Chapter Eight

Orange Ball of Hate

"Everythin’ okay in there?" Scotty asked, glancing up as Kat returned to the squad room.

Grinning broadly, Kat shook her head in amazement. "You’re not gonna believe this," she began, her eyes sparkling with humor and more than a touch of maternal pride. "That girl’s got Boss and Nicky playin’ tea party with her."

Lilly burst out laughing, the mental image of Nick Vera and John Stillman sipping imaginary tea from tiny cups proving to be far too much.

"Yeah, well…that’s our girl," Scotty proclaimed, with a rueful smile.

"Sounds like she’s got ‘em wrapped around her little finger," Lilly observed.

"Ain’t the only ones she’s done that to," Kat chided gently, but the glance she shot Scotty was anything but scolding. No, it was warm, almost…flirtatious, even. Flirtatious? No…surely not. Not those two.

"What can I say?" Scotty grinned in reply, with a casual shrug. "I’m a sucker for cute girls."

He shot Kat a look then, and Lilly was floored. Although Kat’s glance left a bit to the imagination, Scotty’s sure didn’t. There was no mistaking his intent there. And it seemed Kat noticed, because she hastily sat down at her desk, looked everywhere but at Scotty, and then buried herself in some paperwork.

Still completely shocked at the interplay of glances between her two friends, Lilly couldn’t stifle the giggle that bubbled forth, and Kat’s head snapped up.

"What’s so funny, Rush?" she asked, somewhat defensively.

Scotty shot Lilly a quick look, one that told her that, yet again, he was peeved that she was applying her detective skills to his personal life, then turned his attention back to Kat. "Oh, we were just talkin’ about me and you movin’ in together," he interjected quickly, with a warning glance at Lilly.

Kat issued a derisive snort. "Surprised I didn’t kill your sorry ass that day, Valens," she retorted with a slight smile as she scrawled her signature across the bottom of a form.

Lilly chuckled with the memories of that warm spring day, but she was a little surprised when Scotty didn’t join in. Looking up at her partner, she saw just the faintest shadows of…something…cross his face and darken his eyes almost imperceptibly. He glanced up at her, and from his expression, she could tell he knew she’d seen that…whatever it was.

Her pointedly arched eyebrow asked the question, and he just sighed and shook his head, then returned his eyes to his desk, where he seemed suddenly fascinated with swirling the leftover, half-cooled coffee in his mug.

"You were too busy workin’ on yourself, Miller," he replied, his voice light, but still colored with a curious amount of pain. Kat looked up at him, her eyes dark with apology, yet still with that same spark of defensiveness, but Scotty refused to meet her gaze.

"Am I…missin’ somethin’ here?" Lilly asked tentatively.

Kat tore her eyes away from Scotty and sighed in defeat. "Well, you were there for most of it," she began.

Despite rain in the forecast, moving day dawned warm and sunny, unseasonably warm for that early in the spring, and Kat, for one, was grateful. March in Philly tended to be a meteorological crap shoot, with snow and rain and everything in between, and she’d had nightmarish visions of all of them slipping and sliding on a glaze of ice as they attempted to unload her furniture from the truck…until the moment she rose from bed and looked out the window to see nothing but clear blue skies and bright sunshine. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned away from the window and began stripping off the sheets with a satisfied smile.

True to her word, Kat had checked with Veronica before signing anything, even bringing her daughter to the townhouse to allow her to see their potential new digs for herself. At first, Veronica hadn’t seen the necessity of the move, or her mother’s new roommate, or any of the changes that had suddenly been thrust upon her, and Kat couldn’t blame her one bit…but she’d still been almost dizzy with relief as her daughter’s eyes widened upon seeing the size of her potential new bedroom. For Veronica, the decision was made when she saw that, instead of her current arrangement of sharing a tiny bathroom with her mother, she could have a whole bathroom all to herself, and a much larger one than that. She didn’t even care that it was downstairs from where her bedroom would be, nor did she care that she’d still have to share a shower with her mom, she got her own bathroom. Suddenly, the idea of moving to a new apartment didn’t bother her a bit, and Kat was grateful…because she fell in love with the damn place the moment she laid eyes on it. The polished wood floors…the gorgeous fireplace…the skylight in her bathroom…she hadn’t known such an apartment existed, not in anything close to her price range, anyway, and she was eternally grateful to Scotty for jumping in and suggesting it. Not that she’d ever let him see that, of course.

