The Moment He Replaced His Pregnant Wife (The Wives They Wronged #2)

Chapter 1

Lena

The first blue line appeared before I had time to tell myself not to hope.

I sat on the closed toilet lid in our bathroom, holding the plastic stick level in both hands as if one careless tilt could change the answer. Morning light slipped around the blinds. Adrian was asleep on the other side of the wall, one arm probably stretched into the space I had left behind.

The second line deepened.

I looked at the other test on the marble counter. Two lines there, too.

For more than a year, I’d learned the hard discipline of waiting. Waiting to test. Waiting for the exact number of minutes. Waiting for the disappointment to settle before I walked back into our bedroom and let Adrian pull me close without asking what the calendar had done to me this time.

Now the answer was yes.

I pressed my knuckles to my mouth. A laugh escaped anyway, small and wet and impossible to take back.

“Lena?”

Adrian’s voice came through the bedroom, rough with sleep.

I swept both tests into the bottom drawer beneath a stack of washcloths and shut it just as the bathroom door opened.

He stood there in dark pajama pants, his hair disordered in a way no one outside our home ever saw. His gaze moved over my face, then the counter, then back to me.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“Good nothing,” I amended.

He came closer and rested a hand on the side of my neck. “You’re crying over good nothing at six twenty in the morning?”

I turned my face into his palm before he could read too much. Six years of marriage had made him very good at reading me. It had also taught me exactly how to distract him.

“Your surprise is going to make you insufferable,” I said.

“Going to?”

I laughed, and he smiled against my forehead. For one dangerous second, the truth rose all the way to my tongue.

We made a baby.

Not yet. I wanted more than a bathroom confession with toothpaste on the counter and Helena’s schedule waiting on his phone.

I wanted his whole face when he understood.

I wanted one moment that belonged only to us before the Ashford family turned our child into an heir, an announcement, a name under discussion.

“Tomorrow,” I promised.

“That’s cruel.”

“You’ll survive.”

He kissed me once, slow enough to test my resolve, then went to start the coffee. I waited until I heard the grinder before I opened the drawer again.

Both lines were still there.

After Adrian left for work, I wrapped the tests in a clean cloth and locked them in the bottom drawer of my studio cabinet.

At nine, I called the silversmith who maintained the place-card holders at the Ashford estate.

“I need a miniature one,” I told Mr. Bell. “The same pattern, but small enough to fit between two regular settings.”

“And the engraving?”

I looked down at the words I’d written on the pad beside me.

BABY ASHFORD.

My hand flattened over my stomach. Nothing felt different yet. The private knowledge of it changed the whole room.

“Exactly as written,” I said.

He was silent for a beat. Then his professional voice warmed. “Congratulations, Mrs. Ashford.”

The first person to say it was a man I had met twice.

I swallowed around the sudden ache of wanting Adrian. “Thank you. Can it be ready by tomorrow afternoon?”

He would try. Rush engraving, hand polishing, a courier from the city—it was possible, though not guaranteed. I told him I would collect it myself if that bought me another hour.

For the rest of the day, I moved through our house carrying a secret that made ordinary things feel newly permanent.

Adrian’s coffee cup beside mine. His running shoes crooked near the mudroom door.

The framed photograph from our courthouse wedding, taken by a stranger after I’d handed over my camera and Adrian had pulled me into his side, laughing because the wind kept lifting my veil.

There had been no Ashford silver that day. No seating chart. Just us.

Adrian came home after seven, loosened his tie as he crossed the kitchen, and found me rearranging the contents of an overnight bag for the third time.

“You packed two camera batteries and no socks,” he said.

I looked down. “Maybe I’m making a creative choice.”

He set my socks beside the bag. “You’ve been strange all day.”

“You’ve been here for forty seconds.”

“Thirty-eight.” He slipped an arm around my waist from behind. “I knew at twelve, when you sent me a photograph of toast.”

“It was excellent toast.”

“It had a smiley face in jam.”

I turned inside his arm. In public, Adrian wore restraint as naturally as his tailored suits. At home, he watched me with an attention that still had the power to make the rest of the room irrelevant.

“I’m excited about tomorrow,” I said.

It wasn’t a lie. It simply wasn’t the whole truth.

“My mother’s annual military exercise disguised as a birthday party?”

“Her sixtieth. Very distinguished.”

“She’s going to hear you.”

“She isn’t here.”

His mouth curved. “Come upstairs and tell me what you’re hiding.”

He kissed me before I could answer. I tasted the coffee he’d had on the drive home and the familiar hunger underneath it. My hands went to his shoulders. His went to my hips, firm and certain, lifting me onto the edge of the kitchen island as if he’d been thinking about it since he walked in.

“Upstairs,” I reminded him against his mouth.

