Chapter 14
Ashley was having breakfast in the small nook to one side of the kitchen the following morning when Colin came dragging in from the front entrance. It was obvious that he hadn’t been home last night from his disheveled appearance as he sat down and shot her a smile, running his fingers through his hair.
“Thanks,” he said as his cook, Anna, handed him a large glass of orange juice.
“Omelet?” she asked.
“Absolutely. Throw everything in there. I’m starving,” he replied.
He took a big swig of his juice and turned to Ashley, the smile still on his face.
“How are you and the seedling, this morning?” he asked.
“We’re good. Anna has fed us, and we were just about to go out for a walk.”
“Where are you walking to?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I think Mike is going to escort me back to his flat to meet his wife and dog, and we’re going to walk it around the castle grounds.”
“Oh? Mixing his household chores with his duties now, is he?” Colin replied.
Ashley felt horrified. Had she just gotten Mike in trouble without thinking about it.
“No. It’s not like that. I told him I was going to go for a walk and he told me he would go with me to make sure I was secure. He mentioned his dog and I said I’d like to meet him, so he said we could stop by and take him with us if I wanted. It was my idea.”
“Relax, Ashley. I’m not going to fire him for walking his dog on my dime. My staff is extended family to me. His wife is a bit of a handful. You’ll probably win him some brownie points for saving her from walking the dog today.”
“I just don’t want to get too out of shape while I’m pregnant. I’ve been eating like a horse lately.”
“Of course. The baby has a more complex metabolism. Your body is trying to over nourish to accommodate it.”
“Yes, that’s what the doctor told me.”
“Then he should have told you not to worry about gaining too much weight. If anything, he should have warned you not to try to keep your weight down. Even overeating, you’ll probably be fighting to keep weight on rather than gaining too much.”
“He did tell me that. It’s just hard to imagine such a thing.”
“You’ll see. Eat what you want, when you want. You’ll be fine.”
Anna returned with his omelet, and she excused herself to go meet Mike outside the doors from her room where they had agreed to meet. Despite what the doctor and Colin might say, she still felt a need to keep up her fitness. She wasn’t shallow, but she wasn’t going to let someone else’s baby wreck her figure. Right now, she couldn’t care less about whether or not anyone wanted a relationship with her, but things might change once this was done and she returned to her normal life.
She slipped on a pair of the walking shoes she had purchased in the city before and walked out the side door to find Colin waiting there rather than Mike. In fact, Mike was nowhere in sight. She furrowed her brows together, looking at Colin in confusion.
“I’ve not been around much the past few days and you just got here. I thought I could at least walk with you instead of Mike.”
“You don’t have to do that. Mike is fine.”
“Aww now, you’re going to give me a complex. Do you not want to walk with me?”
“I just don’t want to cramp your style. You seem to have had a rough night. You most likely need to get some rest.”
“Cheeky,” he replied.
“What?”
“You’re a bit cheeky today,” he said.
“I don’t even know what that means,” she said, walking toward the gardens without waiting on him.
He could follow. He could not follow. He could find Mike and send him with her as previously arranged. It didn’t matter much to her.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you somehow. I’m not sure what I said or did, but I can assure you it was unintentional.”
“I’m fine. It’s fine.”
“In my experience, a woman telling me that something is fine rarely means that anything is fine at all.”
“I can’t speak to your experiences with women. You will have to own that yourself,” she snapped.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, strong and steady, stopping her in her tracks. He stepped in front of her to block her path as they stood by the last dragon before the exit from the gardens.
“Ashley, is this because I went out last night? Are you upset that I went on a date?”
“What? Of course not. We have an agreement, a contract. Nothing more.”
“Are you sure? Because you are acting like you’re jealous. I mean, I know that you and I got a little carried away in New York, but that shouldn’t change the nature of our association. The only thing it did was speed up the process of all this so we didn’t have to wait months for things to be timed right for insemination.”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed, realization sinking in. He was a dragon shifter. He had heightened senses in certain ways. He had told her as much while they were talking in her room the night they met. Had he known she was ovulating? Had he sensed it? She hadn’t been drunk that night. Tipsy a bit, yes, but sober enough to know what she was doing and to ask about protection. He had scoffed, saying there was no need , that if they got lucky they’d not need a turkey baster to cinch this deal.
She hadn’t thought much about it, at the time, but now she found herself wondering if he hadn’t intentionally gotten her pregnant. Perhaps just to save the wait, as he said, but could it be that he also considered that if she changed her mind about the contract the next day, she might reconsider when finding out she was pregnant anyway. Could he have been so calculating?
“You know what. I don’t think I feel that well this morning. I think I will skip the walk and go lie down for a while.”
His hand was still resting on her shoulder, now joined by the other hand on the opposite one. He removed both of them and put them in his pockets.
“As you wish then,” he replied. “I’ll send the doctor in to check on you.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I’m just tired. Very tired,” she shot back as she made her way back to the house and into her room.
She leaned back against the doors, her heart racing. Damnit. Why had she behaved like that? He was right. She was acting like some sort of jealous maniac. Though it had been an excuse to just get away at the time she had said it, she now found that she really wasn’t feeling all that well. She stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed, drifting off to sleep.
At some point, a bit later, she was awakened by the doctor sitting on the edge of the bed and putting his hand on her forehead to check her temperature, having woken her to ask questions.
“I’m just very tired,” she told him.
“Perhaps we need to adjust your supplements. Let me check your levels. I’m just going to prick your finger. I won’t need much to test.”
“Okay,” she replied, holding out her hand and letting him poke it with the little tester from his medical bag he had brought in.
“All right. I’ll test this and get you straightened out. Get some rest. Once I know what we need to adjust in your diet and supplements, I’ll have it sent up with your lunch.”
“That would be great,” she said sleepily.
She blinked as the light from the hallway momentarily filled her room as he stepped back out in the hallway. There was a glimpse of Colin waiting out in the hallway before the door shut. She could hear their voices whispering and then footsteps down the hallways in opposite directions. She started to get out of bed, but quickly realized she could barely lift her own weight. Collapsing back into the covers, she wondered just how big a mistake this might be, but the thought fell into the darkness alongside her.