Any last lingering fears Kat had about the transition were put to rest one night after work when she, Veronica, and Scotty had dinner at Jorgito’s Taco Heaven, which she’d never heard of, but Scotty raved about it so enthusiastically that she couldn’t say no. As greasy, hole-in-the-wall taco places went, it was surprisingly good, although Kat was still hesitant to put "taco" and "heaven" in the same sentence for any reason…but the most pleasant surprise was how easily Scotty and Veronica got along. She’d forgotten until she saw them together that they’d met before, one spring day a couple years back when Kat had expressed reservations about a man she’d seen lurking at the park where Veronica liked to play. Scotty had volunteered (perhaps a bit too eagerly, she realized, looking back) to go check it out. Although she didn’t know exactly what went down, she had her suspicions…but the man never returned, and that was all she cared about.

But something else she’d seen that day was something she saw again that night at Jorgito’s…that unmistakable sparkle in Scotty’s eyes, one that spoke of comfort around, and an instinctive love for, children. He’d established an instant connection with V, one that brought a curious, and somewhat disturbing, warmth to Kat’s heart, especially when Scotty, to her extreme surprise, demonstrated a working knowledge of The Nutcracker, which V had just danced in a few months before.

"How the hell do you know anything about ballet?" she’d demanded as Veronica scampered off with a couple quarters, courtesy of Scotty, to go try her luck at the claw machine.

"Got twenty-six female cousins, Miller," Scotty had replied jovially. "Wasn’t a Christmas that went by that I didn’t get dragged off to see that damn thing." He was trying to sound gruff, but Kat could tell he didn’t hate it nearly as much as he’d like her to believe, and she chuckled softly, trying to wrap her mind around this particular facet of her new roommate’s personality. Just when you think you know a guy…

After the lease was signed, the preparations for the move had gone quite smoothly, with Kat’s landlord letting her out of her contract early due to her pregnancy, an allowance that she simultaneously appreciated and resented. She didn’t believe in all the "pregnant women deserve special treatment" crap. Oh, sure, she was growing a person, nurturing a new life…but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before, wasn’t anything billions of her foremothers hadn’t done…and it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She was strong, she was healthy, and she despised having to visit the doctor every month, constantly being told to "take it easy" (as if such a thing were even possible), and generally being treated like she was somehow more delicate or fragile just because she was pregnant. She was Kat Miller, for God’s sake. She could handle this.

All these thoughts and more were tumbling around in her mind the morning of the move, and she was bound and determined to be as helpful as humanly possible, especially since her mother had offered to stay with Veronica and help her finish packing so Kat could devote her entire attention to moving. Lilly and Vera had pledged their assistance, and Kat had wondered aloud if the four of them would be able to move two apartments’ worth of boxes and furniture by themselves, but Scotty had assured her that they’d all be fine. She and Lil could get the lighter stuff, he’d explained, and he and Vera would handle the furniture. Kat had glared at him when he’d proposed this arrangement, but he’d just grinned and reassured her that there would be plenty she could do to help out.

In practice, however, she soon discovered that "plenty she could do to help out" was nothing more than an empty promise. She’d had a ton of energy that morning, the nausea and exhaustion of the previous few weeks now a distant memory, and as soon as Scotty lifted the gate of the U-Haul that he and his brother had packed full of his furniture the night before, Kat grabbed the first box she saw and started to carry it toward the townhouse, bursting with zeal and exuberance and the excitement she always felt when she moved to a new place. She was starting over. She was beginning a new life. She was---

"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute…what the hell do you think you’re doin’?" Scotty demanded as he hurried to catch up with her, his features creasing in a frown.

"What’s it look like I’m doin’?" she replied coolly, turning to face him with a brief smile.

