Gabe gave me an incredulous look. "That was shocking news. I'm going to go help him, and Luc will be home soon. Will you be okay?"
"Yeah, I will be. I'll just sit here and marinate until you figure out where Sandalphon is and what he had to do with this baby."
Gabe disappeared, and I considered what I knew about Sandalphon while I waited on Lucian to come home.
He was the angel charged with the protection of unborn children and expectant mothers. If he had a hand in my pregnancy, it was most likely something to help megetpregnant. The question wasn'twhathe did, it was why.
Chapter 13
Constance-Lilith
They didn't returnfor several days, and I didn't try to summon them. Instead, I enjoyed every moment as a pregnant wife to a doting husband.
One morning, I stared at Lucian as he tied his shoes. "Stay home with me today."
"What?" he asked. "I've got work."
Shrugging, I circled the kitchen table and put my arms around him from behind, letting my belly hang down behind the chair. "Come on. Play hooky."
I didn't know how much time we had. Michael and Gabe could turn up with Sandalphon at any time. If Lucian was here, they'd wait until he left. At least this way I got an extra day with him. If he stayed. He was pretty responsible, and playing hooky wasn't in his nature. "Our lives will be so crazy soon. Let Linda hold down the fort at the office or forward all calls and give her the day off too. Please?" Twirling—awkwardly—around him, I sat in his lap and gave him my biggest puppy dog eyes.
My sweet husband laughed and nodded his head. "Okay."
I stood and bounced on my heels. If I hadn't been pregnant, I might've jumped up and down, but a small bounce was all I had in me. "Yay! We can watch TV and cook and maybe..." I wiggled my eyebrows up and down, then winked at him.
Lucian burst out laughing. "I'd love to..." He imitated my crazy facial movements. "Sounds like a great day."
While he called Linda and settled his workload for the day, I took a shower.
By the time I made it downstairs, he had breakfast cooking and was back in his pajamas. "Yay!" I cried from the stairs. "Fun day!"
"We'll call it our snow day." He dipped French toast in eggs, then settled it in the hot pan. "Since we never take those either."
"Deal." I felt lighter on my feet than I had in months and nearly skipped over to the fridge. "I'm so happy."
It was too easy to push the worry away and let Connie's personality take over. Sure, she was a little cynical, but her favorite person was Lucian. He made her happier than she'd ever been in her life. I let that side of me have one more day, time to spend with her husband and the growing life inside her.
That day stretched to four. It became increasingly difficult to convince Lucian to stay home, and finally, I resorted to talking him into working from home instead of taking the day off.
"You know we have a baby coming, right?" he asked in response to me trying to tease him away from his desk with the offer of snuggles. "We're going to need money."
I gave up with a sigh. I couldn't exactly explain to him that this would all be over soon. We did not need money. He never would've believed me.
In the end, I had to let him go back to work. Gabriel popped in on the morning of the fifth day while Luc was in the shower. I languished in bed, unwilling to leave my soft sheets.
"Hey," Gabe whispered, pulling me from my light snooze. The door to our bathroom was wide open, with Luc singing some pop song about working it. His Christmas concert popped into my head. If we didn't sort this soon, I'd have to go to his concert and pretend like I wasn’t preoccupied. Crap.
"What are you doing?" I woke fully up in an instant. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eye.
The dog thumped his tail on the comforter. He'd taken to sleeping at the foot of our bed, which Lucian grumbled about, but secretly loved. He knew who Gabe was and liked him, though.
"I just wanted to pop in and tell you now we can't find Sandalphon or Raphael. We're looking for them both. Just hang tight."
I gave him a sarcastic look and patted my belly. "Not much else for me to do."
He shrugged, pressed a kiss to my lips, and disappeared. I hated to see him go, but we had to get some answers already. And it was better than him trying to kill Luc again.
Two weeks passed before I heard another word. I tried to let life get back to normal. We even went out to eat a few times. I had another doctor's appointment, where they did the final ultrasound. I had to pretend I had no idea that it was a sweet girl inside me. "The baby is perfect," the doctor said. He looked over the ultrasound film that the tech had given him. "Their weight is right on track, and we see nothing that will cause any difficulties." He beamed at us.
