Chapter 18 #2
She guided me into position, mirroring Vivienne’s position on the bed and pillow beside me.
“You can thank your hubby for this.” She shook her head, her gray halo of hair swaying as she tsked.
“I can’t believe you just showed up here without a plan.
I’m good, but I’m not a miracle worker. Really, girl, a spa day ? ”
“It wasn’t my idea,” I grumbled, guilt sinking into every pore. “And I did have a plan.”
Not necessarily a good one, but a plan, nonetheless. The best I thought I could come up with, given the circumstances.
Colt had saved my sorry butt with his obsessive planning and attention to detail. His incessant need to approach things from every conceivable angle. The same thing I’d ridiculed days ago because I thought I could handle things on my own.
I should’ve known better. I did know better.
Just like all of his plans still involved an element of improvisation as long as there were real, living people involved, I couldn’t get everywhere on my half–hearted planning and improvisation alone.
I needed planning more than I wanted to admit.
Undercover work required both to succeed, and I’d let my pride and grudge against him blind me to that.
If he hadn’t planned regardless of my protests, I could’ve ruined everything today.
Hattie seemed to sense that I was already beating myself up about it, since she didn’t comment further. Instead, she mirrored the other masseuse’s motions for the massage, starting with my scalp. She dug her fingers in with vigor, smiling when I flinched.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t suffering enough for her after all.
Vivienne let out a sigh of contentment. “Isn’t this nice? Growing another human can really wear on you.”
“Oh, yeah.” I assumed being pregnant would take a lot of energy. Toting around a baby-less stomach did, after all, and I wasn’t diverting any internal resources to it. “Do you think it’ll all be worth it?”
“Without a doubt.”
Probably the right answer to have, considering she actually had to give birth at the end of all this. But it still took me by surprise how she hadn’t thought twice before answering.
“I’m under no delusion that parenthood is all sunshine and roses,” she continued. “But it isn’t all storm clouds and rain, either. You need both sunshine and rain to grow roses.”
She hugged a pillow the masseuse gave her, and I soon did the same.
“Aren’t you sometimes worried about all the crying and poopy diapers and—” Dominick’s face flashed behind my eyes, so I squeezed them shut “—what it would do to you to lose your child?”
“Of course. But…” She trailed off, and when she spoke again, her voice was subdued yet heavy with conviction.
Her stare was distant and glazed, and in that moment, her cheerful exterior faltered, and I glimpsed a weary woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“I want love to run my life. Not fear. No matter what might happen, nobody can take the memories I’ll have with my baby away.
And if pain is the price of having my little boy in my life for whatever time I can, I’ll gladly pay it. ”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Memories of Dominick played behind my eyes.
Would I trade all of them just to be free of the pain of losing him?
To remove the memories—all the time we spent together—would be to remove him from my life completely.
To make it so I’d never cared about him.
If I hadn’t loved him, the loss wouldn’t have been a loss at all.
It wouldn’t have hurt. It wouldn’t still hurt.
But it did, because I cared. I still did.
And I wouldn’t trade having known him to take that away.
Did Mom and Dad feel the same way? Dominick’s death had torn them and their relationship apart.
Would they still do it all again if the alternative was to never have had him in the first place?
I would. Every mind-numbing ache in my heart from losing him, every purposeless day spent going through the motions while I struggled to hold myself together—I’d do it all again if it meant having the memories.
Vivienne’s voice broke through my thoughts. “The way you’re talking, I almost wonder if your baby was a surprise?”
“Oh, definitely,” I snorted, snapping back to the present. It had been the surprise of the century, I’d say. “It’s not technically a honeymoon baby, but it’s pretty close.”
“That’s so romantic,” she sighed. “Charles and I have been trying for years. Tracking ovulation, special diets, fertility treatments—you name it. We’d even looked into surrogacy.”
My chest sank like my heart had fallen into quicksand.
