Pia Does Hollywood (Elder Races, #8.6)(2)

After all, the best way to lie to someone with a highly developed truthsense was to, well, tell the truth. Pia believed wholeheartedly in plausible deniability, at least as much as possible.

After her exchange with Liam, she met Dragos’s amused gaze, gave him a small nod, and squeezed his ankle. In answer, he closed his laptop as she said to Liam, “Hey sport, could you put the movie on pause for a few minutes?”

Instantly, Liam’s sparkling smile vanished, and he scowled. “You said you could watch the whole movie with me before you left.”

“I know I did, and I will watch the whole movie with you,” she told him. “But first, your dad and I have something important we want to tell you.”

Heaving a sigh, he held up the remote and hit pause. “What is it now?”

“Don’t be pissy,” Dragos told him. “And while you’re readjusting your attitude, sit up and turn around.”

Pia could feel Liam sigh again, but so far, he had been unwilling to challenge Dragos’s authority when Dragos used that particular tone with him. (And lordy, wouldn’t life get interesting whenever Liam did decide to challenge Dragos and rebel.)

As the boy pushed to a sitting position and swiveled to face the couch, Pia sat too and leaned back against Dragos’s legs.

As Dragos dropped a large, warm hand onto her shoulder, he asked her telepathically, Do you want to be the one to tell him?

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, hugging herself with glee. It’s okay with me either way. You can tell him if you want.

Okay. Dragos switched to verbal speech. “Liam, we’re pregnant. You’re going to have a new sibling.”

For the space of a moment, Liam’s expression went blank with surprise.

He held still just long enough that Pia had time to rethink their decision. She and Dragos had kept the news to themselves for a few weeks, which was easy to do since the new little peanut appeared to be determined to keep his—or her—presence a secret. Only Pia’s doctor and Eva knew the truth, and only because Pia had collapsed last month during their trip to Washington for the Elder Races/human summit meetings.

But what if Liam reacted poorly, for some reason? What if he wasn’t happy with the news? They were dropping a big bombshell on him then leaving for a week, so they wouldn’t be around to help him work through any of his emotions.

Anxiously, she twisted her hands together and came to a fast decision. If he reacted poorly, she was going to override his decision to stay home and in school. She would make him come to L.A. with her. Somehow, she would juggle things so that she would get some time alone with him.

Then Liam’s expression changed into one of pure joy. “Oh wow, really? Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed. “You mean I’m not going to be the only one anymore? That’s fantastic!”

Thank the gods. Her face broke into a beam as she nodded. “Yes, we’re pregnant. Really, truly!”

He dove forward to sprawl on his stomach and put his hand on her abdomen. “When did it happen? Is it going to be a brother or a sister? Can I feel it?”

“Be careful,” she said quickly. When he tilted his head to look up at her, she told him, “Yes, you can try to sense it, but you have to be super gentle so you don’t scare it. He—or she—is cloaking pretty hard. That could just be part of its nature, or maybe I frightened it. We got pregnant when we went to D.C., and I was pretty stressed that week.”

She tried not to obsess over what had happened last month when they had traveled to Washington to participate in a summit between the leaders of the Elder Races and the human government, but the thought that she might have frightened that new, tiny spark bothered her quite a bit. Between the anti-Elder Races sentiment, the occasional outright hostility, the vice president’s husband being murdered at their house during a very important dinner party and Pia’s subsequent collapse, it had been one of the roughest weeks she had ever lived through.

Liam frowned. “I don’t remember being frightened, and from all the stories you’ve told me, you were pretty stressed when you got pregnant with me too.”

“You have a point.” She wanted to believe him badly and bit her lip. “I know you’ve said before that you didn’t pay attention to much of what happened outside your own experience, except the time that Urien shot me.”

The time she—they—had almost died. Then, Liam, who had been nothing more than a peanut himself, had flared up to try to heal her, until Dragos laid his Power over the bright, new little spark and gentled him down.

A good thing, too, Dragos murmured in her head. Considering all the rampant sex we had.

Laughter flared, and she looked over her shoulder at him with dancing eyes. And continue to have.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Liam said, resting his cheek on her leg. “I remember sleeping a lot. Man, those were the best naps. I just sorted of drifted, weightless. And I remember feeling like you were so big, you were my entire universe. Which I guess you were.”

She ran her fingers through his hair again. “And you felt safe?”

“Totally safe, except that once.” His smile faded only briefly then returned. “Then I remember Dad being there, and I was safe again.”

Relief coursed through her. Dragos’s fingers tightened gently on her shoulder. She reached up to stroke his long, warm fingers as she said, “Okay, if this peanut is anything like you were, then what was happening in my reality won’t really impinge on his—or her—awareness. Agh, these pronouns are going to be hard to juggle until we know the sex of the baby. Anyway, it must be cloaking itself out of instinct, so that’s part of its nature.”