Lie back and relax.
When people said that, they couldn’t honestly have any expectation of a person doing it, could they? Beck had argued with her outside in the waiting room that he wanted to come in to Doctor Nicks’ office with her; Jaycee said no.
No way was she going to let a guy who she’d been living with for nine days walk in and see her… like this. Legs akimbo, paper sheet over her knees, staring at the ceiling tiles and breathing as the doctor’s head disappeared deeper between her thighs.
Sure, this was just like any other gynecological exam… Except in those exams a catheter wasn’t threaded through her cervix to pump her roommate’s freshly washed sperm into her reproductive system.
Oh, it wasn’t nice.
The speculum, fine, ok, not the nicest of experiences, but not the worst because she’d dealt with it before. The catheter was bad and she asked the doctor to stop once before letting him try again.
Lie back and relax.
Breathing through the discomfort that wasn’t agony, tears wet her eyes. This was crazy. What the hell was she doing? Lying here in a doctor’s office being filled with the sperm of a man she didn’t love. This wasn’t how babies were made, this wasn’t right.
“All done,” the doctor said as he slid out the speculum and gave her a paper towel. “You have to lie there just for ten minutes, and after that you’re free to go and carry on as normal… You may have some cramping, but it shouldn’t be excruciating.”
Shouldn’t be. Yeah, that wasn’t a resonating reassurance. “Can I close my legs?” she asked.
The doctor smiled. He stood up to pull off his gloves and gave her a box of tissues as he tossed his disposables in the trash. “I’ll give you some privacy; I’ll be just on the other side of the curtain. But please, stay in the chair.”
Stay in the chair. Great. Hi, ceiling tile. Guess she’d have to get used to staring at white ceilings and sitting in chairs like this. Pulling her feet from the stirrups, Jaycee cleaned up and straightened enough to tuck her heels against the doctor’s workspace, also known as her vagina, and she covered herself with the paper sheet.
She’d only had to strip from the waist down, so it wouldn’t take long for them to get out of here. The sooner the better.
Beck had insisted they both take the night off from AD, which annoyed her because there were already whispers about them. But he’d said all that proved was it didn’t matter if they were at work or not, people were still whispering. Jaycee had to concede that point.
He’d be out there in the waiting room now, probably pacing like she was in labor, frantic, not because he was worried about her, but because his future was staked on this. Every day it was more and more obvious how important this pregnancy was to him.
“Doctor Nicks?” she called out.
“Yes, do you need—”
“Can you ask Guy to come in?”
She listened as the doctor’s chair moved. Nicks walked across the room before opening the door. If she was stuck here, it didn’t make sense for both of them to be wondering about the other. It was kind of Beck’s job to entertain her anyway; she was doing this for him after all.
“Girl?” Beck asked as soon as he pulled the curtain out of the way to poke his head around it. “Are you ok?”
Nodding, she smiled and held her hand out to him. He came straight over to grab it, locking his grip around the heel of her thumb. “Your spunk is swimming its way up stream right now,” she said and although it was supposed to be a joke, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
Here they were, two people who’d known each other for a year, but really only been a part of each other’s lives for maybe a month and that was including their conversation on the stairs and the staring thing. Yet, she knew his biggest secret, he trusted her and despite the money, she was making a huge sacrifice for him. They were bonded in a way that not many people could appreciate.
“Do you think it’s working?” he asked and when she let her feet slide down to hang off the end of the short seat, he slid a hand over her belly.
Exhaling a smile, Jaycee was surprised to see how nervous he was. He might not seem anxious to an outsider, but he was never this tactile, and never this uncertain. “I don’t know, I’ve never been impregnated before.”
Oh, that made both of them shiver.
All they were doing was holding hands and yet, this could be the moment their essence was joined.
“Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?” he asked, watching his hand move across her stomach over her clothes. Did he think he was imparting some kind of magical fertility booster to her system or that his guys would go faster if they felt him close?
“No,” she said and laughed. Pinching his forearm, she made him look at her. “You hate going on dates and anyway, the doctor said I might cramp, we had a bit of a hitch going in—”
“A hitch?” he asked and his scowl snapped into place. “What kind of hitch?”
“It was me, not you,” she said. “Your guys were just perfect.”
Moving his palm from her stomach to her face, he pushed her hair away from her temple. “I didn’t mean to say… Were you hurt?”
