The SEAL's Christmas Baby

by Katie Knight

  Gone. He was gone. Not just on a mission. For good. Preston was dead and she was pregnant with his child.

  “Oh God.” Lila clutched her stomach and doubled over, not bothering to hide her sobs now. “No. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. He can’t be dead. I never even got to say goodbye.”

  The chaplain laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know it seems hopeless now, but please have faith. If you need help, I can put you in touch with some local charities who offer generous donations to women in need. There are a couple of churches in town who have weekly grief support groups as well. Free of charge. It might help you to talk about things, to work through them with other people.”

  All of it struck far too deep for Lila. Brought back all of those horrible memories of the cops showing up on her doorstep when she’d been eighteen to tell her and her brother that their parents were dead. Fast-forward three years later and another knock came, this time an MP to let her know her brother Tommy had died too. Killed in the line of duty, just like Preston.

  Fuck. Why did this keep happening to her? Why? Why did everyone she ever loved die?

  She clutched her arms around her middle tighter and rocked slowly until her tears stopped and her resolve grew. Part of her wanted to give up. The other part of her knew she couldn’t. Not now.

  Now she had another life depending on her, a small piece of Preston still alive that she intended to cherish with every bit of her tattered heart she had left to give.

  Finally, she stood and glanced down at the poor chaplain, who was watching her with wary sorrow. “I’m good. Thank you for finding out the truth for me. I appreciate it.” She started out of the small chapel only to have the chaplain call from behind her.

  “Wait, Miss Holden. Let me get you that information on the charities.”

  Lila stopped on the threshold and looked back at him, shoulders squared. “No. I’m fine. We’ll be fine. Thank you again. If I need help later, I know where to find you.”

  As she walked out into the sunshine outside, she heard the chaplain call again, “God bless you!”

  “Thank you.” She headed back toward her car, hand over her abdomen and heart heavy. It was going to take a lot more than blessings to get her through the next few years, but she was determined to do everything in her power to try.

  Four

  Present Day…

  “Parker Holden, get over here this minute,” she called, frowning at the errant toddler who seemed to be into everything these days. “I mean it. This is not your play room at home. This is a place of business. Get over here now!”

  Lila gave the guy behind the counter a wan smile and took hold of her little boy’s hand. The air inside the pawn shop smelled stale and musty and the yellowing fluorescent bulbs overhead flickered and popped continuously. Coming into this place always gave her the creeps and she usually tried to avoid having to bring her son along. Couldn’t be helped today though, and since it would be her last visit to this godawful place, she was happy. Two years ago, Lila never would’ve imagined herself dealing with the underbelly of San Diego society, but then she’d had a difficult pregnancy, followed by an equally difficult delivery. Then Parker had needed surgery shortly after birth to repair a hernia and things had gone downhill from there. She’d had decent insurance from the Cedar Lodge, where she’d worked right up until the day she’d gone in to have Parker, but the costs of all the tests, treatments, and procedures had exceed her policy’s limits. Then she’d had to take additional time off for recovery and she hadn’t had enough in her savings to cover it all. They’d had to give her job to someone else, and she’d found herself unemployed. Thankfully, California was generous when it came to food stamps and WIC, but there were still bills to pay and no money coming in at the time. Late payments had tanked her credit score and banks wouldn’t touch her. Payday loans hadn’t covered enough, so she’d come to Sal, the owner of this place, for the rest. It had taken her two years of steady payments and the windfall of inheriting a house from an uncle she’d never met—a house that she’d turned right around and sold for a very lucrative price in the burgeoning San Diego housing market—to pay off her loan from Sal, but today was the day she’d make her final payment.

  “Sal should be right with you,” the guy behind the counter said to Lila without looking at her. Seemed he was too engrossed by the movie on his cell phone to care much about anything else.

