The Bachelor's Baby (Bachelor Auction Book 3) (16 page)

They were both working hard to meet each other’s needs and get past the little niggles of learning to live with someone.

And the make-up sex made up for the disagreements. Hell, walking into a house full of good cooking smells and the sound of a woman humming, finding clean towels and fresh shorts at the ready, seemed pretty mundane, but it was gold to him. The fact he could talk to her about anything under the sun amazed him. She was funny and compassionate and scarily smart. When it came to politics and headline news, she always had a fresh angle he hadn’t seen right away, provoking thought. She gave a damn about stuff, big or little.

She gave a damn about him.

That was the part that really got to him. He hadn’t wanted to care about someone. It was too big a risk. But Meg did sweet little things like fetch an ice pack or listen or research something online so he could get on with the physical work.

He was starting to really care about her. He suspected he was falling in love.

Her breathing changed and she stretched, eyes staying closed but her hand snaked under the covers to find him, petting his thigh and hip. “Did the sun wake you? Was I wrong?” she murmured.

“No. Look.” He waited until she’d opened her eyes and chinned toward the window.

She rolled to look at the view and he reached to spoon her naked warmth into his front. Man she felt good. All silky and smooth, hair tickling his nose and lips, ass a delightful pillow against his stiffening erection. He splayed his hand low on her belly, which wasn’t really a bump, but it was a firm non-flatness. She’d bemoaned her thickening waistline, which he flatly refused to be drawn into remarking upon, but he was oddly eager for more evidence of their baby. The more they planned, the more real it became, the more he wanted to hurry time to pass. Meg was going to be a good mother, he could already tell, and he was going to try like hell to be a great dad.

They were making a home. A real family.

“I love Montana,” she said dreamily, making his nerves jump briefly at what he had thought she was about to say. “Thank you for giving me a reason to come home.” Her hand covered his on her belly.

He caressed her, thoughtful.
He
wanted to be the reason she’d made this her home.

He was still thinking about that, and how much he had and how much more he wanted, when she came to him in the barn a few hours later. Her face was pale, her blue eyes wide and terrified.

“Linc, there’s blood.”

“What? Where?” He looked to her hands for a cut.

“In my underpants.” Her bottom lip quivered.

He set down whatever was in his hand, not even aware of what it was.

“I think I should go to the hospital.”

“I’ll take you.” He walked over to her like he was walking through a wall of mustard gas, nose and eyes and lungs beginning to burn, finding no oxygen, suffocating.

This was exactly what he had dreaded. Caring and losing. He wanted to hold off the threat of pain and…

He couldn’t. He drew her into him, sought the feel of her because he couldn’t bear the magnitude of emotion breaking loose in him. He gathered her in, then picked her up, like she was fragile and delicate. Like if he held her close enough, he could prevent whatever was happening to her. Them. All of them.

She turned her face into his shoulder and silently soaked his shoulder as he carried her to the truck.

*

Meg sat in
a hospital gown on the emergency room bed, legs covered by a blanket, but all of her was cold as ice, all the way to her core. The bleeding hadn’t continued. It was just a few spots really, and she wasn’t having any pains. Rachel had heard a heartbeat and told her it might be something as innocuous as a shift in the placenta, but she’d warned that if it was a miscarriage, there was nothing they could do.

Horrible words.

They were going to do an ultrasound to double-check so Meg was stuck here, waiting for the technician who’d been called in, waiting to find out their fate. If the baby was failing, or gone, procedures would be initiated. She didn’t want to think about it.

Linc returned, shouldering through the curtains, looking like he’d aged ten years in the hour since she’d come to him in the barn. He was still gorgeous, not having shaved this morning, green eyes turbulent and sexy mouth twisted in agony.

God, she loved him.

“Blake and Ethan have the chores covered,” he said, pushing his phone into his shirt pocket, then sitting on the edge of the bed, hand coming to rest heavily on her thigh. “Liz wants to come.”

“I can’t do that to her,” Meg said, chin crinkling. “She doesn’t want to relive something like this.”

“She offered. I told her we’re hoping it’s going to be okay and that I’d call as soon as you’ve had the scan.” He covered where she was knotting her fingers together.

She shouldn’t be surprised that Liz would want to step up and help or that Linc would bring in a pinch hitter. This was ‘women’ stuff she supposed, but her heart was already splitting down the center. Having him take a step back from what was happening was understandable, but it was a brutal betrayal.

On top of another that she could hardly bear.

“My own baby doesn’t even want me, Linc.” The anguished suspicion crept out of her, unable to be held back.

“No, sweetheart, no.” He tried to draw her into his arms, cradling her the same way he had the minute she’d told him, like he would carry her safely through a rain of Hell’s own fury. She stiffened, not believing he meant it. Not really.

She wished he did. She was so in love with him it was World Record level. She loved him for being like this, willing to hold her when she cried, and ready to change his life and drop everything for their baby.

But this situation was forcing her to remember they were together for the baby. Not because he cared about
her
. If there was no baby…

She forced back the press of emotion and faced that everything they’d built had been on the fact that she was pregnant. If she stopped being pregnant…

If she stopped being pregnant, they had nothing.

She twisted the ring he’d given her, a pretty solitaire on a platinum band that was his promise to marry her.

“I know you didn’t really want me either,” she began. “That we’re only engaged because—”

“Meg,” he interjected, voice a low protest, like it was punched out of him on a choke of pain, but there was an edge of warning in it, too.

“I’m just saying, maybe this is—”

“A test?” he broke in. “To see what we can withstand? Because we’re going to get through this, Meg.”

