Baby & Bump (The This & That Series) (14 page)

Marisol sauntered towards the doorway, the tray balanced precariously on her shoulder. “Sure you do!
Just the other day you said you’re sort of lonely. You and Martha can order pizza, do your nails, watch a movie. She’ll never have to know what’s going on back in daddy’s bed.”

“Which will be X
-rated debauchery, I’m sure,” I said flatly.

“Heaven willing!” Marisol laughed and bumped the door open with her butt. “Thank you so much, Lexie. You’re a lifesaver. This is going to be great.”

She disappeared through the door before I could refuse again. For a moment, there was no sound in the kitchen, except the sound of my heart thudding in my chest. There was no way I could do this. I could barely get through my OB visits without begging Fletcher to dump Marisol. How was I going to hang out with his beautiful, innocent daughter while Marisol seduced him with her ample bedroom prowess?

I pressed my palms to my eyes and
tried to rub the image out of my mind. “Oh, man. What the hell did I just agree to?”

“When are you going to tell her?” Candace
came around the island and faced me.

“Tell her that I can’t babysit?”
My hands dropped. “I’m going to tell her as soon as she gets back in here.”

Candace drew a long breath, then released it slowly. She was getting ready to use her
mommy voice
on me. “No, Lexie.”

Plucking up the pan, and turning to the sink to rinse it off, I glowered down at the soapy water. “Ugh, what?”

“When are you planning on telling Marisol that you like Fletcher?”

Chapter Thirteen

I heard Fletcher’s voice through the door, and suddenly my stomach was filled with a flock of rabid hummingbirds. Looking down at my form fitting black jersey shirt to make sure I didn’t have any remnants from my lunch down the front, I took a deep breath to steady my pulse. Knowing I had an appointment with Fletcher today, I’d dressed in the scoop-necked shirt, silver hoop earrings, and dark grey slacks this morning. These were the nicest clothes I had that still fit.

Not that I was dressing to impress anyone.

Well, crap
. Even I didn’t believe that lie.

A swift knock sounded, and I sat up straight and threw my shoulders back. Wincing, I relaxed my spine.
I’m trying too hard.

“Lexie.” Fletcher strode into the room with cargo khakis and hiking boots sticking out from under
his crisp white lab coat. Grinning, he grabbed the wheeled stool and rolled over to the examination table with a grin. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

“H
i!” My voice cracked, so I cleared my throat. “Er, I mean, hi. So, you wanted to see me?” I felt jittery, and apparently that wasn’t lost on Fletcher, because he chuckled as the tissue paper rustled beneath me.

Fletcher’s eyes crinkled, and he
plopped down on the stool. His chest and my knees were just two or three inches apart, and I felt a teensy shock of electricity pass between my body and his. “I saw on the appointment schedule you were coming today. I’ve been looking forward to it all morning.”

“O
h. Me too.” I crossed and re-crossed my legs at the ankle. Fletcher was so close to me, I felt like I was under a microscope. I’d not shaved my legs this morning. Could he tell? I’d also run out of fabric softener last week, and still hadn’t bothered to buy more. My clothes didn’t have their usual spring fresh scent. Shaking my head, I told myself to pull it together. When I thought about where his face was for most of the day, did the freshness of my laundry really matter?

“So did you make up with your mother?” When I looked at Fletcher strangely, he added, “After the big set up at the mall last week?”

“Right.” My stomach sank. He’d seen me blubbering in my car. “Yeah. I haven’t actually talked to my mom since that happened. I think she knows I’m angry with her, so she’s keeping her distance.”

“It’s okay for you to tell her why, you know.” He widened his blue eyes and my heart seized. “When I went through my divorce, my mother used to tell me how to take care of Martha. Every day it was something new. I wasn’t dressing her right. I didn’t comb her hair correctly. She wasn’t eating enough protein
. I mean, I’m a doctor, for Pete’s sake. I know how much protein she needs every day.”

“My mother would have taken it a step further and tried to get custody of Martha,” I explained. “You know, for her own protection.”

Fletcher laughed. “Sounds like your mom and my mom would make a good team. One of them could start with the second guessing, and the other could come in at the end to finish the job properly.”

My eyes widened. “Let’s never introduce them.”

