Yours Truly (Billionaires and Brides #2) (13 page)

K
at

K
at woke
up and sat up gingerly. She looked around for AJ, hoping that perhaps he was still at her apartment, but she knew he wasn’t. The house was far too quiet and there were too many eyes watching him for him to stay. Even the fact that he had come last night was incredibly risky, but she appreciated it. She suspected that the reason she felt better today was because AJ had taken such good care of her. Slowly, she put her feet on the floor and walked to the bathroom. No nausea.

She let out a small sigh of relief. She was getting better. That terrible twisting of her stomach was only temporary and she was on the mend. She could even go into work today. There was so much to do, and since she had spent the day before nursing her illness, she was behind.

With a smile on her face, she went to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. Unfortunately, just opening up the bag of coffee was enough to make her stomach threaten to repeat the day before. She carefully sealed the bag and chose tea instead.

Sitting on the kitchen counter was one of the bottles of Gatorade that AJ had left her. She smiled as she opened it and took a sip. She’d bring the soup he had brought her for lunch today. Food actually sounded like a half-decent idea at the moment, so she found a saltine cracker and nibbled on it while she waited for her tea to brew.

The cracker stayed down. She figured she was as good as cured, which was a good thing. Feeling like that was not a pleasant experience. She decided she needed to be more careful about washing her hands and taking vitamins. There was no way she wanted to spend another day hugging a bowl if she could help it.

Her tea finished brewing and she took it and several more crackers to the small kitchen table. Warm sunlight filtered through her curtains, making the room sunny and bright. She closed her eyes, basking in the warmth like a cat for a moment.

Her phone chimed with a reminder. She let it sit for a moment as she enjoyed the peaceful morning. She wasn’t quite ready yet to see what the world and her phone wanted to remind her of. For the moment, she was happy and she wanted to enjoy it.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and checked her phone. The reminder was from an app she used to track her periods. It was a useful enough thing, reminding her when her next cycle was due to start and how long they lasted. Currently, there were two notifications.

The first was just a reminder that her period was due to start in one week. Kat shrugged and dismissed the notice. Maybe that was part of the reason why she had felt so many stomach cramps last night.

She frowned as she looked at the second notification.

You did not log your last period.

Kat stared at the words. She didn’t forget to log it. She never had it.

Quickly, Kat started doing the math in her head. The only man she’d been with this year was AJ. They had been so careful to use condoms every time, but she knew that condoms weren’t 100%.

Now that she thought about it, the night of the wedding they had used a condom. She remembered how raggedy it had looked, as if it had been there past the point when it was safe to use. Fun Kat had kept Boring Kat from checking it more closely.

A cold sweat broke out on her forehead that had nothing to do with being sick.

What if her sickness yesterday wasn’t the flu?

Kat quickly pulled up a search engine on her phone and found a pregnancy information page. Her eyes skimmed the articles, looking for the information she needed.

Ovulation typically occurs around week two after a period.
Using her period app and counting back on her fingers, that would have been the night of the wedding.

Kat swallowed hard and kept reading.

Count the weeks from the last missed period to tell how far along in your pregnancy you are.

According to her math, it was seven weeks almost to the day since her last missed period and a little over five weeks since she had met AJ.

Morning sickness usually starts around six weeks.

Kat quickly clicked on the link for pregnancy symptoms. She prayed that none of them would match. She wanted this latest bout of vomiting to be the flu. She wasn’t ready for the alternative.

S
igns of Pregnancy
:

• Tender breasts.
  Kat unconsciously touched herself and winced. She had thought it was just her new bra that was making her sore.
  
• Nausea with or without vomiting.
  Check.
  
• Increased urination.
  Check.
  
• Fatigue.
  Double Check.
  
• Food aversions.
  Check again.
  

H
er phone made
a loud click as she set it on the table. What if she
was
pregnant?

She wasn’t ready for this and she had a suspicion that AJ wasn’t ready either. They hadn’t even discussed the possibility of kids, or even a future beyond next week. She had really hoped to meet his parents before they had children together, or at least have introduced him to her family.

This wasn’t how she had planned her life.

A baby with AJ. Surprisingly, the idea of carrying his baby wasn’t scaring her. In fact, she rather liked the idea of it. Someday. Not today, though. She was very much smitten with him, but she wasn’t exactly ready to start a family with a man she had just met two months ago.

What would AJ think? Kat’s nausea came back. He was embroiled in the middle of a horrible scandal regarding his partner being sexually inappropriate with employees. And now, she was about to tell him that he just knocked up an employee.

The press would eat him alive for this. This was the worst thing that could happen to him in the current media climate. They had been worried about the press finding out about them dating. She could only imagine the uproar that would come from him impregnating her.

Panic crept up her throat and she was afraid she was going to puke again. She needed a plan. She needed to know that this was actually happening. She knew better than to believe everything she read on the Internet. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t pregnant and it was just the flu.

There was only one way to know for sure. She had to go take a pregnancy test.

It only took her ten seconds to find a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. She tried not to think about the fact that the jeans felt tighter than usual as she tied her shoes and hurried out the door. Kat would have run to the corner gas station if she hadn’t felt so sick to her stomach. She wasn’t sure if it was the flu, morning sickness, or just nerves.

Inside the small convenience store, she quickly located the easiest to read pregnancy test, paid cash, and hurried out the door. She was so desperate to know, she considered using the convenience store bathroom, but decided to just use her bathroom at home. Maybe it was just paranoia, but she didn’t want anyone but her knowing that she had even purchased a test.

The walk home seemed to take forever. Her future, once so certain and clear was suddenly cloudy and about to change. The weight of the world, complete with a possible new tiny human, sat squarely on her shoulders with every step home.

