The Alpha's Baby(44)

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that." The man was grinning again, despite the fact that he must have been in pain.

She seized his wrist. "Let me see your finger."

"I'm fine." He tried to pull his wrist away.

"At least let me look at it." Scowling, she yanked at his wrist again and was shocked to see an untarnished finger.

He shrugged. "I told you, I'm fine."

"But I saw a burn." She stared down at his finger in disbelief.

In response, Sebastian said nothing. At that moment, she realized she must have been going nuts. There was no burn.

"Or I saw nothing." She threw up her hands. "You're fine."

Sebastian met her eyes.

"What?" She raised an eyebrow.

The man sighed as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" She placed her hand on his head. "Don't tell me the burned bacon fumes liquefied your brain."

"Ha, ha, ha." He rolled his eyes.

"What inspired you to make bacon, anyway?"

"Well, you're pregnant, so I thought you needed something for breakfast," he said.

"Leave the cooking to the chef." She winked at him.

She headed to the refrigerator and pulled out a package of microwavable bacon. After placing the pieces of bacon on a plate, she popped the food into the microwave for thirty seconds.

"Ta-da!" She waved dramatically at the microwave. "Bacon perfection."

Sebastian chuckled. "You're cooking skills are something else."

"Well, I can say that I'm smart enough to read the word 'microwavable' on the package…sweetheart." Then she laid a kiss on his lips and went to grab her purse.



****



By midafternoon, Emmy was puking again, and she couldn't even blame it on Sebastian's overcooked bacon. While she laid her chin on the toilet seat, she made inventive promises to God. If he stopped her from puking, she'd be nicer to employees. She'd even stop giving other drivers the middle finger on the freeway. Hell, she might share her double-fudge ice cream with Sebastian.

Okay, maybe she wouldn't share her ice cream, but she'd do everything else.

Unfortunately, God must not have been impressed with her promises, because five seconds later, she was puking into the toilet again. By the time she was done vomiting, she was shocked that she still had a spleen. Sinking to the floor by the toilet, she ran her hands through her hair and cursed underneath her breath. Naturally, somebody chose that exact moment to call her cell phone. Musical clinging filled the air, and she swore before answering it.

"Hello," her mom, Ann, said.

She should have known. Her mom always sensed when she was miserable.

"Hey." She wiped her vomit from her mouth.

"Are you okay?" her mom asked. "You sound hoarse."

"I'm okay. I just have a little stomach bug."

Liar, liar pants on fire, she thought. Still it wasn't like she could say, "Hey, Mom, guess what? I'm knocked up!" over the phone. Her mom might faint, and her religious dad would take out his shotgun and chase Sebastian around with it. Turning the other cheek was all well and good—until a Catholic man's daughter got pregnant outside of wedlock.

"You're sick because you work too much," her mom said. "Don't I always say that you work too much?"

She rolled her eyes. Her mom lived fifty miles away and still nagged. "Yes, Mom."

"And it would help your immune system if you ate more. You're too skinny," her mom said. "You should come over. I'll have you fattened up in no time."

"Mom, I'm healthy."

"You're obviously not, if you're getting sick," her mom said.

She had to fight the urge to drop the phone in the toilet just to get out of this conversation. Yes, she loved her parents, but she always wondered how she'd managed to live with them for twenty years without jumping in front of a fast-approaching train.

And just wait until they find out that you're pregnant, an evil voice said in her head.

Shit. Her hands shook at the thought, but she knew she had to tell them. They were her parents, after all. It wasn't like she could keep their grandkid a secret from them…or wait, maybe she could. She winced at her own cowardly thinking. When she told them, the worst thing that could happen was that her mom would cry and her dad would say he was disappointed in her. Still she'd always had the I-must-please-my-mommy-and-daddy gene. She wanted to make them happy, even if she never managed it.

"You know, I'm glad you called." Sort of. "I need to come over sometime. We have something that we need to discuss."

"Uh-oh. This has to be about the bakery." Her mom gasped. "You're running out of money, aren't you? I told you that starting a business straight out of college was an awful idea."