Page 116 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

Sophia is standing in front of my desk with her arms crossed and the specific expression she inherited directly from me, the one that says she's been reasonable for a measurable amount of time and has now decided to stop.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“What's wrong is nobody is telling me what's going on.”

I look at her. She's clearly upset, which is different from her usual theatrical version of upset. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes are doing the thing they do when she's genuinely worried about someone rather than performing it.

“Elaborate, Sophia.”

“Why did Harper need you and Uncles Maddox and Asher to go to the doctor with her?”

Oh. “What did she say when she told you?”

Sophia stares at me. Her eyes go wide. She makes a short, frustrated sound that doesn't belong to any language.

“Tell me what the hell is going on or I swear I will walk into town naked.”

“That wouldn't be the first time.”

“I'll key your Bugatti.”

“Again, not the first.”

“I'll—” She pauses, recalibrating, and then something behind her eyes sharpens in a way that I recognize as the expression of a woman who has located her largest available weapon. “I'll tell Mom you want to get back together with her.”

“That's low, Soph.”

“Tell me.” She pulls out her phone with the specific theatrical deliberateness of someone who has already won and knows it, and turns the screen toward me. Evelyn's contact, pulled up, Sophia's thumb hovering over the call button with the patience of a hostage negotiator.

I look at the phone.

I look at Sophia.

“Sit down,” I say.

She stares at me. Looks at Thomas's paperwork spread across my desk, which I should have thought to close before she got through the door. Her eyes move to my second monitor, which I also should have thought to lock, and on which the legal documents are still open alongside the scan images my assistant had framed this afternoon.

Her eyes land on the image.

She goes very still for exactly one second.

Then she screams.

Not a scream of alarm. A scream of pure, undiluted, wall-vibrating joy that is going to give Thomas cardiac trouble if he's still on the line.

“HARPER'S PREGNANT!!!!!”

“Sophia—”

She's already around the desk, hands on my monitor, face six inches from the screen, and then she spins back to me with both hands over her mouth and eyes that are already threatening to spill over.

“Dad. Dad. Is that— is that the baby?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“I cannot keep my voice down right now, this is not a keep-your-voice-down situation!”

A knock at the door. My assistant, Camille, who has the timing of a woman who's been with me long enough to know exactly when to appear.