A Secret in Her Father's House, A Pregnancy Neither Can Hide novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Spare Room
Alana moves into her father's house, a motel booking waits on the table, and at night Henrik asks her to tell him to go back to bed.
Alana Koskinen carried her last box up the porch steps of her father's house and found the front door already open.
Henrik stood in the hall with his sleeves pushed to the elbow.
He had a dish towel over one shoulder.
He had not hugged her at the car.
He had taken the box out of her arms and looked at her once, from her hair to her shoes.
"You got thin," he said.
"I got busy," she said.
"Same thing, on you."
He carried the box up the stairs without asking where it went.
She followed him and watched his back.
His shirt was damp between the shoulder blades from the dock.
The muscles moved under it with every step, and she looked at the wall instead.
It was her own fault she was here at all.
Her lease had ended the morning after she gave Trenton back his ring.
Her firm had offered three weeks of remote work.
She had made a list of places to stay, and her father's house was the fourth item.
She had called him anyway.
"Come home," Henrik had said, and hung up before she could thank him.
The guest room was at the end of the upstairs hall, the one with the window over the river.
He set the box on the bed.
"Clean sheets. Towels in the closet. The lock sticks, so I never fixed it."
"I won't need a lock."
"No," he said. "You won't."
He said it flatly, as a plain fact.
She felt it in her stomach anyway, low and warm, and she hated that.
Downstairs he turned on the stove and handed her a knife and a cutting board.
"Onions. Dinner is halibut, and I'm not doing anything fancy."
"You never do anything fancy."
"That's why you came."
She stood at the counter beside him and started on the onions.
Through the window the Columbia was the grey of old pewter.
A freighter slid under the long bridge to Washington.
On the table, under the pepper grinder, was a printed sheet of paper.
She read it over the onions.
It was a confirmation from the Silver Spar Motel on Marine Drive, three nights, paid, in her name.
"What's this?"
"A room." Henrik kept his eyes on the pan. "You can sleep there tonight. Or the next two. The booking's good."
"You booked me a motel."
"I booked you an exit."
She waited for him to explain.
He didn't.
He turned the fish with a fork and went on not explaining.
"I'm twenty-six," Alana said. "I can sleep in my father's guest room."
"You can." He glanced at her then, and his eyes were very blue and very steady. "I'm telling you that you don't have to."
She folded the paper into quarters and slid it into the book she had left on the counter.
She did not say anything.
He watched her do it.
Something moved in his jaw and then was gone.
They ate on the deck while the light went orange.
He asked about work and she answered in complete sentences, with numbers, the way she answered everyone.
He listened to all of it.
Then he said, "You always talk like that when you're nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"You've cut that same piece of fish into six pieces."
She put the fork down.
The thing she never told anyone was that she liked it when he caught her.
Nobody else in her life ever caught her.
Trenton had needed a spreadsheet to see that she was upset.
After dinner she went to rinse the plates.
Henrik came up behind her to take the pan from the rack, and his arm brushed her shoulder.
She did not move, and neither did he.
She could feel his chest an inch from her back, and the heat of him.
She could smell salt and woodsmoke, which she had known all her life and never once thought about.
She reached past him for the knife she had left by the sink.
His hand closed around her wrist.
It was not rough.
It was just there, big and dry and absolutely certain, with his thumb resting on her pulse.
"Sit," Henrik said.
It was one word, quiet and low.
She sat.
She did it before she decided to.
Her body went to the kitchen chair and lowered itself into it, and her heart hammered while she stared at the table.
He did not touch her again.
He stood over her a moment, looking down, and let her see him look.
His jaw set hard.
"Go to bed, Alana."
"It's eight-thirty."
"Then go read."
She went.
She stood in the guest room with the door open and her pulse still going where his thumb had been.
She unpacked two shirts and a toothbrush.
She told herself this happened to people who hadn't been touched in a while.
She told herself it meant nothing, and that in three weeks she would be somewhere else.
She did not close the door.
She told herself that was because it stuck.
At midnight she lay awake and listened to the house.
The river made a low sound against the pilings under the boathouse.
A floorboard in the hall creaked, and then another.
She knew without looking whose weight it was.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
Alana turned her head on the pillow.
Henrik stood in the doorway in a grey T-shirt and loose pants, with the hall light behind him so she couldn't see his face.
He didn't come in.
He put one hand flat on the doorframe above his head, and his shoulders filled the whole opening.
"Alana," he said.
"Yes."
"I've been standing out here for twenty minutes, and I'm not a man who stands still." His voice was rough. "You can still go to the Silver Spar. You can leave tonight and we never talk about this."
She sat up.
The sheet slid down to her waist.
She was wearing a thin tank top and nothing under it, and she saw his eyes go there and stay.
He didn't pretend not to look.
"Tell me to go back to bed," Henrik said.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend