At the end of his explanation, we were both sitting there flabbergasted.
Treat blinked. “That completely changes our entire operation.”
Sam nodded once. “I thought it might.”
“Fuck me.” Treat groaned, his big hands going over his face as he growled. “This is fucking bullshit. I can’t believe we fell for that bullshit!”
Bullshit indeed.
We’d been sitting on our hands for the last four months, and we had nothing to show for it but an empty goddamn village that wasn’t the least bit under threat.
“No wonder the other team couldn’t find anything, and they were made.” He shook his head. “They had to be feeding them false information for a while. They likely knew they were plants, too.”
Sam nodded once. “If I get anything more, I’ll tell you.” His eyes shifted from Treat’s to mine. “You, I just wanted to talk to you and tell you that…”
“Surprise!”
***
Pru
“I’m so glad that you’re home for a little bit,” I told Piper. “It feels like you were away forever.”
She grinned. “Six months isn’t forever.”
She took her hat off as we entered the building that my dad used for his offices. I’d asked her if she wanted to go change first, but she’d declined.
Piper and I were both daddy’s girls, and she’d missed him. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to change out of her military uniform.
“Six months is forever when you’re used to seeing your twin every single day,” I felt it prudent to point out.
“Thanks for picking me up from the airport. I wanted to surprise Dad. Mom’s face was priceless when she saw me at work. I had to threaten her not to call Dad and tell him I was here.” She grinned happily.
Our first stop that morning had been the hospital.
I normally didn’t like going in on my days off because I didn’t like dealing with Kelley and his never-ending bullshit, but today was a special circumstance.
And the look on my mother’s face when she saw Piper had been worth it. Even if I had to deal with Kelley and his bitching that we were being too loud.
Why he’d been back in his old office, I didn’t know, but I knew that I’d be telling my dad about it once the excitement died down.
“Jesus, you look really pregnant.” She laughed.
I looked down at my tank top and jeans. My jeans were being held up by an elastic hair tie around the button, and I knew it wouldn’t be much longer and they wouldn’t fit at all.
“It’s the shirt,” I plucked it from my stomach and showed her how tight it fit. “It’s awesome. And long so I’m not showing half my ass every time I raise my arms in the air.”
“It’s not the shirt,” she disagreed. “It’s the fact that you’re pregnant.”
I sighed.
“I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday,” I admitted.
She looked down at me. “Well, all I’m saying is that you’re either a lot further along than you think…” She held up her hand when I went to retort, “Or you are pregnant with twins.”
I flipped her off. “I’m not pregnant with twins. Don’t put that sorcery on me! When I went, the doctor said I was measuring right on time according to my last missed period.”
“I also notice that you didn’t hear whether it was twins or not. You could be measuring ‘on time’ with twins, too.” She shrugged. “Twins do run in our family.”
They did.
I narrowed my eyes. “Eighteen weeks. That’s it.”
Eighteen weeks put me getting pregnant toward the last two to three days that Hoax had been home. That meant that it might’ve been the time he took me in the airport bathroom.
Shit!
How was I going to tell my kid that he or she was conceived in an airport bathroom?
“Did she give you an ultrasound?”
I nodded. “Yes. I told her I didn’t want to see it because you could see the gender on the screen.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t stop myself.
I had to know. Piper was right. I was too big. Too pregnant. This was my first pregnancy. With me not having all those muscles and tendons stretched out, I shouldn’t be showing this much this early.
I turned around, leaving her there laughing at the expression on my face, and hurried to my car.
Once there, I ripped the envelope out that I had been planning to send to Hoax within the next week if he didn’t figure out that I was pregnant on his own.
“Let me see it,” Piper snatched the paper out of my hand and ran.
I ran behind her, trying to catch her, but couldn’t.
She’d ripped the envelope open and was pulling out the sonogram photos just as she reached the final hallway.
She made it into my dad’s office and yelled ‘surprise!” a full ten seconds before I did.
I barreled right in, snatching the photos away from Piper, and started to scan the photos.
What I saw made my heart start galloping in my chest.
A rough, almost gasping inhale had me looking up.
But it hadn’t come from my father.
Dad, who had his arms around Piper, was smiling big.
Hoax, who was on the screen staring at me in open mouth shock, had been the person responsible for that strangled sound.
He was staring at me—or better yet, my belly.
The shirt I was wearing was rather form-fitting, and there was no denying that I was pregnant. None.
“Uhhh,” Piper said. “Sorry to interrupt. I didn’t know you had anyone in here with you.”
Dad gave her one more squeeze and lifted her off her feet before turning to me, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s this one’s man,” Dad said, squeezing Piper’s shoulders. “How could you keep this from me?”
He wasn’t talking about the pregnancy.
It was more than obvious that I was, even if I hadn’t admitted it.
We were all ignoring it until I had the guts to say something.