“Deal.” He nodded. “But really, after a year of this, I had to sit her down and tell her I was Martha’s father, and that I knew what was best for her.”

“Did she believe you?” I couldn’t imagine my mother believing me if I told her that. Hell, I already had told her, but she’d still convinced herself I was better off with a husband—
any
husband.

“Not at first.” He shook his head. “When she argued that I’d never raised a child alone, I explained that the only way I was going to learn was by doing it
alone, day in and day out.”

I imagined my mother pressing a hand to her chest and hyperventilating at the thought of me parenting her grandchild alone. “How long did it take her to accept it?”

He thought for a beat. “A year or so.” When my eyebrows rose high on my forehead, his hand squeezed my kneecap, sending tingles clear down my calf. “But once she saw with her own eyes that her granddaughter was flourishing, she relaxed. Now she trusts me just fine, and we’ve got a great relationship.”

“
I can’t imagine having a great relationship with my mother.” Fletcher’s hand was still on my knee. I held my breath to keep him from moving it. An image of Marisol popped into my brain, but I quashed it with thoughts of Fletcher’s butt in a pair of Levi’s.

You’re a bad friend, Lexie Baump
, I told myself.

When Fletcher grinned, I noticed a dimple in his left cheek and decided I didn’t care if I was.

“I just think you should sit your mother down,” he explained. “And tell her that you are a strong, independent woman.” He squeezed my leg for emphasis. My heart seized in my chest as Fletcher continued. “And that you don’t need a husband forced upon you to be a successful mom. A marriage of convenience will not make you a good mother.
You
will make you a good mother. And with time, your mother will see that, like
I
do.”

Stupefied, I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “You
believe in me,” I finally blurted.

Fletcher’s eyes flicked down to his hand on my knee as if he just noticed it was still there. Rolling the stool back a few inches, he retracted his fingers and folded his hands in his lap. “
I, um, I did. I do! Er, believe in you, that is.”

“
Thanks…” My voice trailed off and Fletcher and I sat there staring at each other for five seconds. Then ten. Then fifteen. His eyes bored into mine with an intensity that heated every inch of skin on my body.

“Let’s get down to business
?” Fletcher’s voice cracked, so he cleared his throat. “Shall we?” I nodded, and he added, “Why don’t you lie down and we’ll measure your growth.”

Blinking a few times to clear my head, I wiggled backwards on the table. As soon as I was laying down, I lifted the bottom of my shirt and started unbuttoning my jeans. Fletcher opened a drawer and took out a small measuring tape right as the sound of my zipper going down sounded.
Opening my pants, I thanked God I’d had the good sense to put on a cute pair of lacy panties.

Fletcher turned back towards me, and his eyes widened.
“Oh, it’s not an internal examination!”

Mortified, I zipped my pants back up. “Um, sorry.”

What was I
thinking
? Maybe next time I could hand him a whip and tell him I’ve been a bad girl. Fletcher looked away politely while I closed my pants. I noticed that the blush on his face had spread to his ears, which were now a lovely shade of fuchsia. At least he was as uncomfortable as I was.

Once my zipper was back up, his smile reappeared. Fletcher’s fingers prodded my stomach a few times. “I’m just checking the size of your uterus,” He explained, his eyes flicking from my belly, to my face, then back down again. “It’s easy to find, since your stomach is still fairly small.”

“Thank you,” I said automatically. I wasn’t sure if he’d meant it as a compliment, but every woman knows that if someone compliments your “small stomach,” you thank them.

Fletcher stretched out the measuring tape down the length of my baby bump and n
odded. “You’re measuring at nineteen weeks and two days. That sounds right to you?” I nodded, staring at the side of his chiseled face. He really did have a nice profile. “How’s the nausea coming?”

“It’s getting better every day.” I suppressed a shudder as Fletcher’s fingers grazed the skin just below my ribcage. “I’m eating more and more at every meal. I should probably start watching my calories again.”

I wasn’t exactly sure why I’d said that. I was a caterer for hell’s sake, I worked with, created, and
tasted
food for a living, and I’d never made any apologies for it. The small handful of men I’d dated since my divorce never seemed to care that I could order a tomahawk-cut Angus beef steak, cooked medium, and polish off every single bite of it. So why did I care if Fletcher thought I was one of those annoying count-every-calorie types?