Scotty stepped in front of her, his eyes flashing as he wrestled the box from her arms. "No way," he declared. "You ain’t carryin’ this. It’s too heavy."

"Too heavy?" Kat repeated in disbelief. "Did it look like I was havin’ trouble with it?"

Noticing Lilly and Vera looking on uncomfortably, Scotty set the box down on the sidewalk, then took a deep breath and a step closer to Kat.

"The doctor specifically said you’re not supposed to lift anything heavy," he reminded her, his voice much quieter, but still laced with an almost paternal-sounding concern, his eyes dark and blazing with both irritation and that damn ever-present overprotectiveness.

Kat was about to launch into a tirade, but she then caught a glimpse of her colleagues traipsing quietly into the truck to start the moving process, and a look from Lilly that, although gentle, still spoke volumes.

Sighing in defeat, Kat remembered Rush’s warning about Scotty’s watchdog tendencies even before they’d signed their lease. "He’ll drive you crazy, but his heart’s in the right place," she’d said, and Kat had smiled with understanding.

Knowing that that was probably all Scotty was doing, she took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. It wasn’t that big a deal. So she couldn’t carry that particular box. Fine. Surely, out of the seemingly hundreds of boxes stacked from floor to ceiling in the U-Haul, wedged tightly among Scotty’s furniture, there was another box she could carry.

"Okay," she agreed, and Scotty blinked in surprise. Clearly, he’d been expecting her to put up more of a fight than she had, but she could tell from his startled expression that he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Good," he replied with a slight nod, then hoisted the box from the sidewalk and started up the porch steps.

"I’ll just find another one," Kat declared, and headed for the U-Haul before Scotty could even blink. She thought she caught another glimpse of something in the sapphire depths of Lilly’s eyes as she swept past, but she chose to ignore it. Kat was sure Rush was siding with Scotty, as usual, but at least she could count on Vera to always have her back.

"Hey, what makes you think we’re gonna let you carry in a damn thing?" Vera asked as he removed the box from her hands and added it to the pile he was already carrying. His tone light and joking, but laced with an undercurrent of incredulity, and Kat’s eyes widened in shock. Nick Vera, more than any of the rest of them…he knew her. He knew her independence, her resentment for being singled out for anything, and her fierce need to be in control and on top of things, and so she was stunned beyond words that even he was trying to smother her.

"You have got to be kiddin’ me," she exclaimed, but the looks on the faces of her three colleagues told her that, not only were they not kidding, not in the slightest, but they’d gotten together and agreed on this beforehand. Kat felt a surge of irritation rising in her chest. They’d…talked about her. And her pregnancy. Behind her back. Seething, she glowered briefly at Scotty, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was his doing, but he just glared back, his dark eyes defiant, before turning without a word and heading into the townhouse.

"C’mon," Lilly suggested calmly, leading Kat toward the front door. "There’ll be plenty for you to do once we get a few boxes in."

But, as the morning wore on, "plenty for you to do" manifested itself in Kat being shut down every time she offered to carry anything, move anything, hell, barely even unpack anything. She found that out the hard way when she started in on a box of Scotty’s clothes and discovered, to her chagrin, that the light bulb in the highly touted walk-in closet was burned out, and she couldn’t see a damn thing.

"Hey, Valens," she called down the stairs, where she could see Scotty and Vera beginning to heft Scotty’s bureau through the front door.

"Yeah," he tossed over his shoulder as he backed up the stairs, his triceps bulging and his voice strained from effort.

"We got any light bulbs handy?" she asked.

"Hall closet, I think," he grunted in response, and Kat scurried into the hallway where, sure enough, a box of light bulbs had been thoughtfully placed there by the landlord. Bless them, they thought of everything, she mused, as she grabbed one of the bulbs and the small stepladder that leaned against the door frame, then carried them back to Scotty’s bedroom.

Once there, she climbed up and began to unscrew the light bulb, accompanied all the while by the increasingly loud arguing and occasional swearing from her male colleagues, and directions from Lilly.

