by Pippa Roscoe
Maria shook her head. Both at the shocking hostility in his tone and at the awfulness that there had been women who had apparently tried to trick him in the past. In a second, all the things she thought they’d shared, the beauty of that one night she’d clung to as her world had morphed and changed before her eyes, burned to dust. She didn’t know this man. She was nothing to him. And she would never, never, force such a thing upon her child.
‘Not as disappointed as I am. I hope that your conscience is kind to you when you realise just how wrong you are,’ she stated, gathering her wits about her, and the scraps of her feelings from the floor. She placed the untouched glass down on the small coffee table, reaching into her bag to retrieve the black and white sonogram image of their, no her, child—the one thing that she could give him, the only thing, and, placing it beside the glass, she turned her back on him and stepped towards the door.
‘Wait.’
‘What for?’ she asked without turning, her back still to him. ‘For you to hurl even more insults at me? I don’t think so.’
‘Please.’
She turned then, not because his tone was pleading—which it wasn’t—but because she would give him this chance. She needed to. She found him standing by the coffee table, one finger on the corner of the sonogram. He wasn’t looking at her, but at it. The image of their child. She wondered what he saw in the grey shapes, the patches of darkness and the surprisingly detailed white figure of their baby. The head, the umbilical cord, arms and legs, all clearly visible.
Finally he looked up at her.
‘Do not lie to me about this, Maria. Do not test me.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not. I’m pregnant. The baby is yours.’
‘How?’
Again, shaking away the doubt and confusion she had felt when she’d first seen that thin blue line. ‘Condoms aren’t fail proof, I wasn’t on any other kind of contraception. I...’ She shrugged.
‘You’re pregnant. The baby is mine.’
* * *
Maria nodded and Matthieu’s whole world shifted on its axis. He cast his eye back to the small black and white image on the coffee table. His child?
‘I’m...’ stunned, shocked...what? His mind was completely blank. Though the one thing he could recognise above the white noise roaring in his ears was that Maria deserved an apology.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, the sea of confusion and chaotic thoughts making his tone dark, guttural almost. The instant refusal that had risen to his mind had been both cruel and devastating. He hadn’t missed the way her already pale skin had turned almost bone white beneath his taunt. But it hadn’t been that that had convinced him that she spoke the truth. No. It had been her ready departure. So different from the crocodile tears and insincere desperation he’d experienced in the past. Maria had been willing to walk away not just from him, but from what many others had tried to secure. His money. His ring.
A ring he’d once sworn never to put on a woman’s finger. Never imagining for a second the need to do so. Never being so unfailingly irresponsible to sire a child that would, along with its mother, invade his carefully ordered life.
He gestured for her to sit and only after she had stiffly approached the sofa opposite where he stood, and sat, or rather collapsed slightly into the deeply upholstered leather, did he finally sit down too.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked, holding her gaze with the steel trap of his own, ruthlessly seeking out her intentions, almost willingly seeing hints of her avarice.
‘Nothing,’ she said, seemingly confused by his question. ‘I just wanted to let you know. You...have that right.’
He bit back a cynical laugh. He doubted the truth of her words very much. She might not be after his money or his ring, but there must be something. There was always something.
‘You waited three months?’ he said, accusingly, not having to work hard to do the maths. He’d known every single one of the days since he’d last touched her, kissed her, brought them both to orgasm.
She nodded. ‘The first three months are so...precarious,’ she said, shaking her head and shoulders, as if she hadn’t been alone to bear the weight of that knowledge, that fear that something could have happened, could have taken away their...their child.
The child he could see formed by light and dark in the small black and white sonogram on the table between them.
‘Did you think that I would try to change your mind? Is that why you waited?’ Not needing to work hard to find the fury at the possibility that she would think such a thing of him.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m keeping this baby, Matthieu, whether you want to be part of its life or not.’
‘I would never—’
‘How would I know that?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t even know your last name.’
‘But you found out.’ The unspoken question in his mind rang loud, beating in time with his heart.
‘Only when I needed to.’ Her assurance, the promise offered by her words that she had not sought him out until she’d had to, melted the ire edging his anger, transforming it, lessening it—but only slightly. ‘Look, I respected what you said then about it only being one night,’ she pressed on. ‘I’m only here now to let you know, and to give you the chance to choose whether you would like to be in the baby’s life or not. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘That simple?’ he asked, unconsciously echoing the conversation from that night.
‘I am beginning to see that where you are concerned, Matthieu, nothing is simple.’
He reached then for his water, not because he was thirsty, but to buy time. And he never had to buy time. He always knew what to say, how to react. Until now. Until her. He began to wonder if he ever had any choice in the matter at all. His body overriding all senses, all sensibilities.
Father.
