Leverage (Part II)(3)

And then he left her to stare after him. Julianna wiped away the remnant of his kisses and ground the tears from her eyes. She ought to grab a cab and screw Boston with his dictates but even as the defiant thought blazed across her thoughts, she sank back down on the bed and knew she’d await Richard to ferry her back to Boston’s house because in a way, his place had become more like home than her apartment, even with the gaudy gold-plated bathroom fixtures that she hated.

Why? Ah crap, because as much as she hated to admit it…it was because at night, Boston crawled into bed with her and they slept entwined with one another, as if they were carved from the same block of wood to fit together. Dumb bad luck.

Julianna glanced down at her belly and her breath hitched in her throat as the sobering thought of motherhood weighed on her shoulders.

She squeezed her eyes shut and a tentacle of fear reached from a dark place and curled around her thoughts. Women died giving birth. It was rare — but it happened. It was a worst-case scenario…and it’d happened to someone she’d loved very much.

It might be irrational to fear the same fate but by the time Richard had arrived to pick her up, she was fighting the urge to lose whatever food remained in her stomach.

Bottom line? She was afraid of this baby.

And she was ashamed to admit it.

#

Boston had driven around for hours, trying to clear his head. How was it possible? The doctors had told him repeatedly after multiple invasive and humiliating tests that fathering a child was not probable. They’d tried to soften the blow by suggesting that in vitro might be an option but they were honest in admitting that isolating healthy enough sperm to inject into an egg would be a challenge. The news hadn’t been accepted with any sort of grace. He’d been angry and bitter at first but he’d gotten over it until Gigi had reopened that wound. To be truthful, although logically he knew it was no reflection on his manhood, the fact that he couldn’t father a child had bothered him more than a little. And the best way to avoid dealing with those feelings was to abandon the idea of being a father at all. And now? The answer awaited him in the form of a voicemail that he’d avoided listening to so far. Amazing how one simple DNA test had the power to affect so many lives, he mused. Just listen to the damn message and be done with it. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t want to admit how much he wanted Julianna to be carrying his child and that desire was in direct opposition with his dislike of anyone having that sort of power over him — particularly a woman who openly admitted to hating him.

But did she really hate him? In those moments when it was just she and him clinging to each other in the darkness he certainly didn’t get the sense that she couldn’t stand him. The claw marks on his back were evidence to the contrary. But even if she didn’t hate him, she clearly resented him for forcing her into a relationship using such heavy-handed methods. Try as he might, he couldn’t dredge up an ounce of regret because he craved Julianna in a way that baffled the logical mind. Her skin was like the softest silk beneath his fingertips and her impassioned cries were blazoned across his synapses. But now the game had changed. If that baby was his, there was no way in hell he was going to let anyone come between him and his child.

His phone chirped alerting him to a new text message and he knew it was from Richard. Time to stop being a pussy and just find out one way or another. Breath held tight, he lifted his phone and read the message: paternity matches, you’re going to be a father. Congrats.

Boston dropped the phone as if it’d scalded him. But in fact he needed both hands to grind the tears that’d sprung to his eyes. He was going to be a father. He and Julianna had created a miracle. A long moment passed as he tried to wrap his brain around the reality that the doctors had been wrong. He sat, stunned and trembling. A father. He was going to be some tiny human’s dad.

And Julianna was going to be their mother.

A wash of tenderness followed at the thought until he remembered the look of hatred directed at him flashing in Julianna’s eyes when she’d received the news. She didn’t want his baby. Hell, she barely wanted him. The only reason she was allowing him to touch her was because he’d paid her to do so.

“Fuck,” he murmured, closing his eyes and leaning against the headrest. Was there a way to fix this between him and Julianna for the sake of their unborn child? Had he damaged any hope of happiness for them both by forcing her hand? He didn’t know. The answers didn’t immediately jump in his face with a solution. Well, one thing was for certain, he couldn’t continue skulking around back roads while he figured this out. He needed to talk to Julianna. Maybe if he changed his tactics, he could fix what was broken between them.