She shook her head, licking at the tears dribbling into the corner of her mouth.

“Whatever happens doesn’t change the commitment we’ve made to each other,” he insisted. “You still come home with me. I
knew
we should have married,” he burst out, pushing to his feet.

“You’re just saying that because I’m being a weepy mess and you feel sorry for me right now,” she accused.

“I feel sorry for
me
!” he nearly shouted, knocking his fist into his chest.

Beyond their false cell of privacy, someone issued an urgent, “
Shh.
”

Linc paced a few impatient steps in the tiny area behind the curtain, clawing his fingers into his hair before he hung his head against his palm. Dark tufts of hair poked up from between his fingers.

“I tried damned hard not to get in this position of wanting a family, caring and worrying and facing that I could lose someone again,” he said heavily.

“Oh God, Linc. I’m so sorry,” she croaked, anguished that her miscarriage was going to cause him so much agony. She instantly felt responsible.

“I’m not
blaming
you. I’m trying to tell you—”

A nurse whisked through the curtain, bringing a wheelchair with her. “I’ll take you for your scan now. Please, keep your voices down.”

Linc only hissed a curse at the ceiling, then wiped his hand down his face and gathered himself along with her purse to accompany them down the wide hall toward the imaging department.

Meg hated how it smelled in here. Hated how the air felt thick and stuffy, the sounds hushed and grave, the vision of her future bleak. She hated that this is what she would think of when she thought about the baby that might have been. Claustrophobic despair.

They entered a darkened room and she was helped onto the table. The technician exposed her barely-there baby bump and squeezed a gob of jelly onto it.

Linc took her hand and met her devastated gaze with a tormented one of his own.

“I’m not going back to living alone, Meg. To being a bachelor and having no one.” He squeezed her hand insistently. “Do that to me and I will be really angry with you. I need you in my life. Not just any woman.
You
. I want
you
.”

Shaken, she could only blink. Her nose filled and tears welled again and the hard pressure of the ultrasound sensor pressed into her abdomen, making her jump in surprise.

“Don’t push so hard,” she warned the technician, motivated to protect the baby.

“Are you having a pain?” the woman asked, easing up slightly.

“No. I just… don’t want you to hurt the baby.” She carried Linc’s hand to her heart and covered it with her free hand. “Do you mean it?” she asked him, seeing a tiny ray of hope, but terrified to grasp it.

“
Yes
.” He gently cradled the top of her head in his free hand, leaning down to kiss her forehead, saying, “I love you,” right before he kissed her lips.

“I love you, too.” The words came out soft and aching, but sincere.

It hurt to say it, hurt that this was where they were finding their love, at the cliff of crisis, but she could face whatever came now. His love gave her strength. It was the saddest, most terrifying moment of her life, but she wasn’t alone. She had Linc. Maybe this baby had only been the catalyst to bring them together, and wasn’t meant to grow up and share their lives. It would break her heart to lose it, but she had Linc to help her put the pieces back together.

“There’s the fetus,” the technician said, pointing to the screen where a glow of white fluttered against smudged shades of gray. “Moving. See?”

“Really?” Meg asked, squeezing Linc’s hand so tightly she expected to hear his bones snap, but hope clenched her in its anxious fist. She blinked hard, trying to clear her vision so she could see properly.

Linc was still hovering half over her, arrested, gaze fixed on the screen, not even breathing that she could tell.

“Oh,” the technician said, kind of startled by something unexpected that made Meg squeak out an urgent, dread-filled, “What?”

The technician pointed at the screen again, smiling as she said, “And there’s the other one. Also moving.”

“Other…?”

“You’re pregnant with twins.”

“Twins?” Linc straightened.

His grip on her hand changed, turning to crush her hand while his other hand gave each of his cheeks a quick swipe. “Are you serious?” His voice was ragged and filled with emotion, most of it hope.

“Identical, since there’s only the one placenta. You see how the placenta is sitting right here? That’s probably the cause of the spotting. We’ll have to monitor that, but for the moment everything looks normal…”

Meg didn’t track much after that. Linc was kissing her, and they were both laughing, astonished and happy and relieved. Shocked. Stunned to the soles of their feet.

“Twins. I’ll assume they run in your family because they don’t in mine,” he said.

“Fraternal twins are hereditary,” Rachel said when she confirmed everything and pronounced the spotting was a false alarm. “You get identical twins from winning the reproductive lottery.”

Meg didn’t have to stay the night, but she had a list of precautions and symptoms to watch for once she was discharged and home.

Her heart panged a little as they walked to the truck. She wished she knew whether twins ran in her family, but that was one more mystery she was learning to live without resolving. Where she’d come from wasn’t nearly as important as where she was going.

She was going home.

With Linc. The man she loved.

“Do you want to stop in on our way?” he asked, not having to say who he meant.

She nodded. “I can’t
wait
to see their faces.” She felt the goofy grin on her own, fueled by the one on Linc’s as they both tried to process the news.

“Your brother is going to
kill
me. We are getting married as soon as possible. Got that?”

“Agreed,” she said, adding under her breath, “Bossy.”

He pulled over, set the truck into park and flung out of his side of the truck, leaving the door open.

“What—?” she asked as he opened her side.

“This scared the hell out of me.” He unclipped her belt. “And I’m so grateful it turned out okay. So relieved. I need to hold you.” He drew her out of the truck onto her feet and gently crushed her to his front, heart slamming hard against her ear. His lips nuzzling near her ear. “I love you. Did you hear me say that? Because this has been a really crazy day so you might have missed it.”