Page 113 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

41

HARPER

Sophia’s waiting on the front steps when we get back to the estate.

Not inside, not in her suite, not anywhere that would suggest she happened to be passing by. On the steps, in a linen set and sunglasses, arms folded, radiating the particular energy she gets when she’s been patient for exactly as long as she intends to be patient and not one second longer.

I haven’t said anything to the guys about Sophia. When to tell her, how to tell her, whether I wanted to be the one to tell her, none of it. We’ve had three days of the four of us existing inside this secret together, and somewhere in the middle of doctor’s appointments and breakfast conversations and Killian finally being present enough to make coffee in the suite the way he used to, I just. Didn’t get to it.

She’s going to know the second she sees my face.

She knows the second she sees my face.

I watch it happen in real time, her eyes moving from me to Killian to Asher to Maddox and back to me, something assembling behind her expression like a question she already knows the answer to.

“Harper,” she says.

“Sophia.”

“Why were you in town?”

“Doctors appointment.”

“For what?”

My brain, which has been reasonably functional for twenty-four years, chooses this precise moment to produce exactly one available sentence.

“I’m not feeling well,” I say. “I need to lie down.”

And then I walk inside.

I hear Sophia say “what” behind me, and Maddox say something I can’t make out, and I keep walking until I reach the elevator and the doors close and I lean against the back wall and look at the ceiling and have a very quiet, very dignified internal crisis for eleven floors.

I text Raph from my bed, still in my jacket, shoes still on.

Harper: Are you free?

The reply comes in under two minutes.

Raph: Always. Give me ten.

He shows up in nine, which is either because he ran or because he’d already been heading toward this wing, and either way I don’t ask. I just open the door and he takes one look at me and comes in and sits on the floor next to the bed because there’s a pile of Asher’s sweaters on the only chair and neither of us moves them.

“So,” he says.

“So,” I say.

“You want to tell me what’s happening, or do you want me to guess and be wrong for twenty minutes first?”

I laugh, which surprises both of us, and then I tell him everything.

All of it. The test, the bathroom floor, the pharmacy run in sunglasses like I was avoiding paparazzi, the group text that turned into a pregnancy announcement that turned into Maddox pulling me into his lap and Killian saying I love you in a voice I keep replaying, and Asher crying, and then the doctor this morning and the little dot on the screen that I already love more than is rational for a shape I can barely see.

Raph sits on the floor and listens to all of it without interrupting once, which is one of the things I love about him, that he will genuinely wait until you’re finished before he opens his mouth.

When I stop talking he’s quiet for a second.

“So you told three silver fox billionaires you’re pregnant and they all immediately said they love you and want to be involved,” he says. “In the same conversation.”