Scandalous Box Set

by Layla Valentine

“Not exactly.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Sebastian growls, standing up.

  Leon moves slightly in front of me, and I lay a hand on his arm, letting him know I can handle myself. He looks down at me, gives me an apologetic smile, and steps back to stand behind my chair.

  “I’m not lying,” I say, my voice as even as I can make it. “I didn’t show up to the wedding because I found out I’m pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?” Sebastian’s eyes nearly pop out of his head. Red creeps up his neck and into his cheeks. Then, all at once, he seems to remember there is no possible way for him to have been the father, and his steely gaze turns to Leon. “You cheated on me with him?”

  “It was impossible to cheat on you because we were never a couple.”

  Sebastian splutters, too angry to form coherent words, and then he presses his lips into a thin line. “But Leon is the father?”

  “Yes, I am,” Leon says, laying a hand on my shoulder.

  All at once, Sebastian seems to come apart. His hatred for Leon must run deeper than I ever knew because Leon’s hand on my shoulder is the final straw. He leans across the desk, his finger pointed at my face and his top lip curled back in anger.

  “If it wasn’t obvious by now, you’re fired,” he spits. “And not only that, I will drag your name through the mud until no one in the city will hire you.”

  “Sebastian, calm down,” Leon says, blue eyes narrowed dangerously. I grab his hand so he won’t leap across the desk and start a brawl.

  Sebastian seems to take the warning as a challenge, his voice getting even louder than before. “You will never work on Wall Street again.”

  “I was a fine employee for you Sebastian,” I say, standing up. “If you can’t see that because you’re upset and embarrassed, then that is not my problem.”

  “Do you know my mother actually cried when the wedding was called off?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s just as much your fault as mine,” I say. “You were the one lying to her in the first place. I just decided I couldn’t do it anymore.”

  “Don’t pretend you are the better person, Grace,” he says, bits of spit flying out of his mouth. “You ended up with Leon Knight, after all. How great could you really be to stoop so low?”

  “Hey,” I warn, hot with a kind of hatred I’ve never felt before. “Say what you want about me, but leave Leon out of this. This is between you and me.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Sebastian agrees. “Our deal was supposed to secure my future, but now you’ve backed out, and I’m screwed. How is my mother ever going to believe I could be engaged twice within a year or two? Even though she liked you for some reason, the old hag was suspicious I was ready to settle down. She’ll know something is up if I get engaged again. Not to mention, I’ll have to find another sad sack desperate enough to take me up on the offer. Hopefully, the next woman can keep her legs closed.”

  Leon lunges out of my grip and is halfway across the room, fist pulled back and ready to fire when the office door slams open.

  We all turn at the same time to find a middle-aged woman with chin-length gray hair and a dark gray pantsuit on. She lifts her sunglasses up to perch them on top of her head, and she has the same deep brown eyes as her son.

  “Did someone say, ‘old hag’?” she asks, her gaze withering.

  Sebastian is stunned. His face is pale, mouth hanging open, and he looks around the room as if someone is going to save him. Unfortunately, he has backed himself into a lonely corner.

  Finally, he stands tall and straightens his tie.

  “Hi, Mother.”

  Elaine Wayde crosses the room and pauses in front of me, taking both of my hands in hers. I prepare myself for her to yell at me or insult me, but instead, she looks into my eyes and smiles.

  “We both knew you could do better than my son.” She tips her head to Leon. “And it looks like you already have.”

  I’m too surprised to say anything, and when she turns away from me, any trace of a smile is gone. Her already sharp features—similar to those of her son’s—sharpened further into pointed fury. Sebastian, usually self-confident and pompous, appears to have visibly shrunken several inches. I almost feel bad for him. Almost.

  Before we can get caught in the crossfire, Leon grabs my elbow and leads me gently from the room. We hear Elaine Wayde shouting even after the elevator doors close.

