That she hadn’t had a period in—Jesus, since early June?—was weird, but it wasn’t really a stretch.
Her being pregnant, though, that was a stretch. They’d been careful. The odds of her being late and inexplicably sick for one morning were greater than the odds of condom failure. Certainly. So she wouldn’t worry. She went back to bed.
Except the same thing happened the next morning. And the next it almost happened—only she lay around and felt miserable all morning instead of actually throwing up.
She couldn’t be pregnant, she thought as she stared at the ceiling above her bed. She could not. Last week she’d gone to Dallas and found her place. At the end of the month—a couple of weeks away now—she planned to be living there, and there were a million things to do. A week into August, her second year of medical school would begin.
Holy. Shit.
“Can’t be,” she moaned, turning over and staring at her clock without seeing it. Her right breast pressed into her arm, and the pressure made her wince.
Aching boobs.
Gabriella Ross wasn’t one to panic in any situation. But she’d never been in this one before.
She f**king panicked.
She’d also never been very religious.
She f**king prayed.
What the hell was she going to do?
First off, she decided, she was going to allow herself ten minutes—okay, twenty—to panic, cry, pray, whatever she needed to do, and then she was going to force herself to get up and, like any sensible person, drive to a drug store and buy a pregnancy test. Or four. Because there was no use worrying until there was something to worry about. Until the test(s) came back positive and she saw the proof with her own eyes, there was nothing to worry about.
Gabby repeated those words like a mantra as she got dressed in a cami and shorts and tied her hair up, not bothering with looking too presentable. As she grabbed the doorknob to leave her room, she contemplated throwing up before she left, but didn’t want to break the day’s no-vomit streak. Taking deep breaths until the nausea took its hooked talons out of her stomach, she eased down the stairs, praying yet again. This time to avoid her mother.
Mission accomplished, five minutes later she was driving into town, chewing her left thumbnail to the quick.
Nothing to worry about my ass.
Oh God, she was so screwed. That test was going to be positive. Her boobs hurt so bad. Her abdomen cramped a little. She swept through the family-planning aisle at the nearest drug store and grabbed the top brands of tests she’d heard of and headed for the checkout counter, daring the girl working there to even look at her funny. She didn’t, of course. It wasn’t like that girl f**king cared that Gabby’s life was about to be turned upside down, all her plans laid to waste.
Okay, she told herself as she huffed it back to her car in this infernal damn mid-July heat, which was doing nothing good for her nausea. Nothing was laid to waste here. People had kids in medical school. It could be done. One couple she’d known from her classes was actively trying—and she’d thought they were insane, but whatever. Their reasoning was their schedules weren’t going to get any better from here on, so they might as well go for it.
If they could do it, so could she. Some adjustments and making sure she wasn’t around any X-ray procedures, and she’d be fine.
She felt insane herself right now, with the way her emotions were wildly swinging back and forth. Hormones? Oh God! Another symptom. She was going to hyperventilate.
A cop pulled her over for speeding on her way home. She wanted to scream at him that she was with child and what the hell did he expect? But she doubted he’d be moved. He let her go with a warning, though, so it was good that she’d kept her cool. If Alexander Ross had to bail his daughter out of jail, he’d damn sure know something was going on with her.
Oh, f**king hell, her parents!
It was enough to almost make her stay on the side of the road and sob into her steering wheel, but then the cop expected her to move along. She put her car in gear and eased onto the road. Once he’d disappeared in the opposite direction, she sped off again.
Thankfully, her mother’s car was gone when Gabby pulled into the garage. She didn’t have to hide her purchases from anyone as she climbed the stairs, and she didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing her dash the rest of the way, because all this movement had gotten to her and she was truly about to break her no-vomit streak.
That accomplished, she sat on the toilet and opened one of the tests.
It recommended using morning pee. “To hell with that,” she muttered. No way could she put this off another eighteen hours. Good or bad, she had to know. If it was good, then she could relax…though the odds of that seemed to decrease with each passing second. If it was bad… Well, she’d know what she was dealing with.
Tossing the box and directions on the floor, she took the test. And then sat and stared at the little window that would seal her fate one way or the other. It would either give her one line for negative, or a plus sign for positive.
Maybe she couldn’t watch after all. Lifting her gaze, she stared blindly at the peach-colored wall across from her, and the pretty matching towel with white scallops hanging on the rack. Above it was a picture that had been there since she was a little girl—a watercolor of a little dark-haired girl in dress and hat and flowing ribbons, holding a basket of flowers. Her mother had always told her she looked like that little girl.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening here.
Closing her eyes, she tilted her head down, and opened them again.
A blue plus sign, standing ten feet tall on that white test strip, stared her in the face.
“Fuck,” she breathed. “Oh, f**k me.”
But that was what had gotten her into this mess.
