Note

I would just like to thank everyone for your lovely reviews and favorites and follows. Thank you so much!

Also, this chapter has minor character death, and mentions of cancer, which might be triggering.

Felicity stands at the grave long after the rabbi leaves. She should go to the apartment to sit shiva, but there's no-one to sit with her. And she has to go back to Boston tomorrow. She's at her mom's apartment without any conscious memory of driving there, but the door opens onto a run-down warehouse, with shadowy corners and pools of dark water everywhere. People are yelling at her in Russian and she knows that the man who's walking up to her is going to kill her. His arm slides around her neck like a snake, and she can't breathe, she can't breathe, she-

She woke up, and for a few seconds had no idea where she was. The atmosphere of recycled air and a disembodied hum was suffocating until she realized she was on the plane, the plan had worked, she was almost clear. Felicity looked around her, blushing, hoping she hadn't made a sound. But Yasemin was still reading and the girls were playing on their ipad. Mehmet was sitting across the aisle, pretending to write in a notebook, but really staring into space.

The whole situation was bizarre. Even more so if any of her new friends found out that she was Jewish, something she hadn't even told . . . the guy. She didn't know what to call him. When he'd first walked into the warehouse she'd known he was there to kill her, and she still thought he was the most handsome man she'd ever seen. She remembered being almost glad he'd left the tape over her mouth, because she didn't want her last words to be pleas for mercy. Except she didn't die, though that didn't seem like such a good thing, at the time. Waking up in the trunk of his car had been the second worst moment of her life (hearing the word 'metastasised' was still in first place), because no matter how good-looking this guy was, he'd obviously saved her for something. She couldn't believe it would be something good.

Except it was. He'd fed her, and bought her clothes, and arranged for her escape. And she still didn't know why. They'd hardly spoken in the two days it had taken him to get her a fake passport, except when he'd given her instructions on what to do once she landed at LaGuardia.

"Go to a bathroom. Make sure there's no one there, then take off the scarf and change the coat. Don't throw anything away at the airport – wait until you're far away. Maybe even in another state. Keep the passport until you can destroy it, like in a fire."

He'd been cleaning his gun as he was saying all this, and she was fascinated by his hands as they skilfully took it apart and oiled it, before putting it back together. He'd looked up and met her eyes and she'd opened her mouth to again ask him his name, or at least a fake name she could call him. But she didn't ask. He obviously didn't want to talk about himself. Or even about her.

She felt like she wanted to justify herself to him, to explain why she'd ended up with the Russian mob wanting her dead, though that last detail was still unclear to her. She hadn't even started the work Liam had wanted her to do. And how'd the Russians known exactly where to find them?

She tried to remember the last happy moment of her life, the last time she'd really been Felicity. When she'd graduated, that was it. And even then, the moment only lasted until she'd seen her mom close up, and realised that there was something seriously wrong with her. After that, her life became a sped up rollercoaster. Diagnosis, treatment, no insurance. Cooper had found her huddled up on the floor of her room, crying, and when he heard the reason, had mentioned a friend who needed some work done. On the down low. He'd actually said that out loud. And in her panicked state, she'd actually listened to him, instead of going to a bank to ask for a loan, like a normal human being. She had to stop yelling at herself, she thought. It wasn't productive. Of course she'd known it was illegal. She just hadn't known how illegal. When it became obvious to her that all the Irish pubs she met Cooper's friend at weren't just coincidence, it was too late to get out. All the money she earned went directly to her mother's hospital bills, and eventually, her funeral. She remembered making her mother a promise at the graveside – I'm out, mom. I'll talk to Liam tomorrow, and I'm out.

Except Liam had begged her to go on one last job, in Moscow. He'd wanted to impress his father, he said, and thinking about it later, she was sure she'd once mentioned that her father had walked out on them. That's how they get you, she thought – with the shared daddy issues. She'd only ever seen Liam's father, the big boss, once, when he'd spent five minutes yelling at his son and calling him a pansy-ass idiot. She'd shrunk into her corner of the booth, trying to make herself invisible, but she was pretty sure he saw her. She shuddered at the memory. Now she knew what the Eye of Sauron felt like.