  Chapter 21

  Grace

  After we move my scant belongings into Leon’s penthouse, I barely mention I’m hungry before Leon has me by the hand and is dragging me from the room, to the elevator, and out to the street. It isn’t until we’re standing across the street from the little brick building where his favorite restaurant hides that I realize where we are.

  “Marco’s?” I ask, eyebrows raised. “Is this going to be a usual thing? If so, I’m going to need to buy maternity clothes a lot sooner than I planned.”

  He twines his fingers around mine and walks me across the street and to the door. “I’ll get my credit card ready.”

  The same waiter who served us the first night we came—Matteo—is here again. He looks at me and then turns to Leon, his smile wide and obvious. “Two tonight?”

  Leon nods, and once we are seated, I lean across the table, eyes narrowed. “Why did Matteo smile at you like that?”

  “You noticed that?” he asks.

  “Hard not to.”

  He shrugs. “Matteo may or may not have served me many plates of depressed ravioli these past few weeks.”

  “Was the ravioli depressed, or were you?” I ask.

  “You mock my pain,” he says, face twisted into deep offense.

  I reach across the table and stroke his wrist. “I’m sorry.”

  He laughs and then catches my hand before I can pull it away, running his thumb along my knuckles. “I was miserable without you, Grace. Truly.”

  My heart bends towards him. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I can see everything from Leon’s perspective. I can understand his doubts about me and our relationship. I can understand why, for his own protection, he would push me away. Neither of us were as forthcoming as we should have been. I could have told him I cared about him and solved the whole thing. Likewise, he could have said the same to me. We were both foolish and scared, and it nearly cost us everything.

  “I can’t promise not to make you miserable,” I say.

  A flicker of surprise crosses Leon’s face.

  “But,” I continue. “I can promise you will never be miserable without me. You just might be miserable with me.”

  He laughs, head thrown back, mouth open, the dimple on his right cheek deep and pronounced. When he looks back at me, his blue eyes are shining. “That sounds like a fairy-tale ending to me.”

  I roll my eyes and smile. “And they both lived happily ever after.”

  Chapter 22

  Leon

  Seven Months Later

  Grace is thirty-four weeks pregnant—still one week away from being considered full-term with the triplets—but she is so pregnant it is all I can do to get her out of the penthouse. I order a car to pick us up and drive us the three blocks to Marco’s, and when we get there, Matteo rushes to the door to grab her other elbow and assist her to the table.

  “I’m pregnant, not crippled,” she says fondly, nudging Matteo in the ribs.

  Over the last several months, she and Matteo have built a better rapport than he and I ever had. Though, that seems to be true with everyone in my life. They all prefer Grace to me. And I can’t honestly blame them.

  “You are carrying three other people besides yourself,” he says. “Let me take some of the load off for a few minutes.”

  He sits us at our usual table near the window and insists we have the chef’s special today.

  “It hasn’t been moving as well as we hoped,” he whispers. “Chef would feel a lot better if you ordered it.”

  Grace shakes her head before I can even answer. “No. Ravioli
for me.”

  “But Grace, if I go back there and tell Chef you two are having the same ravioli you always have, then he—”

  “Will make the food we order,” she finishes for him, pointing two fingers at her belly. “Because a very pregnant woman wants ravioli.”

  Sensing a losing battle, Matteo turns to me. “What about you?”

  “What is the chef’s special?”

  Matteo tries to keep his face neutral, but as he says the special, his nose wrinkles. “Sea urchin linguini.”

  I grimace. “Do I have to? At this point, we might be single-handedly paying the rent on this place. Can’t I order what I want?”

  Matteo backs away from the table, smiling and bowing to me. “You are an angel, Leon. Thank you. Thank you.”

  I groan. “I wish I was pregnant. Then I’d get to eat what I wanted.”

  “And you’d get stretch marks, would have to pee three times an hour, and you’d have to give birth,” Grace says, one eyebrow raised in warning.