  “Thanks,” she said, bending to pick up Parker then carrying him over to a section of the store where they had a bunch of musical instruments on display. Hardly eye catching to a two-year-old, but better than nothing under the circumstances. Honestly, she was so giddy about finally getting the monkey of this loan off her back, she wasn’t even upset about Sal brushing her off again. She’d just pointed to a pretty blue electric guitar hanging on the wall when the bells above the front entrance jangled behind her.

  “He in?” a male voice thick with a Brooklyn accent asked from behind her. Lila turned to see a bulky man who looked like he walked right off the set of the Sopranos head for the guy behind the counter. “Tell him Dom’s here. I brought Mr. Capaldi to see him.”

  The skinny, grungy nerd behind the counter jumped into action faster that Lila would have thought he was capable of moving and scurried into the back of the store like his butt was on fire. She had no idea who these new arrivals were, but they must be pretty important.

  More bells jangled as another man walked in. He was maybe late-fifties, dressed in a nice suit, with piercing dark eyes. Mr. Capaldi, she assumed. He scanned the interior of the shabby store then settled his gaze on Lila and Parker. Before she could turn around again, he approached them, his attention fixed on her son.

  “What an adorable little boy,” the man said, his smile sharp as a scalpel. “Your son?”

  Lila nodded, feeling even more uncomfortable than she ever had before and wishing she’d decided to spend the money to leave poor Parker with a sitter. “Thank you.”

  “Aw.” He reached out to take Parker’s hand. “He reminds me of my son, Dante. God rest his soul.”

  Heart in her throat, Lila resisted the urge to yank Parker away from the man and run far and fast out the door. But she needed to pay off this debt—needed to put the whole thing behind her.

  Instead of letting her panic get the better of her, she focused on his words. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Mr. Capaldi inclined his head to her, then narrowed his gaze on Parker again. “It was quite a blow. Family is very important to me. As it must be to you.”

  It wasn’t a question and Lila’s hackles rose even more. Being a waitress for years, she’d become a pretty good people reader and there was something about this guy that wasn’t right. Still, his suit was expensive and he was here to see, Sal, the owner of this establishment, who had a reputation as the kind of man you didn’t want to offend. She nodded.

  “Must be difficult, raising a young boy on your own.” He gestured to the store around them. “This is no place for a child.”

  Defensiveness rose inside her at his comment. “I don’t bring him to places like this normally.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Capaldi’s dark eyes sparked with interest. “Nothing bad, I hope?”

  “Dom, what the hell—” Sal said, coming out from the back room then stopping short as he spotted Lila and Mr. Capaldi. Short and balding, Sal resembled a taller, heavier Danny DeVito. “Oh. Mr. Capaldi, sir. Sorry. I expected you to have waited in the car.” He turned and gave the guy behind the counter a searing glare. “And how many times have I told you, Mick. Don’t keep customers waiting.”

  Sal plastered on a smarmy, used-car-salesman grin and headed toward Lila. “Here to make another payment?”

  She raised her chin. “Yes. Here to make a final payoff, actually.”

  “Payoff?” Mr. Capaldi said. “Please handle the lady’s business first. I insist.”

  Sal gave the other man a slightly confused look, but then gestured toward his office. Mr. Cap
aldi didn’t strike Lila as the sort of man one argued with. “Right. C’mon then.”

  Lila sidled around Mr. Capaldi, who still seemed weirdly enraptured with her son, and followed Sal past Dom and the counter into a small, cluttered office in the rear of the store. The walls were covered with posters of Wall Street and the carpet was water stained. Sal cleared off a chair for her to sit and she kept Parker on her lap, for fear the disgusting carpet might contaminate him.

  “So, you’re paying off your loan early?” Sal asked, clasping his hands atop the desk. His dark suit strained at the seams and there was a brown spot on his tie of unknown origins. She decided that she didn’t want to speculate what the source might be. “I’m impressed. You hit the lottery or something?”

  “Or something.” She adjusted Parker on her lap and reached into the bag over her shoulder to pull out the cashier’s check from the bank. She wasn’t about to tell Sal about the house or the nearly three million dollars its sale had netted her. “Here.”

