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he leaned against the wall and watched from there. Even when the tech pushed up Kendall’s top and shoved down her skirt to expose her belly and coat it with some goopy gel, he kept watching.
    Kendall suddenly felt way too bare with Aiden in the room, but there was no way she’d convince him to leave. There was no way to convince Aiden of a lot of things, and once she had the all-clear with the ultrasound, she’d need to figure out a way to handle him and this situation.
    Aiden wasn’t going to like it when she insisted she leave.
    But she would insist on it.
    And maybe Aiden would soon see that it was the right thing for all of them.
    The tech put the wand on Kendall’s stomach, and when she moved it around, Kendall could see the baby’s beating heart. Her breath rushed out.
    “The baby’s okay?” Kendall immediately asked.
    “Appears to be. That’s a strong, steady heartbeat.” The woman continued to move the wand, and even though it was hard to make out some of the images, Kendall definitely spotted two arms and two legs. All moving.
    “Amazing,” Kendall said. “So much movement, and I haven’t even felt it yet.”
    “Is that normal?” Aiden snapped.
    The tech nodded. “Some women don’t experience quickening or movement until week twenty.”
    That meshed with the maternity books that Kendall had been reading, but obviously this was all new to Aiden. He moved closer to the screen, his focus on the tiny baby.
    Their
baby.
    Kendall saw and heard the moment that it finally sank in for him. Aiden made a hoarse sound that came from deep within his throat, and he mumbled something while his eyes tipped toward the ceiling. Maybe asking for divine help. She’d done that a few times early on, as well.
    He dragged in a long breath. “Yeah, you should have told me.”
    That didn’t sound like a man on the verge of rejecting fatherhood. Or even putting this in perspective. The bottom line was his family wasn’t going to embrace this child, and hers likely wouldn’t, either.
    “Is that what I think it is?” Aiden asked.
    Because he was looking gobsmacked again, Kendall’s gaze rifled back to the monitor, and she tried to brace herself for whatever had put that bleached-out expression on Aiden’s face.
    “I’m sorry,” the tech said, sending Kendall’s heart into a tailspin again. “It’s usually not that clear this early on, and I should have asked first if you wanted to know the sex of the baby. This is a new machine, and it gives much clearer images than we used to get with the old one.”
    Oh. Kendall got it then. Nothing was wrong with the baby, but the ultrasound had obviously shown her something she hadn’t known before now.
    The baby was a boy.
    “A son,” Aiden said, staggering back a bit.
    Kendall had never seen him like this. Aiden was always in control. Always in charge. But this news had shaken him to the core.
    “This doesn’t change anything,” Kendall insisted.
    But she had the feeling he would have had the same reaction if it’d been a girl. It was just that seeing the baby on the screen made everything, well, real.
    “The doctor will look over these images,” the tech said, finishing up. She wiped the goop off Kendall’s stomach. “But everything looks fine, right on target for the end of the first trimester.”
    The moment the woman stepped out of the room, Kendall fixed her clothes. Best not to feel exposed when she had this discussion with Aiden. A discussion he wasn’t going to like. It was also a discussion she didn’t even get to start because Aiden’s phone buzzed, indicating that he had a text message.
    “Leland got a hit on the dead guy’s prints,” Aiden said, reading the info on his phone. “His name was Montel Higgins.”
    She repeated it, hoping that it would jog some kind of memory. It didn’t. “He has a record?”
    Aiden nodded. “Both here and in his home country of Jamaica. He’s worked as muscle for loan sharks but never anything this serious.