"Okay, a little to the left," she guided them, causing Vera to move one direction, Scotty to move the other, and both to curse loudly when they realized their mistake.

"My left," Lilly amended.

"Great," Scotty retorted sarcastically. "Now, if I had any idea where you were, and which direction your left is, we’d be good."

"Go to your right, Scotty…no, no, the right," Lilly instructed urgently, but it was too little, too late, and they couldn’t avoid bumping the doorway with the bureau, leaving a slight dent in its smooth wooden side.

"Dammit," Scotty exclaimed, peering around the corner of the bureau to inspect the damage, and taking the opportunity to glare at Vera in the process.

"Maybe you shoulda emptied it first," Vera shot back. "Might not weigh a ton and a half."

"I did empty it," Scotty argued breathlessly as they struggled over to the corner where he planned to keep the bureau. "It’s just grownup furniture. Real wood. You wouldn’t know a damn thing about that."

"Wood?" Vera repeated incredulously, eyeing the dresser with renewed loathing. "Coulda sworn it was made outta bricks."

"Shut up," Scotty grunted. "I got the heavy end, and you know it."

A few more panted curses and staggering steps, then the bureau met its resting place with a heavy thump, and Lilly, seeming eager to avoid any potential wrath from her male colleagues, quickly headed down the stairs to grab another box from the truck.

"Oh, my God," Vera wheezed as he removed his weathered, backward-facing Phillies cap, dragged his arm across his forehead, then replaced the cap and leaned on the bureau to catch his breath. "After liftin’ this damn thing," he began, indicating the dresser with a jerk of his head, "I shouldn’t need to go to the gym for a week."

"So what’s your excuse for the other fifty-one weeks this year?" Scotty snarked in reply, though Kat noticed that he, too, was more than a little winded, and his gray beater was starting to darken in a few places with the sweat that also glistened on his neck and shoulders.

After lifting the hem of the shirt to wipe his face, he glanced around the room. "Where’d Miller get to?" he asked, letting the shirt drop. "Thought I heard her somewhere."

"Right here," Kat announced with a triumphant smile as she finished screwing in the light bulb, bathing the closet in a soft white light.

Upon seeing her, Scotty froze, his eyes wide in a curious mixture of surprise and alarm, and then he sprang into action and crossed the room in about a step. Before she could fight him off, or even find the words to argue, she found herself being lifted, bodily, off the stepladder and lowered to the ground, where his eyes now sparked with the twin lightning bolts of fury and apprehension.

"The hell you doin’ up there?" he demanded roughly.

"Changin’ a damn light bulb, Valens," Kat retorted. "And don’t worry, it only weighs a couple ounces," she added sarcastically.

Scotty didn’t even blink. "It’s also nine feet off the goddamn ground," he shot back. "You forget you ain’t supposed to be up on ladders, too?"

"Goddammit, Scotty!" she exploded, indicating the closet with an emphatic wave of her hand. "I’m thirty-three years old! I think I can change a damn light bulb without a babysitter."

"Yeah, well if you think for one second I’m gonna---" Scotty began threateningly, but he was cut off by the loud, gravelly voice of Nick Vera.

"Hey, hey, hey," he interjected, stepping between the two. "Botha you just shut up. Movin’s stressful enough without you two rippin’ each other’s throats out." He glanced from Scotty to Kat and back again, then sighed heavily as they continued to glare at each other, neither one moving an inch.

"She knows what the doctor said," Scotty muttered, his eyes shooting daggers at Kat.

"I’ve done this before, dammit," Kat retorted, unfazed and unimpressed. "I’m pregnant, not an invalid. I can change a fuckin’ light bulb, for God’s sake."

In response, they heard a heavy, defeated sigh from Vera, who then fished in his wallet and handed Kat a couple of bills. She looked at the cash, then regarded her colleague with some surprise.

"It’s almost lunchtime," he explained calmly. "Why don’t you just go get us some burgers? My treat."

Kat returned her attention to Scotty and glared at him defiantly. "That okay with you, Mom?" she sneered. "Or do you want me to call Dr. Bridwell first, make sure it’s safe?"