“I was just uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ll be used to it for next time.”
“You think we’ll need a next time?” he asked.
Feeling a need to soothe him, Jaycee wanted to alleviate his apprehension. “I think if we do, I’ll be ready,” she said. “Besides, I’m going to have to get used to it, right? My cervix is going to have to put up with a lot more if this works…” It was a little late to have her next thought, but she shifted angle to get a better look at him. “Oh, damn… it better not be a boy.”
Offence made him glare again. “Why not?”
“Look at the size of you… and those shoulders…” Shaking her head, she flattened her hand on her belly. “If it’s a boy, he’s staying in there.”
“Won’t that make him bigger?”
It was the smile in his voice that made her look up. “I guess… but I don’t want him to come out early. He can’t come out if he’s not all the way cooked.” Beck’s smile was rare and his laugh was rarer. When he skimmed a hand over her forehead to move her bangs aside, she saw just what this meant to him. All the words she’d thought she understood before were nothing to the look in his eyes as he watched his hand move through her hair. “We’ll do this as many times as we need to, ok?”
When his gaze fell onto hers, she widened her tight smile and pulled his hand to her cheek. “Eight more times,” he said. “The contract only allows for nine shots and… we just took one.”
Reminding them of the contract was a smart move, but she still didn’t want the man who was so full of hope to lose his optimism. Pulling him down, she cupped a hand around her mouth to joke. “As long as you have The Abyss, you have something I want,” she murmured.
Maybe it was because they were so close or that the moment called for it, but he tipped his head up and kissed her forehead. He’d never kissed her before. Never. Anywhere. And as he drew back, she thought Beck realized it too because he paused. The confusion on his face only lifted when he saw her eyes, just a couple of inches below his.
Her throat closed, her chest got tighter and her skin came alive. He smelled so good. He always smelled good. His scent was becoming familiar to her and it warmed her in unison with the heat of his body that was resting above hers.
This was Beck. She wasn’t supposed to notice these things about him or be warmed by him at all. This was Beck… Beck, who she wasn’t supposed to be attracted to. Beck who was supposed to be off-limits. Beck who was looking at her mouth like he wanted to gobble her up.
A shimmer of weightlessness danced and flickered through her, buoying her airy cells. It resonated from too high in her belly to have anything to do with what the doctor had just done, but it made her feel so flimsy under the power of this overwhelming man beside her.
It was the moment—that was all it was. They could be conceiving right now. They felt close. They felt bonded. They felt… something.
“Shit,” Beck breathed out just half a beat before the doctor swept around the curtain, forcing her potential baby-daddy to straighten up.
“Ok, Jaycee, that’s you done,” the doctor said, making some notes on a chart. “We’ll keep in touch, but really there’s nothing to do until you take a pregnancy test.”
“When can I do that?” she asked.
“We’ll send you home with a few, but we’d advise you to wait two weeks.”
Great. Two weeks of nothing except waiting… and living with Beckett.
“What are you in the mood for?” Jaycee asked, moving past Beck, who was holding the front door open for her. “I’m starving. What about paella? I make a mean paella, and we got that shrimp. Well I got that shrimp. I won’t make it too spicy, you know, just in case.”
Beck went past her and she started to pull things from the cupboards to prep.
“We can’t,” he murmured, sinking down onto the stool on the living room side of the island.
“You don’t like paella? The chorizo is yours, you can pick out the shrimp if—”
“No, this,” he said, lifting his eyes from the counter to match them on hers. “We can’t do this. I have to cancel the contract.”
Resting a hand on a cutting board, Jaycee grabbed a knife from the nearby block. “You better watch what you’re saying to a potentially pregnant woman who’s holding a knife.”
The island was wide enough that even if she leaned all the way across it, she’d probably just graze him with the tip of the blade. But the threat was meant to make a point, not be serious.
“You’re not pregnant,” he said. “You said we’ll have to do this again, and I’m saying we shouldn’t.”
Slamming the knife onto the board, she didn’t know whether to be terrified or furious. “Your goddamn sperm is inside me, Beckett! You don’t get to back out now! This was your deal! Was it a joke? Do you do this a lot? Knock women up and then kick them out?”
Leaping to his feet, his hands landed hard on the counter. “I looked at you!”
