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FOSTER
I sat on the surfboard, the warm water lapping at my calves, and I took in a deep breath. To say that the last few days had been rough was an understatement. Ever since our trip to the interior, Adrianne had been . . . icy. Avoidant.
Callan had told us about the photographer who’d nearly caught them and how she freaked out, but when Ethan and I asked her about it, she didn’t want to talk about it. Ethan told me and Callan to drop it, but it had been three days of this behavior, and it was killing all of us.
Today was the first day “off” since arriving in Australia, and by eleven, she still hadn’t come out of her room. Callan offered to stay at the hotel to wait for her, and Ethan and I hit the beach. I needed something to clear my head.
But so far . . . it wasn’t helping.
“What if she leaves us?” I asked as Ethan paddled up beside me. “What if the photographer thing scared her, and she’s done with the lot of us and just doesn’t know how to say it?”
Ethan sighed. “Why do you always jump to the worst conclusion?”
Because that would be the worst thing, I thought. “I love her,” I said. “Callan said that she said it to him while they were fighting-the words just came out-and I’m trying like hell not to be jealous, but goddammit, I love her, and she won’t talk to us.”
Ethan stared at me, blinking over and over. “I think that’s the most words I’ve ever heard you say at one time.”
I kicked water at him. “That’s all you got out of that?”
He shook out his hair. “Of course not,” he said. “I . . . I love her too. I don’t want to lose her any more than you do.”
“So, what do we do? How do we fix something that we can’t really fix? Unless she quits her job or the world gets a lot cooler, there’s really no safe way for her to be with us in the open.”
“It’s easier at home,” Ethan pointed out. “We just need to make it through the next few weeks here, and then the movie will be done, and we can go back to our comfort zone.”
I shook my head and glanced behind me. The waves weren’t doing much today. “Once this movie is out, she’s going to be a megastar. The paps aren’t just going to go away . . . so we need a game plan or we’re going to lose our girl.”
Ethan either hadn’t thought of that or he hadn’t wanted to think of that. “We should head back.” He glanced behind him. “One more run, and then we’ll go.”
I nodded and started paddling in as the wave began to build behind us. We both stood within seconds of each other and rode the wave closer and closer to shore. It was a perfect run, and a weight came off me for a moment. “I wish we would have had twenty more of those this morning,” I said as we walked the rest of the way in.
Ethan nodded. “Hopefully, we can bring Adrianne back out,” he said.
Hope was going to strangle me. It was like I couldn’t pull back anymore. I’d let those words out-even if they weren’t to Adrianne-and now I needed to be able to tell her. Please let me be able to tell her, I thought.
I dug out my phone from my bag on our towel. I had six missed calls from Callan. Panic threaded through me, but I kept calm while I called him back. “We just finished,” I said when he answered. “What’s wrong?”
Ethan’s head snapped up at the word wrong. “She won’t come out of her room,” Callan said, “and the hotel won’t give me a key, despite the fact that I’m her security.”
“We’re coming back now,” I said. “Sit tight.”
“I’m two seconds from breaking down the damn door, so you’d better hurry up.” He hung up, and I started shoving things into my bag.
“She locked herself in her room, and Callan’s freaking out. He wants to break down the door.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “He’s so damn dramatic for no reason.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but it did seem a little extreme. If Adrianne had drug problems or something like that, I would agree with breaking down the door. But she seemed to just need some space. It scared me, but ultimately, it wasn’t harmful to her.
Ethan and I drove back to the hotel and rode the elevator back up to the top floor where our rooms were located. Callan was in the hallway, stationed outside her room. “Adrianne, come on!” he said, knocking. “Princess, I need you to open up.”
Ethan stalked down the hall, waving him away. “She’s not in danger, Cal. Take a damn breath.”
Callan glared at him. “I don’t like that she won’t talk to us, Merc,” he said.
Me neither, I thought. “Let’s just get her to open the door, okay? Then, we can get this all figured out.”
Ethan knocked on the door. “Adrianne? Come on, you’ve got to open the door now, okay? We need to talk.”
There was some movement on the other side of the door, and then it slowly opened by a crack. “Can we just-”
“No.” Ethan cut her off, and perhaps wisely, stuck his foot in the door. “We’re not going away. Whatever happened, whatever you’re feeling, we need to talk about it. Right now.”
We could hear her breathing for a second, and then the door swung open, and I got a glimpse of her back retreating into the room. Adrianne crawled back into bed and drew the covers up around her shoulders. The room wasn’t a mess-I didn’t think this was a depressive episode or something like that-but there was obviously something wrong.
“Adrianne,” I said and sat on the edge of the bed. I wanted to reach out to her, but I wasn’t sure if that was allowed right now. “Baby, what’s wrong? Please talk to us.”