Scotty rolled his eyes. "Just go get the damn burgers," he instructed.

Kat shot him one last lethal glare, then snatched the cash from Vera’s outstretched hand and stormed out into the hallway.

"Number four with an extra-large Coke," Scotty called after her. "And, hey, hold the mayo."

"Number six value meal, Extra Mega Jumbo size everything, and get ‘em to add extra pickles," Vera instructed.

"Chicken sandwich for me," the box-toting Lilly added with a kind smile as she met Kat on the stairs.

***

Kat grumbled inwardly all the way to the hamburger place, and, once there, took a disturbing amount of perverse joy in requesting extra packets of mayo, then viciously tearing them open with her teeth and squirting them all over Scotty’s burger until the beef patty was completely obscured by a thick, shiny layer of oozing white goo. She knew it was juvenile, she knew it was petty, but, dammit, it was the only thing she could think of to do. Her power, her control, and her dignity were being ripped away from her, bit by tiny bit, so if her only avenue for revenge was childish and mayonnaise-intensive, then, by God, she’d take it. And she’d enjoy every single minute of it.

When she returned to her new home and handed out the sandwiches, her co-workers pounced on them as though they hadn’t eaten in a week, and all conversation stopped as lunch was greedily devoured. Even Scotty had wolfed down about a third of his burger before he finally realized that it was positively smothered in mayonnaise. After replacing the bun and taking another, albeit less enthusiastic bite, he shot Kat a brief glare, which she returned with a smirk, but neither of them said a word. He wasn’t backing down, she knew…but neither was she.

Shortly after lunch was finished and the sacks and wrappers all noisily crumpled and corralled into the large Wal-Mart sack they were using as a trash bag, they finished unloading Scotty’s furniture from the U-Haul, then drove the truck over to Kat’s apartment to load up hers. Her three colleagues had apparently commiserated on the subject while she was grabbing lunch, and, it seemed, they’d elected Lilly to apprise Kat of her next assignment: she was to stay behind and take a nap. It would be quiet for at least an hour, and the rest would do her good, Lilly had explained gently, without being patronizing, and Kat had to hand it to her. The delivery was flawless…the result being that Kat was furious. Not with Rush, of course…but with Scotty. She knew this edict had been handed down from Valens himself, and she was glad, for the sake of both him and his manhood, that he was already down in the truck.

The minute they left, Kat did, to her surprise, briefly consider the idea of a nap, but she dismissed the idea as quickly as it came. True, she was a bit tired, and a nap would feel simply wonderful…but she’d be damned to if she let Scotty Valens be right about her, and she’d be damned if the rest of them were loading her furniture while she was sleeping. She’d show them a pregnant woman wasn’t a useless invalid, she vowed…and how could she prove that point better than by unpacking Scotty’s stuff? With a twisted, self-satisfied grin, she spent the next couple hours unpacking and carefully organizing Scotty’s belongings: his clothes, his surprisingly large collection of shoes, and the decent assortment of pots and pans. He sure was a helluva lot better equipped for cooking than she was, Kat decided in a heartbeat.

After a while, the crew returned, and Kat renewed her efforts to help, but once again, to her extreme frustration, she was shut down. It was too warm outside, Scotty declared, and he didn’t want her to overexert herself. Once more, she tried to argue, tried to insist that she’d be fine, but Lilly quietly reminded her that Scotty’s heart was in the right place, and Kat swallowed her seething rage and what little remained of her pride, then returned to the living room to busy herself with the incredibly important task of arranging their respective movie collections on the shelves beside the television.

