The Bodyguard's Baby (Billionaire Bodyguard Series) by Kristi Avalon

any given moment.
    She’d believed the separation would make the inevitable more bearable.
    Tomorrow, she went in for her insemination of her choice—Doctor Man’s donation. Excitement should be flooding her veins. She should be ready to leap out of her skin with anticipation.
    Instead, she found the forced separation between her and Slone made everything worse.
    Depressed, since Kylie was on a glamorous ten-day vacation with Cade in Aspen, she wished she hadn’t isolated herself from her roommate. Even though he’d become the catalyst for deep emotional conflict, she’d suppress her weariness in exchange for his company, someone to talk to and discuss her nerves raked raw by her doubts and fears.
    The night before her life-changing procedure, lying in front of the fireplace that couldn’t keep her warm enough, she felt so alone. She should’ve anticipated this as a natural course for her feelings to channel through, but she’d expected loneliness to pass. It hadn’t. Although she’d expected to be on her own from the beginning, after she glimpsed an alternative with Slone, the unexplored possibilities with him had dimmed the once-bright light of hope surrounding the future for her and her baby.
    From now until forever, it would be her and her baby. Not him, her, and their baby.
    Racked by a shiver, she experienced the acute chill of aloneness; hope like the winter sun, weak and hazy and distant.
    More than anything she wanted to hear Slone’s footsteps on the stairs.
    The sound never came.
    She let the fire go out, then hauled herself to bed.
    *
    The big day had arrived.
    Slone faced it with the same choking dread he recalled from his fifth overseas Black Ops mission. After the excitement of the first four had worn off, because he knew the grueling toll it would take on his mind and body. Except today his heart had to endure the stifling pressure, too.
    The only thing making his experience bearable was the brightness that had returned to Lindsey’s eyes. Today the clinic offered an incredible opportunity to make her dream come true. He hoped to God she became pregnant on the first try. For her sake and to salvage his own resolve to keep his hands to himself.
    By all accounts she should get pregnant easily. She had youth, vitality, desire and a squeaky clean lifestyle on her side. With the scientific advancements in the field of reproductive endocrinology, which he’d read up on over the past week, she should face no problems in her pursuit of a baby.
    After he dropped her off at the hospital’s front doors to check in, he pulled into the parking garage and killed the engine.
    Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a chain bearing two dog tags—his and his brother’s. He smoothed his thumb over the indentation of his brother’s name. His vision blurred at the edges.
    “You had so many good years ahead of you, man. A full life to live. More babies to make. Kids to raise. A wife who loved you like crazy. It should’ve been me.”
    Why couldn’t it have been me, instead of James?
    He slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck!”
    Hauling in deep breaths, he pressed his fingers against his eye sockets until he regained composure. He gave his head a hard shake and climbed out of his truck. He traveled the covered walkway leading from the parking garage to the hospital like a condemned man walking a gang plank, about to meet a watery grave.
    No doubt he looked like shit warmed over, judging by the startled glances he drew from nurses ending their shifts and heading to their cars. His stomach felt heavy, churning as if he’d swallowed a handful of grapeshot with a chaser of lighter fluid.
    Damned if he didn’t feel like he was about to explode. His guts would make a nice abstract painting splattered on the glass walls he passed. He wondered if that’s how James had looked when the IUD shredded him to bits of bloody flesh.
    Goddamn it. He pushed back against those gruesome images as he