Chapter 37

Sofia

Lucas and James might have been speaking low enough to escape the radar of rambunctious children, but they weren’t speaking low enough to escape my radar. I sit near the door to the kitchen and I catch bits and pieces of their conversation—enough to spend the rest of the day in a terror that Astrid Gray might burst through the front door at any moment, drunk and armed, intent on ripping this baby out of my womb. Did he tell her that I was pregnant?

I wish he hadn’t done that yet.

But there’s plenty of holiday festivity to draw my attention away from his bitter, jealous ex-wife. There’s a massive turkey dinner, and then the children are each allowed to open one present before Christmas morning. Charlie delights in a much larger Nerf gun, and Madison dresses herself in a full princess costume. We read How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and then everyone trundles off to bed, except for James, who is still flipping through Christmas specials on cable when Lucas and I trudge tiredly upstairs.

I don’t try to sleep with Lucas tonight. I have too much on my mind. I take a nice hot bath to distract myself, and that helps a little bit.

My mind is still filled with guilt and worry, though. I climb out of the bath and towel off, then select one of my long, silky nightgowns for bed. This is a sheer, crisp blue, and I admire my body in the full-length mirror then climb under the warm blankets on my bed.

I nestle deep against the pillow and tell myself that everything is going to be all right, even though the only thing that makes me feel that way is Lucas. At least I have him, promising me that everything will be OK when I’m almost sure that it won’t.

I drift in and out of sleep for hours. The next time I look at the clock, it’s long after three in the morning, but I can’t relax. No sense of ease will settle over me, no matter how long I lay in this warm bed.

Outside my bedroom window, the icy blizzard howls and the house creaks and branches tap and scrape against the wood. I feel like I’m in a horror movie, even though this is supposed to be the warm, familiar scene from a Christmas film. This is supposed to be the moment Old Saint Nick comes down the chimney, not the Headless Horseman.

I hear a doorknob twist and click, then the creak of a wooden door opening. I stiffen under the blankets and almost tug them up to my head.

“Sofia,” Lucas’s voice hisses to me through the darkness, and my muscles relax. Thank God. It’s Lucas, coming to check on me. I should’ve known that he wouldn’t allow himself to sleep in a cold, empty bed all the way through Christmas Eve night.

His feet pad across the floor, and he tugs the blanket off my body. A shudder runs over my skin as he slides under the blankets with me, his strong arms looping around me and pulling me close. “Hey,” he breathes against my ear. “I thought you were going to come to bed.”

“I was,” I breathe, my fingernails trailing up and down his corded forearm. “I got lost in thought.”

“Come on,” Lucas purrs against my ear, kissing the earlobe softly. “You can be real with me, Sofia. When you can’t be real with anybody else, you can be real with me.”

“I know.” I sigh, and my ass twists smoothly over his erection.

Lucas nuzzles against my neck and a smile spread on his lips. He smiles against my skin. Hell, his dick twitches and pulses against my ass cheeks. He’s not just here for cuddling. “God, you smell good, Sof.”

“Shh, wait,” I whisper up to him, sighing and twisting in his embrace. “Maybe we should talk.”

An uncertain smile tugs at the corner of Lucas’s mouth. “All right,” he allows, his eyes measured and steady on me now. I have his attention, even though I can still feel his erection running along my stomach now.

“I need to tell you that I overheard your conversation with your brother,” I confess. “And I wish you hadn’t told Astrid that I’m pregnant right now. You know she’s unstable, and it’s so early. We could have waited.”

“I didn’t tell her,” Lucas defends himself softly. “She saw the bag from the maternity store and she assumed. I just didn’t deny it. I hardly had time to deny it, Sofia. You don’t know Astrid the way I do.”

My brow knits, and I draw away from him, annoyed by the tone. “What do you mean, I don’t know Astrid the way you do?”

“If I said you weren’t pregnant, it wouldn’t have mattered. She goes with whatever she thinks, and you can’t tell her anything else. There was nothing I could do.”

“The way you and James talk about her, she sounds dangerous,” I hiss up to him. “I don’t want her to hurt me. I don’t want her to hurt our baby. You said that she was abusive toward the kids before you left her, and they are her own flesh and blood. So, what is she going to do when she has to deal with Madison and Charlie’s half-brother or half-sister?”

“The only thing you can do with someone like that is watch them,” Lucas tells me. He’s trying to calm me down. It’s working only a little bit. “Don’t worry about it, though, OK? Because she’s never going to watch our baby for us. This baby is ours, not hers. No part of it is hers.”

I take a deep, shuddering breath and try to accept that.

I don’t even notice the way that my arms have come up to lace around my own stomach. I want to go to my first ultrasound and hear the heartbeat. I don’t want anything to come between me and this little peanut. I want everything to be happy and easy, even if I know how unrealistic that all is. After the long, hard road that brought me here, I’m ready for things to be easy. But they’re not going to be.

“I know,” I whisper, curling up against Lucas. I’m too freaked out to be turned on right now. “I wish things could be simple.”

A clatter and a thunk causes sounds outside, and I perk up.

“Did James leave the house?” I wonder.

“I don’t think so,” Lucas whispers back. “Even James isn’t that stupid. It’s not supposed to stop snowing until dawn.”

“I heard something.”

“I know. I heard it, too.”

We both freeze and listen intently to nothing at all. The wind howls outside the window. Distantly, the sound of the television comes through the guest room floor. James probably fell asleep on the couch. Everything is quiet. Everything is fine.

A long, high creak fills the downstairs, and footsteps echo in the silence.

Someone’s in the house.