Once inside the safety of her own bathroom, she ripped open the box and read the instructions. It was pretty straightforward. Just pee on the stick and wait for the lines to appear.

For the first time in the past week, she was grateful for her near constant need to pee. She reread the directions one more time, just to make sure that she was going to correctly pee on a technological wonder correctly.

Then she sat down to wait as the test processed. The timer on her phone seemed to go in slow-motion.

Would the baby have AJ’s eyes or hers? Boy or girl? He or she would be born at the end of February, if she was indeed pregnant. What hospital would she deliver at? What would AJ think? Would he ask her to marry him? He’d make a great dad. What if he didn’t want to be a father?

Stop it
, she told herself, shaking her head to dispel the thoughts.
There’s no reason to worry until there is one.

Kat’s stomach was in knots as she waited. The timer slowly ticked down the seconds, each one longer than the last. She knew her whole world was about to change as soon as she looked at the plastic stick.

The phone timer chimed. Slowly, fingers shaking, Kat reached for the test and read it.

Two lines. Positive.

A
J

A
J looked
out the window for the fourth time in as many minutes. Kat would be at his home any moment, yet he didn’t want to wait that long. He wanted to have her in his arms this second. She was the bright spot to his entire day, his entire week even. Between the lawyers and the media, his days were hell. Even swimming, his usual stress-reliever, wasn’t helping.

But Kat did. When she was around, his tension melted and the constant ache between his shoulder blades faded. Being in the water wore him out so that he was too tired to think of the consequences of Paul’s actions, whereas Kat energized him.

The alarm chimed, indicating that a car was approaching the house. The grin spreading across his face threatened to break it in half. She was here and it was the best he’d felt all day.

He ran to the door, excited as a kid on Christmas. Of course he had seen her at work, but he hadn’t had any time alone with her since he brought her soup four days ago. He hoped she was feeling better. At the office, she said she was feeling okay, but they were both so busy that he didn’t really have a chance to follow up. Tonight, they had the evening to themselves. An entire Friday night all to themselves. He couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend it than with Kat.

The driver he had sent to get her let her out in the large driveway, and he watched as she walked up to the door. He threw open the door before she even had time to knock, making her jump. The surprise put color in her cheeks that accented her beauty. Somehow, she was even more beautiful every time he saw her.

“Kat,” he greeted her, holding the door open for her to enter his home.

“That’s some security you have out there,” she commented.

“I try to have minimal staff here, but security is something I won’t skimp on,” he told her. He felt like babbling that he just had a weekly cleaning staff and personal chef who came once a day, which was nothing compared to many billionaires he knew, but he stayed quiet.

“Well, they certainly know how to do their jobs.” She sounded tired and slightly annoyed.

“Did they treat you badly?” he asked. As much as he wanted to have his home secure, the idea of them hassling her made him angry. He had specifically asked for them to allow her in without issue.

“No, no,” she assured him with a smile. “They were just very thorough. I’m glad I was on their list or I never would have gotten in.”

“You were on the list from the moment I found out your name,” he told her. She blushed and grinned, telling him it was exactly the right thing to say. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she replied, kissing him on the cheek. Just the brush of her lips against his skin had his hormones firing into overdrive. It took more self-restraint than he was expecting not to just pull her into the bedroom and show her how he felt right then.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked, closing the door behind her. She leaned over and started to remove her shoes before officially entering the house.

“Kind of,” she said after a pause. “I’m still a little queasy, but it comes and goes.”

“Hopefully not for much longer, though,” he said, holding out his hand to help her with her balance. She took his hand almost gingerly and he wondered if he had said something strange. “Everyone else at the office seems to be getting over it pretty quickly.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” She smiled and relaxed slightly. “So, do I get a tour or what?”

He grinned. He brought very few people here. She was one of them and he was excited to show his home to her. He hoped she enjoyed it enough to stay. “You got it.”

The house was big, but not overly huge. He enjoyed his wealth, but he didn’t need fourteen empty rooms. He simply had a gourmet kitchen, a fancy dining room, a comfortable living room, two guest rooms, his office, a basement with the entertainment system and bar, and of course an amazing master bedroom.

“So, this is where you work when you’re at home?” she asked as they entered his office. “Wow, that desk is amazing.”

He imagined her stretched out across it, naked and willing and nearly lost his entire train of thought. It was taking a fair amount of energy to remain a gentleman with her this close after the past few days apart. She was becoming his drug of choice and he wanted more.

“How are the lawsuits going?” she asked, looking up at him with those beautiful green eyes. “I haven’t heard anything recently. ”

The weight of the world crashed back down on him again. He had managed to forget the disaster that was his work life for a few moments. “Not great. Paul really screwed the pooch,” he admitted. “Actually, screwing the pooch might have been better.”

She laughed appropriately and put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.” There was a heartfelt sadness to her voice that broke his heart.

He shrugged. “It has been a media nightmare this past week,” he told her. “But at least it seems like there’s an end in sight. The scandal seems to be losing steam. I’ll make it.”

Kat gave his arm a squeeze. He picked up her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “As long as things stay quiet, I think the company will weather this storm. We hit our lowest stock price yesterday, but as long as nothing else hits the fan, we’ll be fine.”

“Fine?”

“Better than fine,” he promised. He actually believed that things would work out when she was around. It wasn’t just her most recent business idea to rent their unsold merchandise, but how she made him feel. When she was with him, things felt possible.

“There’s still more I want to show you,” he said after a moment. “This isn’t the best room in the house by far.”

She laughed. “I have a feeling I know which room you’re taking me to.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” He took her hand in his and led her from his work desk and out into the hallway to continue the tour and give her the surprise he had waiting.