As he was walking back toward Molly’s room, a nurse was rolling a machine in. He followed close behind, but the moment Molly saw Baz and the machine in the same room, she was shaking her head.
“He can’t be in here for this,” she insisted.
“What’sthis?” he asked, not even sure what was going on.
“It’s an ultrasound machine,” the nurse replied. “The doctor wants to take a peek, just to make sure everything’s all right.” She smiled at Molly. “It’s perfectly all right for the father to be in here.”
“No,” Molly demanded, her voice holding that weird edge of panic. “I don’t want you in here for this, Sebastian. You need to leave. Right now.”
Baz frowned, met her gaze, held it. “I’d prefer to stay if it’s all the same. I’d like to see the baby, too.”
Molly was visibly trembling. “No. You can’t. Not until she’s born. You can’t.”
Baz set the ice chips on the table and went stone still. “She?”
Molly’s eyes bounced from him to the nurse then to the machine. “What?”
“You said not untilshe’sborn. You told me we were havin’ a boy.”
Her eyes were wide, her mouth slack. “We are. I mean, I don’t know. We won’t know until October eighth. That’s the due date.”
The nurse looked up from where she was placing a tube of gel. “I show the due date to be September nineteenth,” she said kindly, reaching for the chart. “Dr. Tinder says you’re right on schedule.”
Baz paused. He didn’t need to do the math, because he knew a healthy pregnancy was forty weeks, and since they’d only had sex the one time, there was only one day that was forty weeks out. October eighth was exactly forty weeks from January first. Meaning…
“You’re wrong,” Molly insisted. “Dr. Tinder’s wrong. The due date is October eighth.”
The nurse was looking at the chart, as though worried she’d made a mistake. “Due date is September nineteenth,” she said as she read. “And the sonogram done at sixteen weeks shows to be a girl.” She looked up and smiled. “Another sonogram at twenty-seven weeks shows the same thing.”
Baz was staring at Molly, unable to look away. She’d lied to him. About all of it. Yes, she was most definitely pregnant, but she wasn’t pregnant with his baby. Hell, she’d gone so far as to alter the baby’s gender in her stories. Why the fuck would she do that? Did she think he needed to have a boy to be happy?
She was loony tunes.
His cell phone buzzed on his hip, so he grabbed it, saw JJ’s name. He tapped the screen to decline the call.
“I don’t need that machine,” Molly insisted. “No one needs to see the baby. It’s not time yet. October eighth is the due date.”
The nurse looked sincerely confused and perhaps a bit concerned by Molly’s agitation.
“Could you give us a minute?” Baz asked the nurse.
She looked back and forth between them. “Of course. Dr. Tinder should be here in a few minutes to do the ultrasound.”
Baz nodded, waited until the door closed behind her. He remained across the room, not wanting to get anywhere near Molly.
“You shouldn’t see the baby yet,” she demanded, her fingers now twisted in that silky blanket. “It needs to be a surprise.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” he mumbled. “This is definitely a surprise.”
“Sebastian, I can explain.”
“Can you? Can you explain why, for the past thirty-seven weeks, you’ve strung me along and told me you were pregnant with my child when, really, you were already pregnant the night we met?”
“But I didn’t know.”
He barked a mirthless laugh. “That doesn’t make the baby mine, Molly.”
Her eyes turned glassy. “You’ll make a good father, Sebastian. And when I’m not pregnant, you’ll want me. You’ll want to have sex with me. I promise. We can try again. Next time I’ll be better and it’ll work. You just have to give us a chance. You won’t drink alcohol and it’ll work.”