The truth dawned on her slowly, as that moment repeated in her head. Maybe being choked out cleared the mind, or something. It was never the Russians who'd wanted her dead. She was a liability to the Irish, because she knew things about their organization, and she thought she could just walk away. And Liam's dad was tired of his son's fuck-ups and wanted to teach him a lesson. So he reached out to the Russians and asked for a favour, in return for warning them that she was messing with their financial network. Because she was sure that if they'd really been mad at Liam, they'd have killed them both. She wasted a few seconds feeling enraged at Liam's dad, then rolled her eyes at herself. What did you expect, Felicity? You got in with the Irish mob. Did you think you could just walk away? If it hadn't been for him, she'd be in a shallow grave right now.

There she was, again mooning over a killer. What was wrong with her? Sure, he'd saved her life, and sure he had abs of steel and blue eyes that you could get lost in . . . what had she been thinking about, again? Oh, yes. Hit man. Right. She could hear her mom's voice so clearly, saying 'You got a little drool on you, honey'. She blinked hard, and willed the tears back. No, a strange American who'd risen to the rank of Captain in the Solntsevskaya Bratva was not an appropriate crush object. Down, libido! Not the right time, or place, or even person. She wondered if she would ever see him again, and if she even wanted to.

The pilot's voice dragged her away from her thoughts as he announced that they would soon be landing at LaGuardia airport. He said something about the local time and weather, but she'd stopped listening, worried about going through passport control.

There was a long line of non-U.S. citizens waiting to get their passports stamped, and her terror grew as the people in front of her decreased. Yasemin seemed to sense something (it must be a secret mom power, Felicity thought later), and linked arms with her, rattling off a whole speech in Turkish. They'd discussed this, in the van to the airport, and Felicity followed their instructions – nodding from time to time, and occasionally saying one of two phrases of Turkish she now knew: 'yes, aunt', and 'yes, uncle'. The two little girls also had their parts to play – they were playing loudly and actively drawing attention, and being generally adorable. Felicity could only admire their sneaky little girl powers, as she finally succeeded in getting her breathing under control, just as Mehmet reached the front of the line. He went through quickly, and Yasemin and the girls were next, and all too soon it was her turn.

She tried to keep her eyes down, as Yasemin had instructed, but still, she felt her disguise was so obvious, any minute now someone would unmask her as a fraud, with a point and scream like Donald Sutherland in that creepy Body Snatchers movie. She answered the officer's questions with one word answers, like 'uncle', 'aunt', and 'holiday' – her mystery saviour had recorded Yasemin saying these words, and Felicity tried her best to copy the very slight accent she'd heard. And then she was through. She could hardly believe it, and followed the Ozuls on autopilot. Mehmet went to one restroom, she and the others went to the ladies room, which was deserted, and Felicity wanted to weep and thank God, but it was too early for that. They dashed into cubicles and Felicity finished first, as she only needed to remove the hijab, fluff up her hair, and exchange the long tunic coat for a puffy, brightly coloured jacket. They'd decided that whoever finished first would leave first, and Felicity was ready, having quickly applied some garish looking make-up, very different from shy Sertab's understated look. She whispered one last 'thank you' in Yasemin's direction, and left the restroom.

Felicity wanted to get out of the airport as soon as possible, and hailed a cab to a mid-range hotel mystery guy had told her about. At first she'd imagined herself staying at a run-down motel, like in the movies, except Hot Guy (she had to call him something) had said it was a bad idea, saying that it would just draw attention to her. He'd even given her money, or rather, had given it to the Ozuls to sew into her coat. During the cab ride, she quickly tore at the lining and peeled off a few bills for the cab driver, making sure she tipped generously. Nothing drew attention like a bad tipper.

She checked in and went up to her room and collapsed on the bed, feeling like a weight had been removed off her chest. Now she had some time, she could look into the coat lining more carefully, and she could hardly believe it. She counted again and again, and it still came up to five thousand dollars. Even though it seemed like a lot of money, she knew it wouldn't last very long. So, she had to get moving quickly. But she could rest for one night, couldn't she?

When she woke up, it was morning, and she got dressed quickly. Breakfast was part of her room deal, but she didn't have the patience to eat more than a bagel – oh, and coffee, of course. She inhaled two cups before she felt human again.

