Page 73 of Nine Months to Bear

“I don’t understand,” I say carefully. I’m still pressed against him. Neither of us is moving away. “Why set all of this up if you were just going to cancel it?”

“I thought it would be easy to delegate.” He smirks and shrugs carelessly. “Guess I didn’t like seeing men sniff around what is mine.”

He wants me.

Those three words are like a harpoon of sensation between my legs. I squeeze my thighs together to make it go away.

I should refuse him. This is already complicated enough. He’s already paying me to have his baby. Can I really take more money from him?

I can already hear Camille screaming in the back of my head.Yes, bitch! Take the money!

What I need is a practical reason to say no, to bow out of this insane situation gracefully and tactfully. I think of Walsh’s newest facility—a gleaming monument, brand new machines, all funded by some mysterious investor.

“Walsh has a new lab,” I blurt out. “State-of-the-art equipment, fully staffed. I can’t compete with just one investor backing me, even if it’s you.”

“You’d be surprised what I can provide,lisichka.” His hand moves to adjust a strand of hair that’s fallen across my face.

This is crazy, right? The voices in my head are all yelling over one another, each trying to say louder than the other,Yes, yes, it’s crazy.

But all those voices—Camille’s, my mom’s, my own—all go quiet when I look at Stefan again.

My tongue darts out to wet my dry lips. His eyes follow the motion. His hand is still cuffed around my wrist, warm and rough.

I feel like I’m standing on the end of a diving board and there’s a huge drop waiting for me. One teensy toe forward and I’ll plummet. What’ll happen at the bottom is anyone’s guess. It’ll be black and cold and terrifying—that much is certain.

I open my mouth to tell him that this has all gone too far. It’s a bad idea to keep going; why don’t we just turn back to what makes sense?

What comes out instead is, “Okay.”

Stefan doesn’t smile, but I sense he’s pleased.

I hate the way that pleasesme.

We exit the building side by side, my mind already racing with possibilities—new equipment, expanded staff, proper advertising.

For the first time in months, hope feels tangible. Hope has heterochromatic eyes and smells like bergamot and gunpowder,

I’m practically levitating as we enter the parking garage. Walkin’ on sunshine, as they say. More accurately, it’d be walking on fluorescent lights—the beams overhead are bright and garish, making too-dark shadows dance between the parked cars. I can still hear my own heartbeat.

Stefan places his hand on my lower back to guide me through the maze of vehicles. His palm radiates heat through the thin material of my blouse, fingertips just grazing the dip above my tailbone. Such a small point of contact, yet I’m hyperaware of every millimeter of it.

I glance over, stomach whirling at the sharp line of his jaw, the fullness of a mouth I know the taste of.

It’d be so easy to…

But no. The voices in my head are demanding my attention again. They’re screaming at me that I’m being stupid, reckless, and that I need to check myself before I literally and metaphorically wreck myself.

After all, his investment might come with strings attached. Strings that look suspiciously like the sheets wrapped around us just two nights ago. What if that’s all he cares about? Conning me into bed again and again?

He’s a sick man; maybe he likes that game.Although, if he wanted to get you naked, why go to all this trouble? All he’d have to do is ask…

I start to say, “I think we should?—”

Then the gunshots come.

31

OLIVIA