HIS: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (Part One) by Glenna Sinclair Page B

couldn’t read his expression because he was standing in shadow, but the fact that he turned away the moment he saw me watching him told me everything I needed to know.
    It wasn’t going to be okay. I was held prisoner by a man who was willing to do anything to get what he wanted, including using me to take the child growing in my womb. I wasn’t sure this man was capable of love. He clearly hadn’t loved his wife. How was he going to love a child?
    How could I allow this child to come into the world aware that it would be stuck with a father who couldn’t care less about her emotional wellbeing?
    I couldn’t. It was as simple as that.
     
     

Chapter 10
     
    “Ms. Martinez.”
    I nodded, more out of habit that anything else. The doctor smiled as he approached me, his hand outstretched.
    “Dr. Bishop.”
    “Nice to meet you.”
    The doctor glanced at Nicolas and did something of a double take. But he caught himself and his voice was quite neutral when he said, “I’m guessing you’re the father.”
    “I am.” Nicolas held out his hand. “Nicolas Costa.”
    The doctor nodded. He’d clearly known that.
    The introductions out of the way, the doctor settled on a stool in front of a computer monitor that hung on a retractable arm against the wall.
    “It’ll be a few weeks before we get your chart from your last doctor, so I’ll have to ask a lot of questions,” Dr. Bishop said as he typed away at the keyboard. “You’re fifteen weeks, correct?”
    “A day short of sixteen weeks,” I said.
    He nodded. “And you haven’t had any issues in this pregnancy? No bleeding, cramps, swelling, excessive nausea, or vomiting?”
    “No, nothing like that.”
    “Good. And are you feeling any movements yet?”
    “No.”
    Dr. Bishop looked up, his eyes moving from my face to Nicolas’. “That’s perfectly normal,” he said. “Most first time mothers don’t feel any definitive movement until about eighteen weeks. I’ve even had a few who didn’t feel anything until twenty weeks.”
    Nicolas let out a breath near my ear. I glanced back at him, surprised by the tension I could see in his jaw. What did he have to be worried about? I was the one carrying the baby in my belly.
    “Any morning sickness?”
    “No. Just a little nausea when I smell things like coffee or cigarette smoke.”
    “Also normal.” The doctor laughed a little. “A great deterrent for my patients who don’t see a reason to avoid caffeine or cigarettes.”
    “You have patients who smoke during pregnancy?” Nicolas asked, his tone incredulous.
    “Oh, yeah. Some women figure if their mothers did it when they were pregnant with them, there’s no reason for them not to do it with their kids. What they don’t understand is that the damage is sometimes undetectable, but there’s damage just the same.”
    The doctor was quiet for a moment as he looked through his computer chart. Then he frowned, clicking on something several times before he glanced at me.
    “Is there a family history of diabetes in your family?”
    I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”
    “I see here that you only listed medical history for your mother’s side of the family.”
    My face warmed a little. “I don’t know anything about my father or his family.”
    “That’s fine,” the doctor said, rolling his little stool over to the examination table and touching my hand lightly. “But it also leaves something of a black hole in your medical history.”
    “She had a whole workup before she got pregnant,” Nicolas said. “They didn’t find anything on that.”
    Dr. Bishop nodded. “I see that in her chart. You were with Dr. Beattie?”
    “Yes. My wife’s infertility doctor. However, we decided to go a different direction for the actual pregnancy and delivery.”
    Dr. Bishop nodded again, clearly one of those men who hated to disagree with anything anyone had to say.
    “Not a problem,” he said. “The workup actually helps. But the problem is, your