The oven beeped, and Patrick retreated toward the kitchen. “Oh yeah?” he called over his shoulder. “If your idea is nachos, I’m way ahead of you.”

“Uh…” I followed him to the kitchen and lingered in the doorway. “Nachos are good. But that wasn’t my idea.”

Patrick’s head was in the oven. “What was your idea?”

“It was … something else.”

I let that sink in. Then Patrick unfolded into a standing position. I knew I was blushing, but I forced myself to hold his gaze.

His brow was furrowed. “But … nachos are terrible cold.”

I blinked.

“Kidding!” He crossed the kitchen in two large steps. “I mean, they are. But I don’t care. Sorry.” As he talked, he covered my face in kisses. I accepted them, and his apology. “Let’s eat the nachos later,” he said, his lips pressed against mine. “Let’s eat them … never.”

He marched me backwards toward my bedroom, all the while mumbling about the insignificance of nachos, about how, actually, he didn’t really even like nachos. In fact, apart from the fact that they’d kept him alive throughout college, he hated them. I laughed between kisses as we made our way through my kitchen and living room. We stopped when the backs of my knees hit the bed.

“Enough about nachos,” I ordered.

His smile fell away, replaced by a serious, intense expression. “What nachos?”

I reached for the top button of his shirt and flicked it open. I undid another, then another, releasing each button until the shirt slid off his shoulders and onto the floor. Carefully, we unfurled on the bed. And after what felt like an eternity, he kissed me.

It continued like a dream. On and on, we kissed, hands trailing, mouths exploring. I lay back as he kissed my nipples, rubbing and caressing and even nipping me gently with his teeth. I felt a rush of adrenaline, and I began to get excited about what would happen when he went farther down.

As if reading my mind, his mouth descended farther, obscured completely by my belly. I stared at the ceiling and then … ahhh.… his mouth was warm and wet as it rolled over me. I lifted my hips to meet him and threw my head back. Oh. God.

Abruptly his mouth pulled away and cold air hit where his warm mouth had been. I whimpered, about to protest, when all at once his hands were on my waist, lifting me, turning me. Then I was on my knees and his lips were on my back.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I breathed. God, yes.

When he entered me, we both gasped. And for a heartbeat, we remained just like that, with Patrick deep inside me. Finally, he took me by the hips and began to move.

I pushed back against him as he filled me. Again. And again. To his moans, I started to let go. I felt confident. Sexy. Safe. And, maybe for the first time in my life, like I was in the exactly right place.

*   *   *

The next month passed like a movie montage: little snapshots whizzing by so fast that all I registered was the happiness, rather than the individual moments. I could almost hear the background music, something soft and beautiful like Sarah McLachlan. Patrick and I were a couple. We were expecting a baby.

Eloise moved in with Ted at the end of November, and though Patrick didn’t officially live at my place, he pretty much did. Eloise’s room was now the baby’s room, which meant it housed the boxes of stuff we’d bought at IKEA but still hadn’t opened—a crib, a changing table, a bassinet. Patrick bought a stroller online that, according to him, was top-of-the-line, but when it arrived neither of us could figure out how to assemble it, so that had gone into the room too, still in the box. If Patrick wondered who the baby’s actual father was, he never brought it up. So I decided I wouldn’t either. Patrick was the father, and that was that.

In the meantime, I was getting on with business. I’d made an appointment to see the ob-gyn and I was meeting Patrick there in twenty minutes. I trudged through the snow, my boots crunching in the ice that was forming on the sidewalk. Setting up the appointment had been almost as tumultuous as the snow.

“I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Hargreaves on Friday morning for my scan,” I’d said to Patrick between bites of toast a couple of mornings earlier. “Nine A.M. Can you make it?”

“Lorraine Hargreaves? Chief Resident Lorraine Hargreaves? You know how to hobnob with the important people, Nev.”

“She offered, remember?”

“So she did.” Patrick nodded, duly impressed. “Of course I’ll be there. Hopefully she’ll give us some good news. Maybe she can turn the baby?”

“Unlikely. I already went over it with Sean. He felt the position, said it didn’t look good.”

Patrick blinked at me several times before he could respond. “Sean examined you?”

“No.” I grabbed a piece of his toast, took a bite. “He just felt my stomach. In the hallway.”

There was a long, uneasy silence.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just … don’t want Sean touching you.”

“Why?”

“Because. It’s … weird. And he’ll never let me hear the end of it.” He picked up his coffee and stared into it.

“Are you okay, Patrick?”

“Sure.” With his eyes still downcast, he gave me a halfhearted smile. “Fine.”

We finished our breakfast and went on with our respective days, but the exchange left me feeling wary. If Patrick felt that strongly about Sean examining me, how would he feel if he knew what we had actually done together? I knew on some level it suited Patrick to keep his head in the sand, to keep pretending my baby was the result of the Immaculate Conception rather than the child of another man. But how long could that last? It felt like we were skating around a precarious section of ice, and as soon as either of us stopped concentrating on avoiding it, we were both going to fall straight in.

Now I pulled up the hood of my jacket. It was wicked cold. I tugged at the middle of my puffer coat, but it was no use, it wouldn’t close. My belly was officially enormous. Fall had been kind this year, but today it was as though Mother Nature had looked at the calendar and, realizing she’d overslept, was overcompensating.

I hurried through the sliding doors of the hospital and, feeling the rush of warmth from the heaters, lowered my hood. Eloise crossed the foyer, and I lifted my hand to wave but she didn’t see me. Patrick stood at the information desk, chatting to, by the looks of it, the parents of a patient. His green scrubs exposed a deep V of olive skin and chest hair, partially covered by an orange lanyard holding his hospital accreditation. He looked tired after an all-night shift in Emergency, but he smiled at the couple and ruffled the hair of a little boy who wore his arm in a sling. I stood just inside the door and waited, rubbing my hands together to get some feeling back.

When Patrick noticed me, he excused himself and came over. His smile told me the strange conversation about Sean had been forgotten. For now.

“Hi.” His lips brushed against mine.

“Long night?” he asked.

He shrugged, sliding my coat off my arms and tossing it over his arm. He took my hand as we began to walk. I eyed his unusually large smile.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m excited about seeing the baby.”

“Oh, yeah.” I grinned. “Me too.”

He led me down through the hospital, a maze of halls that even after all these years could get me lost. On the way, we passed several acquaintances of Patrick’s, who nodded at him but seemed to avoid my gaze entirely. Before I could analyze it too much, we arrived in front of a white door with a glass panel and a sign that said DR. LORRAINE HARGREAVES, followed by a lot of letters. We slipped in.

“Neva Bradley and Patrick Johnson,” Patrick said. “We have an appointment.”

“So you do,” Dr. Hargreaves said, appearing at the desk alongside a heavily pregnant woman and a man who I assumed was the father of her baby. Though one never really should assume. “Go straight in,” she said, gesturing to the room she had just exited, before chatting to her receptionist about billing for the couple who were leaving. Patrick and I skulked into her office and sat down. Dr. Hargreaves joined us a little while later.