Favored by Felix by Shelley Munro Read Free Book Online Page A

is, change it. Grow it long. You should do
whatever makes you happy.”
     
    Casey bit back her snort with difficulty.
He made it sound easy, but he’d never come up against the general’s indomitable
will. She’d grown up with the man and found her life went more smoothly if she
went in the direction he pushed.
    But not this time , her mind screamed.
    Not. This. Time.
    If she went against him, she’d lose
everything. Everyone except maybe her Aunt Elsa. She sighed, knowing her time
was ticking away. Two more days before she left the resort and walked into the
medical center.
    Two more days.
    The thought mocked her, shoved fear through
her veins, and not for the first time she told herself she didn’t want to do
this, no matter what arguments the general and the medical experts pushed at
her.
    “Why the big sigh?”
    “Maybe I’m hungry after all.” She caught
the flicker of disappointment in his eyes before he turned away to cut her a
piece of what looked like pie.
    When he handed her the treat, she bit back
a wave of nausea but she forced herself to take a bite rather than make a liar
out of herself.
    “What do you like to do when you’re on
leave?” Felix asked.
    Casey swallowed. She had a family-approved
life, in which meant she attended concerts and went to formal dinners or
parties…and she had her secret life, in which she slipped away to meet her
aunt. They visited the fabric market and went to fashion shows—with Casey in
disguise, of course. It wouldn’t do to let the general know she was “misbehaving”.
And she spent long hours indulging her creative self, designing outfits and
stitching elegant designs.
    “Casey?”
    She lifted her chin, took a deep breath. “I
visit with my best friend, Eva. We go shopping in the market, and I like to
design clothes then stitch them.”
    Interest, rather than polite dismissal,
glinted in his eyes, and some of the tightness faded from her chest.
    “Are you any good? My sister Scarlett was
complaining that there are few decent designers on Dalcon. Would she have seen
your work?”
    Her tension ratcheted right back up. “No. I
don’t have time to do much designing these days. Work gets in the way.” She
swallowed, needing to rid her throat of the cold, hard knot that had grown to
the size of her fist. And soon work would take over completely. She’d become a
pet project and would never have the life she—
    No point whining about it now. No point at
all.
    “I used to go surfing a lot when we lived
on Earth,” Felix said. “I haven’t had a chance to try it here.”
    “I don’t know what that is.”
    “You have a fiberglass board and float on
it, allowing the waves to propel the board forward. The trick is managing to
stay upright without falling off. I’ll take you sometime. The waves farther
down the coast from the resort look big enough.”
    That tightness clamped her chest, making it
difficult to breathe. Her eyes stung at his casual kindness. He hardly knew
her, would never see her again after she left Middlemarch Resort. But she didn’t
say anything, managed a creditable nod.
    “Do you see your family much?”
    “D-depends where I’m stationed. Sometimes
my squad does training exercises with my brothers’ units. My father—he’s a
general. I see him on lots of training vids and occasionally he’ll stop by the
posts where my brothers and I are stationed.”
    “Did you always want to be in the military?”
    “I never considered anything else.” Because
she knew what a shit-storm stepping off the Seonaid path would bring. It was
easier to follow orders and keep her head down. Scurvy pirates , maybe
she should have fought expectation from the start. Looking back, that might
have made a difference.
    When the mental pain threatened to
overwhelm her again, she asked, “What about you?” She barely forced the words
out before the knot crammed her throat shut.
    “Me?” He pulled a face. “I fit in where my
oldest brother thinks I’m