The Maverick's Christmas To Remember. Christy Jeffries

he asked her a series of questions, like whether she was wearing any jewelry or had any metal implants anywhere in her body. Then the tech asked the one question that really threw her. “Any possibility that you’re pregnant?”

      Caroline’s lungs seized and her mouth froze into a circle, unsure of what the answer was. Surely she would remember something like that, wouldn’t she? She was only twenty-three years old and had been waiting to have sex until she’d found “the one,” which she’d obviously found. She turned pleading eyes to Craig, hating that she couldn’t even recall if they’d had intercourse before, let alone whether they’d used any form of birth control. “Have we... I mean is there...?”

      She couldn’t finish the embarrassing question with the radiology guy looking on, his clipboard not even raised high enough to cover his curious smirk.

      A rosy shade of pink stole along Craig’s hardened jawline and his eyes went wide, probably as he realized that he was the only person in the room who could possibly answer such an intimate thing.

      “Uh...” His mouth opened and closed several times before he finally cleared his throat. “I think they did a blood test in the ER before the MRI. Maybe it says in her chart or something?”

      “Let me take a look,” the tech said before flipping a few pages. Caroline wanted to yell at the man for not bothering to check her file first. But she was too busy forcing her muscles to relax against the narrow sheet-covered table underneath her. “Nope, no baby on board. We’re good to go.”

      Caroline almost sighed out loud as the air finally left her chest in a whoosh. Not because she didn’t want to have a baby—she most definitely wanted to be a mother someday. She just wanted to fully remember the man who could possibly be the father of her child. Unfortunately, the more she tried to drag the information from her brain, the more her head pounded.

      The tech raised and lowered the table and gave her some final instructions about remaining still. At some point, the room went darker, but Caroline’s breathing remained ragged and her thoughts kept spinning.

      While knowing that she wasn’t pregnant gave her one less thing to worry about in the overall scheme of things, it didn’t stop her from craving more details about the man she was planning to marry. And what their current physical relationship was like.

      Watching Craig’s retreating form as he exited the room, she came to the pulse-elevating realization that just because she couldn’t remember having sex with him didn’t mean she couldn’t vividly imagine it.