As her colleagues trudged through with article after article of furniture, Kat grew increasingly frustrated. This was her stuff, dammit, so it was her responsibility. No, she didn’t pretend to be able to heft a queen-sized bed by herself, but she felt that she should at least do something to help, especially as the warm afternoon wore on and her friends began to look more and more fatigued. Scotty was bathed in sweat, his shirt almost completely soaked and clinging to his torso, and an equally drenched Vera had added a red face, a bruised shin, and a slight wheeze to his discomforts. Even Lilly’s normally pale skin had turned bright pink with exertion, and a few strands of her unruly blonde hair stuck damply to her neck and forehead. Kat felt her exasperation reach a fever pitch as she watched Lilly fan herself with a newspaper while Vera searched for an ice pack for his shin and Scotty dug through a box for some bottles of water, and with that, her decision was made. She wasn’t going to take it. Not anymore. This was her job. So, while they were distracted, she quietly slipped out to the U-Haul, where she defiantly grabbed a box of her clothes and started down the ramp with it. It wasn’t especially heavy, and she figured they wouldn’t miss that one box.

As she carried it up the stairs to her bedroom, she felt a renewal of her earlier vigor and sense of purpose. Finally, finally, she was helping. She was doing her own job. She was pulling her weight. She wasn’t being the pampered pregnant princess. Pregnancy wasn’t an illness, dammit, it was a perfectly normal, natural state of affairs. There was no reason she couldn’t contribute to this project.

Coming back down the stairs, she heard her weary colleagues decide to take a break and leave the rest of the furniture in the truck for the moment, concentrating instead on reassembling Veronica’s bed. Kat could tell that the three of them weren’t even aware she was missing, so she took advantage of the relative peace and quiet to make trip after trip out into the dazzling early spring sunshine, carting in box after box and stashing them in the kitchen, the living room, and her bedroom.

Finally, all the boxes were unloaded, and Kat stood in the warm, airless shade of the U-Haul trailer, wiping sweat from her brow and deciding what to tackle next. Suddenly, her eyes lit on a small bedside table destined for Veronica’s room, and she couldn’t help but smile. She’d bought that table when she was pregnant with V, one of the few articles of furniture she’d been able to afford at the time, and she had a special fondness for it. The two of them had painted it white one afternoon when V was seven, and Kat felt a flood of love wash over her as she remembered the pride shining from her daughter’s paint-smeared face that day as she surveyed their handiwork. With another affectionate grin, Kat hoisted the table and headed into the townhouse. It was heavier than she remembered, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. Besides, though she trusted her colleagues with her life, she didn’t trust any of them with that end table.

When she reached the front door, she realized, to her chagrin, that a breeze must have closed the door while she was in the trailer. She paused for a moment to plan her strategy, then lowered the table, opened the door, wiggled the doorstop into place with her foot, then lifted the table once more and carefully maneuvered it into the living room.

"Oh, for the fuckin’ love of God!" she heard Scotty exclaim, though, since the table was blocking her view, she couldn’t see him. She could certainly feel him, though; feel the vibrations of his enraged footsteps through the polished wood of the living room floor, feel him forcibly yanking the table from her arms and setting it beside the fireplace, and then she saw the almost lethal mixture of barely controlled anger and helpless exasperation blazing from his dark eyes.

He glared fiercely at her for a moment, and she glared back, her eyes shooting sparks, and she could tell from his rapid breathing, the rhythmically twitching muscle in his jaw, and his tightly crossed arms that he was holding himself back from just laying into her, from reading her the riot act. Makes two of us, jackass, she hissed inwardly.

Finally, he spoke, his tone carefully measured, but laced with a depth of anger she’d heard from him only in the interview room.

"What…in God’s name…do you think you’re doin’, Miller?" he demanded through clenched teeth, his voice soft, yet trembling with fury.

"Movin’ that end table," she shot back.

"I know that," Scotty roared in frustration, flinging his arms to the sides. "What I wanna know is why."

"Then maybe you shoulda asked me that," she retorted. She knew she was being ridiculous, she knew she was goading him, but God help her, she couldn’t stop herself. Pissing him off was just…so damn easy, and today, more than any other day she could remember, he had it coming.

Sure enough, Scotty exploded then, raking a hand through his hair as he began to pace the floor, so furious, it seemed, that he couldn’t even look at her. "For God’s sake, Kat, you’re five months pregnant! The doctor gave you all those limitations for a reason! There’s a reason you ain’t supposed to be carryin’ heavy stuff. There’s a reason you ain’t supposed to be climbin’ ladders. You could get hurt…the baby could get hurt…you could---"

"Oh, spare me," she snapped, rolling her eyes and whirling around in exasperation. "I know all the rules."

