Page 69 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

It looks expensive.

It also looks like it would apologize if I ate it wrong.

“Please,” Alester says. “You should have something.”

I look at the plate. There is a sliver of fish, maybe, with a pale sauce and three careful green things beside it.

“Thank you,” I say.

I pick up the fork. My hand is steady. I’m proud of that. My insides feel like someone has opened all the drawers and left them that way, but my hand is steady.

The man from the wrong number is sitting across from me in Alester Chandler’s house, asking clinical questions about my pregnancy in a voice that makes every word sound controlled by force.

And I am pregnant.

The fork touches the fish. I don’t eat it.

I can’t stop looking at him. Not openly. I’m not that reckless. Not here, not with Alester watching the room like a man who knows ownership can be established by attention. But every few seconds my eyes betray me.

Dalton’s suit is dark, perfectly fitted, not showy. His hair is still silver at the temples. I noticed it that night, at the Thai place, and then again in the hotel, when my hands were in it and my mouth was on his and I was too far gone to care about anything except the next place he touched me.

Now he looks colder. He sits across from me as if he has never had his mouth on my skin. As if he doesn’t know exactly how I sound when I come.

My face heats. I lower my eyes to the plate.

Not here. Absolutely not here.

Petra is standing near the table with her tablet. She keeps glancing at me. Not obviously. Petra does nothing obviously. But I can feel her suspicion gathering weight.

She knows something is off. Maybe not what. But something.

Alester speaks again. “Dr. Acharya will repeat the bloodwork in forty-eight hours. We’ll want to see the level rise appropriately.”

I nod. “I know.”

“Good,” Alester says.

The word makes my stomach twist.

Dalton’s eyes flick to me.

The fork rests uselessly between my fingers.

Alester looks at the plate. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m sorry. I think I’m just overwhelmed.”

That is the safest true thing I have said all evening.

His expression softens by a degree. Not warmth exactly, but a polished imitation of it. “Understandable. It is significant news.”

Significant.

I almost laugh.

Instead, I place the fork down carefully. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

The meeting continues for another ten minutes. Maybe twenty.