Page 41 of Babies for the Boss
She’s not only the woman I love. She’s the mother of my child, which means she is under my protection for all time. There is no version of any future I will build that does not have her at the center of it.
My world has been realigned in a breath, and somehow, I feel more solid, more capable than I ever have.
But she looks terrified.
“Molly, I will not let anything happen to you. Or to our baby.”
She looks at me with those steady brown eyes, and something in her face shifts, some of the tension going out of it. But still, her voice is quiet. “Babies, Pavel. Twins.”
The words spring out of my mouth. “Marry me.”
15
MOLLY
“What? No!”I’m not in control of the volume of my voice.
Marry me.Two words, delivered with the absolute certainty of a man who has made a decision and considers the deciding the end of the matter, which is exactly how Pavel Strakov does everything, and which is exactly the problem.
I stand in the gray afternoon light of his office with my bag still in my hand and the news of two heartbeats still reverberating through every bone in my body, and I look at his face—that beautiful, terrifying, certain face—and I know the answer the way I know that I love him. Pure instinct.
“But—”
“No.”
He looks at me with those pale blue eyes, and the certainty in them doesn’t waver, which tells me he heard the word and has decided it doesn’t apply to him. “Molly?—”
“No.” I set my bag down on the chair beside me because my arm is tired and I need both hands free for this conversation. “I heard you. The answer is no.”
The certainty in his expression shifts into something more careful, like he’s not sure what he’s dealing with from me. I get it. He probably thought I’d be grateful or happy or some other obvious thing.
Right now, I want to put the desk between us. Anything to get some distance. I know we have to talk about this, and now is better than later, but for fuck’s sake, I just want some space. Not a damn proposal.
“You are carrying my children,” he says, with confidence that his point will close the argument. “Two of them. That changes everything, Molly. The security I can provide, the?—”
“I’m aware of what I’m carrying. I’m the one who told you, remember?”
“What is the meaning of this? You come into my office and tell me this… this enormous thing, and now I’m the bad guy for wanting to marry you?”
Something pulls tight and sharp in my chest, and it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with a kitchen in a house I grew up in and a mother who cried at the sink when she thought no one could hear her. “Pregnancy is not a reason to get married. Not for me. Not ever.”
“It’s not only the pregnancy, Molly.” He leans back against his desk, and his eyes flicker. He’s hiding something else from me. “I want you with me. The children accelerate a conversation I was already intending to have.”
“You were going to propose.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
He’s quiet for a beat, which tells me he hadn’t gotten that far in the planning. Maybe he wanted to marry me “one day,” and had never gotten around to figuring it out. Or maybe he’s just saying this to get his way on the matter.
This calls for a serious talk, because I don’t want to ruin things between us, but I also need him to hear me rather than simply wait for me to finish talking so he can say what he already wants to say. “Fine, this isn’t just about the babies. But what you just did—the way you just did it—I cannot say yes to that. I cannot say yes to a proposal that comes as though the twins are the reason. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand that you are frightened?—”
“I’m not frightened.” The sharpness in my voice surprises both of us. “I’m not a woman who needs to be managed through her fear right now. I’m a woman who is telling you something important about herself, and I need you to stop being a pakhan for thirty seconds and listen to me like a person.”
He straightens slightly, something in his posture shifting from command into something quieter, and he looks at me and waits, which is what I asked for but still feels strange. I’m so used to him controlling everything between us—our conversations, my employment, our sex life—that it feels odd to truly hold the floor. Like I’m wearing the wrong skin.
