“Elle,” I pressed her palm to my face with my hand. “I hate to break your heart, but Elena was never going to forgive you regardless of this.”
Tears welled in those beautiful eyes but she bit her bottom lip against shedding them and nodded a few times to shore up her strength. I kissed the inside of the wrist holding my hand and dropped our linked hands to my lap so that I could lean forward and kiss her sad-softened mouth.
She sighed gustily when I retreated. “I’ll have to tell Mama at some point.”
“You will, but you can decide when that is. We can keep it quiet as long as you’d like.” God, but it hurt me to say that.
She side-eyed me before smiling. “How much did it cost you to say that?”
“Just don’t make me say it again.” My dry comment was rewarded with her laughter. I soaked it up like sunshine.
“Miss Moore?” We turned to a nurse in pink scrubs that stood with a clipboard before us. “If you could come with me, the doctor is ready to see you now. Mr. Sinclair, I’ll come out to get you if you want to be part of the ultrasound.”
“Of course,” I bristled, annoyed that she would even ask, that she would even consider barring me from the process.
Giselle placed a calming hand on my arm before getting to her feet to follow the nurse. “Be calm, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
I watched her disappear through the door before I opened my phone.
“Mon frère, ca va?”
“What’s with all the noise?” I asked Cage, wincing at the cacophony of sound in the background.
He laughed. “Give me a second.” I waited while he moved somewhere quieter. “There, that’s better. How is my favorite redhead?”
“We’re at the doctor’s office.”
There was a long pause while he digested that.
“Okay, I am going to guess that she isn’t sick, otherwise you’d be going berserker on me. So…” He burst into ruckus laughter. “You old fucking dog, you knocked her up.”
I couldn’t help my grin. “Mais oui.”
“Just when I think you’ve completely turned your back on the French, you do something so quintessentially francophone like knock up your mistress.”
“She is not my mistress.”
“Woah, ease up. I was just teasing. If you tried to make Giselle your mistress, I would happily cut off your balls.”
“You’re a good friend, Cage,” I said drily, which only elicited another chuckle from him.
“How is she dealing with it?”
“It was a surprise but she seems happy.”
“Bon. I am very happy for you, Sin. You’ve got yourself quite the woman.”
Pride sluiced through me; Giselle was the ultimate woman.
“Listen, I need your advice.” I waited for him to stop laughing before continuing. “I agree, you’re an idiot, but I need someone to talk to and apart from Elle, you’re family.”
Cage cleared his throat roughly. “Any time, mon frère.”
“I want to marry her.”
There was a loud whoosh as Cage exhaled in shock.
“This is a joke?” When I didn’t respond, he blew a raspberry into the phone. “Wow, I am shocked. Daniel Sinclair wants to get married.”
“He does. Tomorrow wouldn’t be early enough.”
He chuckled. “Okay, then I don’t really understand why you need advice. Marry the woman.”
“Her mother has basically disowned her, one of her sisters hates her and the other just disappeared after being in a fucking coma, her brother is on location somewhere in the Californian desert, we have only been dating for a few months and we just discovered that she’s pregnant.”
There was a long pause.
Then, “Seems like a bunch of excuses to me. You want to marry her, then do it. When a man finds a woman like that, he does everything he can to tie himself to her.”
Fuck yes. I’d know if anyone could understand my primitive need to claim Giselle, it would be my best friend and brother of choice, Cage. Unlike me, he had never tried to civilize himself. He was happy with being a blunt, gluttonous, badass even when people turned their noses up at him. Even when our parents did.
The guy had balls of steel and finally, I felt like he wasn’t the only one who did.
“I’ll need you to help me pick out a ring,” I said. “And I have an idea. It’s crazy impulsive but I don’t think I can wait to make her mine, legally. I’ll need you to help me organize it.”
“Done. I’m busy with the new album but any time, man, I’m there.”
I tipped my head back against the wall and let out a massive breath that I wasn’t aware I’d been holding in. “Merci, mon frère.”
“She brought you back to you, Sin. There isn’t a hell of a lot I wouldn’t do for her, and you know there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you.”
I swallowed the stone lodged in my throat just as the nurse appeared in the waiting room again to beckon me forward.