He was going to be a father.
‘We will marry.’
The look on her face would have been comical in any other circumstance. The horror and shock overriding the fierce neutrality that she had presented in the last few moments.
‘No.’
That’s different. So many had tried to coerce themselves into his life, but of course Maria was different. He briefly wondered if this might have been part of some larger game, some grander scheme, but he decided not. There had been nothing about Maria then, or now, that indicated some ulterior motive. Wasn’t that what had driven him to her in the first place? Her innocence?
‘I don’t think you understand—’
‘No. It is you who doesn’t understand,’ Maria cut in. ‘That’s not why I came here. I have no intention of marrying you. I don’t want that, or your money. My only interest is the level of your involvement in my child’s—’
‘Our child’s,’ he said, interrupting her.
‘Our child’s life.’
‘And that is what I’m telling you, Maria. My interest will be deep, my level of involvement will be total.’
CHAPTER FOUR
MARIA FELT PULLED beneath a tide of emotion, some parts fear, some parts daunted, and all parts consuming. She hadn’t lied to him. She hadn’t come here to demand marriage, or anything more than maybe weekend visits. She hadn’t imagined that he’d even want that if she was honest. Certainly not after reading the hundreds of articles on the ‘notorious beast’. She hated herself for using that description even mentally. Because she knew why they had called him that. His scars had made him the subject of intense speculation, his wealth and almost cruel single-minded, driven success all the more so.
And now, to have all that focus pinned on her... She couldn’t help but want to shrink back from it. But she couldn’t. Not now that she had someone else to protect. Her unborn child. Her hands instinctively wrapped around her waist, his hawk-eyed gaze watching her every move.
‘Why?’ she couldn’t help but
ask. Everything about Matthieu screamed isolation. The way he did his business, the way he reportedly lived.
‘I will protect my child,’ he said, his determined voice sending a shiver down her back.
‘Protect? Not love?’ she demanded. Because in truth that was all that mattered to Maria right now. It was the only thing that mattered.
‘Of course I will love my child,’ he said dismissively.
But not the mother of his child.
Maria pushed aside the sad thought. How had this happened to her? Just when she was on the brink of her freedom, her jewellery business beginning to find traction, her false feelings for Theo behind her, to discover who she was outside that, to find an independence that meant so much to her.
‘We don’t have to marry for you to...protect our child.’
He scoffed an almost cruel laugh. ‘Are you that naïve, Maria? Do you have even an inkling of what will happen when the press find out?’
She hadn’t thought of that. She simply hadn’t thought of anything past the point of telling Matthieu about the baby. Unease began to grow within her at the sheer conviction in his tone.
‘They will hound you, Maria. They will dig up every little thing they can find out about you. They will stalk your friends and family, they will offer money for any salacious story they could print, they will go through your rubbish and camp on your doorstep. They will follow you and anyone who knows you.’
Maria didn’t have to work hard to imagine the awful things he was saying. Because she knew how the press worked. Had experienced a little of it first hand when her father had been exiled, when her brother had been forced to assume the purse strings and sell off nearly every single thing they had owned. Even now they still stalked Sebastian and every single woman he encountered. Some thought he courted it, but Maria knew he resented it, hated it. But he was happy as long as they’d left her alone.
Her brother. Her protector. Just as Matthieu wanted to protect their child. She didn’t think for a minute that Seb could help her in this situation though. No. The Rohan de Luens were minor exiled nobility. Matthieu Montcour was a completely different level of notoriety and fame. She had seen that for herself within seconds of hitting enter on the search bar with his name in it.
His words had conjured exactly what he had intended. Fear. And more than that. His words had chipped away at her belief that she could still have her freedom, that she could still be in charge of her life the way she hadn’t before now, and now never would.
‘But how can we marry? I don’t know anything about you,’ she said, fighting back the rising tide of panic in her chest.
‘You know my birthday and my favourite colour. That is more than most know.’
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she said, almost on a whisper as her last defences began to crumble. He waited until she met his gaze before speaking and his words were the final blow.
‘I know that you make jewellery and that you do it in spite of your stepmother’s objections. I know that you are kind and thoughtful or you wouldn’t have been so upset at the idea of breaking someone’s engagement, no matter how you thought you felt about the groom. I know that you are not after my money or this conversation would have been significantly different, and I know that you are strong, defiant and determined. And I know that you will do whatever you need to do to protect our child.’
I also know the feel of your skin beneath mine, the blush that rises to your cheeks when you can’t fight your desires, and I know the sounds of your pleasure when you climax, Matthieu concluded silently, unwilling to speak his wayward thoughts out loud.
He watched as her eyes grew wide with surprise, a faint blush—as if conjured by his very thoughts—rising to her cheeks.