  I hold up both hands in surrender. “I take it back.”

  Grace laughs, and then suddenly, she winces and grabs her side.

  I jump up. “What is it?”

  “Down, boy,” she says, pointing me back to my seat. “Just a twinge. I’ve been having them all morning.”

  “What?” I ask, my entire body on high alert. “What kind of twinge?”

  “An ‘I’m eight months pregnant with three babies’ twinge. It’s probably nothing.”

  “Grace, you are a week away from full-term and the doctor said triplets can go at any time. Maybe we should go to the hospital.”

  “I’m not going anywhere before I get my ravioli,” she says. “Besides, it’s nothing.”

  I begin to relax back into my seat with the intention of watching her every move for the rest of the night in case she is really in labor when suddenly, her eyes go wide.

  Grace looks at me, the color draining from her face, and says, “Oh.”

  “Oh, what? What?”

  “I think,” she says slowly. “My water just broke.”

  Grace told me halfway through the pregnancy that she didn’t want me to react like every father in every movie ever. She didn’t want me to panic and throw my arms in the air and run around like a chicken with my head cut off. So, I listened. Instead, I ran around like a chicken about to get my head cut off.

  My feet never stopped moving from the moment the words were out of her mouth. I jostled Grace to the car, requesting Matteo put some breadsticks in a to-go box for her to eat on the way to the hospital, jogged in place like a football player at practice waiting for her to get buckled in, and then fidgeted and fussed the entire way to the hospital.

  Grace, on the other hand, was fantastic. She ate her breadsticks, groaned a few times when the contractions got the better of her, and ignored me entirely.

  When we get to the hospital, everything happens quickly. Since we are a high-risk pregnancy, she is whisked to a room immediately, hooked up to monitors, and doctors and nurses flit around the room, poking her with things, checking things, and constantly lifting up her gown to examine something under the hood. I keep jogging in place until they insert the epidural, at which point I have to jog out of the room so I don’t pass out. When I get back, Grace is looking much more relaxed in her bed, sitting up, chewing on ice chips.

  “You better get dressed,” she says, pointing to the blue gown laying over the blue vinyl sofa. “I’m going in for a C-section in ten minutes.”

  In the months leading up to delivery day, I imagined myself standing boldly by Grace’s side, holding her hand and comforting her as the process of life unfolded. Instead, she is holding my hand, encouraging me not to look past the sheet shielding her lower half from view, and begging me not to throw up.

  “The doctor said the babies are almost here,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Just hang in there. It’s almost over.”

  I swear one of the nurses gives me the stink eye, but I’m too busy taking slow, calming breaths to notice. And it pays off. I don’t throw up, and within thirty minutes, we have one, two, three beautiful baby girls.

  It takes a team of nurses to move our crew from the operating room to the recovery room and finally to the postnatal unit. Three bassinets. Three mouths to feed. Three tiny bodies to swaddle. Three precious faces to love.

  “I’m not sure we’ll ever sleep again,” Grace says, holding baby number one while number two and three sleep. “They aren’t going to take shifts like this forever.”

  I swipe her hair away from her face and kiss her forehead. “Then we’ll take shifts. I’ll be awake while you sleep, and you’ll wake up when I go to sleep.”

  “But when will we see each other?” she asks, lower lip pouted out.

  “During shift change,” I tease and give her a wink.

  Epilogue

  Three Years Later: Grace

  There are few things I love more in life than a licorice rope. I used to daydream about taking a tropical vacation or backpacking around Europe, but since having three children, I daydream about eating a licorice rope without being hounded to share. Without Annabelle crawling up my leg like a spider monkey to get a bite, Charlotte crying because I didn’t ask if she wanted any, and Katherine using the other two’s meltdown as a distraction to climb the bookshelves and throw every single book into a big pile on the floor.

