by Maya Blake
He stopped at my shocked gasp. ‘Your fiancée was pregnant?’
His face turned even grimmer, his jaw clenching tight before he nodded abruptly. ‘But I began to suspect that she was chasing more than prime snow when she was away.’
‘She was cheating on you?’
‘I sensed she wasn’t being truthful about a few things. But she denied it and I...’ His jaw clenched tight for a single moment. ‘I chose to believe her. She convinced me to let her stay in Gstaad for a few more days before coming back to Athens. On the morning I was supposed to leave, she wanted to ski on the black run. She was an excellent skier, but she was pregnant with my child and I didn’t feel right about letting her go alone. So I went with her. It started snowing heavily almost immediately. I lost sight of Anneka for a moment and lost my concentration.’
He stopped.
‘I woke up from a coma three weeks later. Just in time to hear her plotting with her lover about how they would pass off their child as mine long enough to get a ring on her finger and all of my wealth. Within minutes I had no child, a duplicitous fiancée and the dreadful news that my injuries had ended any hope of my ever fathering a child naturally.’
As I was grappling with that, his turbulent gaze found mine.
‘Do you understand now why hearing you’d destroyed my one last chance prompted my reaction?’
His stark bitterness threw ice-cold dread over me, keeping me numb for a minute before sensation piled in, puzzles slid into place.
With a horrified gasp I moved away from him, pulling the sheet tight around me. I suppressed another sharp cry as pain lanced me and the weighted certainty that another woman’s transgressions had been the measuring rod I’d been judged against all along froze me from the inside out.
‘So I’m Project Two Point Zero?’
He frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You thought I was lying when I said I was pregnant. Then you accused me of trying to foist another man’s child on you. Then you thought you’d hedge your bets by marrying me, on the off-chance the child was yours. How are those imagined offences of mine any different from what your fiancée did to you?’
He reared up, his face tightening further. ‘For one thing, we’re married. And for another, you barely touch the possessions I’ve showered on you. You don’t drive, or ask to be driven anywhere. The thought of going to a social event makes you grimace.’
‘So my saving grace is that I’m not a fashion whore and nor do I salivate over the dozen supercars you store in your garage? What makes you think I’m not just biding my time, lulling you into a sense of complacency before I strike?’
One insolent eyebrow rose, as if the idea was amusing. ‘Are you? And how do you propose to do that?’
‘Give me time—I’m sure I can come up with something.’
‘You won’t,’ he parried arrogantly. ‘You want to know how you’re different?’
I pressed my lips together, the strong need to know almost overwhelming me.
‘The only thing that gets you fired up—truly fired up—is your work. Your eyes light up when you’re in the boardroom, challenging men and women with years of experience to better market an idea. Anneka got fired up by shopping until she dropped. The reason she was an ex-supermodel by the time she was twenty-five was because she’d gained a reputation for being unprofessional and lazy—partying and skiing were the only things she lived for. Sometimes I’d go two or three weeks without seeing her because she was too busy flying around in my jet to spend time with me.’
I frowned. ‘So what on earth did you see in her? And is it even possible to shop and party that much...?’ I muttered.
‘Believe me, she gave it a good try. And after a few months we barely saw each other. I was about to break it off when she told me she was pregnant.’
The similarities crushed me harder. Neo and I would never have met again had it not been for the baby.
‘You know how else you’re different from Anneka?’ he said.
I hated these comparisons. Hated the other woman’s name on his lips. But I’d started this. And, for good or ill, the need to know more about what had shaped this man who made me terrified for my heart’s well-being wouldn’t abate.
‘Enlighten me. Please.’
He ignored my droll tone, his eyes growing even more incisive as he stared at me, as if the list he was enumerating was necessary to him. Essential, even.
Maybe he needed to scrape together my worthy characteristics in order to be able to accept me as the mother of his child? And if he failed? If I wasn’t enough? Anguish seared deeper, but he was still talking, so I forced myself to listen.
‘You signed the prenup without so much as a quibble. Anneka got a team of lawyers to negotiate every clause—especially the one that stated that should I perish while we were married she would receive one hundred percent of my assets, including the funds I’d set aside for charity. Your attention to detail in the boardroom is exceptional. But I’m willing to bet you can’t even remember the details of the financial package in the prenup you signed?’
I shook my head. ‘The only part I cared about was what happened to our child,’ I replied.
His arrogant smile widened. ‘So tell me again how you plan to fleece me?’
I shrugged away the taunt, still consumed with wanting to know why he’d bothered to get together with a woman like Anneka if those were her true colours.
But I knew the answer. She was beautiful, vivacious and he’d thought she was carrying his child. It had become clear over the last few weeks that there was nothing Neo wouldn’t do for his child. No sacrifice he wouldn’t make.
