Page 42 of The Christmas Eve Delivery

I shook my head. “No one knows, except for me and now you. I wasn’t exactly blabbing it around town.”

“This is gonna take some time to get used to,” he said. “Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy yet?”

“Baby wasn’t cooperating when it was time to find out. I guess you could say the birth is going to be the gender reveal party. You never told me, what are you in town for?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter now because I’m gonna be here to help you out.”

“You’re going to stay?” My heart lodged in my throat.

“I’ll stay for as long as I can,” he said. “I might have to go back to the city to make arrangements and to get more of my things. I can’t believe you’re pregnant. I’m gonna be a father.”

“Yes, we’re going to have a baby,” I said.

Miles very tentatively reached his hand out toward my stomach. “Can I touch you? The baby?”

I grabbed his hand and put it on my distended stomach, pressing his palm down.

“That should be the baby’s butt.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of how it kicks,” I said. “Sometimes, it’s turned around, but…” I pressed my hand against the other side of my abdomen. “That’s definitely the head.”

At that point, the baby bucked against Miles’s hand. His entire face lit up in astonishment.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“That’s my baby? Our baby.”

“It is,” I said.

“You are so amazing,” Miles said, his voice full of awe.

“I’m hardly amazing. People have been getting pregnant for thousands upon thousands of years.”

“Yes, but you are the first person to get pregnant with my child.”

22

MILES

Lydia was pregnant.

My pulse raced and my heart pounded so hard against my rib cage, I thought it might burst out of my chest. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I was going to be a father.

Lydia was so happy and so beautiful. She didn’t glow, she radiated. She sparkled. She was the happiest I had ever seen a person be, and it was all because she was pregnant with my child.

It was hard to swallow. It was hard to fathom. It was amazing. I was confused and giddy, and I was going to be a father. The emotions were overwhelming and unexpected.

I had never planned this. I had never thought I’d be here, a parent, a father.

It wasn’t one of those things that I really ever thought about. But now, looking at Lydia with her bright eyes and shiny hair and expectant belly, how could I have ever not wanted this?

This changed everything on one hand. And on the other, my gut clenched.

Since she was pregnant, everything at the inn had to be that much more difficult for her. Yet, she sounded more determined than ever to turn Sweet Mountain Inn into something outstanding.

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