Braylee winced as she laughed heartily at that. Malcolm didn’t. Her smile faded. “You were kidding right?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned over and gently kissed Braylee on her forehead. “Let’s just say it would be safer for him if he never breaks your heart.” He then cleared his throat. “I’ve got to go. I can’t stay long…I just needed to make sure you were in a good space. I know that you’re not always as strong as you pretend.”
Braylee pressed her lips together before responding. “I will be.”
He squeezed her hand. “Just know I’m always a phone call away no matter who comes in and out of our lives that will never change. I already have a couple of people looking into Gina Lee Xiou’s background. I’m not sure where the lapse of security came from, but I guarantee you nothing like what happened yesterday will happen again.”
Braylee knew that as much as Malcolm wanted to make that promise. He couldn’t. Nobody could. Instead, she remained silent.
“I better get going before Alexandro show’s up, and you have the awkward task of trying to explain to him who I am.”
“That would never be a problem. I would tell him the truth that you are one of my dearest friends. And, Malcolm…thank you for everything.”
He nodded and then turned to leave. Braylee watched him walk out of the door. In the midst of all of her pain, unexpectedly, a very long chapter that she thought would never end was finally closing.
Shortly after Malcolm left her physician entered her room. “Ms. Hinsdale. How are you feeling this morning?”
Braylee sat up a little straighter, “I feel like I want to go home. Whatever is going on in your chart will heal up a lot faster in my own bed.”
He smiled. “I can see you are anxious to be released. All your tests have come back normal so as long as you follow a few simple rules, we can release you today. I’ll need you to get plenty of rest. It might be challenging differentiating between any dizziness you might feel from the bump on your head and the nausea and dizziness from your pregnancy.”
Braylee blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, what? You must have the wrong chart. I’m not pregnant.”
He looked down at the paperwork. “No, I don’t think so. It all says, Braylee Hinsdale. According to the tests, the hospital took last night, you are about eight weeks. When they brought you into the ER, they couldn’t give us that information, so the hospital administered a pregnancy test.”
Steadily shaking her head, Braylee said, “Impossible. There is no way I could be pregnant. We need to take another test.”
Hearing the near hysteria in her voice, he agreed. “Okay, I’ll have the nurse set it up.”
Relief swept over here. There was no way a second test would produce a positive result. “Thank you.”
A half an hour later, Braylee Hinsdale was informed that she was going to be a mother.
*****
Alex had been gone for nearly an hour. She was glad he had been away for as long as he had and had missed the doctor when he came in to see her. Braylee was still in shock when he’d told her that she was pregnant. How as that even possible? They always practiced safe sex except for those times that they didn’t. She and Alex had been dating all of five minutes. She’d just realized she wasn’t in love with Malcolm anymore because she was in love with Alex, she had been involved in an explosion that may have been an attempt on her life, and Nate was dead. Now to find out she was pregnant was too much. Pregnant? How was he going to react to the news? Hell…how did she feel about it? For now, she couldn’t even process it. Braylee decided to tuck it into the back of her mind and deal with what was in front of her first.
As Alex approached, one of the menacing looking body guards that Alex had stationed outside of Braylee’s door held it open for him.
A nervous smile slowly spread across her face as she watched him awkwardly try to come into her room balancing several dozens of roses and balloons. He probably couldn’t even see behind all of them. “Hey. Sorry, I got back so late. I wanted to return before you woke up, but it took a little longer than I’d hoped to…” Just as he was about to put his flowers down on her bedside table, Alex noticed that space was already occupied. Curiously, he spoke. “Seems like someone beat me to it.”
“An old friend stopped by to check on me.”
“What the hell? Do I need to fire my entire security team? An old friend?” While his voice was light, his eyes were anything but. “Somebody I need to be concerned about?”
“Not at all. I promise.”
Alex leaned over and gently kissed Braylee. “This is for you.” He gave her one long stemmed red rose from out of the vase. Alex then released the bouquet of balloons onto the foot of her bed. Once he was able to free up one of his hands, he boldly picked up the flowers Malcolm left and moved them over to the other side of the room. He had no shame when he replaced the empty spot with the flowers he had purchased. “I think these look better over here don’t you?”
Braylee couldn’t hide her smile. “They
