“Trust me, I don’t want to feel that sick again, thank you very much. It’s awful . . .” I trailed off, realizing we still were without an answer to a question that really needed one.

“Wait, the second test—” I reminded him.

“Yeah, I was just thinking that myself. I wonder if it’s still downstairs in the powder room.” Ethan sat up in bed and reached for his jeans. “I really hope so for Fred’s sake, because I doubt he’ll appreciate being woken up at two in the morning to give us the first one.”

“Are you going down to see if you can find it?”

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for hours to know the truth and I don’t want to wait any longer.” He gave me another intense look as he pulled on his pants. “Okay with you?”

I nodded and took another deep breath. “I want to know too.”

He stood up and checked my IV bag before dropping down to kiss me quickly on the lips. “Don’t go anywhere, baby.”

“Oh, I won’t,” I said sarcastically, “I want this out of me.” I indicated to my wrist.

“In the morning, he said. He’ll remove it then.” He smoothed my hair in that gentle and soothing way he had. “The drip is going in very slowly now.” He gave me a really nice smile. I loved seeing it. I loved when Ethan smiled, period. Because it changed his whole face to where he really looked . . . happy.

“I’ll be right here waiting, then.” I nodded.

He lost the smile and got serious again but turned back at the door, in his jeans and bare feet, his hair in disarray from dragging his fingers through it, his beard looking scruffy.

He took my breath away.

 Heading down the grand staircase, I was able to take my first relaxed breath in hours. Well, maybe relaxed is not accurate, but the dread that had been crushing me like an anvil on my chest had lifted enough that I could breathe without physical pain.

She was back in the land of the living, for one thing. We were on the same page with unplanned pregnancies for another. The rest of it would have to be dealt with one step at a time.

First step was to find the unused test kit.

It wasn’t in the powder room where I’d last seen it, and that made sense as this house was a working hotel most of the time. Hannah wouldn’t leave something like that out in a room where guests might find it. I hadn’t expected it to still be there anyway.

I hit the kitchen next. I had an idea where she might have put it and went to switch on the lights. The pantry was huge, with one whole wall devoted to nonfood items and supplies for the business. I scanned each shelf, and then bingo, there it was. The box I’d purchased in the Kilve chemist’s shop earlier in the day sitting on the shelf with the soaps. I read the package again. “Over 99% accurate” and “As accurate as a doctor’s test” had to mean something, right?

As I went back through to leave the kitchen I passed the shelf with the photograph on it of my mum with Hannah and me. I stopped and picked it up. As I studied the picture, I realized this was the way I imagined her always. Her beauty captured in this photo for the final time before she went away and became something else. I looked at image of me at four, at how I leaned into her and how she was touching me, my hand on her leg, and wondered if I’d ever told her I loved her. I had in my dreams and prayers of course, but wondered if I’d ever said the words to her so she heard them coming from me. There was nobody I could ask, though. Even if there was, I don’t think I could ask them the question. It would be cruel to make my dad or Hannah try to remember something like that.

I thought about where I was headed and what Brynne and I would be doing a few minutes from now, and wished so badly that my mother could have known about us. That I could ring her up and say, “I have some news, Mum, and I hope you’ll be pleased to hear it.”

I brushed my finger over the image of her lovely face and set it back on the shelf, somehow feeling the connection was there and that it was possible for her to know about me. I held that hope close to my heart as I turned out the light and went back upstairs to my girl.

Brynne was sitting up in bed looking beautiful and anxious, and the protective urge that flowed from me was so incredibly intense, it made me pause. And I realized something important. I knew in that moment that anyone who dared to try to hurt her or our potential child would have to kill me first to get to them. Wow. I shrugged it off because it didn’t matter about me, anyway. If anything ever happened to her, I’d be finished.

This was my truth.

“You found it?” she asked in her sweet voice.

I waved the package in front of me as I came forward. “One missing test.”

“Okay, I’m ready.” She spoke quietly and held her hand out.

I placed the package in her lap and picked up her right hand. Instead of kissing the top, I turned it and pressed my lips to her wrist. I could feel her pulse beating. Her eyes filled up and got watery, so I smiled and told her the truth. “Everything will work out the way it’s meant to, baby. I have no doubts like that.”

“How can you not?”

I shrugged. “I just know that we are going to be together, and if this is part of our future then we’d better go forward with it.” I pulled back the blankets and helped her out of the bed.

“I can walk,” she told me. “And I promise that I will come out the same door I went in this time.” She looked down at the floor, ashamed.

I could afford to be cocky at the moment, so I grabbed the chance even though it made me a bastard. “Yeah, I’m pretty confident of that, my beauty. You’d have a tough time getting down the staircase with that pole and me not noticing.”

She lost the look of shame immediately and glared beautiful flashing eyes at me. “I can think of a good use for the pole.”

“That’s my girl.” I led her to the bathroom, rolling the pole for her, unable to curb my smart-ass mouth. “This really is a very fine pole, you know. It probably has a good many practical uses—”

She shut the bathroom door in my face and left me standing there on the other side for the second time, waiting for some information that I now hoped would be true. It’s weird, but from the start, I embraced the idea almost as soon as it was suggested. The idea of a baby was a daunting prospect, sure, but we were intelligent people and had to have more going for us than many people do when they start a family. Our child would just cement us more solidly together, and that was a beautiful thing in my eyes. I knew what I knew, even if I couldn’t admit it to a single other person on this earth. If I’ve gotten my girl pregnant, if we’ve made a baby together and it’s growing inside her right now, then I’ll never lose her, she’ll never leave me, nothing can ever take her away.