She found a hair salon which seemed busy enough to be popular, and when she came out again, her hair was blond and straight, and she only waited until she was out of sight of the salon to pull it back into a pony tail. Next was glasses, but after thinking about it, she realised she didn't want to wait the few days it would take to fill a prescription. And she also didn't want to leave behind the kind of paper trail involved in getting a prescription. Especially as she had a prescription at her mother's apartment. Good thing she'd kept the key on her. She looked at it, remembering putting it in one of her socks before she got on Liam's plane. So when the Russians had dragged them away, it wasn't lost, unlike her smartphone and tablet.

She had a sudden flash of herself taking her clothes off in a strange bathroom in Moscow, and debating what to do with the key. He'd said she needed to get rid of everything (and at the time, the only way to stop herself from screaming was to wipe her mind blank and concentrate on doing one thing at a time), but on the million-to-one chance that she'd ever see Vegas again, she needed the key. She'd looked in the bathroom cabinet and spotted a small tub of make-up remover wipes, half empty. Just the right size. Thinking about it now, the memory was surreal, like it had happened years ago, and to someone else. She'd been wondering if that was her life now, to be some mob guy's gun moll (so her mobster vocab was slightly dated, she thought) or was she fooling herself, and he was just going to . . . sell her. But it hadn't ended up like that, at all.

She was still lost in thought when her eyes started closing, and she decided to take a nap. Just ten minutes, and then I'll go and have dinner, she thought.

When she woke up, it was pitch dark in the room, and the tv told her it was 5 am. Great. Brilliant, Felicity. She needed to get moving, so she put the coat in the small carry-on she still had from Russia, and checked out of the hotel, having prepared a story of lost credit cards to make up for paying in cash. She was nervous about having so much cash on her, but it couldn't be helped, so she'd carefully opened the lining of her puffy jacket, and put most of it in there. Next she bought a messenger bag which she could hang across her body, and went to a diner for a coffee, visiting the bathroom to put some spending money in a wallet – she didn't feel like having to rummage in the lining of her jacket every time she needed some cash. Good thing she'd left all her credit and debit cards in Vegas – everything was waiting for her there. Now she just had to cross the entire country to get to them. She left the long coat and the carry-on in the bathroom, next to a small garbage bin, making sure to open the bag completely – she didn't want to cause a bomb scare.

She'd made an initial plan, that morning – a way of reducing the trail, as much as she could nowadays. She'd take a train to Miami, and from there she could fly to Vegas. The train ride would be overnight, and it would give her time to finally decide where she was going from there. She only hoped they'd let her buy a plane ticket using cash, especially as she had no form of I.D. on her. Maybe she should practice crying over her lost credit cards, though then someone might wonder where all the cash came from. She'd cross that bridge in due time, she told herself sternly. So she went to Penn Station and bought a ticket, and after five minutes of arguing with herself, found a BestBuy and bought a prepaid smartphone. It wasn't a luxury, she thought. She was going literally cross country – she at least needed a working phone.

Felicity had booked a sleeper car so she could at least lock the door and retreat from the world, and spent most of the trip sleeping, emerging only for dinner. The whole Russia fiasco had taken more out of her than she'd thought. Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the desk at Miami airport, preparing to burst into sobs at a second's notice. But no-one batted an eyelash at her two hundred dollars, and before long, she was in another plane. When she trudged up to her mother's apartment block, many hours later, she felt like she'd been traveling forever, and desperately wanted to sleep for a week. But she knew she couldn't, because she'd decided on where she was settling, and she wasn't taking another plane. She'd started getting nervous on the five hour flight to Vegas – what if she'd been flagged on the security cameras? She was sure she'd seen that in a movie, once. So even though nothing had happened, she was still tense about getting on another plane in the near future.

Lying on the couch, she opened the map she'd bought at Penn Station, and studied it for what must have been the millionth time that week. She knew it was irrational, but she wanted to get far away from Boston. And she was. Still, she was tired of living in the desert. She supposed she could try her luck in Silicon Valley, but then her paranoia started kicking in – if someone started looking for her, wouldn't that be the first place they looked? She'd gotten frustrated somewhere on the train to Miami, and had closed her eyes, and dropped a finger on the map. It had landed in Seattle, and without even thinking about it, Felicity thought shook her head. He'd said, nowhere famous. But then she started looking at the smaller cities in the vicinity, and was intrigued. They kind of had their own little world, with their own celebrities and culture, so to speak. Coast City, Central City, or Starling City? The first two sounded pretty generic – couldn't they think of a name? While the last – she liked the idea of a city named after a bird, and decided it was a good omen, and just like that, made up her mind. And groaned, because she definitely wasn't flying, and the Greyhound would take a couple of days. Unless . . . she went online, and after about half an hour, found the best solution – bus to L.A., and train to Starling City. There.