Tears filled her eyes. Her shoulders began to shake as she cried. Ethan sat beside her and opened his arms, and after a moment of hesitation, she crawled into them, clutching at him. I felt a weight come off my chest to see her just as desperate to touch us as we were to touch her. But that begged the question-why put us through any of this?
“I’m sorry,” she murmured against Ethan’s chest. “I am so, so sorry.” She raised her head just enough and pressed her mouth to his. Ethan cupped
her neck, holding her close. When they broke apart, she turned and crawled over to me, and my arms were full of Adrianne.
“You’re not leaving us, are you?” I asked, and her arms squeezed around my neck. Adrianne shook her head.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, pulling back enough to look in my eyes. “I
couldn’t. I love you too much.”
Relief washed over me. “I love you too,” I told her and kissed her. Her answering smile was everything.
Adrianne turned back to Ethan, who looked a little deflated. “I love you too, Ethan. I hope you don’t think otherwise.”
He grinned. A relieved expression swept over his face. “I was hoping, but I’m glad you said it.”
Callan stepped in, and I allowed him to take her from me. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said sternly.
Her eyes went soft and sad. “I’m sorry,” she said, and I wished that she would stop. Whatever drove her from us was obviously hurting her too. Callan seemed to agree with me because he shook his head and shushed her gently.
“Just tell us what’s going on,” Ethan said.
She let go of Callan. “I have something to show you all.” She went to the bathroom and came back with a small pink box. My heart fell into my stomach. That can’t be what I think it is, I thought. “In Coober Pedy, I was feeling off, like I had a hangover, but I didn’t drink anything . . . and Ryan made a snide comment that if I was having sex, he’d suggest that I was pregnant, and something about that just sent up all of these alarm bells, you know?”
“But you have an implant,” Callan pointed out.
“I know, and because of it, I don’t get a normal period, so not having one wasn’t exactly a big worry for me.” She pulled out a plastic stick from the box. “I’ve done three of these tests,” she said, “and they all say the same thing.”
She held up the test, and it had two very clear lines. Positive lines. My mouth dried out completely. “You’re pregnant,” Callan said dazedly.
Adrianne looked back and forth among us, trying to gauge our reactions. “I think so,” she said. “I need to go to the doctor to confirm everything, obviously, but I think I am.”
I couldn’t describe the emotion that welled up within me. Fierce loyalty and the need to protect her . . . and a weird sense of masculine pride. None of us had set out to impregnate her-I doubt any of us had ever considered babies as a possibility-but it had happened anyway. We were too virile. It was a caveman thought, and I knew it, but the feeling was there all the same.
I closed the distance between us and tipped her head back so that she looked up at me. “Are you going to have our baby?”
The word ‘baby’ sparked a light in her eyes. A small smile tried to curl onto her lips, but she looked so scared. “Do you want me to?” she whispered.
I kissed her, long and deep, and when I pulled back, she smiled. “I’m here to support whatever you want to do, Adrianne,” I said. I looked at Callan and Ethan, who looked equally shell-shocked. “We all are,” I said.
Callan rushed to agree. “Of course,” he said. “We’ll be here no matter what you want to do.”
“We should confirm it,” Ethan said, “before we all get ahead of ourselves.” His voice was gruff, and it only took one look at him to see how freaked out he was by all of this.
Adrianne picked up on it, but she didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she said, “I agree about getting it confirmed, but what can we do from here? I figured that I would make an appointment with my GYN when we got back to the States.” I frowned-that was nearly a month from now, after filming was wrapped. We couldn’t wait that long to know.
“Our travelers’ insurance should cover a trip to the clinic,” Ethan said. “One of us will take you.”
“We should all go,” Callan interjected, but Ethan shot him down.
“And draw even more attention to her?” Ethan asked. “Let’s keep everything as lowkey as possible.”
Adrianne nodded. “I agree . . . and actually, we need to talk about that before we do anything else.” We all sat on the bed, and she looked like a queen holding court with her knights. “We have to be more careful,” she said. “Not that I like hiding anything-I want to scream it from the rooftops
-but we can’t be careless. What happened in Coober Pedy shouldn’t have happened. I got carried away, and I didn’t think about it. But we can’t do that, especially here. So, in the hotel, we can do whatever we would do at home, but outside it, I’m just one of your clients, okay?”
We all agreed that there was too much at risk right to be reckless. “So, who’s going to the clinic with me?” she asked.
Ethan still had that edge of panic on his face. He was no good to Adrianne like that. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m better at the ‘boundaries in public’ thing than you, Cal. No offense.”
“Offense taken.” Callan sulked, but he relented to the idea of staying behind.
While she changed, I called the nearest clinic and dropped Adrianne’s name . . . and there was suddenly no line ahead of her. “The clinic is three blocks away,” I said. “Is it more attention-grabbing to call the car or to throw a hat and shades on her and walk it?”
