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“I don’t feel any—”
“Shh...” She closed her eyes, her voice lowered. “Just wait.”
They sat still, his hand on her stomach. The only sound in the room was the intermittent beeping of the IV pump.
Suddenly one of the babies kicked. Sloane smiled when she opened her eyes and saw the look of amazement on Benji’s face.
“I can’t believe it. I could really feel that. That’s incredible.” His voice broke slightly. “That’s my...our baby.”
Her chest tightened at his use of the phrase. She’d only ever thought of the babies as hers.
“That was your son.” Sloane adjusted her position as the baby kicked again. “I don’t know what my ribs ever did to him, but he’s got it out for them.”
No longer tentative, Benji pressed more firmly on the area where he’d felt the kick. He jumped, startled as the skin high on her belly shifted. Their baby girl started to roll.
“It’s okay. The first time I saw that, I was pretty weirded out, too.” She smiled so much her cheeks hurt. “Looked like something straight out of one of your favorite sci-fi movies.”
That seemed to relax him a little. Benji glided his hand to where her skin stretched and moved. He touched what looked like a tiny little shoulder. It protruded slightly from her belly, then disappeared from sight again.
He stood, staring at her stomach in awe for a few moments before he met her eyes again.
“I wasn’t around during most of my sister’s pregnancy, so I didn’t see any of that.” He indicated her belly. “It really is remarkable.”
“Speaking of remarkable—” she pointed a thumb over her shoulder at the electronic fetal monitor “—I asked Dr. Carroll to turn the sound off before you came in the room. Turn that dial up.”
Benji went to the machine and turned up the volume. His eyes sparked with recognition as he turned to meet her gaze again. “That’s a heartbeat.” He listened carefully, turning the volume up a little more. “No, it’s two heartbeats.”
She rubbed her stomach again. “That’s right.”
Benji dragged a hand over his head and sat beside the bed. His brows furrowed as the pain and disappointment returned to his face, forming hardened lines that weren’t there before. “How could you not tell me?”
Sloane’s phone rang. She swiped it from the table beside her bed, thankful for a respite from the withering heat of Benji’s stare.
Mama.
Sloane hadn’t thought to call her mother. But the last thing she wanted was to give her mom an excuse to come to Nashville and set up camp at her place. With her growing belly and all of the baby things she was collecting in duplicate, the place already felt too small.
She silenced the phone and turned it facedown. She’d return the call once she was settled in back at her place. No need to worry her mother unnecessarily.
There was nothing to tell.
Except that the man her mother still referred to as “little Benji Bennett” was the father of her babies. And that wasn’t a conversation she was prepared to have.
“Everything okay?” Deep worry lines creased his forehead.
“Everything’s fine.” She pulled the sheet around her and asked him to turn down the monitor again. “Now, about what you said when Dr. Carroll was in here.”
“About me not returning to Seattle?” He raised a brow and narrowed his gaze.
“Yes, that.” She refused to repeat the words that both terrified her and made her hopeful. “That isn’t necessary. As Dr. Carroll explained, there’s nothing wrong with me or the babies.”
“I missed the first six months of your pregnancy. I’m not missing another minute.”
It wasn’t a question or even a suggestion.
“You’ve pretty much gotten the highlights. The first two months, I had no idea I was pregnant. Then there was four months of barfing my brains out before the morning sickness finally subsided.” She settled back against the pillow.
“The morning sickness was that bad?”
“It bordered on spectacular. I had acute morning sickness, which, by the way, is a misnomer. There was nothing cute about not being able to hold down anything or work for the past four months.”
A pained look crimped Benji’s face. “You’ve been out of work for four months? How’ve you been paying your expenses?”
Sloane’s cheeks stung with embarrassment. Her dire financial situation wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with the golden boy billionaire. She’d gotten herself into this mess and it was her job to navigate her way out of it. If there was one thing she’d learned in her thirty years, it was that when she got into difficulty, no one was coming to rescue her. She needed to figure this out on her own, just as she’d done her entire life.
“Sloane?” he prodded.
“I manage.” She stared down at her ragged fingernails and fought the urge to chew on them.
