It Must Be Love - Jacob and Connie

Chapter Forty Two

It was Christmas Eve, and of course Grace was bouncing off the walls getting ready for Christmas. Connie and Jacob decided that today would be the day that they'd tell Grace about the pregnancy, and Connie had been on edge all day. Rather than actually telling her in person, they had recorded a video and put it on a DVD so they could practice exactly what they were going to say. Grace had been watching the television almost all day while doing her homework, so Connie and Jacob hadn't been able to give their idea a test run. They'd agreed to do it at four o clock, and leading up to four, Connie was a bag of nerves. Jacob was upstairs at the time, but the second it was 4pm, he bounded down the stairs shouting, "It's on!"

"What's on?" Grace asked.

"There's a program I've been waiting to watch all day. Do you mind if I flick the telly over?" Grace shook her head, and Jacob jumped on the couch, pretending to be excited, while in reality he was scared stiff too. Grace was reading an extract for her English Homework, so she didn't notice Jacob switch onto the DVD player, and start playing the DVD. Connie spoke first on the video, and as soon as she did, Grace's head shot up. It had been filmed in their bedroom, on Connie's iPad.

"Is it on? Is it, I can't see..." Connie muttered at the beginning, trying to work the iPad.

"Honey, it's on, sit down." Jacob insisted. Grace laughed, and asked what was going on, so Connie just told her to watch the video. Connie sat on Jacob's knee, and they both sat quietly together, hoping she'd like their surprise.

"Hello Sweetheart," Connie said on the video. "I know you're probably really confused as to why we're showing you this, but it's because we need to tell you something. You know that we both love you very much, and we promise you that that's not going to change, so we're going to give you your first Christmas present early, and we hope you like it." After that, they had edited the video in of the ultrasound that they'd been given on DVD, and Grace gasped as she saw what it was. Soon, Connie and Jacob came back on, and he had his arm around her. "You're going to have a little brother or sister, Gracie." Connie talked for a little while, expressing her love to Grace through the video, then Jacob piped up.

"Also, I've spoken to your mum, and you don't have to, but if you feel okay to start calling me dad, then that's absolutely fine. I promise I'm staying around for the long run, so you two Beauchamp ladies are going to have to learn to put up with me." The video switched off after both Connie and Jacob blew a kiss to the camera, and the screen turned black. Grace sat in silence for a while, and Connie begged her to speak. Without saying a word, Grace jumped up and threw herself into both Connie and Jacob's arms, and cried.

"Hey, hey, sweetheart, what's wrong? What's wrong, beautiful?" Connie had really wanted Grace to be happy, but it seemed she was just so upset and it broke Connie's heart.

"I'm so happy," Grace cried, and she sat up and laughed at both of them, tears streaming down her face. "It was just a shock, and I'm really happy," Grace laughed more, and that caused the other two to burst out into huge smiles.

"Merry Christmas," Connie smiled, wiping away the tears, and all three of them curled up on the couch designed only to seat one.

After that, they had dinner, had a talk about Christmas, and then watched some festive films together. They had just watched Mrs Doubtfire, and then Grace suggested putting on a romance story that Jacob had been forced to watch once. He loved Connie and Grace, but he despised that film, and so he excused himself to miss this one out. Connie offered to put a different film on, but Jacob insisted that they watched it together, while he went to do some wrapping. He had wrapped all of the presents that he'd bought at Watford, and just had Connie's stocking fillers to wrap. He had gotten her some of her favourite make up, and a bottle of her favourite perfume, Yves Saint Laurent, with some small packs of chocolates and special toffees. He had dared to buy her some underwear too. It was nothing too fancy, just a deep red set with black lace outline, and a luxurious cream bra with a matching thong. He didn't want to overdo it, as he knew that she'd be opening it in front of her daughter, but everyone got underwear in their stockings back in his day - he had to keep up tradition! The stocking itself was quite small, which meant that when he managed to get everything in, things were coming out of the top as per usual. Jacob made sure that everything else was wrapped to perfection - Connie's were wrapped in a gold paper, with a big golden ribbon on each, and the ones he'd bought Grace were in a shiny pink paper with pink ribbons. At Watford, he had bought Grace the headphones she wanted, the coat, the chocolate models, Nike trainers, and the sweatshirt and jogging bottoms which he had wrapped up together. After that, he'd bought her a teddy bear, just like he had bought for Connie on their first date so long ago, and he'd wrapped that up too. He had to admit that he'd gone a little overboard with Connie's presents - the slipper boots, the night dresses (which he'd wrapped together), the necklace, the earrings, the Louboutins, the coat, the scarf and gloves, and the chocolate - but he loved her so he didn't care. He had already given his friends their presents, all wrapped in blue like his mum's and sister's gifts. Jacob left the stocking and the bag of Grace's and Connie's presents underneath the bed, as he was going to put them out when Connie was asleep. He didn't want her to see how much he'd bought, and he had to try and blend in his presents with some of the others too. His plan was to put the necklace in the tree somewhere, so it would be the last thing she opened. He was just about to get up and do something when his phone rang, and he saw that it was his sister. He picked it up.