“Thanks,” I told the doctor, and walked with Harlow to the door.

A nurse met us in the hallway. “We have a back exit to take you through. That way, Miss Manning doesn’t have to deal with the crowd in the waiting room.”

The way she said “crowd” snapped me out of my emotional haze. What crowd?

“There have been a few arrivals since you got here. We’ve called the police. It should be cleared up soon,” the nurse explained.

Shit. Damn Melody. Had she alerted the f**king media?

“I’m so sorry,” Harlow said. I turned my attention to her and saw the horrified look on her face. Dammit. Why hadn’t I been better prepared to keep her safe from this?

“Nothing to be sorry for, Miss Manning. We should have brought you in through the back. That was our mistake. From now on, you can enter through this door, and we will send you directly to an exam room. You can have your privacy then.”

“Thank you,” Harlow muttered, but I didn’t miss the frustrated sound in her voice. She didn’t like the attention, and she had flown under the radar for so long. This thing with her parents had taken her privacy away from her.

Harlow

We could have sex. As upset as I was by the media showing up at the doctor’s office, it didn’t take away from the fact that we could have sex. I’d been having vivid fantasies about Grant lately, and I had to fight the urge to climb on top of him when we got to the car.

“How do you feel about this doctor?” Grant asked as he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road toward home.

“I like him. I feel better talking to him than I did with the last doctor. This one seems to know more about my specific situation,” I replied honestly. This doctor had explained things carefully and was thorough with his exam. He had even set up visits to a cardiologist for me. I had a cardiologist in L.A., but I needed one here. I needed one involved in this pregnancy. The only fear I had now was that our baby might not be healthy. I didn’t want to curse this child with my heart condition.

“He seems positive,” Grant said.

I liked that he seemed positive. It made me feel like I wasn’t the only person on earth who believed I could do this. “I’m low-risk.” I repeated the doctor’s words. I liked being low-risk.

“Yeah,” was all he said, although I could still see the pinched look on his face. He wasn’t going to accept things that easily. I understood that he was scared. The baby was hurting me, in his eyes. He needed to accept that the baby was a gift. I believed he would in time.

“Grant,” I said, staring at his arms flexing as he drove. I wanted to lick his biceps. I was close to begging.

He glanced over at me. His eyes took me in, then went wide before he swung his gaze back to the road. “What you thinking about, baby?”

I was thinking I wanted to lick his biceps. Then his abs and that wonderful muscle that made a V and disappeared into his jeans. That was what I was thinking. “About you,” I said.

“Shit,” he muttered, and he took a deep breath.

“The doctor said it was OK,” I reminded him.

He nodded. “Yeah, I heard him.”

I reached over and ran a finger down his arms and wrapped my hand around the muscle, which flexed as he gripped the steering wheel more tightly.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a shaky voice.

I had jumped on him in a car before. But this time, I wasn’t going to do that. We weren’t far from his apartment. I wanted to have time to explore him and kiss every perfectly sculpted part of his body.

“Harlow?” he repeated when I didn’t respond.

“I’m just touching you. I can’t wait to do more,” I told him as I ran my finger up over his shoulder. I brushed my fingertips over the vein in his neck, which stood out as if he were in pain.

“I can feel that, but I won’t be able to drive if you keep that up.”

Maybe I couldn’t wait until we made it back to the apartment. “Could you pull over?” I asked, feeling my breathing pick up with anticipation.

Grant let out a string of curses before pulling off an exit and into the parking lot of the first nice hotel we came to, which we had seen from the highway. He had barely put the truck into park when he swung his door open and jumped out. I watched in fascination as he stalked around the front of the truck and opened my door.

Both of his hands grabbed my waist, and he pulled me out of the truck, even though I didn’t need his help.

“Not taking you in a damn truck,” was all he said as he grabbed my hand and led us inside.

It took him no time to get a room. When we stepped onto the elevator, he backed me up against the wall and kissed me. Really kissed me for the first time since he’d shown up at Mase’s. This kiss wasn’t holding back anything. His hands gripped my h*ps tightly in a possessive, hungry grasp as his mouth moved over mine. When his tongue slid across mine, I tasted the mint from his gum and shivered at the intimate contact. The dinging of the elevator reminded us that we weren’t alone yet.

Grant broke the kiss and then stepped back to stare down at me. “I need to taste you. All of you,” he said, before taking my hand again and leading me down the hall toward room 2200. He touched the key card to the door, and the green light blinked. He swung the door open, revealing a suite.

“We just needed a bed,” I said, smiling as I looked around at the large room, complete with a bar and a gas fireplace.