When she’d stopped in Tahoe for gas and munchies, and gloves for her freezing fingers, the old guy behind the counter had chatted away about the lack of ‘inches’ on the ground for this time of year and the unseasonably warm temperatures. But if her frozen body and what she’d seen on the drive up the mountain were any indication there was already way too much of the white stuff covering the ground, and Covington wanted to turn right back around and head for places warmer—head home.
Her lips quivered. “I don’t have a home.” She sniffed back the sting of tears, blinking furiously to ward off another crying jag. “Damn stupid hormones.”
She’d given up her lease. Sold everything she could, donated what she couldn’t and piled the few possessions she’d decided to keep into her twenty-two-year-old car and headed for California.
The other side of the country.
Another world away.
Up a godforsaken mountain covered in snow!
When that little blue plus sign had appeared in the teeny tiny window on the plastic stick, Covington hadn’t been able to breathe. It had taken her a very long, very angst ridden day to come to terms with the fact she was pregnant.
After the initial shock wore off she’d been okay with the idea. More than okay. She’d been thrilled to know she was carrying Tristan’s baby.
But then morning sickness set in and dancing had become difficult. She lost her balance as well as her lunch and a couple of one-day jobs along with them, and as she headed into the third month, and her weight dipped to an all-time low, she panicked more than a little.
Surely it couldn’t be normal to lose weight while growing another human being?
Her doctor had assured her she was fine—thebabywas fine—but scheduled an ultrasound ‘just to be on the safe side’ and put her mind at ease.
There was no ‘safe side’ for what that scan revealed and no easing of the mind.
Two miniature hearts beating fast and furious as two perfect little bodies formed and grew.
“Oh god.” Her fingers clenched on the wheel as her stomach clenched around two bags of chips, three cans of soda, and one and half bags of gummy bears.
The rush of fear and excitement and panic shot through her as quickly and sharply as it had two weeks ago when she’d first seen with her own eyes the teeny lives she and Tris had made.
She’d stumbled out of her doctor’s office, vaguely remembered thanking him and paying the bill, and somehow found her way home while her world spun and tilted all over again.
She couldn’t do it alone.
One baby would have been manageable and she’d had every intention of hunting Tris down to let him know he was going to be a father, buttwobabies…
Covington might pride herself on her independence and know she could, if push came to shove, do anything she set her mind to. But raising two babies while working in an industry that required she stay in peak physical form when in all likelihood she’d be forced to rest later in her pregnancy not to mention most singers didn’t want a pregnant woman in their music video, and there would be night feeds once the babies arrived…
Well, there really was no way she could do it alone.
She sighed.
She’d been deluding herself.
She didn’twantto do it alone.
Hadn’t from the moment the situation had sunk in and the reality of having Tris’s babies had taken root in her mind as firmly as they had in her belly.
Finding him had become a priority.
Ironic that it was Dirk who’d revealed Tris’s whereabouts.
Her ex-fiancé had turned up on her doorstep accusing her of sabotaging his friendship with Tris and blaming her for Tris’s decision to relocate to that ‘godforsaken mountain’ miles away.
It took a while to get the details out of a clearly drunk Dirk, and even longer to fend off his sloppy advances, but once he’d clued in to the not so obvious swell of her belly—she’d had to spell it out for him—he’d escaped her apartment as though his ass was on fire.
A little more investigation and Covington had all the info she needed on Tris’s new home and made the decision to pack up and move there too.
She had to admit she was excited to be going to Karina Black’s hometown. And she knew Karina’s trusted choreographer also lived there and maybe, just maybe, she could get some work to see her through until the babies were old enough to go to daycare and she could return to work fulltime.