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“Did she call you Sash?” Rafael asked.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Short for Sasha.” Alexandra began rummaging in her purse. “She told me she had a childhood friend who had my name and went by Sasha. It’s cute, right? I said she could call me that.” She ran some balm across her lips and dropped the tube back into her purse, not meeting his eyes.
“Sasha is already short,” he pointed out, puzzled by exactly how close they seemed to have become. Exactly how often did they talk?
“Mr. and Mrs. Zamos?” A nurse escorted them down a short hallway into a darkened room. Molly was on a table. A sheet was draped across her upper thighs and tucked into the waistband of, presumably, her underwear. Her hospital gown was bunched up to her rib cage, exposing a belly that was still very flat.
The doctor had said this was an external scan and would only proceed to internal if that was deemed necessary, but Rafael still hesitated, feeling as though he was walking into something too personal.
Alexandra hurried toward the bed, though, and clasped Molly’s hand. “Okay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Molly said. “Excited.”
Rafael stood behind Alexandra and clasped her upper arms as they all looked at the screen.
The technician started with gray scale, two-dimensional imaging, pointing out the baby’s heartbeat.
Both women caught their breath. Rafael let out a surreptitious breath of relief.
But as the tech took various measurements, changing the view, reality began to sink in. That was their child. Not just his progeny, not just an extension of Alexandra, but it would look like her and show pieces of her remarkable personality. A high-pitched voice would ask impossible questions and small legs would jump off too-high ledges and someday get behind the wheel of a car.
His heart began to thud harder. Energy gathered in him, a force that wanted to close his hands protectively around that small form and guard that life with his own.
The technician switched to a three-dimensional image. A fully formed fetus appeared on the high-def screen in shades of peach-yellow. The baby crooked one knee to block identifying its sex, then, much like a tourist in a hammock, yawned and stretched.
They all chuckled. Except Alexandra. She released a choked noise and her shoulders convulsed in his grip. She suddenly ripped herself away from him and headed out the door.
“Sasha!” Molly cried.
“Alexandra!” he said at the same time and hurried after her.
She was already pushing into the powder room across the hall and locked him out as he arrived at the door. He bit back a curse.
Molly came out of the exam room a moment later, still wearing the hospital gown.
“Seriously?” she asked as she realized the door was locked. She rapped on it. “Sasha. Don’t make me pee on the floor.”
The lock clicked and Molly slipped inside, but Alexandra didn’t come out. The lock clicked again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT THE HELL was that about?” Rafael asked when they entered the hotel suite they were using here in London.
“I had a wobble,” Sasha said, playing off her breakdown as though it was nothing.
“A wobble?”
“I got emotional. You’re constantly worrying that I don’t really want this baby. Surely it makes you happy that I—” Her throat closed.
Don’t cry. Not again.
She had already soaked Molly’s shoulder.
Her phone pinged. It was the clinic sending photos of the scans along with a confirmation that the pregnancy appeared to be progressing without issue.
She couldn’t look at that image again. It flashed her back to her own scan twelve years ago. The intense longing that followed was too painful to bear.
I want my baby.
