“Knows what?” Melanie repeated back, blinking innocently.
Eyes narrowing, his sister studied Melanie for a moment before shifting her attention to Rebecca and then back again before slowly nodding with a murmured, “I see.”
“That will make this easier,” Melanie said, nodding solemnly.
“It really will,” Rebecca agreed with a sympathetic smile before the duo shifted their attention back to Rog
er and gestured for him to continue.
“Now, where were we?” Melanie asked as she popped another Hershey Kiss in her mouth.
“We were about to be entertained,” Rebecca said, sending a hopeful look in Kenzie’s direction.
“I just have one question,” Kenzie said, gesturing lazily around the room. “What exactly is going on here?”
Popping another Hershey Kiss in their mouths, the duo looked at him. “Can I see you outside, Kenzie?” Aidan asked, trying to figure out how he was going to explain this.
Actually, what he was really trying to figure out was why his mother hadn’t told everyone yet. His brothers had barely managed to get the words out, letting their mother know that she was about to be a grandmother when she’d started spreading the word, planning baby showers, and sporting a “World’s Greatest Grandma” tee-shirt.
For the past two days, nothing. Not one word, email, or any of his brothers or cousins coming over to fuck with his head, which meant that his mother was fucking pissed. He’d worry about how he was going to make this up to her later, Aidan decided as he moved to step out of the room when the woman who lived to torment him decided that she wasn’t done fucking with him.
“You didn’t tell her the news, pookie?” Rebecca asked, blinking innocently.
“What news?” Kenzie asked right around the time that Melanie closed her eyes on a groan and said, “Don’t,” to her best friend, but Rebecca being evil and all…
“Yeah, what news, Aidan?” Rebecca asked with a calculating look in her eye as she popped another Hershey Kiss in her mouth.
“I’m going to be a father,” Aidan said, shifting his attention to find Kenzie frowning at him before she slowly glanced at Melanie and-
“I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?” Kenzie asked, throwing him a questioning look because she knew better than anyone that he’d never planned on having children.
“He’s going to be a father and I’m going to be a godmother,” Rebecca said, tossing another Hershey Kiss in her mouth.
Kenzie opened her mouth and-
“Wait. Why do you get to be the godmother?” Kenzie demanded with a frown.
Pursing her lips up with a thoughtful expression, Rebecca asked, “What’s her name?” as she gestured towards Melanie, who popped another Hershey Kiss in her mouth with a heavy sigh as Kenzie stood there, frowning and-
“Fair enough,” Kenzie said with a slow nod.
“Moving on,” Rebecca said, shifting her attention back to Roger. She placed a Hershey Kiss in her mouth as she gestured for him to get on with it only to sigh heavily when Kenzie said, “I didn’t even know that you were seeing anyone.”
“You’re really making this too easy,” the epitome of evil said with a shrug and a sad shake of her head.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Aidan said, feeling a headache coming on.
“You don’t want to talk about it now, pookie?” Rebecca asked with a calculating look in her eye.
There was a sigh and then, Rebecca was glaring at Melanie when her best friend took it upon herself to shove a handful of Hershey Kisses in Rebecca’s mouth before she could make this worse. With a regal wave, Melanie said, “You may continue,” as her best friend was forced to sit there, glaring at her as she finished eating the chocolate that had been shoved in her mouth.
“How are you feeling, Melanie?” Roger asked as he continued looking through her file.
“Bored out of my mind,” Melanie said even as she shoved another handful of chocolate in the little troublemaker’s mouth when she opened her mouth to fuck him over.
“How have you been sleeping?”
“Okay,” Melanie said, not quite able to look at him as she shifted and cleared her throat while Aidan narrowed his eyes on her.
“Nausea?”
“Better,” she said, still not quite able to look at him as she answered.
“I can’t help you if you’re going to lie to me,” Roger said, glancing up to find Melanie worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.
“It’s still pretty bad,” Melanie reluctantly admitted.
Nodding absently, Roger said, “Your doctor’s a fucking idiot.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Melanie said with a solemn nod.
“What do you think?” Aidan asked, hoping that they could do something to make this easier for her.
“Her numbers look better since your father changed her meds and so does the baby, but I’m concerned about the fact that she’s spent a majority of her pregnancy on bed rest,” Roger said, swiping back to one of her earlier lab reports.
“I told her to get off her lazy ass,” Rebecca said with a sad shake of her head and a sigh as she shoved another Hershey Kiss in her mouth.