Benji spoke after a few moments of awkward silence between them. “When you were filling out the hospital paperwork...I couldn’t help noticing the past-due bills hanging out of your wallet.”
“You snooped in my purse?” The heat in her cheeks turned to a butane-lighter-charged flame.
“I wasn’t snooping. I just couldn’t help noticing the words stamped in bold red capital letters.” He raised his hands in self-defense, then sighed. “Sloane, what are you trying to prove? I have all this money. What good is it if I can’t even help the people I care about?”
“That’s not what you said at the reception.” She folded her arms and glared at him pointedly. “You said you were tired of people treating you differently. Like you were a freakin’ ATM. I couldn’t bear for you, Delia or your parents to ever think I’m no better than the girls who stalked you at the wedding. That I looked at you and got dollar signs in my eyes. That I planned this to ensure I’d get a big ol’ piece of the Benji Bennett pie.”
“Sloane, no one will think that.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself since I was sixteen. I worked a job, in addition to my duties on the farm. Paid my own way. I’ve never needed to ask anyone for anything.” Tears formed in her eyes again. She swiped at them, but that didn’t stop fresh tears from falling. “I should be able to take care of myself and the twins. Without help. But my life is falling apart at a time when I should be able to enjoy motherhood.”
Benji pulled his chair closer to the bed and held one of her hands in his. He lightly kissed the back of it. “You don’t need to do this alone. Accepting help doesn’t make you weak.” He squeezed her hand. “It took two people to make the twins. Stands to reason it’d take both of us to care for them.”
She leveled her gaze at him. It wasn’t fair. She was emotional and feeling vulnerable. His argument actually made sense.
“Don’t do this out of a sense of obligation, Benji. If this isn’t what you want, you can walk out of that door right now and no one else ever needs to know.”
Benji slid his hand to her cheek and cradled it. His voice was soft. “Nothing in the world is more important to me than taking care of you and the twins. Are we clear on that?”
She nodded, and he leaned in and kissed her cheek. A kiss that was soft and sweet. Yet, it warmed her from the inside out.
He kissed her again, this time a closed-mouth kiss on the lips.
When he raised his eyes to hers, there was the same desire she’d seen there that night. The night they’d made the twins.
Except six months ago she’d been beautiful, and now she felt like a beached whale.
A sly smile curved the edge of his mouth and he leaned in to kiss her again.
“Should I come back later?” A male nurse hovered inside the doorway.
“No.” Benji groaned, his gaze still meeting hers. “I’d liked to get her back home and settled in as soon as possible.”
He moved to the sofa to give the nurse room to check Sloane’s and the babies’ vitals. The man put a blood pressure cuff on Sloane.
“Now’s a good time to tell my mother and father they’re going to be grandparents.” He pulled out his cell phone.
“You’re going to tell them over the phone?”
Sloane’s pulse suddenly raced as she imagined Connie and Rick Bennett’s reaction to the news. Rick would be mildly surprised, but Connie would be spitting fire, and she’d probably faint right on the spot. When she recovered, the woman would blame her for corrupting their son. Which she probably deserved.
And Delia. God, her friend was going to be angry with her. Delia already knew of her pregnancy. Only Sloane hadn’t told her friend the whole truth about it. Like the fact that her little brother was the father.
“Why not tell them now?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of conversation that should be had in person.”
“We have to tell them eventually, Sloane.” He kept his voice even.
“I know.” Sloane frowned when the blood pressure machine beeped, and she saw the unusually high numbers. She turned to the nurse. “Can you give me a few minutes and take it again, please? I just got a little worked up. My numbers will go down in a few minutes, I promise.”
The man nodded begrudgingly. “Be back in fifteen minutes.”
She sighed in relief, then turned to Benji. “I know that we have to tell them, and we will. But don’t you think it’s better if we figure all of this out first?”
“All of what?” He sat beside her again.
“You said you’re not going back to Seattle. Well, fine. But there isn’t enough room in my tiny condo for me, you and all the stuff for the babies.”
“So we’ll sell your place and get a bigger one.”