She felt as exhausted as if she'd just finished a ten-mile hike. But she still had to clear out the apartment. Although, when she'd come in, it had looked emptier than usual. She hadn't really paid attention after the funeral, but now she had more time, and she realised that it was really empty. Anything personal was gone, and for a second she was enraged that the landlord must have emptied it out as soon as she'd left for Boston. She stormed into her mother's bedroom, looking for his phone number, ready to chew him out, when she spotted an envelope with her name on it on the bedside table.

As she sat down on the bed, she hesitated before opening it. She turned the envelope over in her hands, almost scared of what it would contain. Then she called herself an idiot, and carefully looked inside. There were a few papers in it, but at the top was a letter in her mother's handwriting.

Dear Felicity,

By the time you read this, I'll be gone. That sounds like one of those movies you hate, right? I'm sorry honey, but I know I'm not coming back from the hospital this time. I wish I could change things, but I can't. I'm so sorry that you'll be on your own, but you're my little genius, and I know you'll be fine.

I cleared out all my furniture, all my tchotchkes (hope that's spelled right!) – anything you might want to keep. They're in a storage unit. All the paperwork is in the envelope, and it's paid up for a year, so you can decide what you want to do with all that stuff.

I closed my bank accounts and transferred everything to yours – not that there was much left there, anyway. I canceled my credit cards too, you don't need to worry about that.

I thought there would be more to write, but I guess there isn't. I could write the same words over and over again, how much I love you, how having you was the best thing that ever happened to me, and how I'm so proud of you.

You need to be strong and live your life. Most of all, I want you to be happy. Goodbye, sweetie.

Love, Mom

Felicity could hardly read the last lines through her tears, and once she started sobbing, she couldn't stop. She could only think of how badly she'd let her mom down, how dumb she'd been, and vowed never to be so stupid again. She'd leave for Starling City in the morning.

Her phone alarm dragged her out of a deep sleep, and she reached blindly for her glasses. It was 6:30 – time to get ready for work. She'd been in Starling for a month, and was gradually starting to get used to it. She'd had a couple of bad nights, what with nightmares about the warehouse and the funeral. Although some of the dreams hadn't been too bad, she thought with a blush. Mystery Bratva guy featured in those, and she always woke up before they really got good. Though her memories of him were fading, and she was making an effort to put him out of her head. That was another life. Before leaving Las Vegas, she'd taken everything that she gotten from Moscow, and had left it in the garbage in an airport restroom. She still had the Turkish passport though – she'd sewn it a coat she'd found at a thrift store, and hung it in her closet. Very purloined letter, she'd thought. It was all very well for mystery guy to say she had to destroy it, but where was she supposed to find a furnace? It would keep, until she found a way.

She stopped at a coffee shop to get her usual breakfast to go – the largest and blackest of coffees and a plain bagel – and walked to Tech Village. It was the first place she'd found that was hiring, besides Big Belly Burger, and the money wasn't great, but she needed to pay her rent. She'd leased a small apartment, and was surprised about how low the rent was compared to Vegas. And she was looking for a new job. Once the panicked rush away from Moscow was over, she realized she needed much more than an entry-level retail job to keep her entertained. Sure, there was some tech support involved, but she really wanted to get into IT at a larger corporation. Like Queen Consolidated, for example. The IT department was ok there – but much more interesting was Applied Sciences, which was working on some really cutting edge tech. And maybe the IT department could be a stepping stone to where she really wanted to be.

She hadn't really made friends at her work – no-one seemed to want to be there. And ok, she wanted to move on too, but she could still be friendly. The guys there either called her Tech Support Barbie or were constantly hitting on her, and she was feeling a little too fragile to start dating just yet. She did sign up for a yoga class – the way she'd been eating lately meant that she needed to get some exercise, and she hated running. The bonus was that she got a hint of a social life, as they occasionally went out on girls' nights.

Two months later, she was sitting nervously in the foyer at Queen Consolidated, waiting for her interview. Or interviews, rather. She'd been warned that it was a whole day process, but by the fifth interview, she was starting to flag. There was one awkward moment when the CEO, a polished lady called Moira Queen, asked her about the gap between her graduation and now, what she'd been up to workwise. But Felicity had expected that question, had looked online for good answers which didn't involve lying through her teeth, and had spoken, as positively as she could, about illness in the family which was now over.