The blonde girl was definitely putting out signals, and Ian was picking up on them. She’d come in for a little infinity symbol on her wrist, which only took him a few minutes, but she was hanging around now looking through flash, trying to decide what she wanted to get next time, or so she said.
And, well, she was hot. Blue-eyed and petite and wearing a bright, airy, summer-yellow top that hugged her h*ps just above jeans that accentuated her ass. The single guys were openly staring, while the taken guy—only Ghost at the moment—kept his eyes resolutely elsewhere. It was pretty funny.
But Ian had given in to one too many clients in the past couple of months. Yeah, only one, but that one was more than enough. Cute as this girl was, she wouldn’t hold a candle to the woman still haunting his memories.
He had never hoped for anything more with Gabby. Well, that was a lie. He’d hoped, but he was a realist too. When she had left the studio after he’d finished her ink a couple of weeks ago, there had been no plans made. No numbers exchanged. She’d looked a little sad, and he’d known it was good-bye. Maybe for good.
Brian would probably mention her every now and then. That would be the extent of Ian’s updates on her life. He’d probably tell them if she found a new guy (because Brian would undoubtedly not like him) and if she decided to give the whole marriage thing a shot again. She wasn’t even gone yet, as far as he knew, and he already dreaded that day down to the very core of his being.
The blonde gave him a glance over her shoulder. He’d been looking without meaning to, and her face lit up as she smiled at him. Shit.
“I think I’ve found one,” she said to him. Her voice was too…girlish. He preferred the darker purr of Gabby’s. The blonde was obviously younger than him. “Can I set up an appointment? I want to make sure I can get in.”
“Sure, if you want.”
He plucked a card from the holder on the counter and looked around for the appointment book, finding it at last over at Starla’s station. She jokingly hissed at him like a cat when he took it. “All right,” he said, strolling back up to his new client. She could throw out all the signals she wanted. He was probably being a dumbass, but he wasn’t in the mood to have someone totally opposite from the woman he couldn’t get out of his head. “When were you thinking?”
“A couple of weeks?”
He flopped the book open and spun it around on the counter so she could see it. “I don’t work Monday or Tuesday, but I’ll be here every other day. It’s wide open.”
She picked her day and time, and he wrote it on her appointment card. As he handed it to her, the door chimed, and when he saw who was coming in, he almost dropped it before it reached the girl’s fingers.
Gabby spotted him and made a beeline. The blonde girl took the card from him, and before he could do anything else, she slipped something into his hand.
“Just in case something…comes up,” she said. First he looked uncomprehendingly at her, then at what was in his hand.
Her f**king phone number.
“Hey…” he began, but she only gave him a grin loaded with suggestion and slithered away from the counter, walking right by Gabriella on her way out. Gabby looked at her as if she wanted to snatch her down to the floor by the roots of her hair.
“Gabby!” Ghost exclaimed. “What’s up, bella?”
“I need to talk to him about, um…a touch-up,” she said, and something about the way her gaze held his made him feel like an insect pinned to a f**king board.
Ian hadn’t noticed it, but Brian had come out of the hallway behind him. “Everything all right?” he asked at the same time Ghost said, “I told you.”
“No, he did a great job. I just need him for a second.”
And now everyone was looking at him, so he shrugged and moved toward her, doing his damnedest to maintain an air of indifference. Because whatever this was about, he had the sinking feeling it wasn’t her ink.
But the door chimed as it swung open with a blast of Texas heat, and he was left waiting as Candace and Ghost’s girlfriend, Macy, swept inside. Gabriella and the girls exchanged hugs, but even her smile and chatter seemed strained. Candace didn’t keep her long, though, because she was bubbling over about something else.
“Give this girl ink,” she said, shoving Macy toward her boyfriend. “Right now. I just got her to admit she’s thinking about letting you do it.”
“Candace!” Macy laughed as Ghost’s face broke into a grin and he hugged her to him, playfully dragging her toward the back with an arm around her neck.
“Come on,” he said, unmoved as Macy shrieked and struggled against him. “I’ve been waiting for this. I’m gonna ink you, baby. I’m gonna ink you so hard.”
The girl must be pretty strong, because Ghost didn’t keep a grip on her for long, and Ian got the impression it wasn’t for lack of trying. Laughing, Macy twirled out from under his arm and ran to the waiting area. “Someday, I said! Someday.” She held a finger up to Ghost’s chest as he advanced on her again, but he only wrapped her in his arms and kissed her cheek.
“I’ll wait on you forever, killjoy.”
Ugh. Ian turned to see Brian and Candace in a similar position, liplocked, and Gabby smiling at them. Then her gaze flickered past them to meet his, and her smile faltered. Well. Whatever the hell he’d done, he guessed he was about to hear about it. She nodded her head toward the back, and for the second time, he moved to follow her as she walked past him. For the second time, they didn’t quite make it.