My jaw slackened. “You want me to leave the military?”
“Yes.” He kept his eyes on mine, searching while he spoke. “A job at the firm would mean you’d be home more than you would be away. Even when you had to leave, you would only be gone for a few days at a time. The longest you would be gone for the moment would be a week.”
Brows climbing as high as they could go, I practically gaped at the man. “Why would you offer me a job? Why now?”
“Because my daughter loves you,” he said without skipping a beat. “I know that you love her, too. You’d also be an asset for me to have around, so I’d be stupid not to do it. Plus, I have a feeling you’re going to want to be home more often than not for the foreseeable future.”
I frowned at him, struggling to make sense of all this. “I really missed Sofia. It would be great not to have to leave her for so long again, but I still don’t understand.”
“You will,” he replied confidently. “Just think about it. Discuss the offer with Sofia. I haven’t told her about it yet, but I won’t take offense if you turn me down.”
“Okay.”
He shifted the truck into gear, then smirked at me. “Right. That was the question I had for you. If memory serves, you had one you wanted to ask me, too?”
Oh, fuck. “Yeah, I do, but we don’t need to do it right now.”
“No, no,” he said in as close to a sing-song voice as I’d ever heard from him. “Now would do just fine.”
A lump sprang up in my throat. I tried to clear it away, but my voice still came out as a croak. “Oh, uh, okay. Fine. I wanted to ask for your blessing actually. I—”
Charles laughed, reaching out to pound me on the shoulder. “You can marry my daughter, Lincoln. You have my blessing.”
“Really?” My chin dropped as I tried to determine whether he was fucking with me. “You’re giving me your blessing that easily?”
“I’ve known this was coming for the last six months, son. I’m not stupid. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and a lot to consider, and yes, you have my blessing.”
Relief rushed through me, knocking the air out of my lungs and making my head spin. But then Charles slowed the truck down outside of his house, waving at it with the flick of his hand.
“I’m glad we got all that sorted out. Now, I’m going to head out for a fishing trip for the weekend, so the house is yours.”
What the fuck is going on? I didn’t know what to say, but this was weird. I was also too eager to be with her to question it for much longer.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you for picking me up and for everything else.” I was already opening my door.
Charles nodded. “Just do right by her, okay?”
“You got it.” I grinned, climbed out, and grabbed my bag from the back.
Before I’d even turned away from his vehicle, he gave me another wave and took off. I stared after the truck for a beat, still confused and a little overwhelmed by how he’d acted.
But then I remembered that my girl was right inside, and all the worries about her father’s sanity fled my mind. I jogged to the front door, finding it unlocked.
“Hello?” I called as I stepped inside, making sure to shut the door behind me. “Sofia? Baby, I’m here.”
I heard nothing, but as I took two steps into their house, I saw that every surface in their living room was covered in candles. The curtains over the windows had been drawn to accentuate the soft, flickering light, and the room smelled like vanilla and bergamot.
My heart went wild, but that was nothing compared to what it did when I heard a rustling behind me. I spun around to face the love of my life, taking in every detail of her before my brain could even give the signal to my feet to fucking move.
Her hair was a little longer, her eyes a little wider. She seemed nervous about something, her teeth tugging at her lower lip.
A white nightdress covered her body. As my gaze traveled lower, I realized what she was nervous about.
Instead of just her soft curves beneath the gauzy material, it also looked like she’d hidden a beach ball in front of her stomach. My eyes widened as everything clicked into place.
Our conversation that night before I’d made love to her. The surprise. Being reminded of how much I loved her every day. Charles’ job offer and his assumption that I’d want to be home more. The weird way he’d looked at me back in Iraq and when he’d picked me up from the airport.
Sofia was pregnant.
Before I even realized the command had reached them, my feet were moving toward her. I opened my arms and pulled her into them, only just noticing the massively wide smile that had lit up her face.
“Oh my god, baby,” I whispered as I held her as tightly as I could, nearly fainting from the relief of having her in my arms again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you in person,” she said, her voice muffled by my chest but her hard stomach pushing me away. “It didn’t seem right to tell you while you were gone, and especially not when I needed your head to be where you were and not here with us. Are you mad?”
“No, Sofia.” I buried my face in her hair, and for the first time in more than a decade, tears didn’t just well. They fell, wetting her hair beneath my cheek. “I’m so fucking happy. I just wish I could have been there when you found out and when you went to the doctor.”
“I made an appointment for tomorrow morning,” she said, pulling her head back to look
