I nodded. “I guess so. But, if Sebastian was innocent, what was Becca’s dress from the club doing in his bedroom?” Though even as I asked the question out loud, I felt the answer coming to me. Becca had been sleeping with Blaise, Goldstein, and Darwin. What did you want to bet she was playing hide the fangs with Sebastian as well?
“What dress?” Ramirez asked.
I shook my head. “Never mind. Not important.”
“Hmm,” he said, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully at me. Though, thankfully, he let it go.
I looked down at my cup and realized it was empty. “I’m gonna get a refill. You want one?” I asked.
“Please,” Ramirez said, his eyes still watching me as I left the room.
I made my way into the kitchen and was just filling another cup when I felt Ramirez come up behind me, putting both arms around my middle. His lips went to my neck.
“You sure you’re feeling okay,” he whispered.
I grinned, trying not to giggle at the way his breath tickled. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Hmmm, good.” His lips moved lower, kissing along my shoulder. “Okay enough, say, to ditch the paperwork and go back to bed?”
I froze. “You mean… bed, bed?” I asked.
I felt Ramirez nod. “Uh huh.”
I was two seconds away from ditching the robe, and my panties with it, but something made me pause. Instead of rushing for the bedroom, I spun around to face him.
“So, now you’re in the mood?”
Ramirez grinned, his eyes a dark chocolate brown that told me he definitely was.
“Where exactly has this mood been the last four months?” I asked.
Ramirez paused, his eyes going just a shade lighter. “What do you mean?”
I wagged a finger at him. “Don’t you play dumb with me, Jackson Wyoming Ramirez. You know what I mean. Tired, headaches, paperwork. You’ve been using every excuse in the book. What gives?”
He paused. Then looked down at the floor. “I just… well… I was kind of afraid of hurting the baby,” he mumbled.
I did a forehead smack. A real one this time.
“Seriously?” I asked, blinking at him. “Honey, exactly how big do you think you are?”
Ramirez blinked at me. “What?”
I shook my head. “Forget it. Look, the fact is that it is a physical impossibility for you to get anywhere near the baby. In fact, my doctor said that sex is actually good for the baby. Not to mention me,” I added.
Ramirez did some more blinking. “Oh.” Then that grin slowly began to crease his cheeks again. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “It would also be good to know what suddenly has you ready to throw caution to the wind this morning. Was it the idea of almost losing me?” I asked, my voice going soft as I took a step toward him.
He grinned, his arms snaking around my middle again. But he shook his head. “As scary as that idea is, it’s not exactly a turn on,” he admitted.
“Okay, so then was it the sexy vampire outfit I wore last night?”
His eyes went a dark chocolate again, but he still shook his head.
“The coffee breath?” I fished.
“Nope.”
“I give up, then. What did I do differently?” I asked.
He grinned wider. And maybe even blushed a little, if it was possible for Bad Cop to blush. “I don’t know, Maddie. Something about seeing you hold that gun over Blaise. Being all kick ass like that. It was… kinda hot.” he admitted.
I felt myself grin in response. “So ‘Cagney’ turns you on, huh?”
He frowned. “What?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Just kiss me, you crazy cop.”
And he did. Then Ramirez scooped me up (yes, all two tons of me) in his arms and made for the bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I crossed my legs, trying to ignore how badly I had to pee (for a change) as I waited patiently for the nurse to call me into the ultrasound technician’s back room. I was pretty sure it was a form of torture that they’d told me to come with a full bladder, then made me wait twenty minutes until the tech could see me.
Ramirez shifted in his seat beside me, flipping the page on his copy of Popular Mechanics. I did the same, trying to focus on the People article in front of me and not my soon-to-be-exploding bladder.
Actually, it was a pretty interesting article, detailing the fall of Ava Martinez from super-stardom. Apparently her Playboy shoot had enraged more than just Dana. Posing nude was against her contract with the producers for the Moonlight movies, and once her spread had come out – where she was wearing a pair of fangs and nothing else – they’d dropped her option for the third movie.
Ricky’s option, as Dana told me, however, had been renewed. Even though Crush had reopened and was doing so well that, as Dana had originally hoped, he hadn’t needed to renew his contract for the third movie. But when the producers had come to him with a suggestion for his new leading lady, he hadn’t been able to turn it down. Of course, Dana was now going to have to dye her hair black, but she and Ricky were going to be seeing a lot more of each other, both on and off the set. In preparation, Dana had started wearing her fangs twenty-four seven in order to lose her lisp.
“Springer?” a woman in scrubs called my name from the doorway.
“Oh thank God,” I said, slamming my magazine down and fairly sprinting for the door.
I’ll admit, not only was the full bottle of water the doctor had suggested I drink before driving here playing havoc with my bladder, but I was also just the teeniest bit nervous. This was the first time we’d really be able to see The Bump, not to mention find out whose gender predications were correct. I had an entire Amazon shopping cart full of pink baby clothes, just waiting for the word to hit “send”.
I grabbed Ramirez’s hand as we were led down a hallway that smelled like rubbing alcohol and Band-Aids, then into another room where I was instructed to lay down on a table. Luckily they didn’t leave me alone long, a female technician appearing as soon as the woman in scrubs left. She quickly squirted icy-cold goop all over my belly and stuck a wand attached to a computer on it.
I watched nervously as images moved across the computer’s screen. Mostly fuzzy. All black and white. None of them even slightly resembling a person as far as I could tell.
“Is that The Bump?” I asked. I paused. “I mean the baby?”
The technician nodded. “Uh huh.”
“Is he supposed to look all fuzzy like that?” Ramirez asked, cocking his head to the side.
I grinned. I suddenly didn’t feel like such a bad parent that I couldn’t tell what was baby and what was screen static.
The technician smiled. “Yes. See, here you can see the hands, the feet, and this is its little rump.”
“Can you tell if it’s a girl or a boy?” I asked, silently chanting “pink, pink, pink” in my head.
She nodded. “We should be able to tell by now. Let me just see if I can get a better angle,” she said, moving the wand around on my belly so that the image in the screen twisted sideways.
“Maybe just a little to the left here, and we should be able to tell… oh.” The tech paused, her eyes squinting at the monitor.
“Oh?” I asked, butterflies suddenly taking hold in my stomach. “What does ‘oh’ mean?”
“It’s just that… well, I’m not sure but… oh, my goodness”
“What?” I asked, nerves creeping into my voice. Oh god, what? Mom was right, I didn’t know what to do with this parenthood. It wasn’t even born yet, and already we were having an “oh my goodness” moment. It must have been the feta cheese I ate on my Greek salad before I took the pregnancy test. The soft cheese had done her in. Or maybe it was the lattes. Yes, I was a horrible person. I had snuck one when I’d been on caffeine-deprivation-headache day number three with no end in sight. Oh, God, my selfish latte binge had permanently disfigured my baby, I knew it.