That was the plan—one that didn’t include Ivy. Yet he’d wanted her since he’d first laid eyes on her. And nothing had prepared him for the ecstasy of actually having her.
Except, according to the map he’d laid out for his life, he couldn’t keep her. He’d stepped out of his comfort zone in the name of romance and knew it was a mistake.
But that wasn’t something you said to a woman over the phone.
“What?” Sierra demanded.
Her sharp tone had him looking closer. Paxton couldn’t miss the strain in his sister’s expression. Some people might attribute it to the fatigue of her being in the second trimester of pregnancy while taking care of his very active niece, but Paxton knew better. The tight muscles around her eyes and tart tone weren’t normal for her.
He slowed her down with a hand on her arm, easing her over to one side of the hallway outside of the doctor’s office. His niece had gotten sleepy, laying her heavy head on her mom’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a quiet tone, pulling himself forcibly back to the here and now. “What’s up?”
As if realizing just how much she’d revealed, Sierra glanced away. But Paxton didn’t miss the rapid blinking of her eyes against the sudden tears. “Nothing. It’s probably just the hormones.”
While that could definitely play a part, his big-brother instincts told him something more was going on. “Is everything okay?” He thought back over her words. “Is there a problem between you and Jason?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she sniffed, then reached up to stroke her sleepy daughter’s hair. “He’s always at work. Though I guess that’s what I married him for...right?”
She turned back to him after only a few steps. “Take it from me, Paxton,” she said in a low tone. “Just because the whole business-before-pleasure thing worked for our parents and grandparents doesn’t mean it’s the wonderful life they told us it would be. Marrying for money is just as complicated as marrying for love.”
Then she quickly changed the subject. “Let’s check in,” she said, almost too nonchalantly. He knew she was trying to hide from him as she reached for the door.
He’d never known her to keep secrets, but her stoic facade worried him.
Following Sierra and his niece into the doctor’s waiting room, Paxton felt that familiar surge of protectiveness that he often got by just hanging out with his siblings. They’d always been close. Add in the gaggle of girl children his sisters had given birth to, and Paxton found himself to be a hands-on uncle. His grandmother often prophesied that Paxton would be the first to give the family a male heir, something he definitely looked forward to. But until then he would protect and love the women in his life as much as possible.
If he only knew what Sierra needed protecting from...
“Here,” he said, reaching out for his niece, “let me take her while you sign in.”
He snuggled the droopy toddler in his arms and stood behind his sister as the receptionist opened the window that separated her from the waiting room. Small talk floated around him as Sierra signed the check-in list; he wasn’t really paying attention. He glanced over the women’s heads, farther into the little box the receptionist occupied. Behind her, at the exit window, a woman in scrubs was speaking to a patient who was checking out. At first Paxton couldn’t see her. Then she turned toward him.
Ivy.
Without a thought, Paxton leaned closer to the opening. He knew he shouldn’t eavesdrop, but it was if his hearing was tuned in specifically to her voice. Luckily for him, his hearing was excellent.
“Here are your vitamins,” the woman in scrubs said.
Ivy had a nervous expression as she glanced down at the box on the checkout counter. Paxton’s gaze followed. He swallowed hard. The words prenatal vitamins seemed to jump out at him.
The woman continued, oblivious to the audience behind her. “And this is a prescription for nausea medicine. Take it when you need it, which will hopefully only be for another month or so. You and the baby need good nutrition right now, so we don’t want you too sick to eat. Got it?”
Ivy nodded, swallowing hard enough for Paxton to see her throat working. Nausea? Prenatal vitamins? Baby? The words floated through the fog clouding his brain. He blinked, trying to process. He knew what the words meant, but he couldn’t get the significance to register.
Just then, Ivy looked across the tiny room and spotted him. Her eyes went wide. Her lips parted, but no words came out. He didn’t need any. Panic spread across her features like a wave, putting the final piece in the puzzle.
A baby. They’d made a baby?
No sooner had he blinked than she was gone. He couldn’t see which way she went through the receptionist’s window.
“Paxton, what is wrong with you today?” his sister complained.
He glanced down to realize the way he was leaning had her blocked in against the check-in counter. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Here.”
He handed his niece over to her mother, then murmured, “I’ll be right back.”
Remembering the office layout from the few times he’d been there before, Paxton knew the exit let out on the other side of the clinic, but then patients had to come back up the front hallway to get to the parking lot. He rushed back out the way they’d come in, hoping to intercept Ivy. Not that he knew what he’d say. His only thought was to find her. Now.
The hallway was empty. He backtracked down the hall to the adjoining one, but still didn’t see her. Maybe she’d already gotten outside? But he couldn’t find her in the parking lot either. He cursed himself as he realized he wasn’t even sure what kind of car she drove. After a good five minutes—and one missed call and exasperated text from his sister—Paxton returned to the doctor’s waiting room.
But Ivy’s panicked features remained foremost in his mind.
* * *
“Paxton McLemore saw me at the obstetrician’s office.”
The heart-pounding panic as Ivy spoke the words to her sisters was almost overwhelming. She forced herself to breathe in and out slowly. This intense upset couldn’t be good for the child she carried. Even if it was justified. She’d spent a month second-guessing herself, only to have all her plans smashed with one doctor’s visit.
“What happened?” Jasmine asked, her voice hushed with expectation. Jasmine was the epitome of the older sister, fulfilling her role with wisdom and the same matter-of-fact tone she used on unruly clients in her event planning business.
“I looked up from the counter, and there he stood. Watching me.” Ivy swallowed. So tall. With a baby sleeping in his arms, he’d almost seemed like her fantasies come to life. Only it wasn’t their child. And the realization that she was truly seeing Paxton in that moment had been more like a nightmare.
One that mocked the dreams of happily-ever-after she’d been rudely woken from that fateful morning, two months ago.
“He recognized you, I hope?” Auntie asked, her frown deepening the wrinkles on her beloved face.
Oh, he had. “Yes. There was recognition in his eyes. Then shock.” Her finger traced the interlocking pattern of the tiger wood on the dining room table.
Ivy had watched Paxton’s gaze drop to the box on the counter with the paralyzing realization of what was to come...and knowing she could do nothing to stop it. Luckily the nurse had wrapped things up quickly.
She imagined her disappearing act would not go over well with Paxton once he got over