“You lying bitch,” Melanie bit out with a glare. “You locked me in my room and gave that obscenely large bastard that you married my mother’s phone number so that he could tattletale on my ass anytime I got out of bed!”
“Again, with the lies?” Rebecca asked with a heartfelt sigh and a pitying shake of her head before she added, “I’ll pray for you.”
“Eat gluten, bitch,” Melanie said, making Rebecca’s lips twitch.
“Can we focus, ladies?” Aidan asked, biting back a sigh even though he was secretly pleased that Melanie was feeling well enough to banter with her best friend, something that he’d noticed that she hadn’t done since she came to live with him.
“I want you off bed rest immediately,” Roger explained as he swiped to another lab report.
“I can do that,” Melanie said, nodding solemnly.
“Don’t overdo it and take naps when you’re tired, but I think it would be in your best interest and the baby’s if you were more active. Go for walks, go swimming, keep it simple, but your best bet is sex,” Roger murmured absently.
“Sex?” Melanie asked, frowning in confusion.
“It should alleviate most of your problems with the added benefit of improving blood flow, recovering some muscle tone that you’ve lost while on bed rest, reduce stress, improve sleep, and help with some of your pain and discomfort as well as help strengthen your pelvic muscles, which is what we want,” Roger explained while Melanie sat there, once again avoiding looking in his direction.
“When’s the last time you had sex?” Roger asked, shooting Aidan a questioning look as Kenzie absently nodded with an, “I’m just gonna go wait out in the living room mostly because I really don’t want to know the answer to that question.”
When she left, everyone glanced at Rebecca as she popped another Hershey Kiss in her mouth with a mumbled, “I’m good where I am.”
“A little over seven months,” he reluctantly answered with a pointed look at Melanie’s belly.
“And before that?” Roger asked, looking back down at her labs.
“A year and a half,” Aidan admitted, having a bad feeling where this was going.
“And I assume that you’ve been tested?”
“I’m clean,” Aidan said, watching as Roger absently nodded before glancing down at his watch.
“There are a lot of benefits for sex during pregnancy, but it’s up to you, Melanie. Unprotected sex with the father is preferred because of the benefits from his sperm. I can email the articles to Aidan if you’d like to take a look at them. For right now, I think the most important thing is to get you off bed rest and get you moving again. I’d like to see you weekly at this point to keep an eye on your labs and to make sure that everything is progressing correctly,” Roger explained as he handed the iPad back to Aidan.
“O-okay,” Melanie mumbled weakly and just like that, Aidan knew that any progress that he’d made with her was gone.
Chapter 18
Maybe it was infected? Kenzie wondered as she stared down at the fresh bandage that she wrapped her arm in this morning. When it continued to itch, she decided that she should definitely run before Aidan could stick her with another needle. Decision made, she moved to get to her feet only to find herself ge
ntly pushed back down on the couch and the man that she couldn’t seem to get away from sitting down on the coffee table in front of her as he carefully began removing her bandage.
“What did you do this time?” Roger asked as she sat there, forcing herself not to think of all those things that she’d told herself to forget.
“Fell through a crawlspace,” Kenzie said, wondering how it was possible to hate someone this much.
Absently nodding, Roger removed the gauze pad and winced in sympathy when he saw the gash on her arm. “You’ve got to be more careful, Kenzie,” he murmured, gently turning her arm over so that he could get a better look.
“I’m fine,” she said, moving to pull her arm away only to have him tighten his hold around her arm and-
“Are you ever going to forgive me?” Roger asked as she found herself looking into the dark blue eyes that were going to haunt her for the rest of her life.
She opened her mouth to answer him only to find herself frowning when Rebecca answered for her. “Probably not,” her sister-in-law that really seemed to enjoy screwing with people’s heads said with a sad shake of her head.
“Then again,” Rebecca continued as she headed for the front door, “she doesn’t know that Missy lied in that letter and that you never touched her. Then there’s the fact that you only did what you did to save Reese from making the biggest mistake of his life because you felt guilty about that secret that we’re not supposed to be talking about.”
When Roger narrowed his eyes on her, Rebecca added, “Melanie doesn’t gossip. I was there, which is why I think you’re an idiot,” with a shrug as she walked out the door, making the decision that Kenzie had been struggling with for the past year easier.
It was time for her to leave and this time, she wasn’t coming back.
*-*-*-*
“I shaved my legs,” the man that she’d been trying to figure out how to explain, as politely as humanly possible of course, that she didn’t want to have sex with him, said.
“I’m sorry, what’s this now?” Melanie found herself asking, still not quite able to look at him at the moment because she actually did want to have sex.