Dad just rolled his eyes each day he saw me and I was even more pregnant.
Mom gave me pointed looks and crossed her arms as if she was waiting for the big announcement.
Well, they’d be waiting for a while…or at least they would have had I not walked in on this particular meeting.
Hoax’s eyes were locked onto my stomach, and he was staring at me in horror.
“Uhh, surprise!” Piper clapped her hands with excitement. “It’s twins!”
Dad choked. My sister laughed.
Hoax paled further…if that were even possible at this point.
Maybe it was the lighting of the screen?
“Piper, let’s go,” Dad said, hooking his arm around her waist and hauling her out of the office on his shoulder.
“Here! Show him these!” Piper shook the sonogram pictures at me.
I walked over to where Dad had paused in the doorway and took them from her.
When I looked back at the screen, the man that had been sitting in the background—Treat, I was thinking—was disappearing through a flap in the tent room they were in, leaving Hoax all alone.
God, he looked good.
Despite his paleness at the moment, he looked scrumptious.
I wanted to jump him. If we were in the same room, I was fairly sure that I’d be crawling him like a tree.
His beard was the longest I’d ever seen, and his eyes looked tired but beautiful. He was wearing some tan cargo pants, a tan shirt a slightly paler shade than his pants, and a bandana around his head holding his hair back. His arms were bare, and I could see veins rolling and winding their way up his arm. A nurse’s paradise. God, I just wanted to poke them, run my fingers along his arm just to see what they felt like.
“Pru?”
I looked up to his face and flushed guiltily.
“Yeah?” I asked.
My heart rate h
ad sped up, and my voice sounded husky even to my own ears.
I looked down and yep! Nipples were hard.
There was no way he was missing that.
And he didn’t.
His mouth kicked up at one corner and he smirked at me.
I felt my heart kick hard in my chest at that smile—my smile—he reserved only for me.
Swallowing, I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against my father’s desk.
“What are you and my dad talking about?” I tried to find something else to talk about that wouldn’t lead to him yelling at me.
His eyes went weird. “How much do you know of what your dad does?”
I shrugged. “How much do you know of what my dad does?”
I mean, I knew a lot.
I just didn’t know it all. I didn’t need to know it all.
Hoax opened his mouth and shut it. Looking, I was sure, for a way to tell me something that wouldn’t compromise him.
“How about I tell you what I know?” I paused. “And then you tell me what you know.”
He crossed his arms, mimicking my gesture.
“Go.”
I scrunched up my nose at him.
“You’re Delta Force or something equivalent,” I started.
He jerked, his eyes going wide in surprise. “How did you know?”
I pointed at my face, indicating his beard with a jerk of my head in his direction. “No Army person I know besides very few would be able to have a beard. You have no distinguishing tattoos other than one that’s easily covered up. You don’t talk about your job. No Facebook page. No pictures ever without a long-winded explanation about how I can’t share the photos on any social media platform. You’re very secretive. Hell, even my father had a hard time finding anything out on you at first, but Jack and Winter are wizards at their craft and know how to find stuff. Not that my father ever told me anything. He kept it all to himself. Everything that I’ve found so far is just conjecture on my part.”
“You’re right,” he said, looking relieved. “I’m Delta.”
I smiled. “My dad has a lot of business dabblings that I stay way the heck away from. I’m not sure I want to know more than I already do. I was going to tell you.”
He flowed with the change of subject just as I did.
“When?” he asked. “When you had the baby—babies?” he choked that last part out. “Which is it?”
I brought up the sonogram pictures, feeling my heart pounding for a completely different reason now, and started to sift through them.
My eyes moved toward where the camera sat, and I saw that I’d never get close enough to show him the photos close up, so I brought my phone out. Opening the Messenger app, I took photos of all the sonogram pictures and sent them.
“I had the pictures sealed into an envelope,” I told him. “My only instruction to the doctor when I went yesterday was for him to make sure the baby was okay and healthy. Everything else? He kept it quiet so I could share that with you for the first time when you got home.”
“So why were you looking at them when you walked in?” he questioned.
He wasn’t mad. He was just curious.
“Piper made a comment that had me freaking out,” I told him.
“A comment that had you questioning whether it was twins or not?” he asked as the sound of his phone dinging momentarily stole his attention away from me.
He looked down at his phone, and he brought his hand up to scrub over his face.
“Are you looking at the first picture?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
I looked at the first picture, too.
It was a close-up shot of a cute little face in profile. There was a small nose, a tiny set of lips, and an eye socket.
“It looks like an alien,” he muttered.
“It’s the eye socket that makes it look weird,” I told him.
His thumb swiped, and he swallowed thickly.
This was the one that made me want to freak out.
“Fuck.”
Yeah, fuck.
“I have twins that run in my family,” I told him something he already knew.
“Fuck.”
“I was on birth control,” I told him.
He laughed. “Shit.”