“I can’t just sell my place. It needs a lot of work before I can put it on the market and...” Sloane chewed her lower lip. She didn’t like talking money with Benji. Feeling as if she had her hand out.
“And?” He prodded.
“And I’m under water.”
“You overpaid for the condo?”
She shook her head, her voice lowered. “I took out a second mortgage on the place.” Sloane fiddled with the strap across her belly. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t spend the money on shoes or something. I took the loan out for a good reason.”
“Which was?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your—”
“Sloane!” He inhaled deeply, then lowered his voice considerably. “Just tell me. Why did you need the money?”
“To save the farm. The crop yield hasn’t been good the last few years. Plus, my grandfather needed bypass surgery last year and the insurance didn’t cover everything. Do you have any idea how expensive medicine is for a cardiac patient?”
Benji stood and paced the floor. “Delia mentioned that your granddad had surgery.” He turned to face her, the wheels in his head obviously turning. “Both your condo and your family’s farm have second mortgages on them?”
“Yes.” She whispered the word under her breath. “I had a plan. I didn’t have much cash to spare, but I was paying my bills and theirs. And I was about to land the job as the creative director at the record company until...” She paused, sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She didn’t want to make it seem as if she was blaming him or the twins.
“Until you couldn’t work anymore because of the pregnancy.” Benji slid into the seat beside her again. “I’m starting to get the picture.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Then he leaned forward and gripped her hand. “Look, I know you think the worst of the folks in Magnolia Lake, but I plan to prove you wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let me get the condo ready for sale.”
“Even if I got top dollar for it, I’d barely break even with the second mortgage.” Her grandfather had implored her not to do it, but she’d been determined to prove to him that she’d made something of herself, despite his predictions that she’d flop in “the big city.” Not one of her better decisions. “Besides, if I sell my condo, where will I live?”
“You’ll move to Magnolia Lake with me.” His brown eyes were earnest, but his expression was neutral.
“I have no intention of moving in with my mother and grandfather.” A shiver ran down her spine just thinking of it. “I’d rather live in a tent in the woods.”
“Perfect. Then you’ll move into the cabin with me.”
A tiny ray of hope flared deep in her chest.
Benji was asking her to move into the cabin with him. Did that mean he felt something for her, too?
After their weekend together, she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head. She couldn’t stop wondering if a future for them was possible. But Benji was the first man she’d been with since her divorce. She cared about him too much to make him her rebound guy. Once she learned she was pregnant, she’d attributed her feelings for him to her wildly fluctuating hormones.
The same hormones that filled her body with heat as her gaze traced the sensual lines of Benji’s strong physique. The same hormones that made her long for his hands to glide along her skin, the way they had when he’d made love to her.
Sloane pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shake loose the fine image of how Benji’s muscles had bunched beneath his brown skin. She needed to focus on the larger implications of what he was saying.
“You’re asking me to move in with you?”
“We should get married first, naturally. For the sake of the twins.” He released her hand and pulled out his cell phone, tapping out a message. “But it would only be temporary.”
“The marriage?” Her heart had inflated and deflated in six seconds flat.
Not that she wanted to get married again. Ever. And she still had a modicum of pride. He wanted to marry her, but only because he felt obligated to, and now he was saying it would be some kind of temporary arrangement?
He looked puzzled, then frowned with realization. “No, not the marriage. Living at the cabin would be temporary,” he clarified. “I’m shooting my cousin Cole a message now. We’d live at the cabin until Cole’s company can build us a permanent home.”
“Hold up there, Andy Griffith.” She extended her palm toward him. “I’m not agreeing to a shotgun wedding. Do people really still have those?”
“You don’t want to get married?” The poor thing looked bewildered, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine why a knocked-up poor girl would reject the offer to get hitched to an incredibly handsome, impossibly sexy billionaire and commence having his babies.
“Because getting married strictly because of an unexpected pregnancy worked out so well for my parents and for your sister.” Baby boy bounced his generous-sized head on her bladder as if in objection.
Of course, you’d side with him. Traitor.
Sloane rubbed her belly, hoping to calm the little one.