Walking away from the glass and stone monolith, she felt she could finally breathe. She'd decided to wear a suit for the interview, and felt stifled – and slightly disappointed. She hadn't had a great feeling about the interview, and wasn't even sure she still wanted the job. But the money was so much better than what she was earning right now. And she was so bored at Tech Village. So she was surprised to get the phone call saying she was in, followed by an email, and a request to come in and sign some paperwork.

Felicity celebrated by going on a frugal shopping spree, also known as hitting the sales. She'd decided on a complete overhaul of her appearance after Russia, and stocked up on cute skirts and heels – just because she was the tech support, she didn't have to wear a jumpsuit. And anyone looking for a sullen Goth in DMs would look elsewhere.

The IT department consisted of about half a dozen people, less than she thought was necessary for a company the size of Queen Consolidated. And at first she enjoyed it a lot, especially when she was given some back-end programming work which was far more challenging than the run of the mill email problems, password problems and disk-wiping she usually had to do. It became less enjoyable when her supervisor took credit for it, though the CFO, a Walter Steele, had given her a wink the last time he came down to discuss it. She was pretty sure he knew what she was capable of, so she was prepared to stick out working at QC for a little longer. Even though she was bored. Again. After a few months there, it had become clear that Applied Sciences never recruited from within. It would have been a better idea to start with another company, and wait for an opening in the department. And her asshole supervisor insisted that she went through all the disks she was asked to wipe, and all the porn was started to get to her. Nothing illegal, but still. How much porn could one person watch? A lot, she started to realise. But she knew she needed to stick it out for at least a year – what with the gap between graduating and starting at QC, she'd definitely look like a flake if she left after a few months.

It's weird, she thought. Last November she'd spent a week thinking she was going to die, and worrying about leaving a paper trail for Mafia hit men. Now she was back to the usual life worries – where's my career going? Will I ever find love? All this, while dealing with losing her mom.

She'd tried to convince herself that her mother's death hadn't been a shock when it happened, that she'd known sitting in the doctor's office, looking at the PET scan light up like an old-fashioned switchboard. But she hadn't been prepared for the sneaky nature of grief, how it got you when you weren't looking, when you thought you were ok. Like a month after she started at QC, when she saw a TMZ report about George Clooney in Vegas, and immediately decided to phone her mom and ask her if she'd started moonlighting with the paps. She'd already started punching in the number, when her eyes fell on the photo of the both of them which was on her desk, and she gripped her phone so hard she cracked the screen. Her supervisor had taken one look at her face and ordered her to take a break – he didn't get any points for that, she thought bitterly, as she sat in the break room, staring into space. Mediocre, seat-warming asshole just didn't want to have to ask her what was wrong, or offer to help. And she wasn't going to cry at work.

The memories of the mystery man who'd helped her had grown more and more fuzzy as the months passed. She started to think she'd embellished his looks – no man could be that handsome in real life. And the way she'd felt about him: classic Stockholm Syndrome.

She worked, she took classes, she made acquaintances, she went on a couple of dates with guys from other departments, she scoured the wanted ads for jobs at Star Labs, at Merlyn Incorporated. And so time passed. And before she knew it, she looked at her online calendar and realized that soon it would be a year since her mother, since Russia. Work had gotten more exciting, in the sense that the Queen family, which had always been a trainwreck, was once again in the spotlight. She'd done her research before applying for the job, and so knew of the tragedy surrounding the Queens – father and son lost at sea. And she'd tried to surreptitiously study Moira Queen, but her façade was impenetrable. She soon found out that Moira and the CFO were married, which only increased her admiration for Walter Steele. The lady was scary. So she knew all about the drama – and then it got more dramatic.