“You raised a valid concern about my remaining time.”

I laughed, then stopped when his lips moved down my throat.

Desire had never been the difficult part of loving Adrian.

He knew the places that made my fingers tighten in his shirt.

I knew the exact change in his breathing when I opened the third button and put my mouth to the warm skin beneath his collar.

His hands could remain steady through almost anything. That was where the steadiness ended.

We had years of private fluency between us, built in hotel rooms and borrowed weekends and our own unmade bed. He carried me upstairs anyway, striking one shoulder against the doorframe because he was watching my face instead of where he was going.

“Very graceful,” I said.

“You distracted me.”

In our bedroom, he lowered me to the mattress and undressed me without hurry. His attention paused at my stomach for half a second before moving lower. It could not have been knowledge; there was nothing to see. Still, my secret tightened inside me.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Come here.”

I pulled him down and kissed him until questions no longer fit between us.

His fingers slid between my thighs. The first stroke was too light. I caught his wrist and pressed him closer; he read the correction in the movement of my hips and gave me the pressure I wanted. His mouth covered mine when I said his name, but not before I heard the restraint leave his breathing.

He held the rhythm there instead of changing it when my body tightened. Pleasure gathered, broke, and left me clutching the back of his neck while he kept his hand steady through every aftershock.

When I reached for his cock, Adrian’s hips moved into my palm before he stopped himself. The small failure of control sent satisfaction through me.

“Condom?” he asked.

The question nearly undid me.

We’d stopped using them when we started trying, but he still asked whenever we hadn’t talked about timing. I shook my head and drew him closer.

“No. I want you.”

He entered me slowly. I held his gaze, keeping my secret for one more night while the man I loved moved inside me.

There was nothing tentative between us after that.

I knew how to take him deeper; he knew the shift of my hips that meant more.

The bed struck the wall once, uneven and loud enough to make me laugh against his mouth.

Then he changed the angle and the laugh became a gasp.

My second climax caught me before I could warn him. Adrian kept moving through it, his jaw tight, his hand locked around mine against the pillow. He lasted several rough breaths longer. Then his composure gave way in pieces—my name, one broken thrust, his forehead dropping to mine as he followed.

For a while, we stayed tangled together beneath the sheet. Adrian traced the inside of my wrist with his thumb.

“Tell me,” he said.

My heart gave one hard beat. “Tomorrow.”

“So there is something.”

“There’s always something.”

His phone rang on the nightstand.

He glanced at the screen. “My mother.”

“At nine forty?”

“That means the flowers have mutinied.”

He answered with his free hand still resting on my waist. I heard Helena’s precise voice without making out every word. Florist. Table linens. Camille arriving late. The head housekeeper had apparently misunderstood the revised schedule.

“We’ll come early,” Adrian said. “Lena can handle the room while you deal with the caterer.”

I turned my head toward him.

He listened, then added, “Two o’clock is fine. We’ll see you then.”

He ended the call and set the phone aside.

“We were going at five,” I said.

“I know. She’s overwhelmed.”

“And you told her I would fix it.”

“You’re better at this than anyone she hired.” He kissed my bare shoulder. “You always are.”

The compliment settled over the decision he’d already made.

“Adrian, I moved the Carlisle shoot for this weekend. And I turned down the gallery portraits last month because your mother needed the anniversary book redone.”

His hand stilled on me. “I know you’ve given up a lot of time. After tomorrow, I’ll make it up to you.”

“That’s not the same as asking before you give her more.”

He looked at me then, fully, and regret softened his face. “You’re right. I should’ve asked.”

He drew me into his arms. I let him, because this was the place where we had always been good. His mouth touched my hair.

“No more family events for a month,” he said. “We’ll go somewhere next weekend. Just us. You pick.”

I could have pushed. Instead, I rested my cheek against his chest and listened to the steady beat beneath it.

Tomorrow, I would tell him there would soon be three of us.

The next afternoon, we reached the Ashford estate at two twelve. Helena met us in the entrance hall with a clipboard in one hand and relief she tried to hide.

“Lena, thank God. The place cards still need checking, and the photographer has questions about the family portraits.”

Adrian squeezed my hand before his mother led me toward the dining room.

At three twenty, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Mr. Bell’s message was brief: the engraving was finished, but the final polish needed another hour. The place card would be ready at five thirty. No earlier.

Guests were due at six.

I looked across the long table, where Helena was moving crystal by fractions of an inch. If I left at five, I could reach the shop, collect the little silver sign, and return before the first car came up the drive.

I would take Adrian into the study. I would tell him first. Then we would decide together whether the place card joined us at dinner.

“Everything all right?” Adrian asked from the doorway.

I slipped my phone away and smiled at him.

“It will be.”