Page 18 of The Selkie Santa

He stilled, his spine stiffening.

“Why didn’t you tell me it’s your baby?”

“What!” Noah’s eyes bugged. “You think that baby’s mine? Are you crazy?”

A little flicker of hope took hold inside Harper. But she needed more than that to believe him. “What else am I to think? I saw you hugging her on your boat that night, and then you wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Next thing, I see her with a baby belly, and she says it’s a secret until daddy gets home.”

“Yeah.” Noah sniffed. “Well, the daddy isn’t me.”

“No?”

“No! Hell, Harps, do you really think I’d go back to Dina? After the way she behaved? I’d have to have rocks in my head. Gods, as for having a child with her…” He shuddered.

Harper’s heart was singing so loudly she wondered if he could hear it.

“I just thought… I mean, she’s beautiful,” she huffed lamely.

“So?”

“Like… I mean, stunningly beautiful.”

“Yeah, on the outside. Only goes skin deep. Besides… so are you.”

“So am I what?”

“Beautiful.”

Harper blushed to the roots of her hair.

“But we’re just friends, so it doesn’t count,” she muttered, hugging the elf outfit, while Noah stood there with the Santa pants bunched in his fist.

She felt his dark gaze on her. “I really hope we can be friends again. I’ve missed you, Harps.”

“Yeah, I’ve missed you too.” But her heart dropped a little. She’d been hoping he’d say he wanted to be more than friends. Still, at least Dina’s baby wasn’t his. The way he rebutted that statement, she did truly believe him.

But a girl had to double, triple check. “So it’s really not yours?”

“Really not. Hand on my heart. She just needed to tell someone, and I guess I was who she thought of. And then you saw her with me, and yeah… it all went pear-shaped after that.”

“I was just hurt that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on. And then when I saw her outside the doctor’s, I admit, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I’m sorry, I should have asked you first.”

“That’s okay. I guess neither of us have had great role models on the communication front.”

She nodded.

They’d discussed their childhoods often enough in the past. How Noah’s alcoholic dad had walked out when he and Wyatt were kids, how Harper’s parents were never happy; her high-breed human dad resenting her mom being elf, even though he’d defied his family to be with her. They’d separated when Harper was sixteen. She guessed her misunderstanding with Noah made sense in light of that. He was right, they’d had useless rolemodels. She was just thankful they were setting the record straight now.

“I was no better,” Noah continued. “That night, with Dina turning up out of the blue, plus all the stress of leaving the next day…she’d made me promise not to tell anyone she was pregnant, and I always keep my word, you know that, Harps. So when you said you didn’t want to have dinner, I didn’t know what to do. Plus you wouldn’t answer any of my messages or calls after that.”

She hung her head. “Sorry. That was shitty of me.”

“I’d say on a scale of shittyness, it was a ten out of ten.”

She whacked him playfully with the elf outfit.

“Anyway, it’s good we’ve cleared things up,” she said lightly, “because it would be difficult to be your elf if we weren’t talking.”

They stood there in silence, as if they both had so much more to say, then Noah asked, “Can I give you a hug?”

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