“Actually, no.” He put his tape measure back into his pocket, and pulled my shirt down over my stomach. His palms were sweaty. So were mine. “Right now, you’re a little bit underweight for your height and body type. It’s probably from all of the nausea.”

Nodding, I tried not to think about all the random places around the city I’d vomited over the past few months. The restroom of at least four hotels where we’d been catering weddings; two garbage cans outside my food distributor’s headquarters; once in my mother’s lilac bushes; and countless times in the varied bathrooms at Candace’s house.

“For the next few months I want you to eat an additional five to eight hundred calories every day.” When Fletcher noticed that my eyebrows shot up (getting permission to gorge through the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays was like finding the golden ticket), he added, “Once we put a little more weight on you, I’ll have you meet with my nutritionist, and she can help you come up with a healthy food plan for you and your baby.”

“Okay.” I cradled my belly in my hands. “Does everything look all right?”

His face softened. “Yes. My nurse said that the heart rate was around one hundred sixty this week, and that’s just where we want it to be. Your urine sample looked good, and your last round of blood work w
as clean as a whistle. Now I need you just need to focus on growing a healthy baby.”

Fletcher held out his hand to help me back into a sitting position, and when I took it, a wave of energy danced between us. “Do you have any idea what it is? I mean, you know, from the measurements and urine samples, and stuff?”

He leaned against the examination table as I sat up. Once again we were just a few inches apart. “Unfortunately, no,” he told me. Our fingertips were just a centimeter or two apart. “It doesn’t work that way. We can only find out your baby’s sex through an ultrasound, or an amniocentesis.”

I pulled a face. “Amniocentesis s
ounds complicated.”

“It is.” He
nodded. “We go into one of my procedure rooms, and while using an ultrasound to guide me, I insert a needle into your uterus and amniotic sac, then—”

“Who
a” I held out a hand. “Are you saying I have to have a giant needle jammed into my gut? You’ll maim my baby!”

Fletcher put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “No. You won’t have to have an amnio unless we suspect complications. Sometimes we do them in the case of advanced maternal age, too.” I narrowed my eyes at him and he chuckled. “But you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Can we just schedule an ultrasound and never discuss that other test again?” I suggested, enjoying the way the ends of Fletcher’s fingers massaged my shoulder as we sat there.

He grinned. “Deal.”

We just sat there gazing at each other like idiots for a few seconds. After a silence that teetered on the edge of inappropriate, Fletcher drew a sharp breath, and let his hand drop. “So, uh, you can set that ultrasound up with my receptionist on your way out.”

“O
h. Okay, thanks.” I didn’t want my appointment to be over yet. “So how’s Martha?”

Fletcher
dug into the pocket of his coat and pulled out his phone. “Check this out,” he said proudly. The picture on the screen was Martha wearing a fluffy white cap on her head, and a dress with the biggest bustles I’d ever seen. “She’s wearing her Halloween costume. She sewed it herself.”

“No kidding?”
I blurted. That kid had skills. “It’s really great! What was she? A colonial woman?”

He pointed to the flag she was holding. “Betsy Ross.”

“Of course!” I laughed. “It looks awesome. You should have brought Martha to my house for trick-or-treating. I was giving out full sized candy bars, I’ll have you know.”

Fletcher raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know where you live. If I’d known, we would have stopped by for sure.”

“My building is in Brown’s Addition, in the Mercer building. You a big chocolate fan, doctor?”

“That depends. What kind are we talking about?”

“Dark chocolate. My favorite.”

Fletcher’s eyes flashed. “Mine, too.”

I dropped my voice down an octave and leaned in a bit. “Guess you missed out then.”

“Seems that way.”

I offered him a one-shouldered shrug. “I didn’t get very many kids at my door, so I had lots leftover. I would’ve given you two.”

“Okay, now you’re just trying to
rub it in.”

“Is it working?”

“Sort of.” His hand shifted on the top of the examination table, making our pinkies touch. It felt like his fingers were on fire. Or maybe it was me. “I not only missed an opportunity to get score some dark chocolate bars, but I didn’t get to hang out with one of my favorite people, either.”

He said I was one of his favorite people!
My insides started to spin like propellers. “Are you just saying that because of the chocolate?”

Fletcher’s eyes bore into mine. “Not at all. You know I like you, Lexie.”