Christmas Miracle

EVIE

“Do we really have to do this today?” Sam asked. “Can’t we just stay home and have sex?”

“We just had sex this morning. Is that all you think about?” I shot back.

“Uh…” He smirked. “Have you seen you?”

I shot him a charmed smile, but I wasn’t getting distracted. Today was a big day. I’d fantasized about giving my parents this news for over five years now.

We hadn’t exactly been honest with my parents about Sam’s identity, but for today, we were going to leave the fake relationship part out and focus on the “knocked up by my boss” part.

“What if we wait until after Christmas?” he suggested. “I’ll give them some nice gifts, they’ll get to know me better, and ~then~ we can drop the bomb.”

“Listen, Vázquez.” I huffed, grabbing my coat from the peg in my foyer and tossing it over my shoulders. “We don’t have to do this today if you really don’t want to, but my parents have been waiting to be grandparents for just as long as I’ve been waiting to be a mom.

“Saanvi doesn’t want children, so that makes me their only hope. If you’re worried about their reaction, don’t be. They love you already.”

Sam slipped on his own jacket, shooting me a skeptical look. I decided to sweeten the deal with another incentive.

“Okay, look. If you do this for me today, I’ll let you do that thing that you joked about doing to me this morning,” I said.

“Wait…” He paused, wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Really.” I nodded. “I won’t say no.”

“You drive a hard bargain, angel.” He drank a breath through his teeth. “I don’t have the stuff for it, though.”

“Well, once you get the stuff, I’ll hold up my end of the deal.”

“All right,” he said with a nod. “You’re on.”

As we walked toward Sam’s Mercedes outside my building, I spotted a tiny shop across the street with a red ‘for sale’ sign in its front window. For some reason, I couldn’t peel my eyes off it.

That would be the perfect spot for another Evangeline’s. The foot traffic I’d get from Main Street alone would be enough to keep me in business.

Starting my own business again would mean I’d have to stop working for Sam, though. I did love spending every day with him.

Besides, it felt like he needed me. These past few days, we’d been working nonstop to get all the insurance paperwork done—not to mention closing outstanding cases before the end of the year and reassuring clients that the damaged office wouldn’t affect productivity.

My plan had always been for this secretary job to be a stepping-stone toward being an entrepreneur again. I definitely didn’t want to end up resenting Sam for standing in the way of that. I’d have to think about it.

~So much for no secrets between us.~

“Hey. You okay?” Sam asked me over the roof of his car.

“Yeah.” I forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

~One thing at a time.~

A moment after Sam and I plunged into the heated leather seats of his vehicle, my iPhone chimed its obnoxious ringtone. I swiped the green button over the picture of Saanvi on my lockscreen and pushed the phone to my ear.

“What’s up, Sis?”

“Mom’s been feeling lightheaded, and she passed out for a minute,” Saanvi said, sounding anxious but relatively calm.

“Oh no. Is she okay?” I demanded. Mom had low blood pressure, so dizzy spells weren’t too unusual for her, but fainting was usually a sign that something was wrong with her medications.

“Yeah. She didn’t hit her head or anything. I’m just gonna take her to urgent care and get her checked out, so can we rain check the big family meeting for later?” she asked.

“Sure. Let me know how she makes out,” I said. “Love you.”

Upon hanging up the phone, I filled Sam in.

“Hope your mom feels better,” he said earnestly, fiddling with the key in the ignition. “So…if we’re not seeing your parents this morning, maybe we can talk to mine first?”

I gulped, realizing that I couldn’t say no. But…what if they thought less of me once they learned I was pregnant? Would they think I was just some gold-digging secretary who’d trapped Sam on purpose?

“If you’re worried about their reaction, don’t be,” Sam said, mocking me. “They love you already.”

I tried to convince myself it was true. After all, the night I met Carla, she was practically roasting all Sam’s life choices, and yet she was still invited back for Christmas Eve dinner.

If Sam’s parents could extend so much grace to a woman like that, surely they could do the same for a woman who loved Sam with all her heart.

“Fine,” I huffed.

***

Shortly after arriving at the Vázquezes’ house, I sank into the black leather sofa beside Sam as his parents gazed at us curiously from their matching recliners.

The blue spruce lined with colored string lights on the right still sported that tiny baby photo of Sam, and I was still dying to have a look at it. However, I was too paralyzed at the moment to talk, let alone move.

“So, what brings you guys by this morning?” Regina asked.

Sam glanced at me, and I offered him a small nod of approval, allowing him to be the one to say the words.

“Ma…Pops…” Sam’s fingers meshed in mine. “Evie’s pregnant.”

Hearing that word from his lips was powerful enough to halt my lungs. I was just now realizing—it was the first time I’d heard him even say it out loud.

~Here we go. They’re gonna hate me.~

“You mean we’re finally gonna be grandparents?” Regina asked in a near shout. “It’s a Christmas miracle!”

I grinned and let all the air out of my lungs in a ~whoosh~, making it obvious I’d been holding it too long.

By the time Regina managed to wobble from her chair, Fernando was already up and yanking his son into a bear hug. A moment later, he smiled and gave me a similar but gentler embrace. “Congratulations, honey.”

As soon as Fernando let go of me, Regina stepped forward to wring my hands warmly, excitement churning in her hazel eyes. “This is perfect! I was just thinking about pulling out Sam’s photo albums from when he was a baby.”

“Ma, come on,” Sam groaned, already sounding embarrassed. “Evie doesn’t wanna see those.”

“Speak for yourself,” I told him with a sneer. Then I cast a smile at Regina. “I’d love to see them.”

Regina recruited Sam to accompany her up the stairs to get the family photo albums. He tried a couple more times to protest, but he gave up after his mother started grumbling about her wooden spoon still nestled in the kitchen drawer.

“So, Fernando,” I said, struggling to find a safe topic for small talk while Sam and Regina were gone. “Are you excited for Christmas Eve dinner in a few days?”

Sam had said that his family always made a bigger deal of Christmas Eve than Christmas Day, so we were planning to come here for the former and spend the latter with mine.

“Oh, sure,” Fernando said easily. “Regina’s been cooking up a storm. We just found out that Carla’s going to bring her new husband, so that’s extra helpings of everything. Probably several extra helpings, considering how huge that man is.”

“Wait, Carla’s bringing the guy she left Sam for? And you’re…okay with that?” I asked carefully.

He considered me. “Family is complicated,” he said. “I’m sure you know that as well as anyone. Lord knows Carla’s not perfect, and I’d like to smack her upside the head sometimes for how she talks to our Sam.

“But once someone’s part of this family, they’re part of it forever. And I have to say, I worry about Carla. Seems like she might need some family in her corner pretty soon.”

I tried not to let my doubt show all over my face. “Are you upset for what I said to her that night at dinner, then?”

He laughed. “Oh, no, that was amazing. She needs to be told when she’s out of line. Sam was never so good at that. Seems like maybe she’s overcorrected with this new guy.”

I grasped for the right words to say next. “Obviously I don’t know Carla well, and I don’t know her husband at all. I guess I’ll meet him soon and judge for myself. But…I just recently got some new closure with my own ex.

“I think sometimes you have to be done with people, you know? Sometimes people are toxic enough that it’s better for both of you to close the door, even if that means they’ll go off and make the same mistakes all over again with someone else.”

“Maybe,” said Fernando thoughtfully. “Hard to know when to draw that line. I think…not here. Not yet.”

I nodded, and we lapsed into silence again. I realized that, wow, Sam and Regina had been upstairs for ages. Their house was huge, but damn. I hoped everything was all right.”