He Let Another Woman Replace His Pregnant Wife (From Grovel to Redemption #1)

1. Winnie

WINNIE

The paper beneath me crackled every time I shifted. I stopped moving and pressed both palms to the edge of the exam table.

The room smelled like disinfectant and the peppermint gum Knox chewed when he was worried. He stood beside my shoulder in a charcoal coat, big enough to block half the cabinet, and watched the blank monitor as if he could force it to show us something good.

“You’re going to break the screen with your mind,” I said.

His jaw moved around the gum. “I’m encouraging it.”

“You intimidate geologists. Fetuses are probably immune.”

His mouth softened. He laid two fingers beside mine on the paper, close enough to touch without assuming I wanted it. Three years of negative tests had taught us strange courtesies. Dr. Verrall rolled closer on her stool. “Ready?” I nodded because speech had abandoned me.

The image appeared in grainy shades of gray. At first, I saw nothing I understood. Then Dr. Verrall pointed.

“There’s your baby. Measuring exactly nine weeks.”

She adjusted the machine. A rapid flutter filled the room, too fast and fierce to belong to anything so small. Knox’s fingers closed around mine. I stared at the pulsing shape. “That’s the heartbeat?”

“One hundred sixty-two. Strong and right where we want it.”

I laughed from relief. The laugh turned wet halfway out. Knox bent over our joined hands, and a tear landed on my knuckle. My husband cried silently, shoulders shaking beneath wool that cost more than my first car.

I reached for him. He came willingly, careful of the machine and my body, and pressed his mouth to my hair.

“Hello, baby,” he whispered.

Love hurt inside me. It had been hurting for months, but this was the older ache.

The good one. This was the man who once sat on a veterinary-clinic floor while foster puppies waiting for their first examinations destroyed his silk tie.

The man who remembered how I took my coffee and never forgot to warm my side of the bed.

The heartbeat went on. Dr. Verrall gave us a minute before explaining the next appointment.

She talked about normal symptoms, hydration, and the screening options we could discuss at the thirteen-week appointment.

I listened with the part of my brain trained to record medication instructions while an owner cried.

She printed one image and placed it in a white envelope with my name across the flap. Knox asked whether heat, light, or careless handling could damage it. Dr. Verrall explained that the paper was ordinary and the image also lived in my patient portal.

“I’m aware I sound deranged,” he said.

“You sound happy,” she answered.

He looked at me when she said it. The naked joy in his face made my fear feel briefly survivable. We had bought pregnancy tests in bulk, hidden fertility invoices from holiday mail, and learned which condolences wounded least. This time, a doctor handed us proof of life.

“Can she keep working?” he asked.

Dr. Verrall looked at me. “Do you have concerns about your work?”

“I don’t lift large dogs,” I said. “I run reception and most of the building. I’m cross-trained for supervised support in emergencies, but I can stay out of the lifting.”

“Then keep doing what feels comfortable. Call if anything changes.”

Knox accepted the answer. Six months earlier, I would have loved that ordinary restraint without noticing it. Today I noticed everything. In the parking garage, he opened my car door, then stopped with one hand on the roof.

“Wait here.”

“Knox, I have my own keys.”

“Two minutes.”

He crossed the lane toward the hospital gift shop. His long stride looked almost dignified until the automatic door refused to open because he approached it from the wrong side. I laughed against my scarf.

He returned carrying a stuffed puppy nearly as large as my torso. It wore a blue bow, one ear stood upright, and the other flopped across a deeply stupid face.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Our child needs a dog.”

“Our child currently resembles a bean.”

“A bean with excellent cardiac performance.” He strapped the puppy into the rear seat. “Safety first.”

Knox drove with one hand and held mine above the console with the other. Snow clung to the bare hedges beside the road. Storefronts flashed wreaths and gold lights as we passed. I wanted to live inside those twenty minutes.

At a red light, Knox lifted my hand and kissed my wedding ring. “We made a baby.”

“We’re making one. Apparently I’m doing most of the current labor.”

“I supplied critical early materials.”

“Your contribution lasted four minutes.”

He glanced at me, offended. “That was one time.” I laughed again. His answering smile was warm, private, and six years familiar. The fear returned before we reached home. It came from knowing how much I wanted this. Hope had teeth after three years of disappointment.

Knox parked in the garage and reached for the ultrasound envelope.

“Can we keep this ours?” I asked.

His hand paused.

“Until after the thirteen-week appointment,” I said. “Dr. Verrall is happy. I’m happy. I’m also scared. I don’t want your mother planning a christening before I’ve had the next appointment. I don’t want the foundation office sending flowers. I want four weeks when this belongs only to us.”

His expression gentled. “Of course.”

“No family.”

“No family.”

“No assistants. No board members.”

“No one.” He leaned across the console and kissed me. “Ours until after the appointment.”

I searched his face. “That includes Tabitha.” The gentleness thinned. It did not disappear, but I saw the small adjustment he made whenever her name entered a conversation.

“It includes everyone,” he said.

I accepted the answer because I wanted the day back.

Inside, Knox propped the printout beside the stuffed puppy and took a photograph of both. Then he returned the scan to its envelope and handed the puppy back to me.

“No posting,” I said.

“I do understand privacy, Win.”

Embarrassment warmed my face. “I know.” He kissed my forehead and left for a call with the western plant. I carried the stuffed puppy upstairs and set it in the empty room across from ours.

We had never called it a nursery. For three years, it had been the room where unopened hope collected dust. A dismantled crib remained boxed in the closet. Paint cards hid behind tax records in the desk. I placed the puppy on the window seat.

“Don’t get comfortable,” I told it. “You’re ridiculous.”

Its crooked smile held.

That evening, nausea chased me away from the roast our housekeeper had left. Knox made buttered toast himself and sat on the kitchen counter while I ate it. His knees crowded mine. His white shirt was open at the throat, sleeves folded over his forearms.

“Better?” he asked.

“The baby rejects rosemary.”

“I’ll have it removed from the property.”

“This is why people think billionaires are insane.”

He smiled and rubbed his thumb over my socked ankle. “You love me.” I did. Anger and love occupied the same marriage more easily than I wanted to admit.

At nine thirty-three, he photographed the scan flat against his desk and uploaded the clean image to the private family cloud as our backup. I watched him select the folder marked AMES HOME, the one shared among our phones, the house computer, and the tablet in his office.

At ten, Knox’s phone rang. Tabitha’s name lit the screen between us. He silenced it.

“She’s finalizing Christmas,” he said. “I’ll call her back later.”

I set my mug down. “You promised.”

“I remember.”

He kissed me and carried both mugs toward the dishwasher. I went upstairs first, exhausted enough to trust the shape of what I wanted. Eighteen minutes later, cold air woke me. The terrace door stood open at the end of the hall. Knox’s voice came through the gap.

“Nine weeks today,” he whispered. “Yes, the heartbeat was strong.”

My fingers closed around the bedroom doorframe. His back faced me. Snow silvered the terrace rail beyond him.

“She wants to wait until after the thirteen-week appointment,” he continued. “You can’t tell Mother yet. Tabitha, listen to me.”

He laughed under his breath at something she said.

“I know you already know everything. That’s why I’m telling you. You’ll know how to help with Christmas.”

The joy of the morning did not vanish. It stayed inside me, bright and injured.

My stomach dropped. I gripped the bedroom doorframe until the edge pressed into my palm.

Then I returned to bed before he saw me.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand less than a minute later.

Tabitha had sent a photograph of gold-labeled alcohol-free champagne.

For Christmas. Auntie Tabitha already has you covered.