  “Hmm.” Sal took the check and scowled down at it. “Guess this covers it then.”

  “Yes, it does. I’ll need a receipt please. Thanks.” She snatched the slip from him when he handed it to her, then pushed to her feet and adjusted Parker’s weight in her arms. He was being good at the moment, but she could tell from the way he was starting to squirm that he’d be fussing in a minute. She wanted to be out the door before that happened. “Goodbye, Sal.”

  He didn’t say anything, just watched her walk out of the office. She walked straight past Mick at the front counter, past Dom and Mr. Capaldi, and out the exit into the crisp, cool afternoon. Two blocks later, she reached her old Toyota. It still ran fine, even if it did have more rust than paint these days.

  God, getting out of the that place at last—and knowing she never had to return—felt like being freed from prison. Lila hadn’t realized how much that debt had weighed on her until it was gone. She got Parker secured in his car seat in the backseat, then climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.

  As if on cue, Parker started acting up and she reached into her bag on the passenger seat for his toy dragon. He was a good kid and rarely cried, but she was sure he’d picked up on her discomfort back there in this pawn shop. Even now, when she thought of creepy Mr. Capaldi staring at her son like he was a rare jewel he wanted to possess she shuddered. Sure, she felt bad for the guy when he’d told her about losing his son, but that didn’t give him free reign to be weird.

  She’d lost people too, a lot of important people, but she’d found a way to move on.

  Downtown San Diego blurred past the windows as she headed home to her small apartment near the naval base in Coronado. Lila rolled her tense shoulders, finally allowing herself to relax. Things were looking up at last. Christmas was just a few weeks away, and for the first time in years, she could enjoy it. There was plenty of money to buy Parker all the gifts a toddler his age could want, and they were getting out of the city too for a while. She’d booked them a cabin to stay in up at Cedar Lodge, north of Sacramento. She hadn’t been back there since before she’d had Parker, since Preston. It would be bittersweet. Sweet because this was the first vacation she’d taken since her parents died—not to mention, her first trip with Parker. She couldn’t wait to experience a real Christmas through her son’s eyes. Bitter because it was also the last place she and Preston had spent time together.

  Lila knew it was silly to still be hung up on the guy after all this time, but he’d been her first real love and people said you never forgot your first. The fact he was frozen in time, always young, always perfect, probably didn’t help either.

  In truth, that was another reason why she’d chosen to go back to Cedar Lodge for the holidays. If things went well, it would be a chance for her to say her final goodbyes to the man she’d loved and lost and hopefully move forward with her life.

  It wasn’t like she was a nun or anything. She’d dated a bit after having Parker, but it was hard, with her financial worries and the stress of the few part-time jobs she’d managed to scrape together around raising her son alone. All of it took a lot of energy out of her and made her less than appealing to the average guy who was either looking for good time with no strings attached, or else wanted wife material.

  Lila wasn’t into flings and she had enough on her hands at the moment without worrying about settling down. Maybe that would change now though, with money in the bank and a whole new future ahead of her.

  With a sigh, she slowed for a red light then glanced at all the Christmas decorations out the window. A huge Christmas tree made out of poinsettia plants sat on the corner of a business in Little Italy and Lila pointed it out to Parker, who clapped and gurgled excitedly.

  “Wait until you see snow, buddy,” she whispered, smiling at him in the rearview mirror. He had Preston’s dark eyes. Had his daddy’s smile too. Her heart tugged at the memories. “Pretty soon we’ll be out of here and on our way to the mountains. Won’t that be fun?”

  Parker laughed, the sound muffled by the horns of his dragon, which he was still chewing on.

  “I’m excited too, baby,” she said. The light turned green and she pressed the accelerator. “We’re going to have the best Christmas ever, I promise.”