‘If we were to marry... If,’ she repeated as if she hadn’t already made her decision, which he very much believed that she had. ‘What would that...be like? What would it look like to you?’
Terms. He was good at this. Securing contracts and finalising practicalities. He would have time later to consider the implications of impending fatherhood. Feelings had no place here, not now. The irony of that would have struck a more righteous man in the heart.
‘You will live with me here in Switzerland. I can arrange for everything you could ever need to be available to you. As I’m sure you have already figured out, there are certainly benefits to marrying me. Especially for your business.’
‘No. That’s...that’s not up for discussion. My business is mine and I don’t want your involvement.’
He frowned. For many, that would have been enticement enough.
‘I have contacts around the world and the resources to give you access to some of the finest materials—’
‘I said no. I can source my own materials and any achievements I make professionally will be my own.’
Her words were fast and harsh, as dark as he’d ever heard her tone, both tonight and three months ago. Clearly her independence was important to her, but he resisted the urge to warn her not to let pride get in the way of success. Partly because he very much found pride in his own success. He knew what that meant and found that he respected her for it.
‘Do you have a particular stipulation in mind?’
He also gave her credit for not flinching, though clearly she wanted to. It might have been distasteful to discuss the matter in such a way, but necessary to avoid future upset, misunderstandings...he couldn’t say heartache, because he would never, never, allow himself such an indulgence.
‘I...we...would stay married until our child is at least twenty.’
He almost laughed then, at her naivety, her innocence. ‘Maria, hear this now. In the little time they were alive, my parents at least installed in me a sense of the sanctity of marriage. I may not be religious, but I do not believe in divorce.’
As if refusing to acknowledge his declaration, she looked at her hands.
‘I’m not sure that I can just pack up my life and move in with you.’
‘Really? I get the impression that you are more than capable of anything you put your mind to, Maria.’
Her gaze flew to his and her expressive face registered surprise, and something else...something warmer, serving only to heat his blood from within. He ruthlessly pushed that aside. It was absolutely vital that he got her agreement in this. He’d meant what he said. He would protect his child, and by extension her too. But he wouldn’t lie to her. She had asked him of his expectations and it was important that he state his intentions now.
‘My home is on the edges of Lake Lucerne, in the heart of this country. It is...certainly big enough for us, and our child.’ He knew his words were modest. The large sprawling estate was an architectural marvel and he forced himself to stifle the discomfort at the idea of opening it up to another person, to Maria. But he would. He’d have to. The idea of Maria and his child being anywhere other than with him? Simply untenable.
‘You will have access to anything you could want. Truly. But I need you to understand one thing, Maria.’ Her eyes grew watchful, assessing, as if she realised that this was the most important thing of all. ‘Do not build hopes and fantasies about me. I promise you now, that I will love, care for and provide every single earthly want for our child. But that is the extent of what I will offer.’
* * *
He was saying that he wouldn’t, couldn’t, love her. He was refusing her the one thing she’d only just realised she’d ever wanted. A wave of sorrow crashed over her and she thought, How funny. An engagement is supposed to be a happy thing.
She forced herself to focus on what he was offering her. Her child would want for nothing. Her child would grow up with the kind of security she had once taken for granted, until it had been lost. Never would her child experience the shocking devastation she had. Because she would protect their child. She, who had been protected all her life, would become protector
and that thought fired her determination more than any other.
‘One condition.’
‘Anything.’ His response, quick and sure.
‘It will be a small wedding. No guests.’ She didn’t want that day to be a public spectacle. Didn’t want her family there, her stepmother turning it into a farce. She could already imagine the lascivious glint in Valeria’s gaze, the image of her mother in her father’s eyes, and the disappointment in her brother’s.
‘Just us and two witnesses?’
‘Yes.’
‘It will be so.’
He reached for her hand across the table, the heat of his fingers searing as they wrapped around her cool skin. A handshake, as if nothing more than a contract had been agreed to.
Tears threatened the backs of her eyelids, but she willed them away. Others might be full of joy and brimming with happiness, but she wasn’t one of those soon-to-be brides. No. She was a soon-to-be mother and would do whatever it took to care for, protect and love her child in the way that she had not felt herself.
* * *
Matthieu might have wanted a quick wedding, but even he, with all his might and money, could not force Swiss bureaucracy to bend to his will. Once their marriage application had passed through the churning machine of legalities and regulations they had still needed to wait ten long days before the ceremony could take place. And Matthieu had used that time well. He might not have known much about Maria before, but, having collected the many required details for the application, he did now.
He was going to be a father.
He almost resented Maria the time she’d had to mentally prepare for impending parenthood. She’d had about a month on him before informing him, but he had been forced to absorb it all in a matter of an hour or two that night. But since then?
