.

“And
I
just want to finish this appointment before I freeze my bare ass off.” She smiled at him as sweetly as her gritting teeth would allow.

He stared down at her, brows drawn into that frown she knew too well.

“Don’t. You. D—”

He dropped one of those fast, brain scrambling kisses on her, right in front of Penelope. She swallowed the whimper that tried to escape when he pulled away, opening her eyes slowly.

“Better?” he asked, stoic as always, his gaze locked on her as if Penelope wasn’t in the room with them.

Yes.
“No.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t call her on the lie. He hadn’t called her on much all week, which was sweet but almost as aggravating as when he did. That just wasn’t how they did things. She understood, but it was making her insane.

“Tell you what, Mr. Jackman,” Penelope said into the quiet between them. “Let’s finish the exam and then we’ll see if I can’t give you a few more concrete answers.”

Locke’s jaw ticked, but he eventually nodded. Poor man was hanging on by a thread. Susie twined her fingers with his, sucking in a breath when Penelope folded down the paper sheet to the lowest part of her belly and squirted a clear gel neatly onto her skin. Unlike the other offices where she’d had procedures done, this time, the gel was warmed. The nurse turned off the lights, making the monitor of the screen the only light source and Locke nearly jumped.

“What’s that for?”

“She’s going to do an ultrasound,” Susie answered before Penelope could. She’d had this done before, had already been versed in what she should find on the screen. Even though she hadn’t bled, hadn’t had pain, the litany repeating in her head wouldn’t stop—
please don’t be empty. Please don’t be empty…

A fuzzy image filled the small screen. Small black outlines showed the edges of things, but not enough that Susie could figure out what they were looking at. Penelope quietly manipulated the machine’s dials and controls, stopping from time to time to focus on something and make the ultrasound print.

“Aren’t we supposed to be able to see the baby?” Locke asked gruffly. Susie looked at him, taking in the shadowed lines on his face, his deeply drawn brows. Could Penelope see his disappointment? She must, because she sent him a gently reassuring smile. Susie decided she could keep seeing this woman for that alone.

“Not so much from this angle, no. But don’t worry, we’ll get there. The baby is only twelve weeks, which is still quite small in the scheme of things. I wanted to be as thorough as possible, is all. This ultrasound isn’t as strong as the ones in the imaging center, so I wanted to set up a baseline. Uterine size, take a look at your ovaries, see if there might be any external keloidal scar tissue we need to be concerned with.”

“And is there?” Locke’s frown could have been carved by a rock. All the same, Susie was glad he asked. She didn’t have the nerve.

Penelope pulled away the triangular-headed apparatus, wiping it off before handing it to her nurse to put away. She smiled, reassuring and friendly. “Not that I could see. It’s not common without surgery, but it’s always good to check the bases.”

Cara gave Penelope another tool, this one long, thin and with a small ball at the end. Penelope held it in place as the assistant slid a thin sheath over it, then squirted more goo on the end. That job completed, Cara circled the doctor and began pulling out the metal stirrups from the end of the table.

Locke sidled closer to Susie’s head. “Is that thing what I think it is?”

Unfortunately. “Don’t be threatened, baby,” Susie cooed, using his own endearment, just to see how
he
liked it. “Penelope could never do it like
yoooooou
.”

“Damn straight she can’t,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off the Wand of Doom, as Susie tended to think of it.

Cara stifled a giggle but Penelope did little to hide her grin. “Ready?”

Susie tried to hold on to the humor, but it slipped away as her mouth dried. The chanting in her mind returned, almost drowning out her ability to answer. Until Locke’s hold on her hand tightened. Not in assurance, either.

He was as scared as her. Only, despite his seeming confidence, he had no idea what to expect. He’d been trying to keep his fears to himself, as if she wouldn’t notice. As if she couldn’t feel it radiating from him in waves. This was his first time. His first child. He had every right to be nervous.

Following her instincts, she brought their joined hands to her lips, pressing a kiss onto his knuckles. For his sake more than her own, she prayed silently for the baby to be all right. She nodded for Penelope, then held her breath.

The wand moved into her slowly, pushing past her resistance, offering a shaky picture of mostly static until it finally stopped. Penelope kept her eyes on the screen, moving the angle of the wand until she found what she was searching for. A pool of darkness, where the small ovalish shape of Susie’s uterus formed a pocket. Susie’s heart skipped at what appeared to be complete emptiness, but then Penelope changed the angle once again. And suddenly there it was.

Their baby. Alive.
Real.

Penelope fiddled, took some stills, then zoomed in. A little body, with tiny, waving arms and legs, the round head pointed down while the round belly took up almost as much space as the head.

Susie gasped while Locke’s hand began to shake.

“There she is,” he breathed, and she realized he’d crouched down to be next to her. Or maybe his knees had just given way. She wasn’t sure, couldn’t blame him if they did. She wrapped both her hands around his now, holding him to her closed lips, doing her best not to sob in relief. Hot tears streamed down her cheeks anyway, blurring her vision. So very, very alive. She wiped viciously at her wet lashes, hating that the tears got in the way. She’d waited so long for this moment—

Rough, gentle fingers stroked the moisture away, just before Locke pressed another hard kiss to the side of her face. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice rougher than she’d ever heard it. He kept his face buried against her hair. “For giving me this.”

“I haven’t given you anything yet.” That small being on the screen, though, made her wonder if this time—please God, this time—she might.

Locke picked up his head, his icy gaze determined and gleaming with the same moisture as her own. With faith she only wished she had. “You will.”

How could she not love him? And yet, though the emotions strangled her, she couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat. She so did the next best thing. She kissed him, a brief touch of their lips, but she hoped it was enough.

Penelope cleared her throat lightly. “Well, as you can see, your baby is doing fine. In a good position, near the top of the fundus. That will likely change as the pregnancy progresses, but I don’t see anything to be concerned with. The cervix is clear and the placenta is implanted away from the Fallopian openings. Those would have been my main concerns. Now let’s inspect this little guy a little closer and make sure development is moving along as it should.”

They watched together, both riveted as Penelope took more measurements, explained more about the structures they were seeing. The string of tiny, glowing stars that formed her spine. The tiny fluttering light that was the baby’s heart. And when she turned on the sound…

A rapid, steady staccato filled the room. The beats so fast they were nearly on top of each other.

“That’s a good, strong heart,” Penelope told them approvingly.

“She gets it from her father,” Susie whispered, her voice strained to her own ears.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Penelope mused, turning off the sound before pulling the wand free. “Seems to me her mother might have a little to do with it as well.”

Susie was never so glad to have her doctor go about taking care of her equipment, needing the space to pull herself together. All the while, Locke was there, silently stroking her hair. Not demanding. Not taking over. Just waiting, comforting. The storm of emotion still seemed to fill the room, a nervous energy that had Susie feeling shaky and still afraid. Until she walked out of this room, until Penelope told her everything was completely as it should be, she couldn’t relax. She just…couldn’t.

“We’re going to give you a few minutes to get dressed—I’m leaving a few wet naps here for you to clean up with—and then I’ll be back to talk with you both. Okay?”

Susie nodded, lying back until both Penelope and Cara were gone. Locke handed her the foil wipes, then edged out from behind the table to fetch her clothes on the chair. He brought them back to her somberly. She dressed without a word, letting him help her keep her balance as she put her leggings back on. Was it because he knew she wasn’t ready for words yet? Because he sensed that their particular game was just asking too much of her right now? Or was it that he was beyond words as well? What was he thinking, this man who thought too much and said so little?