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“Well, it definitely woke me up.” I nuzzle my nose into his shoulder.
Liam snickers. “The perfect way to begin the day, if you ask me.”
Forty-five minutes later, Liam sits next to me in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, holding my hand.
“Why do these offices always have the TV blaring?” he whispers as some talk show contestant shouts out over the rows of leather chairs in the lobby.
“I feel like it’s so we can’t hear ourselves think. Or maybe the front desk just wants to be able to hear it.” I shrug. “They deserve to, with all the annoyances they probably go through.”
He smirks at me. “Is that why you kept laying it on so thick when we checked in?”
“I just have a feeling they put up with some nasty patients, and I never want to be one of them.”
“My people-pleasing baby mama.” He tickles his fingers up and down my arm.
“There are just some things I can’t cut out of my personality that have been surgically embedded.”
But I am getting better at being more assertive with what I need, so I guess I could count that as a win.
“Gabrielle Murphy.” A nurse opens the door to the back hallway of exam rooms, and I stand with Liam following.
He grouses, his spine going rigid, but follows me as he places one hand on my back to lead me.
After the usual urine test, undressing, blood pressure, and typical questions about how I’m feeling, the nurse leaves us in the exam room, where I sit awkwardly on the table while Liam bounces his leg in the spousal support chair.
“You okay? You seem tense.” Something shifted in his attitude the minute we got back here.
He bites down on his full bottom lip, and I have to smother a sigh; this man is too gorgeous for his own good.
“Nothing. Forget it.” Except his leg is agitated and shaking violently now.
“Liam, what is going on?” My voice takes on a panicked note because we have so many things going on right now and I don’t know what just got under his skin.
After the night I made him work at the playhouse that all the Ashtons attended, Liam and Alana sat us all down to tell us they’d seen their fellow farmer Dan and the trespasser together outside in a group. It could mean nothing, but Thomas isn’t all that sure. One thing is definite; it’s suspicious. Warren and Thomas went to the police right away to report it, discreetly, of course. Since it could be nothing, and they’d known Dan Quillin a long time, they didn’t want him to suspect they were poking around trying to figure out how he was connected to the man who had trespassed on their land. If it turned out to be nothing, they’d have burned a bridge in the community.
On the other hand, all the men were now riddled with even more anxiety, and Liam has his head on a swivel constantly like something is about to happen.
“I just didn’t like the way she said your name,” he blurts out.
Confusion flits through me. “What didn’t you like about it?”
“That she called you a Murphy, when I so desperately want you to be an Ashton.”
My jaw may be somewhere on the floor because that sounds oddly like a proposal. It’s the only thing I can think, and then I’m thinking that I’m insane and girlishly unhinged because no way did Liam Ashton just ask me to change my name to his while I’m sitting here pregnant with his baby out of wedlock.
I don’t have any more time to regroup, though, or ask any of the questions lingering on my tongue because our doctor walks in at that very moment after a complimentary knock.
“Are you two ready to find out what you’re having?” the doctor asks as she comes in, a huge smile on her comforting face.
Recovering quickly because I have a thousand questions for the stoic man sitting in the corner of the room, I nod enthusiastically.
We opted to find out the sex of the baby early using a blood test but wanted to wait to hear it from our doctor along with the other results from the genetics they test during said test.
My OB looks over the paperwork in front of her and grins, a professional but happy expression that has my heart thumping. Liam shoots me a wink, and again I’m floored that this man continues to surprise me at every turn.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy.”
The information floods my brain in a rush of warmth, love, and excitement. Suddenly, Liam jumps up and comes at me, arms open as he hugs me into a tight squeeze.
