“Mitch doesn’t feel like a stranger.” At Miranda’s arched brow, Tess tried to cover. “I mean, we’ve spent a fair amount of time together over the past week, working on this proposal, so we’ve gotten to be friends. He’s a good guy. He took me to buy a car this morning so I wouldn’t be dependent on him or anybody else.”
“He’s got a heart of gold,” Miranda agreed. “But I want to apologize for him on the front end.”
“For what?”
“My brother, God love him, is a compulsive flirt. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable with that.”
Tess thought of her own experience on the receiving end of that flirtation and couldn’t imagine being uncomfortable with it. He wasn’t the skeezy kind of flirt who left a woman feeling like she needed a shower simply by being in the same room. He was charming, dancing his way right past people’s reservations, until they wondered why they’d resisted in the first place. By his own admission, he’d dated a huge chunk of the eligible population of women in Wishful. But she’d been all over town with him in the past week, and no one had a cross word or look for him. There was no line of jealous exes or anyone who seemed to expect anything of him—none of the negativity that would follow a player. Because he wasn’t one.
Tess felt the urge to defend him. “I’m pretty sure Mitch flirts to put people at ease.”
“He does. But a lot of people on the receiving end of that think he’s an operator.”
“He’s a friend. And I’m not uncomfortable.” Please, please leave it at that.
“Well, all right. I just wanted to check because sometimes Grammy gets something in her head and nobody ca
n make her shake it.”
“Your grandmother is adorable.” And Tess wanted to kiss her feet for coming up with this arrangement.
“Adorably interfering.”
“Interfering with what?”
Miranda shook her head and tapped a few keys on the computer, presumably bringing up Tess’s record. “Never mind. So you’re having recurring nausea. It comes and goes? Isn’t constant?”
“Right.”
“Is there a particular time of day it happens?” Miranda put her stethoscope in her ears and pressed it to Tess’s chest. “Deep breath.”
“Not really. Some days it’s lingered for hours. Other times it’s just this vaguely queasy feeling that passes.”
“Again.” She shifted the stethoscope. “What about in relation to eating? Any kind of consistent reaction after consuming food?” She moved the disk around to Tess’s back.
“No. Not that I’ve noticed. I’ve just felt generally…lousy. I kept chalking it up to other stuff, but it seems unlikely I managed to get food poisoning, jet lag, a stomach bug, and anxiety stomach all in the same week.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you there. All right. I want to run some basic tests. Do a blood draw, urinalysis, and see what there is to see, okay?”
“Okay.”
Tess gave the requisite samples and waited. And waited. It actually probably wasn’t more than half an hour, but with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling, it felt longer. At last Miranda stepped through the door, shutting it quietly. Her curiously blank expression set off alarm bells.
“What? What is it? Is it something serious? I mean, I’m twenty-six. I haven’t had a proper physical since college other than my annual gynecological exam. I—”
“Calm down. You’re perfectly healthy.” Miranda sat on the stool and rolled over to the table.
Tess frowned. “Then why am I feeling so sick?”
“You’re pregnant.”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. There had to be some mistake.
“I take it this is a surprise?”
Her brain kicked into gear again. “That…that’s not possible.”
“Unless we’re talking you aren’t sexually active, immaculate conception kind impossible, I’m afraid it is.”