Scotty stopped in his tracks and glared at her again, disbelief mixing with the blazing anger in his fiery gaze. "Then why the hell are you so dead set on breakin’ every last goddamn one of ‘em?" he demanded, the strain in his voice reflected by the tension of the muscles in his shoulders and his chest as he folded his arms once more.

"Because I’ve done this be---" she shot back, but Scotty interrupted her.

"I know, I know, you’ve done this before," he shouted, with a seamless blend of anger and sarcasm. "You had a kid, a decade ago, and you think that makes you some kinda childbearin’ expert."

She opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off, turning to face her with a peculiar expression on his face, equal parts rage and worry, and for a moment, she almost felt her heart softening. Almost.

"But y’know what?" he continued angrily. "I haven’t done this before, okay? There ain’t a single parta this that I’ve done before," he declared, the anger melting away just enough for her to hear his anguished concern. "So excuse me for worryin’," he continued hoarsely, his voice rising with each syllable. "Excuse me for makin’ sure you follow the rules."

He turned then and looked her dead in the eyes. "Excuse me for carin’ about this baby."

Kat froze, utterly nonplussed, and just stared at him in disbelief for a moment.

"Did you just say what I think you said?" she asked icily, not wanting to believe what she’d just heard. "Are you implyin’ that you don’t think I can take care of my own child?" That you don’t think I’m capable of makin’ sure this baby is safe?" she demanded, her voice beginning to shake with barely-controlled fury. "Is that what you’re sayin’ to me? That you think I don’t care?"

"Well, it’s makin’ me wonder, I’ll tell you that much," Scotty fired back.

Kat stood in stunned silence, reeling from his verbal slap. She’d expected to feel angry…she’d expected to want to just kill him…but what she didn’t expect was for that comment to cut so deep, so quickly…she didn’t expect it to hurt so damn much. She needed to get out of there, and fast, before he could see how badly he’d wounded her. So she shot him one last glare, one of her finest, she noted with pride, and swept past him on her way up the stairs.

"I’ll be in my room. Unpackin’ clothes," she informed him, trying desperately to keep the tears that had begun to sting her eyes from coming through in her voice. "You know what’s good for you, you’ll stay the hell out."

"Kat---" Scotty called after her, sounding instantly contrite. "Hey, I didn’t mean---"

But she was hearing none of it. She merely lifted a hand to stop him as she stormed up the stairs and hurried into her room.

"And if you so much as leave a fingerprint on that table, I swear to God I’ll rip your throat out," she called by way of a parting shot as she slammed the door so hard it shook the walls.

***

Kat spent the entire evening glowering in her bedroom, tossing clothes in her dresser drawers and flinging them into the closet. The seething combination of pain and anger fueled her frenetic unpacking, and when she finally glanced at the clock, she was shocked to see that it was after ten. She was sure her colleagues had left by now, couldn’t imagine them sticking around, not after that fight, not after the way Scotty was no doubt bratting around like he owned the place.

As she finally folded up the last empty box, tossed it into the back of her closet and sank wearily onto the bed, her stomach loudly and indignantly insisted that it had been far too long since her last meal, and now that her anger was spent, the hunger could battle for supremacy with the sudden, almost overwhelming fatigue. She wanted to eat, hell, she was starving…but she didn’t have the energy to move a single muscle.

Her decision made, she dragged herself to her feet to grab her phone…

…and that’s when the pain hit.

Sudden. Sharp. Stabbing. Excruciating.

Blinding in its intensity, it washed over her in waves…her abdomen…her back…her groin…everywhere, and for a second, Kat wondered if she’d pass out. She felt a cold sweat break out all over her body, and, dread coiling in her stomach, her heart pounding with a sudden, desperate panic, she sank back down onto the bed, dinner forgotten, and, with trembling hands, frantically dialed the number for her obstetrician.

She’d never done this before.