I’d been staunchly pushing away the guilt from pretending to be pregnant when so many people struggled with infertility.
Outside of my former resolve not to have children, there wasn’t anything that would actually prevent me from getting pregnant, as far as I knew.
And here I was, pretending I was having a baby just to further an agenda.
A worthy agenda, to be fair. But would anyone else see it that way? I’d sworn I wasn’t going to have kids. Ever. Living my undercover identity was like mocking the dream so many had, including Vivienne.
Even if I’d changed my mind about wanting kids, would that change anything about this situation? Would it wash even a sliver of the guilt away? Or would it simply paint over the jagged edges—the gray areas inherent in this assignment—with empty justification in landlord-white?
Had I changed my mind?
Vivienne’s answer from earlier swirled around my thoughts.
My sole reason for choosing not to have kids didn’t come down to lost sleep, poopy diapers, finding babysitters, or all the ways babies might inconvenience me.
Those sacrifices weren’t the issue. Avoiding the pain of losing them and the way it would tear me and my spouse apart was.
But was I still willing to let that fear take away all the happiness and growth I could share with my child?
Now, Colt’s words filtered through my muddled thoughts. Honestly, his and Vivienne’s takes on the topic were eerily similar. Either they were in cahoots, or they were on to something.
Considering it’s your future, I’d say what you want matters a lot.
What if I didn’t put the “greater good” before my desires? If I shelved my fear, took it completely out of the equation, what did I want ?
A family.
I wanted a family of my own. I wanted the messy kisses and sticky hands, the tears and tantrums, the cuddles and tiny voices filling my home. I wanted the good, the bad, and the ugly—the sunshine and the rain. To love and be loved so much that it could tear me apart to lose it.
Because sometimes giving someone the power to ruin you is worth the risk.
“We’d just about given up,” Vivienne continued, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Fertility treatments are so expensive, and it’s so hard to find insurance that’ll cover even a portion of them. The constant failed attempts and roller coaster of raised and then crushed hope weighs on you.”
“I can imagine,” I murmured.
I didn’t know much about fertility treatments aside from a rough estimate of how expensive they were. Some were painful and invasive, too.
“But the latest round of IVF actually succeeded.” Vivienne smiled at her bump and rested her hand on it. “That’s why Charles suggested Matisse as the name. Present of God. As much as I like the name Wyatt, I can’t deny that this baby feels like a gift.”
My throat threatened to swell shut with the lump building in it. How could I betray her now? How could I lock her husband up and leave her to be a single mom when all she and Charles ever wanted was a baby?
I squeezed my eyes shut. Focus . Charles had taken other people’s children away.
Permanently. Like Dominick. His drugs had caused such strong addictions that his customers would prefer death over withdrawal.
I couldn’t leave him—the man who tweaked the drugs that had killed my brother—free to roam the streets.
No matter how devoted a husband he was, or how good of a father he’d be.
“It’s a beautiful name,” I finally managed, “and I have no doubt your little boy will be beautiful, too.”
“Thanks.” She hummed contentedly as the masseuse moved to massage her leg. “Your baby is going to be adorable, too. Do you think they’ll get Colt’s freckles?”
“I hope so,” I chuckled.
The thought sent a thrill zipping through my bloodstream.
It should’ve scared me, how easy and natural it felt to pretend that Colt and I were a real item.
To picture our future child. After all, everything was fake for the sake of the cover.
Everything except my stupid crush on him, but that would end when the assignment did, too. Really.
And the fact that pretending came so easily didn’t scare me— that was terrifying.
Vivienne sighed dreamily. “I swear, if the baby gets your eyes and curls and his freckles, I think I might die.”
I laughed. “Lately I feel more like a blimp in a frizzy wig than anyone even remotely attractive, so that’s sweet of you.”
And then there was my run-in with Liam fresh in my mind. The only male attention beyond an appreciative glance that I’d received from someone who wasn’t on the other side of an interrogation in months.
