“Wife, I feel the same.” My smile in the mirror is huge and likely looks a bit unhinged. I’ve only been able to be home and with - and inside - my wife for a week or so at a time before having to take off again, and hearing her admit she misses me… is she beginning to see the same future for us that I do? “How are your self-defense lessons going with Mala?”
She immediately brightens. “Really well, thank you for asking her! It helps to work with someone my size.”
“I should have just had Natalia do it, but…” My wife is not as good at guarding her expressions as she used to be. “Are ye’ not getting along with her?”
“It’s not that, exactly,” she says, “she does her job just fine. I am well-protected.”
“Then what?”
“She despises me.” Bad Cat is sitting on her lap and she starts stroking him, as if for comfort. “If I were her, maybe I would, too. I don’t want to be in a position where we’re forced to interact more than we are.”
My jaw tightens. “She and her husband came very highly recommended, but no one treats my wife with disrespect. I’ll replace her right away.”
“Look, please don’t worry about it! You need to concentrate completely on what you’re doing. I’m fine. I’m safe, and I have my sisters-in-law to spend time with. I have a test for Slavic Art History that I need to study for. We can talk about any changes after this…”
Morana pauses, trying to think of the right way to say, ‘After you kill my father and Stepanov and everyone associated with them and burn it all to the ground and then salt the earth.’
“After this mission,” she settles on. “This is too important to be distracted by little things, all right?”
“Aye,” I scowl. “But I don’t like it.”
“Don’t we have something better to do?” She distracts me with a sly smile. “How would you like to desecrate our Facetime session tonight?”
My hand slides under my sweatpants. “I have a few ideas.”
Morana…
“If you pull forward a little harder, you can get me off balance,” Mala instructs. “Let’s try this one more time.”
She’s been trying to teach me this maneuver all morning, and it’s infuriating that I can’t get this tiny woman to fly over my shoulder when she demonstrated it on a 200-pound guard.
“Let me get some water first…” Suddenly, just the thought of water hits me with a violent surge of nausea and I barely make it to the bathroom across the hall.
“There are easier ways of getting out of practice,” Mala teases me gently, holding back my hair.
“Bozhe moy,this is so embarrassing,” I groan, “don’t look at me!”
“Please, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve witnessed a post-Challenge party at the Ares Academy,” she chuckles, “I’ve held the hair of every woman on campus and half the men.” Her smile fades a bit. “Have you been getting sick a lot?”
“For the last couple of days,” I say, rinsing out my mouth, “I might have a bug or maybe it’s the haggis I had to try at Sunday dinner.”
“That was four days ago,” she laughs, “stop casting aspersions on traditional Scottish fare. I don’t want to be pushy, but is it possible that you’re pregnant? These MacTavish men are alarmingly fertile.”
“No, we’ve always used…” Cameron has been very responsible about wearing a condom except… oh,der'mo,shit! That time in the car after getting married in Dublin.
“Your face is pale,” Mala says sympathetically. “Why don’t we go to lunch and make a quick stop at the drugstore?”
“This is bad,” I moan, “we’ve only been married for four months! I can’t be pregnant!” The dark fears surge up. My mother.
“Hey, hey, relax,” she soothes me. “No freaking out until we know, all right?”
We leave Natalia and Mala’s bodyguard standing by the door of the drugstore, bored out of their minds as Mala and I leisurely discuss the merits of the mauve vs. the berry shade of lipstick. She finally meanders to the cashier with a basketful of items, including three pregnancy tests.
“We’ll go to a nice place for lunch,” she whispers, “you do not want to take this test in the grimy restroom of the Boots Pharmacy.”
“Good point,” I smile weakly, stuffing the tests in my bag.
Mala kindly tries to distract me with chatter over my uneaten plate of Scottish shrimp and cherry blossom jam. The server comes by to see my lack of progress and looks personally wounded. “Is there something else I can bring you, ma’am?”