  Five

  Preston loaded the last of his perishable groceries—milk and eggs and such—into the back of his rented Range Rover then thanked the guy who’d helped him carry them all out of the general store. The lodge provided pretty much everything except groceries for the cabin. Not that he planned to cook much, since the food at the main restaurant was delicious from what he remembered, but he liked to have a few basics around, especially during this time of year. If the snow got bad, he might not be able to make it up to the restaurant. He’d been on the road for nearly twelve hours now and was looking forward to a nice hot shower and a nice long nap once he reached his destination.

  “Have a safe trip, Mr. Fleischer,” the store owner said, tipping the brim of his baseball hat at Preston. “Should be a pretty drive this time of year.”

  “I hope so. Thanks again,” Preston said, climbing into the SUV and pulling out of the parking lot and turning onto Interstate 80. The Sierra Nevada Mountains loomed larger in the distance and with every breath Preston could feel some of his tension drift away. Man, he’d missed this—being free, being out in nature with nothing to worry about and no fears of getting your head blown off by a sniper. Traffic was lighter than he’d expected this close to the holidays, and he relaxed back into his seat, enjoying the Christmas carols playing on the radio.

  Hard to believe last week he was baking his butt off in the Sahara, wading through what was left of a terrorist bunker near Damascus and following their latest lead on the mole inside the Navy’s intelligence community. Too bad there hadn’t been more to go on once he got there. Just some busted computer equipment—laptops and a couple external hard drives that looked like someone had squashed them with a tank. Per his CO, Preston had gathered them up anyway and sent them off for analysis. Those guys in IT were geniuses. If anyone could pull data off those busted drives, it would be them.

  Afterward, Preston and the rest of the men he worked with in black ops had been put on mandatory leaved. Just as well, he supposed, since he felt more burned out and exhausted than he’d ever been, and that was saying something. He had nothing but free time until post-New Years. For a normal guy, that would sound amazing. For Preston, it just made him a tad uncomfortable.

  To be honest, he wasn’t really sure what to do with himself. This was the first vacation time he’d had since before his last SEAL mission in Syria—the one that had ended in his supposed death. Then he’d gone deep undercover, changed his identity, changed everything about himself including his name, and been on the run ever since. There really wasn’t anything left of the old Preston Lawson anymore. Once he’d agreed to the bogus death, Preston had shed his old life like a second skin and never looked back. He had no real home, no family, no friends
—other than James and the guys he routinely worked with on his secret fact-finding missions. No possessions except what fit in a small, locked storage unit in Coronado. Three years since he’d set foot back in California and damn if the first thing he hadn’t thought of was Lila. He wondered where she was, if she was happy.

  With a sigh, Preston steered with one hand and fiddled with the radio with the other until Bing Crosby came on, crooning about a White Christmas. There was something about the song that always got him right in the feels. Poignant and bittersweet, it reminded him of all the things he’d never had.

  As he wound his way through the twisting mountain roads and the elevation rose, snowflakes began to fall. It really was gorgeous up here. He’d forgotten how much until just now. Not that he’d ever been here in the winter. The time he’d spent with Lila at Cedar Lodge had been in the middle of summer, when everything was warm and green and lush with life. Now, everything was blanketed in white and dormant, waiting for Spring.

  Cedar Lodge. Hard to believe he was back here again, yet when he’d stepped off the plane at the naval base with no plans for the next three weeks, this place was the first place he’d thought to visit. So he’d called and made a reservation, rented the Rover, and here he was. When he’d called, they’d said he was lucky, getting the last cabin available for the holidays. The woman had warned him that it was the remotest one, but that was fine with Preston. The more solitude the better, as far as he was concerned.

  He passed a large sign and signaled to turn left down the long drive leading up the lodge. The landscape was pristine and untouched, a godsend after the carnage he’d just left behind. Moment later, he arrived outside the main lodge. The whole place looked like Christmas had exploded on it—decorations and lights and trees everywhere. Preston pulled up to the curb, cut the engine and got out, walking inside to check in and get the keys to his cabin.