in his jaw, near his ear. “I’m certain he does,” he said quietly. “I’m sure he thinks you’re his mother.”
The words, gently spoken, cut her to the quick.
The tears she’d fought to hold back now flooded her eyes, and she looked away and bit down ruthlessly into her lower lip, forcing her teeth into the soft skin, drawing blood to distract her from the pain Nikos had just caused.
He was right, of course.
Absolutely right.
And yet she had never once let herself think those words, or feel the power of them.
The baby would lose his mother, just as she had lost her mother...
It wasn’t fair, not for him. Maybe not for any of them. But it was the decision she had made to help provide for her sister. It was the only thing she could think to do given their circumstances.
She blinked hard, fiercely, trying to dry the tears, praying he didn’t see them.
“Which is why you are here,” he added flatly. “To allow my son to know me, to become familiar with my voice, to establish a bond so that when you leave the hospital after delivery, he won’t be in distress as he will have me...his father.”
Nikos wasn’t making things better. He was making it worse. And his words felt like he’d poured salt all over an open wound.
So the baby won’t be in distress...
So that when you leave, he won’t suffer...
For a second she couldn’t catch her breath. Pain splintered in her heart, radiating in every direction.
She’d never gone here...to this place...
She’d never really let herself think of him, though, cognizant of the fact that the child wasn’t hers. It had been almost too easy these past six months to remind herself of that as she wasn’t the maternal type, that she’d never played house or cuddled dolls as a little girl, not like Savannah or Charlie, her youngest sister, who wouldn’t go anywhere without a doll in the crook of her arm.
She’d constantly reminded herself that she was the tomboy. That she didn’t need touch, didn’t need cuddles, didn’t need tenderness. No, she was tough. A tomboy. She’d always preferred to run and jump and swim. Growing up, she’d been happiest challenging others to races. She loved competition. She was good at all subjects and brilliant at math. She loved doing complicated problems in her head, loved solving equations, and once she began studying chemistry, she found another favorite subject.
Life made sense in a lab. Math made sense.
Emotions and the heart...those didn’t make sense. Those couldn’t be managed and controlled.
So no, she’d told herself she didn’t want children. She told herself throughout the hormone treatments and egg retrieval that she hadn’t inherited a maternal gene. She’d repeated this during the IVF transfer, focusing on her lack of patience and her inability to compromise and yield as reasons why she shouldn’t be a mother.
And then when she got the call that she was pregnant, that the embryo transfer had taken hold, her fierce, tough heart missed a beat.
She’d felt shock and joy, and then she’d suppressed the joy and focused on the future. Her future in medicine.
Conceiving the baby had been a scientific act, one with predictable steps and measurable progress. Of course there were uncertainties, just as there were with every pregnancy, but so far the pregnancy had been smooth.
At least, she’d been able to pretend it was smooth. But now Nikos had lifted the lid on Pandora’s box. The baby had become real. And she could say she wasn’t maternal, but she suddenly feared for the baby, feared for the life he might have to live...
Without her.
Georgia drew a panicked breath. Her fingers lightly grazed her bump, as if reassuring the baby that all would be well. But truthfully, now that she was here, now that she saw where the child would grow up, and how he’d grow up, and who would raise him, she wasn’t at all sure he would be okay.
This wasn’t the life she’d imagined for him...not that she’d spent that much time imagining a future she wouldn’t be part of, but she’d smashed her worries with a blind confidence that the child was part of an immensely wealthy family and he’d lead a privileged life.
She’d told herself he’d have the best of everything: education, opportunity, protection.
Now she wondered if that would be enough.
Stop. Stop, Georgia, stop. She couldn’t think like this, couldn’t go there in her head, either. She’d known from the beginning she wouldn’t keep the baby; she’d known she had no say in his future. She was a vessel. She was nothing more than a womb. She’d signed away every right to him.
Not her child.
His.
“Are you crying?” he asked, sitting next to her on the couch.
“No.” She was not a crier. She couldn’t remember when she’d last wept in public over anything.
“You are,” he contradicted, taking her chin and lifting her face to his inspection, his dark gaze scrutinizing every inch of her face, making her cheeks flush and her eyes sting and burn. “What is happening? One moment you are laughing—the next you are crying. I don’t understand.”
That made two of them. She didn’t understand, either. “Maybe it’s the jet lag.”
He gazed at her intently, staring into her eyes, as if able to see all the way through her. “Or pregnancy hormones?”
She could feel the heat of his fingers on her jaw, and a sensitive prickling in her skin. She couldn’t remember the last time a man touched her. She’d dated plenty but medical school had been so consuming for the past few years that there was no time for serious relationships, and even if Georgia had time, she wasn’t one to jump in and out of bed. It wasn’t her upbringing—she wasn’t pious in the least—but trust. Or lack of trust. She wasn’t comfortable stripping bare, becoming vulnerable. She wasn’t comfortable exposing her body or her heart.
“Emotions are definitely more volatile when pregnant,” she conceded, trying to ignore the crazy pulse leaping in response, wondering if he could feel the rapid staccato in her jaw, hoping he couldn’t, as the mad beating of her heart wasn’t due to fear, but something else...something worse.
She was reacting to him. Responding to him.
“I am not usually emotional,” she added.
“So you said on the application.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “It’s you. Your effect on me.”
His brow furrowed. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No. Not afraid. But you are intense. I’m sure I’d be calm...or calmer...if you gave me a little bit more space.” She’d tried to sound matter-of-fact, but the words came out breathless, her voice suddenly pitched low and husky.