My heart dipped in alarm and, yes, I felt a bite of jealousy at the thought that the all-encompassing feeling would never extend beyond his child. Not after what he’d experienced at the hands of another woman. Not after what I’d done to him even before our first meeting.
I was simply the vessel carrying what he wanted most in the world. How soon after I served my purpose would I be relegated to the background?
That anguishing thought drove my next question. ‘So I’m a step or two up from the previous model—no pun intended. But I still have question marks over my head, don’t I?’
‘Don’t we all?’ he drawled.
‘No, that’s not going to fly. You’ve just listed the ways I’m different from your ex, but what does that difference mean to you, Neo?’ I pressed, an almost fatalistic urge smashing away my precious self-preservation.
‘That remains to be seen,’ he replied, and that aloofness I’d fooled myself into thinking was gone for ever resurged, saturating every inch of his perfect face.
‘You mean until I prove my worth to you? Add the ultimate title of true mother to your child to that list? Maybe then you’ll stop comparing me to her?’
He shrugged.
Stone-like dread settled in my midriff, depriving my lungs of air. Slowly but unrelentingly, perhaps even since that first night on Neostros, I’d allowed this thing to go beyond doing the right thing for my baby. I’d reached out, taken what I wanted for myself despite the lingering suspicion that my actions would come with emotional consequences.
And now, with this account of what had shaped him, he’d bared my own weaknesses to me.
I started to slide out of bed, froze when he reached for me.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘I’m going to shower. Alone.’
Tension rippled through his frame, his eyes narrowing to ferocious slits. ‘We can’t go back, Sadie. It’s better you’re aware of that. That you accept it.’
‘You’re right—we can’t go back. But with your feet firmly stuck in clay you’re not going to move forward either, are you?’
Again his silence spoke for him.
‘Well, guess what? You may be stuck, but I’m not.’
‘Explain that, if you please,’ he rasped tightly.
‘You’re lauded for your sharp brain, Neo. Work it out for yourself.’
When I tugged myself free he released me. And that little act of setting me free, when deep down I wanted him to recapture me, drove the hard truth home.
His actions would always skew towards protecting himself. Towards shoring up his foundations with thick layers that guaranteed everyone else would remain on the outside.
Which was rather a sad and agonising state of affairs, because I very much wanted to be on the inside. So much so that when the composure that had held me together crumbled I let it, allowing the hot scald of tears to mingle with the warm shower jets. The hiss of the water muffling my quiet sobs.
But what I didn’t know in those stolen, self-pitying moments was that my agony was only just starting.
Work it out for yourself.
I resented the unnerving panic those five words had triggered.
We were married. We’d made an agreement!
But listing her better qualities had opened my eyes to what I’d known for a while...that Sadie was truly different from Anneka. A wife a husband would be proud to possess.
But...what kind of husband? One who valued her for her brain but was too jaded to look into her heart? Perhaps because his own emotions fell short of fulfilling her needs?
Could I really stop her if she deemed me unfit to hold up my end of the bargain? If the doubts I harboured about my effectiveness as a father grew apparent?
I’d negotiated another deal in my favour by reclaiming her in my bed. One that had given me a yearning for a state I’d never considered before.
Contentment.
Theos mou, the woman I’d married was sensational. She tasted like the purest strain of innocent temptation, which would only get richer when she’d fully embraced her sensuality.
I should be pleased.
And yet, her words had only intensified that hollow sensation I’d woken up with the morning after the wedding. The feeling that had expanded ever since.
Not in a glaring, aggressive way, that could easily be identified and fixed, like a marketing flaw that required sharp intellect and an eye for detail. It had started as a ripple on the surface of a pond, effortless but determined. Unstoppable. Expanding against my will and desire to contain it.
And you need this triple-strength protection, why?
I ignored the wheedling voice, alarmed when I couldn’t find any immediate comeback as to why I needed protection against Sadie.
Even more disturbing was the louder voice that questioned whether I was equipped to safeguard what I fought so valiantly for once my child was born. Cynicism and bitterness and being a shark in the boardroom were hardly the cornerstones of fulfilling parenthood...
Would the child I was so intent on claiming eventually resent me?
No. I would do better than the indifferent and bitter hand I’d been dealt. Just as I knew Sadie would too—if only to counteract what her own father had done to her.
The hollow sensation intensified—as if now I’d admitted one craving, several more demanded to be addressed.
Something was missing. Perhaps...within me.
Had I bargained with chips that were flawed? Pushed Sadie into marriage without stopping to examine whether I was the type of husband she wanted? A fit father for our child?
Money. Influence. Power. All things I could offer.
All things she’d rejected one by one without batting an eyelash.
Her question lingered long after she’d disappeared into the bathroom, after the hiss of the shower taunted me with the knowledge that tonight might have been the only pleasure I experienced with her.
And then, like that tree I’d known would be my doom in that moment of clarity right before the accident in Gstaad, when I heard the sharp scream from the bathroom, I suspected things would never be the same again.