“Are you kidding me? Every guy in that restaurant was eying you until Colt scared them off.”
I furrowed my brow, barely stopping myself before jerking my head in her direction.
Surely she’d read more into things than was realistic, right?
There had been some curious stares, but we were two obviously pregnant women surrounded by a squad of men of varying degrees of scariness. Who wouldn’t gawk at that?
The cool, collected person I liked to think I was opened her mouth to say how any men in the vicinity had been looking at her rather than me.
But the sputtering, twitterpated idiot who’d started catching feelings for her fake husband hijacked my vocal cords at the last second.
All I managed was a slurred “uhhhhwhaaaaa?”
Her laugh filled the room. “You don’t have to pretend you didn’t notice, Lex. Any man who looked too long at you got the death stare from Colt whenever you weren’t watching.”
Chills danced up my spine. A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth despite my best intentions.
My pride wouldn’t let me accept that she might be right and that I’d missed those cues when I’d supposedly been on high alert.
But the thought that Colt might be possessive or protective of me made me… giddy .
Yep. Giddy. Like a schoolgirl whose crush just shared gum with her.
I’m not proud.
Colt took the assignment seriously. That was all. He took everything seriously. Any husband who was supposedly in love with his wife wouldn’t stand for other men ogling her.
“Uh, well…” I grasped desperately at whatever crumbs of coherent thought I still possessed. “Colt can be a bit… protective . He has nothing to worry about, though.”
“Not with the way you look at him, he doesn’t,” she teased. “Charles can be a bit overprotective, too, so I get it. And I won’t deny that it’s a huge turn-on.”
My cheeks flamed. Images of Colt kissing my head and holding my hand and pulling me close flashed unbidden behind my eyes.
They mixed with images of him mid-work-out, suited up for a raid, and unholstering his firearm.
My ear tingled as if reliving his flirting demonstration.
As if the memory of his lips whispering against my skin had been engraved into my muscle memory.
The cocktail of thoughts and sensations was intoxicating. I didn’t need protecting. I could take care of myself. Save myself. But there was a comfort in knowing I didn’t have to. In believing someone wanted to do that for me because I was precious to them, and you took care of precious things.
Uncomfortable with the heat flooding through me, I shoved my desires aside. I was here for a reason. And, despite Hattie’s magical touch, it wasn’t to get a massage.
“Charles, overprotective?” I teased, beginning the laborious process of flipping to my other side. I wasn’t proud of how much flopping and heavy breathing it took, but I made it. “Doesn’t everyone go places with a handful of bodyguards?”
She laughed, somehow transitioning much more gracefully despite being the only one actually pregnant. “In his defense, the restaurant business is more cutthroat than you’d expect.”
Huh. Cutthroat. What a fitting term.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Someone even tried to kidnap him once just to get his recipes.”
Was that true, or had that been the lie he’d told her to keep her in the dark about the bodyguards? Or was she the one lying right now? “For real?”
“I know, right? It’s insane. He doesn’t write his recipes down, so it was the only way they’d be able to get them.
Even his chefs have to sign nondisclosure agreements when they’re hired.
” With the masseuse’s help, Vivienne sat up and climbed off the table, our massage apparently done.
“Anyway, he doesn’t want anyone leveraging me or our baby against him. That’s why he’s so cautious.”
I hid my discomfort by easing up and off the table, too. Wasn’t that similar to what I was doing—leveraging Vivienne to get close to Charles?
She met my eyes, her expression earnest. Like me believing her next words was imperative to her happiness. “Once he finally opens up, he’s really charming and sweet. I promise.”
The lives his drugs had claimed proved otherwise, so all I could manage was a forced smile and nod.
Vivienne pulled her robe back on, cinching it over her bump. “He’s… hesitant… whenever I try to make new friends. But I’ve got a good feeling about you, Lex. I think you’re just the friend I need.”