“Walk,” Adrianne voted. “I’d like a little sunshine, I think.” She put on a pair of sunglasses. Ethan donated a ball cap, and Callan gave her a hoodie to put on. While she still looked like Adrianne Montoya, it would give her enough coverage for us to get down to the clinic and back.
Exiting the hotel was actually fun. I took her down the back elevator and out a service door in order to avoid any lingering photographers. It felt almost like doing a covert mission again for the SEALs. As we walked down the street, she stood close but not overly near me. She was more a weight against my side. “Are you going to be . . . disappointed if I’m pregnant?” Adrianne asked softly. “Or would it be worse if I weren’t?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. “I don’t think I’ve completely wrapped my head around any of it,” I said as honestly as I could.
She chuckled. “Me neither.”
“I wish you wouldn’t have holed up like you did. We could have talked this all out days ago.”
I tried not to stare at Adrianne while we walked, but it was hard not to watch her face. “I was worried about nearly getting caught,” she said, “and then after taking the pregnancy test . . . I just needed some time to think.”
“And what did you think about?”
She shrugged. “What I wanted,” she said. “What I thought I could handle.”
“So, just trivial stuff then,” I joked, and Adrianne laughed and nodded. “Seriously, though, we’re here for the big stuff.”
“I know. I hired you all because I had a stalker problem, remember?”
“Hard to forget,” I said. Though, thankfully, distance has made that easier to deal with, I thought. Putting an ocean between Adrianne and her
stalker was the best thing on that front, but we wouldn’t solve that issue here. It was still waiting for us at home. Another problem for another day.
We came to the clinic, and Adrianne put her head down when she went through the door. As promised, it was completely free of other patients, and the doctor called her into a private office right away. “What seems to be the problem today?” he asked as he shut the door.
Adrianne took her sunglasses off. “I got a few positive pregnancy tests,” she said. “I need some confirmation.”
The doctor’s eyebrows shot up for a second before he was able to smooth out his expression. It probably wasn’t every day that an A-list celebrity came to his clinic for a pregnancy test. “Obviously, this conversation is private,” I reminded him. “But I could have a quick NDA drawn up if that would help.”
He glared at me and shook his head. “I have no desire to sell her business to the tabloids, son. There’s no need to threaten me. Relax,” he said. “I’m too old to be mixed up with all of that.”
Adrianne touched my arm. “Foster, it’s okay. We came to get a definitive answer, right?”
“A definitive answer in medicine is kind of like asking for a miracle,” the doctor said with a little chuckle, as if he’d told some kind of joke.
“You can tell me that I’m pregnant for sure, though, right?” “How many tests did you take?” he asked.
“Three,” Adrianne replied.
He clapped his hands. “And they were all positive?” She nodded. “There you have it. Sounds pretty positive to me.” At our blank expressions, he explained, “Barring a blood test or an ultrasound, the at-home tests and the ones we have here are exactly the same. I would recommend a blood test if you hadn’t gotten so many positive results, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I’ll put together a list of dos and don’ts for you, and you’ll need to see your primary doctor when you go home, but there’s not much to be done in the early stages.”
“I have a contraceptive implant in my arm,” she told him before he could dismiss us entirely. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you when it stopped working or when my last period was. It’s been too long.”
Now, the doctor frowned. “Well, we’ll need to remove that immediately,” he said, “and I’ll get the ultrasound set up. We’ll want to make sure that everything is where it’s meant to be.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Ectopic pregnancies are more common if a woman gets pregnant with an implant or an IUD,” Adrianne murmured to me. “That was explained to me when I got it put in.”
“Ectopic? That means a medical emergency right? She’d have to have surgery?”
The doctor waved me off. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said. “Let’s just go take a look-see. If we can’t get a good picture on our ultrasound here, I’ll send you to the hospital for one.”
Five minutes later, Adrianne was lying on her back with her shirt pulled up, and an ultrasound tech was spreading goop on her stomach with a wand. For a moment, they weren’t finding much of anything. Dr. Greene said something to the effect that it just might be too early to tell, but the tech was persistent.
Adrianne sucked in a breath when the tech pressed the wand against her belly more tightly. “There it is,” she said, pointing to a tiny peanut-shaped thing on the screen. “Not much to look at right now, but everything looks pretty good.”
I looked at that fluttering bean, and it felt like my world shifted beneath my feet. “There’s really something in there,” I breathed out. Looking at the tech and the doctor, I asked, “Can we have a few moments?”
She nodded and saved the image on the screen before giving us the room. Adrianne waited for the door to shut, and then she took my hand. “What are we going to do now?”
I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the screen. “We’re going back to the hotel to show Callan and Ethan this,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll believe me otherwise.”
“And then?”
“And then the four of us will talk about what comes next.”