  “Are you enjoying it?” Leon asks, picking my feet up off his lap so he can grab another handful of gummy worms from the coffee table. “You’re moaning so loud I can’t hear the movie.”

  “This is heaven,” I say, swinging the rope above my head. “I am so glad we got my parents an apartment here. They think it was a gift for them, but now we have a place to ship the girls off to when we need a break.”

  “It was one of my more genius ideas,” he admits.

  Leon is the best dad. He loves the girls so much and is always ready to play and engage them and encourage them. But just as importantly, he is the best boyfriend. When I was going through the baby blues after the girls were born, he’d just hold me with one arm while using his other to hold a baby bottle or rock a bassinet or clean off a pacifier. When I started working at FutureTrust six months later, he took a short sabbatical from work to handle things at home and arrange daycare. And when I’ve had the worst day and can’t imagine cooking dinner, he will walk through the door like an actual superhero with bags of takeout from Marco’s dangling from his arms. I can’t imagine life without him.

  “It’s why I keep you around,” I say. “Every so often, you have a stroke of genius.”

  Leon laughs and then, suddenly, he pauses the movie and turns to me. “Does it ever bother you we never got married?”

  “Whoa. Where did that come from?” I ask.

  “From me, your genius husband.” He bats his lashes at me, and I laugh. “But seriously, does it bother you?”

  After the fake engagement to Sebastian, I wasn’t in a rush to get married, especially with three babies on the way. And once the girls were here, getting married seemed like less of a priority than simply getting through every day without collapsing from exhaustion. And now, we are happy. Really, really happy.

  “No,” I say confidently. “I love you. You love me. We have three incredible little girls. Marriage doesn’t change any of that.”

  “I agree,” Leon says, nodding once. “I’m happy to live this crazy chaotic life with you.”

  His dark hair is longer than usual, hanging over his ears and the collar of his shirt. His beard is also a little longer. Daily grooming takes a back burner when you are potty training three three-year-olds and wrestling them into clothes every morning. He still looks sexy, though.

  “Do you want more popcorn?” he asks.

  “Yes, please.”

  I hand him my bowl and grin, but as he walks away, I find myself slightly disappointed the conversation is over so quickly. While marriage hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of my mind, that doesn’
t mean I don’t want it. I mean, eventually I’d like for us to be a conventional family. I’d like to wear a ring and call him my husband and not have to explain to every new mom at daycare pickup and drop off that just because Leon isn’t my husband doesn’t mean he isn’t the girls’ father. I mean, it’s the twenty-first century. Our situation can’t be so unheard of that people are confused by it.

  “Where’s the popcorn?” he calls from the kitchen.

  “In the pantry.”

  I hear him rustle around a little more. “I don’t see it.”

  “Check the countertop,” I yell back. “I just made some, so I know there’s more.”

  There is a bit more banging and muttered cursing before I hear Leon sigh. “You’re going to have to come find it, Grace.”

  I shove the last of my licorice rope into my mouth and groan. “If I walk in there and the popcorn is sitting in the middle of the pantry, you are going to owe me a foot rub. My feet are tired. I waste a lot of steps walking in here to help you. You can’t find anything without me.”

  When I turn the corner into the kitchen, Leon is on the ground, and it takes me a minute to realize he is down on one knee, a small black box in his palm. I freeze in place, eyes wide.

  “You’re right, Grace. You help me find everything,” Leon says, his blue eyes filling with tears. He smiles, his right cheek dimple appearing, and wipes the back of his hand across his wet cheeks. “Happiness, fulfillment, love. You’ve given me everything. The one thing I did find was you in your parents’ orchard, and it was the smartest thing I ever did. A real stroke of genius. Though, I think asking you this question will be a close second.”

  A sob trembles through me, and I clasp my hand over my mouth to hold myself together until he can get the words out. Because I want to hear it. I want to hear the man I love. The man who gave me my three babies. The man who is the best man and person I know. I want to hear him ask me to marry him.