No Fair Lady

I’m pregnant.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it.

And there’s absolutely no chance it’s anyone’s but his.

I may play the ever-deadly femme fatale when I’m after my marks, but no one so much as gets a hand up my skirt without losing it.

Par for the course.

It’s like everything is going wrong lately.

My relationship.

My life.

My ambitions.

Even my last mission. Somehow, I’m having some kind of—ugh!—conscience over neutralizing my last target.

Galentron failed a federal medical inspection about six months ago and paid handsomely to cover it up, but a CDC scientist with a loud mouth went whistleblower. The rogue outed the dangerous conditions Galentron operates under when handling highly lethal viral payloads confiscated from rival countries developing unearthly biological weaponry.

That got Durham a lost contract—tens of millions with the government, pulled more to save face on the politicians’ sides than out of any real care for broken rules.

If they hadn’t gotten caught, they’d have greenlighted anything Galentron wanted to do.

And they probably don’t give half a damn that their faithful informant is now six feet under.

Still, it doesn’t sit right with me.

They didn’t have to give a kill order.

I could’ve just…done a little dirty work and made it look like he violated enough protocols with his report so he’d end up jailed for life on a treason charge. It would suck, sure, but he wouldn’t be dead.

His family wouldn’t be mourning him, and probably setting themselves up for a frightening visit the more they blab to news outlets about “suspicious circumstances.”

God. Don’t they get it?

It’s a domino effect that can only end in tragedy. One that never should’ve been kicked off in the first place.

Durham’s been getting more reckless. More ruthless. More angry.

Or maybe I’m just going soft all of a sudden, now that I’m facing an infusion of mommy hormones and the prospect of carrying a child to term when I know just how horrible the world it’ll be born into is.

Sigh.

I rest a hand over my stomach as I stand just inside the penthouse’s elevator, holding the doors open with my body and staring at Oliver’s door.

On the other side of it, destiny awaits.

A man who says he…

…he actually feels things for me.

Even after five freaking years, I don’t know how to handle that.

Maybe we don’t always see eye to eye.

We’ve had ripping arguments over the years about what to do with Galentron and our miserable careers, the best way to take them down from inside, only to flop back into ignoring it under the weight of our own helplessness.

Every scenario we wargamed in our heads winds up with someone dead.

Still, I’m in favor of burning it all to the ground, consequences be damned.

He wants to go the more legal route, using the reams of evidence he has access to in his position.

As if the Feds will do a damned thing when they’re the ones paying for this crap.

When I’d first seduced him on that quiet sunny evening a long time ago, I was a dreamer.

I’d somehow thought that, together, we’d be unstoppable.

We could do so much more joining forces than we ever could apart.

The problem was, we could never agree on what to do.

Or maybe we were afraid to actually take action.

Talk is cheap when you’re staring at a fire-breathing dragon with nearly a trillion dollars in assets, an international footprint, and legions of deadly agents.

Who could blame us for being afraid to face the music?

But even so, Oliver always promised to sort things out.

Always promised he’d make things right, somehow.

Always promised he’d keep me safe, even though we both knew I didn’t need it.

I never came to him looking for a hero or protector. It was the principle of the thing.

And he always did the same thing.

Just asked me to give him time.

I wish I still had time to give.

But I don’t now. The clock’s running out.

Not with the ultrasound in my purse, and the words on my lips, and the knowledge that once I tell him I plan to keep the baby…

Nothing will ever be the same.

I’m afraid of losing him, I realize.

That’s new for me.

Caring at all.

People come and go, flitting in and out of my life, without leaving an impression. Just like my parents and any other family I had. Just grey placeholders, names and shapes that don’t mean anything to me, and if I ever meant anything to them, I’ll never know it.

I’ve never cared about anyone enough to want to hold on to them.

Until now.

Goddammit, Fuchsia Delaney may be a lot of things, but she isn’t a coward.

And I’m going to do this head-on, one way or another.

Lifting my chin, I stride forward and knock on his door.

It’s a habit I can’t break.

He gave me a key.

I tell myself I’ll use it every time I deposit myself on his doorstep like a stray cat, after a deployment. I never even go to my dingy little Galentron-owned apartment, preferring the sleek, modernist style of Oliver’s place, the fine linen furniture, the tasteful wooden artwork.