Chapter 62

He looked at it longer than I expected him to. Long enough, in fact, that I got back to hanging up my new work clothes in the empty closet and tucking away other things in the sleek dresser at the foot of the bed.

“Bean,” he finally said.

“Right? I should be getting new pictures tomorrow, though.”

“Can I come?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my stomach still jumped a little. Taking a guy to come see the ultrasound of your fetus wasn’t romantic, but it still felt rather intimate. You didn’t just take anybody.

And, well, he was the father, and he was helping me out with Joshua for the health of the baby, whatever his ulterior motives, whatever they may be.

“I don’t see why not, but don’t you have work, sir?”

I saw his eyebrow twitch. “If I’m going to see my kid, I doubt Kim can’t kick up too much of a fuss.”

“I don’t know—he’s been hissing curses at you since we got back from Germany. I expect to find a voodoo doll of you in his desk any day now.”

He gave a dry, sad kind of laugh. “Well, we all make sacrifices.”

And, well, since I wasn’t the one who had to fight with LeFevre, I shrugged and told him to do whatever he wanted to.

When he just stood there, watching me finish up organizing my scant belongings, my back started to prickle with discomfort. It felt weird to just straight up tell him to leave when this was his house, so I scraped my mind for something to say and remembered my desire for a dance space.

When I asked him about large spaces of hard, clear floor, he caught on right away.

“I can make one,” he said. “It isn’t like I use my house for anything other than sleeping and cooking.”

It wasn’t till he left that I realized he had taken the picture of Baby Bean with him.

I had copies, but they were mostly pictures from different angles. The one he’d taken had been the clearest one and my favorite. Still, I couldn’t quite pull myself to chase him down. It was his kid, after all, and it was kind of cute that he just ran away like a thief with it.

The room he ended up clearing for me turned out to be his dining room.

“I only use it when my family comes to visit,” he said. “And even then, that’s only because my stools aggravate my dad’s back.”

Still, I did a double take when I saw the metal and glass table—the BIG table—leaning on its side on the side of the kitchen along with all its chairs. That had to have been heavy.

“Did you move that by yourself?”

“Not like I’m going to ask you to go lifting,” he said, all while wiping his forehead on his arm. He did look a little flushed. “I haven’t done my workout for today anyway. Oh, let me get you a stereo.”

He ran off, leaving me alone with the spare wall decoration left in the dining room. Mostly it was just windows like most of the house seemed to be, though instead of being blocked by greenery, it opened to a view of a fountain, a porch, and a covered pool.

I eyed the pool, wondering if he’d let me use it when I got farther along with my pregnancy.

He came back, not only with a rather ritzy-looking stereo but dressed in gym shorts and an athletic shirt that hinted at everything I wished I could remember.

“I’ll be down in the gym. I figured you wouldn’t want me watching you.”

“You’d be right.”

“Just be careful, kay? I trust you to know your body best, but I can’t help but nag for my own sake.”

I’d dressed down in maternity yoga pants and tank myself before coming in here, but when you’re a dancer, you stop being self-conscious in skin-tight wear. Even so, watching the muscles in his back, his very fine, very defined back, move as he set up the stereo made me suddenly self-conscious of my budding stomach and the extra weight I’d gained since getting pregnant. Mostly, though, it just made me swallow.

“Um, I’ve been wondering for a while, sir…”

“Yeah?” he finished and stood for a stretch.

“I’m always hearing about these crazed fan girls of yours…but where do they even see you? I mean, the places I’ve gone with you so far aren’t exactly swarming with women let alone young, crazy kinds.”

I thought I saw him stiffen a bit, but then he rolled his shoulders into another stretch and distracted me with the sheer width and bulk of said shoulders. When did he have the time to body build? Good crap.

“Money makes you tight. The wealthy tend to know each other, so I’ve known a lot of these people since I was young.” He hooked his hands onto his hips and smiled at me. “And, as you said, since the places I usually go to aren’t exactly rife with youth, my own tends to make me stand out.”

I rolled my eyes. “Even old you’d stand out.”

“Still…” he shrugged for no reason, and I found it a bit out of place. “I’ll get out of your hair now. You’re probably tired of me.”

I couldn’t exactly deny that, so I hoped he wasn’t too offended when he finally walked out. I wished there was a door to the dining room to shut out the rest of the house, but the entrance was a simple wide, square archway.

I rolled my feet a bit as I dwelt on the strange apprehension nestling in my gut before moving into the familiar warm-up stretches.

Why had he been so dismissive of a group of people that regularly threatened his life, and recently, my own? Was this just something about the life of the elite that I’d never get?