"Oliver Queen found!", the headlines blared one September morning, and Felicity read the articles with some fascination. Everyone in the company was going nuts, and the women's restrooms started to fill up with the entire office pool, it seemed, doing their make-up and hair, on the off chance that Oliver Queen would choose that day to tour the company. The entire IT department spent a whole week watching every single piece of footage ever filmed of the Queens, especially Oliver, and so Felicity was almost glad when an infestation of ants (when would people learn not to keep open food containers in their desks?) caused the whole department to be fumigated, and they were all split up into small rooms scattered all over the company. She suspected hers had started out as a broom closet. But there was light there now, and a desk, and a computer. And she had her tablet, and that was all she needed. Especially as she really wasn't interested in the Queen family drama, which was getting more Shakespearean by the day. She hadn't even bothered to watch all the youtube videos (and there were many), of Oliver Queen in his heyday. They were sometimes inescapable, though, and in one of them she'd caught the tail-end of a paparazzo trying to get a soundbite, and a voice which sounded vaguely familiar, giving it to him. The thought nagged at her all day. She'd heard that voice before. But where? But then Ant Apocalypse 2012 had started, and she was too busy with relocating to worry about it anymore. They'd have to stay out of the IT department for a few days, to let the fumes clear, and management had told them they were using the opportunity to redecorate and combine it with the server room. Which was good, Felicity thought, because as the last one in, she was usually sent on the trek towards the servers when anything went wrong – it would be great to have them near.

Obviously she didn't have her name on the door, though. Someone might think she deserved an office, she thought sourly. Instead, maintenance had stuck a paper label on the door, which said I.T. – temp, giving completely the wrong message, in her opinion. So she was surprised when there was a knock, and the door opened.

"Felicity Smoak?"

The memories hit like a tsunami, and her stomach threatened to revolt. It couldn't be him. It couldn't. Her chair came to life and turned to face him, because it sure wasn't her doing that. She stared up into his face. It was him. The hair was different, his face seemed more open, and he was dressed in the style her mom had called 'rich-guy casual' rather than the Russian mobster suit he'd had on, but it was unmistakeably him. He knew her real name, and he'd come to finish the job. She stared at him for a few seconds, frozen, until she saw the recognition dawn on his face.

"Meghan?"

He sounded like he couldn't his eyes, but he was faking it, he must be. She'd planned for this, had expected someone to find her, and she used whatever leeway he was giving her, and grabbed for the gun which she'd velcroed to the underside of her desk. She'd been anti-gun, but that was in another life, before she'd been choked out and had woken up in the trunk of a car. So it had been one of her first purchases in Starling, and she'd had some very tense moments smuggling it into QC once she started working there. She pulled it out of the holster, and was gratified to see his eyes widen as he saw it – he wouldn't have been so scared if he'd read her mind, and realised she'd completely forgotten how to use it.

"Wait! Meghan! I'm not-"

"Stop pretending you don't know my name!"

Felicity realised she'd screamed the words at him, and hoped that no one was passing by her door right then. The gun was unexpectedly heavy in her hand, and certain things were starting to dawn on her. First, she'd heard that voice more recently than a year ago. Second, he was holding a laptop in his hands, not a gun. Third, he was Oliver Queen. Oh, shit. She was holding a gun on Oliver Queen in his mother's company, and she was beyond fired. And dead. Maybe. She dropped the gun on her desk. It landed heavily, and she jumped at the sound, glad she'd left the safety on. She wanted to run and hide, and got up, but there was nowhere to go. He was blocking her exit. She ended up retreating to a corner of the room, and collapsed in a crouch, putting her head in her hands. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and wasn't sure if it was a flashback to Moscow, or a panic attack.

He settled next to her and put a hand on her shoulder, gentling her like he would a frightened horse, and she bristled. She wasn't his pet. She jerked her shoulder out from under his hand and glared at him.

"I always wondered what I could call you. Never thought it would be 'Mr Queen'."

He gave a half smile, which looked much more relaxed than he'd ever been in Moscow.

"No," he said, stretching out the word. "Mr Queen was my father."

He kept up his relaxed expression all the way through her nonsensical babble in which she couldn't believe she actually referenced his dad's death by drowning, and she groaned and put her head in her hands again.

"Meg- Felicity . . . are you ok?"

"Shut up! Just stop talking, ok? Yes, I know I'm the one doing most of the talking right now, and making very little sense – why can't I stop? Shutting up right now . . . I mean, I'm fine. I just need to think."

He nodded and leaned back against the wall. She looked at him under her lashes, wondering if her hint hadn't been heavy enough. She needed to think on her own, without the major distraction that his presence was, but he showed no intention of leaving. Of course, why should he leave? It was technically his company.

Oh Felicity, she heard her mother's voice saying. What have you gotten yourself into this time? Good question, mom. I wish I knew.