“Ha! That’s what’s freaking you out?” she asked, seeing how pissed off he was, probably at himself. “I’m not gonna insult you by pretending I don’t know what you’re talking about because I do. Yeah, you did, and I looked at you too.”
In a way they’d never looked at each other before and shouldn’t be looking at each other. Ever. “That’s not happening, girl! We’re done!”
So he was happy to walk away from the thing he wanted most in the world because of a ten second moment? He started to march away, but she ran down her side of the island and got in front of him before he could reach the stairs.
“I’ve got news for you Beckett Trent; this is going to get harder. What happened in there was nothing to do with me. Ditch me if you want, but don’t you think the same thing will happen with the next surrogate?”
Jaycee was so used to matching the vehemence of her opponent that it took a real concerted effort on her part to be the calm one.
When she tried to touch his face, he blocked her with his shoulder and scowled as he backed off. “Don’t fucking do that,” he snapped.
What did he think? That she was trying to seduce him? Now? After what she’d been through today, she was hardly in the mood to be getting it on. “Stop being a baby,” she said. “Of course you felt something! I was vulnerable, there because of you, and we were doing something not many strangers do with each other. There will be more moments like that, but it won’t mean anything to either of us. It’s just a human connection in an intense moment. I proved to you I was going to do it, your dream became real; your child became a real possibility. You felt something for the child I might grow for you, not something for me.”
Her reasoning took some of his anger. Wow, who knew she could be rational even in the face of being yelled at? “You think?” he asked.
Smiling, she tiptoed closer and this time when she lifted her hand, he let her stroke his jaw. “I know, Beck. For sure. We’re so different. We’ll never be together. Neither of us even want it.”
“You wanted to have sex,” he grumbled in his muttering voice.
Sometimes he was so cute and he didn’t even know it. “Honey, I wasn’t making a play for you. You say ‘make a baby’ to a girl and she thinks that’s what needs to be done… and I really didn’t want to do IVF. I didn’t even know intrauterine insemination was a thing… I’d just never thought about it.” A grin made her head duck into her shoulders. “God, I just said it. Damn, this is actually a part of my life.” Except he was backing out of the deal… was he? Picking at the edge of his tee-shirt sleeve, she got coy. “If you back out of this deal now, I could be just another woman knocked up by an asshole deadbeat.”
“I’m not a deadbeat.”
“Money means nothing if our kid can’t pick you out of a line-up,” she said. “I thought the point of this was that you wanted a kid…”
He showed his clenched teeth a fraction before he spoke. “I don’t want a wife.”
“And I don’t want to marry you,” she said. “Trust me, Beck. Today… meant nothing.”
“Nothing,” he said and swallowed. “Right. You’re right.”
Good, he was more relaxed, she was good at this. “I’ll make dinner. You go upstairs for a bit, channel this into creating something beautiful; channel what you’re feeling now… I’ll call you when the food is ready.”
“One, three, one, eight,” he said, driving his rough fingers through her long bangs to blend them with the rest of her hair.
“What’s—”
“The code for the door upstairs,” he said. “If you get sore, come up.”
That was a show of trust and a sign that being home, getting back to normal, was reminding him of their lack of interest in each other. “I’m a woman,” she said. “Cramps come with the territory. But thank you for sharing.”
He took her chin. “No battering the beaver in front of The Abyss while I’m sleeping though, right?”
So if he was up and working… If he was joking around with her, he was feeling better and that made Jaycee feel better too. “Damn… what about when you’re out?” she asked like she had real expectation he might say yes.
“Maybe,” he said and squeezed her chin before easing her aside to head for the stairs. “I’ll think about it.”
It made sense that he had freaked out, she’d been freaked out too. But there was no need.
Getting pregnant, just like pregnancy, was going to be an emotional experience. If this one didn’t take they could discuss whether or not they wanted to try again.
The truth was, she liked feeling like this. Having Beck taking care of all the bills meant she could live for herself again. She could take the clients she wanted to take, and spend time with her music, scribbling lyrics to songs she’d never sing to anyone except herself.
Being near Beck made Jaycee want to explore her creative side, something she’d always ignored. She loved to sing, but it had always been her grandmother’s artistic talent that she wanted to mimic. With Beck around, she was reminded of all those days she spent with her grandmother on the shore at dusk or dawn, sweeping the pastel colors onto the page.
Jaycee would never have artistic flair, but being around those who did inspired her and there was nothing wrong with embracing that.