The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(68)

She focused on breathing, relaxing, eating her cereal, and watching TV.

Telly.

She snorted. Yes, she’d admit, when Nate deliberately used his accent, it was sexy.

Nate arrived home before Leo, Jesse, and Laurel. He put his stuff down and walked over to where she sat on the couch, her puffy ankles propped up and unable to focus on the TV.

Literally unable to focus, because her eyes were even more blurry now than they had been when she got up.

He knelt next to the couch and kissed her belly before kissing her. “How’s Momma?”

He’d left his hair back and she reached over and untied it, fluffing it with her fingers. “Fine, Sir.”

He sat up, scowling as he caught her hands and brought them to his lips to kiss them. “Okay, seriously. What’s wrong?”

Damn him and his keen Dom intuition and spooky senses. “I had a call from Mom earlier.”

“Is he in his grave? Sorry, that was in bad taste. Did he get hit by a lorry? Fall off a ladder? Struck by lightning—boy, that’d be ironic, wouldn’t it?”

She snorted, “No.”

His expression darkened as she told him what happened.

“And?” he asked.

She shrugged. “And…that’s it. She didn’t call back.”

He cocked his head.

“I’m not lying, Sir, I swear.”

“Then what else is wrong?”

“I’m about to give birth to a baby elephant. What do you think?”

He arched an eyebrow at her.

She pointed at the TV. “My eyes are bothering me and I started to get a little bit of a headache after I talked to her, but I’m okay. I’m probably overdue for an eye exam and have been pushing my luck not getting glasses before now. Pregnancy changes hormones and stuff. That’s all.”

He leaned in and cupped a hand around the back of her neck as he kissed her. “Do you want to skip the club tonight?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “This is my last chance to get my Tilly fix for a while. Please?”

He finally nodded. “Okay. But if you don’t feel good, we’re canceling. Or leaving early.”

“I’m okay, Nate. Honest.”

“So my cheeky girl went Brit, huh?”

She smiled. “I did, Sir. Are you proud of me?”

“I’m always proud of you, love.” He kissed her again before standing. “But make sure you tell Cherise that one. She’ll say you’re bloody brilliant.” He grinned before heading back down the hall toward their room to change clothes.

Damn, she loved that man.

Okay, yes, Leo did her a huge favor divorcing her. She didn’t see it at the time because of her emotional pain, but had he not divorced her, he’d be miserable, Jesse would be alone, so would Nate…

And she’d be stuck in denial. Still.

This was better. Much better, and worth every ounce of pain it took to get there in the process.





The cruel irony that she now craved sushi didn’t escape her. “This is our secret, right?” she asked as she leaned in close.

Nate smiled at her from across the table. “Would I betray you, love?”

“No.” She shoved another piece of California roll into her mouth. “Count yourself lucky I’m not craving BK onion rings,” she said.

“Oh, believe me, I am. Leo told me.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. He’d had to help her order because with her vision so blurry, she was having difficulty making out the text in the dim restaurant.

By the time they reached the club, her headache was back. Not bad enough to make her want to cancel, but enough that Nate noticed.

He stopped her before he even unfastened his seat belt. “Seriously—”

“Seriously, I had two glasses of tea with dinner, and if I don’t get inside, there’s going to be an accident.”

It was bad enough she had to carry spare panties in her purse—and not even fancy panties, just plain black panties. She also had a duffel bag in the backseat with a change of clothes, just in case.

With Laurel, three different times she’d lost the race to the toilet and had learned to take extra clothes with her.

Once they were inside, with her settled on one of the couches and with a chair for her to prop her legs up on, she shooed Nate off to go socialize and work on people. He’d offered to just go to be with her, but that wasn’t fair and she knew it. He liked what he did, and she liked that he helped people. She wasn’t jealous, because he wasn’t doing the kind of play with others that made her jealous.

If he’d done any of their private play with anyone else, however, hooo boy.

And she’d made it to the bathroom, although she hadn’t peed nearly as much as she thought she would. In fact, all that day, she’d actually been doing pretty good.

Then again, as puffy as everything was getting, every ounce of liquid she drank was probably going straight into her extremities.

Tilly arrived a few minutes later and practically mowed down several of their friends in her eagerness to get to Eva. Then she settled on the couch next to her, and that was all she wrote.

Eva leaned her head onto her friend’s shoulder, glad to have her there.

“You feeling okay?” Tilly asked after they’d been talking for a while.