When, an hour later, I stood by Sadie’s bedside in another hospital, my gut twisting into knots as I stared down the barrel of a metaphorical gun, suspicion became certainty.
CHAPTER TEN
LOOKS MUCH WORSE than it is... Everything is fine, Mrs Xenakis. You just need to take it easy.
I repeated the doctor’s words to myself as the limo drove us home from the hospital a few hours later.
The ravaging pain shredding my heart had merely been put on hold in light of the scare in the bathroom. It was still waiting in the wings.
And even if I’d fooled myself into thinking it was in any way diminished, the tight, drawn look on Neo’s face testified that our conversation in the bedroom had merely been stayed.
That determined little muscle ticking in his jaw said it all. And it had only intensified with the doctor’s reassurance that our baby...our son...was fine. Thriving, in fact. That the blood I’d spotted in the shower was concerning, but ultimately nothing to stress over as long as I took it easy.
Why that news had triggered Neo’s ashen complexion and lockjawed determination only served to expand the stone lodged in my heart.
Had our conversation and the scare merely fast-tracked the inevitable?
We completed the journey home in tight, fraught silence.
When the driver shut off the ignition, Neo strode around to my side, offered his hand in silent command. I took it, stepped out, but when he leaned forward to lift me up I threw out a halting hand.
So soon after everything I’d experienced in his bed, and afterwards, having him so close would be detrimental to my emotional well-being.
The very thing I should’ve guarded against in the first place.
‘I can walk on my own. The doctor said to take it easy. I think that safely includes walking from the car to the villa,’ I said, unable to keep the tightness from my voice.
His lips tightened and he stayed close, unbearably surrounding me with his heat as I climbed the stairs to my suite, then perched on the wide, striped divan and watched the staff fuss with a tray of food and soft drinks Neo must have ordered before we left the hospital.
When the housekeeper lingered, Neo dragged an impatient hand through his hair. ‘Leave us,’ he snapped, authority stamped in his voice that saw his command immediately obeyed. He paced to the door, shut it, then returned, his footsteps heavy and resolute.
I knew what was coming. Unlike that postcard that had torn my world apart, this heartache-shaped wrecking ball I could see coming from a mile away.
‘Don’t do it. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it, Neo,’ I blurted.
He froze beside the bed, then dragged his hands down his face. Even with two-day stubble and shadows haunting his turbulent eyes, he looked sublime.
The man I craved more than was wise for me.
The man I’d fallen in love with as he glared at me from across his office, tossing bullet-sharp questions about marketing and then reproducing a birthday cupcake at short notice in the most stunning setting on earth.
‘Do you know what it felt like to see you there on that bathroom floor?’ he demanded raggedly, his voice rough to the point of near incoherence.
My pain twisted, morphed, as a new strand was woven into its jagged fabric. ‘Every pregnancy carries a risk. The doctor just said that.’
He gave a violent shake of his head. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept my hands to myself! If I hadn’t pushed for more!’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do. I feel it, Sadie. Right here.’ He pounded his closed fist on his midriff, his jaw tight with recrimination.
‘You think you’re something special?’
He inhaled sharply. ‘What?’
‘You think we’re the only couple who indulge in sex during pregnancy? That you deserve some kind of special punishment for doing something that comes naturally?’
‘There you go again—seeking the crown of martyrdom. I have a voice, Neo. And, if you recall, you didn’t get everything your own way. What makes you think I didn’t want it too? That I wasn’t in a hurry to fall into bed with you or marry you for my own reasons?’
He shook his head. ‘Be that as it may, I set this ball rolling—’
‘What? Gave me a roof over my head? A job opportunity that most would give their eye teeth for?’
‘You said yourself—those are just things. What you could’ve lost—’
‘But we didn’t lose anything, Neo. Our baby is fine.’
Raw bitterness tightened his face. ‘But for how long?’
My heart shredded. ‘What?’
‘I only negotiated for the short term, Sadie. As unfortunate as the circumstances are, it’s a wake-up call. I need to accept that I don’t have the tools for the long term.’
My fists bunched as anguish ripped through me. ‘I don’t buy that either, Neo. But I can’t stop you from this path you obviously want to take, so just spare me the suspense and spit it out?’
His jaw worked for the longest time. Then he nodded. ‘I’m leaving for Brazil tomorrow. Then travelling in Latin America for the next few weeks.’
‘You’re leaving.’
It wasn’t a question. More absorbing the impact of the wrecking ball.
‘Yes.’
‘Because I’m so different from Anneka?’ I taunted sarcastically.
‘Yes!’ The word was drawn from his soul. Almost as if he was terrified to admit it.
My jaw dropped. ‘Neo...’
‘You’ll be taken care of—’
‘I don’t want a laundry list of things you’re putting in place to ensure I don’t lift a finger. I want to know why you promised me better terms and are now reneging.’
