are you or aren’t you?’
That was what he said. A simple question.
He saw, as if from a long way away, her face blanch.
‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered, expression strained. ‘My period is late—’
‘How late?’ Again, a simple question.
‘I... I think it’s about a week late. I... I’m not sure. It may be longer.’
Anatole found himself trying to calculate in his head when she’d last been...indisposed. Could not quite place it. But that wasn’t relevant. Only one thing mattered now.
His voice seemed to come from a long way away. A long way from where she was sitting, gazing at him, her expression like nothing he had ever seen before. Like nothing he wanted to see.
‘You’d better do a test.’ The words came out clipped, completely unemotional. ‘With luck it’s a false alarm.’
Without luck—
His mind sheared away. He would not think about the alternative. But even as he steeled himself he narrowed his eyes, resting them on her face. There was a stricken look on it, but something more, too.
She’s hiding something.
Every instinct told him that. She was concealing something, pushing it back inside her, so that he could not tell what it was. But he knew—oh, he knew.
I haven’t given her the right answer—the answer she wanted to hear. I’ve caught her out by not giving her that answer, and she doesn’t know how to react now.
He knew what she’d wanted his reaction to be. It was obvious. He was supposed to have reacted very differently from the way he had.
I was supposed to look amazed—thrilled. I was supposed to sweep her up into my arms. Tell her she was the most treasured thing in the universe to me, carrying my oh-so-precious child! I was supposed to tell her that I was thrilled beyond everything—that she’d given me the best gift I could ever have dreamt of!
And then, of course, he was supposed to have gone down on one knee, taken her hand in his, and asked her to marry him.
Because that was what they all wanted, didn’t they? All the women who passed through his life. They wanted him to marry them.
And he was so tired of it—so bored, so exasperated.
All of them wanted to be Mrs Kyrgiakis. As if there weren’t three of them already—his father’s current wife and his two exes. Even his mother had coupled her new husband’s name to Kyrgiakis, to ensure so she got kudos from the family connection as well as her hand in the Kyrgiakis coffers.
So, no, with quite enough Mrs Kyrgiakises in the world, he did not want another one.
Not another one who had only become one because she was pregnant—the way his mother had become Mrs Kyrgiakis the Second. Giving her the perfect opportunity to dump her unwanted first husband and snap up a second. Not that she’d wanted his father for long, or he her. They’d both got bored and taken lovers, and then another spouse each. Creating yet another Mrs Kyrgiakis.
And so the circus had gone on.
I will not perpetuate it.
Not willingly. Never willingly—
His eyes rested on Tia, his expression veiled. She was looking pale and nervous. He reached out a hand as if to touch her cheek, reassure her. Then he pulled back. What reassurance could he give her? He didn’t want to marry her. That would hardly reassure her, would it?
‘Did you do it deliberately? Take a chance that you might get pregnant?’
The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He heard her gasp, saw her face blanch again. As if he had slapped her.
But he could not unsay them—un-ask the question he’d pushed at her.
‘Well?’ he persisted.
His eyes were still resting on her, no expression in them, because he did not want to let his feelings show. He needed to keep them banked down, suppressed.
He saw her swallow, shake her head.
‘Well, that’s something,’ he breathed. ‘So, how did it happen? How is it even a possibility?’
She’d been on the Pill for months now. Ever since he’d made the decision to keep her in his life. So what had gone wrong?
He saw her drop her eyes, her face convulse. ‘It was when we went to San Francisco. The changing time zones muddled me.’
He gave a heavy sigh. He should have checked—made sure she hadn’t got ‘muddled’.
‘Well, hopefully it hasn’t screwed things up completely.’
Her expression changed. Anxiety visible. But there was another emotion too. One he could not name. Did not want to.
‘Would it?’ Her voice was thin, as if stretched too far. Her eyes were searching his. ‘Would it screw things up completely?’
He turned away. Reached for his briefcase. It was going to be a long, draining day—getting through the annual board meeting, seeing his parents again, watching them pointedly ignore each other, pointedly show demonstrations of affection to their current new spouses, glaring testimony to the shallow fickleness of their emotions, constantly imagining themselves in love, rushing into yet another reckless, ill-considered marriage.
No wonder he didn’t want to marry—didn’t want to be cornered into marrying by any woman prepared to do anything to get his ring on her finger. Including getting herself pregnant.
I didn’t think Tia was like that. I thought what we had suited her, just like it suited me. I thought that she was fond of me, as I am of her—but there’s nothing about love. Nothing about marriage. And, dear God, nothing about babies!
But it looked as if he’d been wrong—
He didn’t answer her. Couldn’t answer her. Instead he simply glanced at his watch—he was running late already.
He looked back at her as he headed for the door, not meeting her eyes. ‘I’ll have a pregnancy testing kit delivered,’ he said—and was gone.
There was a tight wire around his throat. He felt its pressure for the rest of the day. All through the gruelling board meeting—his parents behaving just as he’d known they would, constantly pressing for yet more profits to be distributed to them. And after the meeting was the even more gruelling ordeal of an endlessly long lunch that went on all afternoon.
‘You seem distracted, Anatole. Is everything all right?’
This was his Uncle Vasilis, taking the opportunity to draw him aside after the formal meal had finally finished and everyone was milling about, lighting up cigars, drinking vintage port and brandy.
‘Call me old-fashioned,’ Vasilis said, ‘but
