Page 54 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

She picks up her bag. Then she looks at me sideways, with the look she gets when she’s deciding how much to say. “The car, Ivan.”

I suspect I know what she’s speaking of, so I try to redirect her. “You want a car? What kind? You can have your pick.”

“The gray Volvo. The one outside my building for days now. I made it on day four.”

“Luna—”

“I understand why you’re doing it,” she cuts in. “I do. Your job is what it is, and I’m not naive about that.” She holds up a hand before I can speak. “But I’m not living my life with a tail on me. I won’t do it. If something feels wrong, I’ll call you. I promise I’ll call you.”

Every instinct I have argues with this, but I just sigh. “I’ll pull him.”

“Thank you.”

“If anything feels off?—”

“I’ll call you.” She meets my eyes. “I said, I promise.”

She means it. Luna doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean, which is one of approximately ten thousand things about her that has dismantled me incrementally since the night I met her.

“How else can I be of assistance this evening?”

She rolls her eyes at me and smirks. “Let me in?”

“Of course.” I step aside and fetch her water, and we settle in for the evening.

I pull the Volvo via text and spend the following three days not looking at the feed from the new building cameras. Eventually.

If she knew of them, she’d be mad, and I’m trying to respect that, even though it’s stupid. I check four more times before I stop checking today and pour myself a drink instead.

There are things I’m learning to hold loosely. I’m not good at it. I have never had to be before. Everything I’ve built has been built on the principle that loose hands lose things, and Luna is asking me to be a different kind of man than the one that principle made. I’m trying.

Trying and failing.

Two weeks after the Volvo comes off and the building cameras are the only eyes I have on her, I find myself at my desk with a notepad and a problem I have never had before in my life.

I’ve organized the movement of cargo across six countries. I’ve managed the logistics of operations that required the coordination of forty men across three time zones. I’ve negotiated deals in rooms where the wrong word meant someone didn’t go home.

But… Now, I’m staring at a blank piece of paper trying to figure out how to plan a baby shower.

Darya, when I call her, doesn’t laugh at me. This is one of the things I pay her for, although we’ve never discussed it in those terms. She listens to what I want—something small, Luna’s closest people, the right food, nothing that will embarrass her or feel like a production—and I can hear her thinking on the other end of the line.

“The candle shop,” Darya says.

“Excuse me?”

“After hours. Her own space. People she trusts, in a place she loves.” A pause. “She’ll feel safe. More in control.”

Darya has, in approximately forty seconds, solved a problem that had me staring at a blank page.

“Brilliant.”

She sighs. “Stop being so controlling. She doesn’t like it.”

“She told you?”

“A woman knows. Now, for party colors?—”

“There are colors for a baby shower?”