My Forever Valentine: New Zealand Happy-Ever-After Romance (Due South: A Sexy New Zealand Romance Book 5) Read Free Page B

husband’s face. He’d still be at Due South, working his ass off, since Bill and Del were still in hospital. But he’d be home by eight for the special Valentine’s dinner she’d promised him.
    The Mollymawk’s engines powered down, the boat slowing. A minute later, a knock sounded on the bathroom door.
    “You okay, Pipe?” Her brother’s voice was tinged with concern.
    “Be right there,” she said. Just as soon as she’d finished transferring her stomach lining to the damn toilet bowl.
    Maybe she’d feel better with some fresh air up with Ben in the wheelhouse.
    Piper hauled herself upright and ran the taps, washing her hands and splashing cold water on her clammy cheeks. She headed up to the wheelhouse, weaving a little drunkenly. Although the Foveaux Strait wasn’t as rough now as it had been two hours earlier when they’d returned their clients to the mainland, the constant rolling made her legs wobbly and uncoordinated.
    “You could try acupuncture,” Ben said by way of greeting as she entered the wheelhouse and slumped in a helm seat. “I’m happy to stick some needles in you.”
    “Right now, I’d let you stick a bullet in me.” Piper draped an elbow over her face and waited for death to claim her.
    “We could’ve stayed in Invers.”
    “No, we couldn’t. I’m making a special Valentine’s dinner for West tonight.”
    “Valen?—Oh, shit.” Ben jerked his head toward her. “That’s today? Kez didn’t say anything this morning.”
    Piper cracked open an eye at her poor, pathetic excuse for a brother. “You’re dead meat, aren’t you?”
    “Yeah.” Ben scratched his neck and scowled. “What are the odds of Russell’s still having a bunch of flowers when we get back?”
    “About the same as me not hurling again before we reach the wharf.”
    “Funny that those bracelets have suddenly stopped working. You’re not preggers, are you?”
    Piper’s gut lurched again, followed in an instant by her heart plummeting into the depths of her stomach. Pregnant? Her gaze shot to her brother’s, and his eyes bugged open.
    “Don’t.” She held up a warning finger. “Don’t you even think about saying anything to anyone.”
    Ben gripped the wheel, his knuckles pale under his tan. “Bloody hell—are you?”
    Oh. God. Could she be? No birth control—other than abstinence, of course—was one hundred percent effective, and there was that one time, after a seven-day-dose of antibiotics, when West had woken her for some morning delight, and since she’d felt fine, they’d…but they’d used…hadn’t they?
    She lurched upright and wrapped her arms around her middle. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never been super regular, but—”
    “No-no-no-no.” Ben clapped his hands to his ears. “No girly details. I’m still traumatized by not knowing the difference between liners and wings and maxi pads when Kez made me take an emergency run to Russell’s a couple of weeks ago.”
    Piper rolled her eyes. “You’re such a walking cliché, Ben Harland.”
    “Yep.” He removed his hands from his ears and dug out his phone from his hip pocket. “So call Kez or Shaye or Mum, I don’t care. I’ve had enough female stuff dumped on me from my sisters already today.”
    Piper grabbed his phone and hit speed-dial to Kezia. With any luck, her friend still had the mail-order pregnancy test she hadn’t used last year. Tingles ran up and down Piper’s spine as the phone bleated in her ear. As a teenager, she’d thought she’d carried West’s child and had been devastatingly wrong.
    She couldn’t bear to be wrong again.
     
    ***
     
    In a flash of inspiration, Piper googled a recipe for bread rolls and made up a batch. Okay, they looked a little dubious, she thought, sliding the tray of odd-shaped dough balls into the oven. But West would get a kick out of her announcing, “I’ve got a bun in the oven,” if she was pregnant. And if she wasn’t…
    Piper’s chest hitched and she placed