by Eve Langlais
“I need a new assignment,” Marina announced quite suddenly.
“I thought you were about to start one that Sergei planned.”
“I’ve decided to pass on it given the news from the doctor.”
Instantly concerned, he sat straight and stared at her. “Are you sick?”
“Only part of the day. All that nausea, and then there is the tenderness in my breasts. And it is your fault.” She fixed him with a glare as he took a few seconds to process her words.
“Fuck me, you’re pregnant!”
“Like I said, all your fault.”
“But how? I thought you said not to worry about it.”
“My tracker was inside the birth control capsule, which I lost during the helicopter attack. I forgot to replace it.”
“Are you okay with being pregnant?” He still recalled their awkward conversation.
“Actually, I am. It will be nice to train the next generation of assassins.”
“If you’re in the early stages, then you can still work if you want.”
“I could. However…” Her hand cradled her abdomen. “Because of you, I now have two lines I won’t cross.”
And he had two reasons now to make sure Bad Boy Inc. and the academy were bigger and better than ever.
“I love you.”
“Do you love me enough to hold my hair?” she said, turning green.
He did, and he even joined her in a sympathy puke.
The knock at the door set off his apartment proximity alarm. Good thing, because Declan slept like the dead.
The single knock wasn’t repeated, so he slapped at his tablet, flashing red by his nightstand. Probably just someone coming in from a late night and banging into the walls. He’d done that a time or two. Even tried to enter the wrong apartment before.
“Waaa. Waaa.”
Did someone sob?
He lifted himself onto an elbow and looked around his loft apartment. The noise appeared muffled. Was the knocker still outside his door?
Please don’t let it be some drunk chick. He didn’t do well with snotty noses and running mascara.
He grabbed his tablet and tapped it to bring up the surveillance camera he’d installed in the hall, only to frown. It showed nothing but darkness. Someone had blocked the lens.
The intentional act put him into mercenary mode. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and heard it again. A little crying engine that kept starting. “Waa-waa. Waa. Waa-waa.”
It came from outside his door.
He grabbed the gun from his nightstand and trod quietly in his bare feet to the portal, keeping to the side lest someone decide to blast it. It would take some pretty heavy-duty firepower given he’d had a steel-plated door put in when he remodeled the loft. The walls were thick cinderblock. He thought of it as his bunker against the world.
What he didn’t understand was why he could hear someone in the hallway.
He paused by the door, arguing with himself against opening it, but that seemed cowardly. His buddy Calvin certainly wouldn’t hesitate. Most of the guys he worked with at Bad Boy Inc. would fling that door open and confront what lay outside.
Probably just a drunk chick passed out in the wrong spot.
The tumblers in the many locks clicked as he turned them, and bolts slid out of their secure housings. His fingers gripped the gun tightly as he swung open the door and confronted a…
Baby?
Big brown eyes peered at him, a rosebud mouth pursed, and a note pinned to the blanket covering her said, “Congratulations, Daddy.”
Declan did the mature thing, the only thing a man in his position could do.
He slammed the door shut.
* * *
The End
Next up is Killer Daddy
For more Eve Langlais books see www.EveLanglais.com
For more contemporary bad boy romance see my new alter ego, Suzanne E. Lang at http://suzannelangromance.com/