Free I Married a Billionaire: The Prodigal Son (Contemporary Romance) by Melanie Marchande

choice.” He hesitated for a moment, then straightened up and pulled me against him, tightly. “I love you, Madeline.”
    “I love you too,” I said, muffled against him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”
    “For the love of God. Stop apologizing.” He laughed, pulling away. “Do you want to tell anyone?”
    I shook my head. “Not right away. You’re supposed to wait. Right?”
    “I suppose so,” he said, laughing a little. “I have no idea.”
    Neither one of us knew what on earth we were doing. For some reason, that thought didn’t scare me as much as it ought to have.

Six

    As expected, the blood test also came back positive. By that point I’d gotten myself so used to the idea that I hardly reacted. I just kept nodding into the phone, not realizing that I was failing to verbalize anything until the nurse said “Mrs. Thorne, are you there?”
    She ended the phone call with “congratulations,” which sounded pretty heartfelt. I thanked her, and hung up. I’d already spent the better part of the last two days mainlining all the information I could possibly handle, and then some: what was normal to expect at each stage of pregnancy? Formula or breastfeeding? Cloth diapering or disposable? And of course, the most hotly debated topic of all: to circumcise, or not?
    Me personally, I just hoped I’d never have a boy so I could avoid the issue entirely.
    My head was already overflowing with the number of things that could go wrong - and the number of things that were going to be nearly unbearable, even if they went right . I knew Daniel was going to take care of me, but I still felt strangely frightened and alone.
    But after a while, I just gave up worrying.
    I don’t know if I’d just exhausted my brain, but after a while I just sort of fell into a calm acceptance. I gathered up wine bottles out of the cabinets and bagged them up. I could always save them for later, but between the nine-plus months of pregnancy and however long I wanted to breastfeed, if I decided to, it made just as much sense to pass them along to someone else who might appreciate them. I was sure Lindsey would take them, if she’d be in town anytime soon. She usually visited whenever she had a meeting in the city.
    Of course I couldn’t really give them to her unless I’d already decided to tell her I was pregnant. It wasn’t like I would just give up wine of my own accord.
    “Do you think Lindsey would believe me if I told her I was giving up wine to lose weight?” I asked Daniel as he walked into the room.
    He eyed me for a moment. “No,” he said, finally, heading for the fridge.
    “I’m not sure if that’s meant to be ‘no, because you look beautiful just the way you are’ or ‘no, because you’re a raging alcoholic,’ so I won’t say thank you,” I replied. “But I really want to get this wine out of the house.”
    “She’s going to assume you’re pregnant no matter what you say,” he pointed out, taking a swig from a bottle of water after he spoke. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “But, by all means, give her the wine next time she’s up. She’ll be thrilled. But there’s no way she’s going to believe for a second that you’re not pregnant.”
    Thankfully, he seemed to know better than to try and suggest that I throw the wine away. What a mortifying idea. What a waste of perfectly good wine.
    “Actually, we might be at the twelve-week mark by the time she’s back in town,” I said. “I’ll probably just tell her then.”
    Daniel just shrugged.
    It was odd, how well we’d seemed to settle into the idea of having a child. In a way I supposed it didn’t yet seem quite real, so we were able to dance around the idea lightly, taking each new challenge as it came. Although admittedly, so far the biggest challenge had been figuring out what to do with all the wine.
    My phone started buzzing in my pocket. Suddenly, I realized just how much of a challenge it was going to be to talk to