“Do you only have cuss words rattling around in your brain right now?” I questioned.
His eyes flicked up to me. “Yes.”
I rolled my eyes and studied my own photo. The picture was a zoomed out shot of both babies. They were in the fetal position facing each other. Actually, they looked like they were cuddling.
It was actually really cute.
One had ‘Baby A’ above it and the other had ‘Baby B’ below it.
“How far along?” he rasped.
“Eighteen weeks and two days as of this morning,” I answered. “You can see that on the photo at the top. It says ‘18w2d’ on it.”
He lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. “So you roughly have what, twenty-two more weeks?”
I nodded, then shook my head. “Maybe. Maybe not. Likely I’ll have twenty. A multiple pregnancy isn’t something that usually goes full term, but it can.”
He looked like he was calculating it all up in his head. “Possibly around Christmas?”
I nodded once. “My due date is officially Christmas Eve.”
His eyes went pained for a few long seconds before he looked down. I watched his throat bob once.
“My parents died on Christmas Eve.”
I remembered him telling me that once.
He didn’t talk about them all that often, but when he did, I listened.
The date was definitely significant.
“I’ve never really had a good reason to celebrate since they died.” His eyes looked up from the photo. “And now you’ve just given me two.”
I felt tears start to sting my eyes at that comment.
“How could you not tell me?” he asked, sounding hurt.
I dashed the back of my hand across my eye and caught the tear that’d fallen before answering.
“I sent you fortunes!” I told him. “The last four packages I’ve sent all had hints in there. I sent you baby sausages. Baby announcement fortunes. Sent you all child-sized stuff. The only thing I didn’t do was out and out say ‘I’m pregnant’ to you when you called.”
His eyelid twitched. “I have to admit, it’s all making sense…now.”
“How have you kept this from Bayou?” he questioned. “He would’ve mentioned it had he known.”
I shrugged. “I only just started showing. And I’ve been wearing my old scrub tops that aren’t really form-fitting when I leave the house. The only people that know for sure are my parents and sisters because they show up at my house uninvited and see things that they’re not supposed to see. Though I haven’t outright ‘told’ them yet.”
His lips twitched. “That what your dad was about to tell me before you walked into the room?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
He flicked his thumb over the phone, and he paused at the next photo. It was of two little tiny feet up by the world’s cutest little button nose.
“Flexible little shit,” he commented.
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“Can you feel them yet?” he wondered, his eyes coming back up to meet mine.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I…maybe? I’ve been reading some message boards and stuff. They say some first-time mothers confuse movement with gas. So who knows?”
His lips twitched. “Gas?”
I shrugged. “I’m neither confirming nor denying…let’s just say my libido isn’t the only thing that has ramped up while you’ve been gone.”
He chuckled at that and then sobered. “I should be home soon.”
I was so tempted to believe him, but I’d heard stories from my father. Stories that were very full of their thoughts and true o
pinions. Things could go very wrong. Shit could happen. Hell, he could be there for another six months if that was what needed to happen. So no, as much as I wanted to believe that he would be home next week, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up.
My smile was small. “Make it home for the birth and I’ll be okay.”
He read the disbelief on my face, and I felt a tendril of relief at the confidence that was on his.
His eyes went heated. “I’ll be home soon.”
It was a promise. He would be finding his way home soon, even if he had to kill every person in his way to get here.
I swallowed. “You’re happy?”
The thought of him not being happy was a nagging ache underneath my skin. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to be excited like I was. But, I knew that was also a lot to ask.
This was a hell of a thing to learn. I’d sprung quite a huge surprise on him, and really he hadn’t had time to process it yet. It’d taken me the better part of three months to come to terms with it, and I still wasn’t all the way there yet, as evidenced by the fact that I hadn’t told my parents yet.
He stood up and walked closer to the screen so all I could see was his face. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I’m really happy. So happy that I want you to know if you were here right now, I’d be fucking you.”
I shook my head. “That’s really…sweet.”
That was sweet, right? I fidgeted and his eyes went hot.
He snorted. “The idea that I got you pregnant has my dick hard. Let’s just say that your libido probably isn’t the only one that’ll be in overdrive when I get back.”
I closed my eyes and smiled softly, happy that he didn’t take this badly like he very well could have.
“I love you, Pru.”
My eyes snapped open.
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
The screen went black, and I stared at it for a full five minutes before I was able to get my tears back under control
Having him know about the baby—babies, Jesus Christ, I was about to really have my life changed—was like a weight lifted straight off of my chest. I hadn’t realized how fucking scared I was until he’d told me he was happy.
Swiping at my eyes as happy tears started to leak out of my eyes, I walked to the closed door and found my father standing on the other side talking low with Piper and Phoebe—who’d obviously arrived at some point while I was having my heart to heart with Hoax.
My Bad- Lani Lynn Vale Page 18