Page 3 of Knocked Up in Alaska

He watched the slice of the lobby visible from the archway with growing concern, which only escalated when Lilah stepped into view, looking like a long-legged angel in her fancy sandals and white party dress. Instead of curving into a radiant smile, however, her lips trembled, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks. Backing up as someone not yet visible came closer, she held both arms out, palms up, in a beseeching gesture and spoke in low, rapid Tlinget.

Rose came into view then, crying bitterly, gesturing wildly, speaking so quickly and loudly he didn’t need to understand the words to know the normally stoic innkeeper had lost all control.

Izzy murmured, “Oh, no,” and made a move to get up. Bridget restrained her with a hand to her arm and a quick, “Nuh,” before adding, “Don’t. She wanted to be the one to tell her. Wanted to be the one to deal with it.”

“With what?” he asked at the same time as Archer. Whatever the problem, it was massive and unprecedented in his comparatively brief but fairly immersive knowledge of their relationship. Since buying the bar, he interacted with them on a daily basis. Rose loved Lilah. Sheltered her. Raised her with a strict eye and a short leash. Jorg hadn’t missed the mark characterizing her as a mama-bear. But not even the fiercest mama-bear could wish for a more loving, sweet-natured, and obedient daughter than Lilah.

Nobody answered his question, but nobody needed to, because at that moment Lilah said something in her soft, calm voice and placed a hand over the front of her full-skirted party dress in a gesture that set off more unspecified warning bells in his subconscious and sent him time-traveling to a point in his life when he’d been a sweaty-palmed teen suddenly in way over his head. Rose closed in, shouting up at her daughter, her face red, her small frame shaking with emotion.

This was spiraling, fast. Instincts honed to handle trouble took control. He rounded the bar with no specific plan except to intercede in the altercation before someone said or did something difficult to take back. “This has to stop. I haven’t seen a mother go after her daughter like that since…”

And there it was. He hadn’t seen a mother so unhinged and inconsolable since the winter of his sixteenth year, when he and his seventeen-year-old girlfriend had confessed to her mom that three different drugstore pregnancy tests had yielded the same frightening result.

Those thorny memories from his past tripped up his progress, even as he focused on the discernable bump revealed by Lilah’s hand now resting low on her abdomen. His stomach dropped away as if he’d just stepped out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet. “Shit.”

Then Rose raised her arm and brought her palm down hard across her daughter’s cheek.

“Shit,” he said again and resumed his forward motion as Lilah stepped away, touched her cheek, and said something to her mother in a voice just above a whisper. Then she turned and walked quickly out of the inn.

Shit. Shit. Shit. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rose crumple to the carpet, bone-rattling sobs wracking her body as she cried into her hands. If he had the power to split himself in two, he would have stopped to help her to her feet, lead her to a private area where she could calm down and gather herself. But he was just a regular man—no special powers—and his primary concern remained Lilah, so he continued out the door. The Shanahans, Jorg, any number of people in the bar would help talk Rose down.

When he reached the covered sidewalk fronting the building, he looked up the street then down, searching for a trace of Lilah in the cool, lavender dusk—a flash of white dress disappearing between parked cars along the street, or waves of long, light brown hair trailing around the corner of a building—but he saw nothing. The quiet of the evening remained unperturbed. But Lilah, despite her ethereal appearance, also possessed no special powers. She couldn’t simply disappear, no matter how much she might want to at that moment.

On a second visual sweep of the street, he spotted her red Jeep parked curbside about halfway down the block. Concerned the engine would fire to life any second and pull away with a distraught driver steering through streaming tears, he stepped off the sidewalk and moved briskly toward the vehicle, approaching along the passenger side.

From beyond the window, he saw her huddled behind the wheel, legs crossed kindergarten-style, arms braced on the steering wheel, face pressed to her wrists. The skirt of her dress pooled high, leaving her slender thighs bare all the way to her…

He turned away, swallowed hard, and rapped a knuckle on the passenger window. At least he probably didn’t have to worry about her driving off. There were no keys dangling from the ignition. After a moment of silence, the door opened. He got in and closed the rest of the world out. Bracing himself as best he could, he faced her.

She was still huddled in the seat, but she’d arranged her skirt over her legs. There wasn’t much she could do about her watery eyes or the livid red palm print across her cheek, and they both broke his heart. Even more so when she curved her soft, full lips into a wobbly smile, and said, “Thank you for hosting my birthday party.”

“You’re welcome. I thought it went really well.”

Her choked laugh ended in a sob. Helpless to do otherwise, he reached over the center console, wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her close. She buried her face against his chest and cried like the world was ending. Which, in a way, for her, it was. She deserved time to mourn the loss of that world she’d grown up in, safe, shielded, and entirely orchestrated by her mother. Realistically, he knew this, but Lilah had always been such a vibrant, positive presence, and he wasn’t equipped to withstand her tears. “Don’t cry,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “Please. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

To his surprise, she nodded, drew back, and dried her eyes with the heels of her hands, making him wish he had a tissue or something to offer her. “I know,” she said, then, with a sniffle, added, “I’m sorry,” and laid her hand on his chest. His heart beat a mile a minute under her palm.

Sorry for what? Was she apologizing for his shock, his concern, or some perceived disappointment she in no way deserved? If anybody understood and empathized with her situation, it was him. He looked down to where her hand rested and realized she was apologizing for the wet spot on his shirt left by her tears.

He shook his head to tell her it wasn’t an issue, closed his hand over hers, and squeezed gently. Switching his attention to her face, he said, “Talk to me.”

Her hand tensed, as if she intended to pull back, but he simply tightened his hold. She sniffed again but raised her wet, spikey lashes and met his gaze. The impact of those wide, heart-of-the-forest green eyes hit him like a force of nature, but he’d gotten used to that inadvertent punishment over the last year or so.

“Well, Ford, as you and half the town probably realize by now, I’m pregnant.”

Even as his brain issued an eyes-front order, his gaze went AWOL and dropped to her middle. The floof of her dress currently hid the evidence, but the clingy, halter-style top displayed smooth shoulders and full, upswept breasts. “That’s…uh…” He perp-walked his attention back to her face. “That’s quite a birthday present.” Which brought him to an important realization.

Lilah had definitely crossed a street, at least once.

And that realization led him to an even more important question. The answer promised to factor heavily into his near-term plans, which included teaching some bastard the hazards of carelessly crossing a street with Lilah and not manning up and standing with her when it came to deal with everything on the other side.

With his voice as smooth and even as the blade of a sword, he asked, “Who can I thank for giving you that gift?”

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