Page 50 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

The room tilted. I slid to the floor when my legs betrayed me. And strangely, for a while, I didn’t cry. Instead, I stared at the two tests on the edge of the sink and felt a furious, impossible heat rise behind my ribs.

“I’m having a baby,” I whispered. That was terrifying because the more I thought about it, I did.

But the timing was dreadful. Damien was still hanging around. Hudson and Lincoln said they’d be back in one month as though a month were a reasonable distance to put between a woman and two men whose scents still woke her at night.

It was also because of my father. If he knew, he would turn it into a strategy inside an hour. And Maeve, who had survived quite enough already without me turning up with this scandal.

And for myself, because I’d been trying so hard to build a life that couldn’t be taken apart by men. Yet here I was, taken apart by the best ones I’d ever met.

Before I told anyone, I should go to the clinic and get it confirmed properly. Behave like a sensible person with a future she couldn’t sketch her way out of.

My stomach lurched.

I turned and vomited into the toilet until there was nothing left but a shaking body, and the sour burn of fear in my throat.

When it passed, I stayed on the floor with my forehead against my arm, not looking at the tests that sat beside the sink. The two lines that were my future.

I laughed once, cracked and wet and furious.

“What the hell have I done?”

Then I finally cried.

Chapter 10

Lincoln

Four weeks after Mary walked out of our hotel room, I still smelled violet in places it had no right to be.

I could’ve blamed the detergent, or I could’ve told myself scent lingered in fabric and memory because brains were stupid things.

But this wasn’t any of that.

I smelled violet in the London office while I was signing documents. Then it happened in the car when rain hit the windscreen. Then at three in the morning, waking me from my dream. But the first time I smelled violet was in that Boston bar, I’d not stopped smelling it since. It was her, Mary, and now it was me…and Hudson.

We smelled like her.

I stood by the office window and watched the streets of London as I smelled her. Silver light slid over the glass buildings opposite. Traffic moved below.

Our office was all clean lines and dark wood. Hudson liked it because it made people trust us. I liked it because the coffee machine was good.

I strolled to Hudson’s office. He sat at his desk with three contracts open in front of him.

“We should be in Boston,” I said.

His eyes lifted and he closed the contract. “You said she’s too young.”

“I said many things that I’ve changed my mind on. She’s Damien’s ex. She’s a student. She’s young, but why can’t I forget her?”

“Lincoln.” Hudson leaned back in his chair. He looked tired in a way few people would notice. His hair was still neat, his suit still pressed, but there were now faint shadows under his eyes. “You also said that age is just a number.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. “It is when the age is similar. But nineteen years.”

Hudson corrected me, “Eighteen. I’m thirty-nine.”

I laughed. “And you’re still clinging to the wreckage.”

“Then what’s the problem?”