If she didn’t get better, she would need to be put on an IV to sustain herself, and that was the last thing she needed. Corinne had kept most of her shifts at Gateaux, even though Johanna had insisted that it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t on the early morning shift, but still worked from nine to three.
Corinne had been convinced to live with the nice lady while she painted for her, but there was no way she wasn’t going to keep her other job and try to contribute something to Johanna’s household.
Why the older woman had taken her in and been so generous, Corinne didn’t know. If she hadn’t been pregnant and feeling under the weather, she would have put her foot down and said a resounding no. As it was, Corinne was alone in the world, apart from Peanut, and she needed all the help she could get while it was being offered.
Corinne took a step back from her painting and sighed. It was coming along pretty great, but her fingers were cramping, and she needed to pee. It was time to pack it up for the time being. She started cleaning her paintbrushes and tidying her workspace, when she heard footsteps coming up the hallway. They were too heavy to be the elegant Johanna, and Corinne figured they had to be her son’s. Johanna had told her that her youngest would be visiting today and that she should expect a pop-in from the fellow artist.
As a still new and unknown painter, Corinne was always nervous at showing others her work, but if the man was anything like his mom, Corinne knew she had nothing to fear.
A small knock on the door made her jump, and the acid in her stomach bubbled. She swallowed hard, taking a sip of water before shouting out, “Come in!” It was hard to insert much joviality in her tone, when she was trying not to be sick. Easy, Peanut, let Mommy make a good impression.
She turned around to face the newcomer, but instead of giving the youngest Warwick a smile, Corinne sneered at him.
She knew who he was.
He had kissed her lips.
He had made her come with his tongue.
He had fucked her until her limbs had been nothing but jelly.
He was her baby daddy.
“You!” she hissed out, with a lot more anger than she had anticipated.
Thomas blanched, and his eyes got wide. He rushed forward, toward her with his arms outstretched. Corinne wanted to step away from him completely, but her feet refused to move.
“Shit, Corinne. Are you…” his hands went down to her stomach. His eyes were filled with a million different emotions, but there was no doubt in Corinne’s mind that he had figured it out. How? She couldn’t know. Maybe Johanna had warned him that her new houseguest was pregnant, and now that he saw who the guest was, he had put it all together. “You’re pregnant.” There was no denying it. He could probably hear the flutter of the little heartbeat deep inside of her womb. She sure could. Or maybe that was just a new mom’s imagination. Maybe, as the baby’s father, he could hear it, too.
Corinne pushed his hands away, and she replaced them with her own, over her stomach, taking large steps back away from him.
“You told me your name was Thomas.” Her tone was full of accusations.
He sighed and ran a nervous hand through his hair. “It’s my middle name. One of them, anyway.”
There was rage and anger in her eyes. If she could shoot lightning bolts at him, she would. “I can’t believe you gave me a fake name.” In that moment, it didn’t matter to her that she had done the same. Corinne DuBois was her name now. It also didn’t matter that she had already figured out that he had given her a fake name.
Hearing it from the man who had impregnated her was entirely different.
To learn that he was a Warwick? That was even worse.
“I thought you wore a condom,” she hissed in accusation.
Momma still loves you, Peanut. Don’t listen to the conversation, okay? God, she hoped her kid didn’t remember all of the doubts she felt at being a single mother on the run. Once again, acid rose up at the back of her throat. She tried to swallow it down, but the more she tried to breathe and calm down, the more the acid threatened to bubble over and out of her.
She shoved passed Paris, and she ran across to the living room, into her bedroom, and to the en-suite bathroom. She barely made it in time and puked up the water, ginger ale and saltines she had managed to keep down so far.
“Shit, Corinne. Are you okay?”
Thomas—or rather, Paris—knelt by her side and rubbed her back as she tried to slow down her breathing. Her whole body shook with another wave of vomiting.
So not sexy.
Why did he have to be here for this? Didn’t he know that a woman needed to be alone to puke?
Not that she didn’t find the soothing hand across her back comforting. It felt nice, and Corinne could have sworn that the more he touched her, the more her acidy tummy settled. Maybe if he just kept rubbing her back, the Hyperemesis Gravidarum would go away.
“I’m fine,” she said, keeping her eyes shut tight.
His arm dropped from her back, and she heard him shuffling around. The next thing she felt was a cold washcloth against her neck. She didn’t want to sigh in satisfaction, but she did. It felt too nice. Every time she puked, she always felt hot. Like her skin was boiling, just like the acid in her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m pregnant. I puke.”
“Morning sickness?” he seemed shocked.
“But it’s the evening? Yup. Pregnancy hormones don’t care if it’s morning, afternoon, or evening. I’ve been sick around the clock.” She wondered if she should tell him about her condition, but thought better of it. It wasn’t any of his business. He and his abandoning cock and mysteriously powerful sperm could stay out of it.
Paris helped her up, and she shoved away from him.
“Shit, I’m just two months along. I can still move all by myself. I’m not the size of a Buick just yet.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath and immediately felt bad. She turned to face him, her hands going to her Peanut.
“Sorry, I’m just a little shocked. I didn’t expect to ever see you again. And I sure didn’t expect you to be a…Warwick. I swear to fuck, I didn’t know who you were. If you want me to take a paternity test to confirm this is yours, I will. But you should know, I’ll be mad as hell, because I haven’t been with anyone but you for years, and we used protection. So…” she was out of things to say.
Maybe it was the way Paris was looking at her that made her stop speaking about a million miles a minute.
Paris’s green eyes were about two shades darker, and she watched as his face softened, making the green lighter. She hadn’t forgotten how the color shifted with his moods. She had missed guessing the tones they would take.
“I know that baby is mine,” he said with a conviction that made her eyes water.
Corinne didn’t know how he could be so sure, but she could appreciate the fact that he wasn’t going to make her get a paternity test, or accuse her of getting pregnant on purpose.
“Is everything okay with the baby?”
Corinne nodded. “I’ve already been to the doctor. Everything is fine, but it’s too early to know the sex, and all that stuff. I’ll be able to do that next month.”
“And being sick all the time? That’s normal?”