like a caged lion, his jaw pushed all the way forward with tension.
‘Don’t dare to mention a termination,’ she said. ‘I won’t agree to it and you can’t force me.’
He stopped pacing to look at her. ‘I do have some measure of humanity about me, Emelia. This is not the child’s fault.’
She gave him an accusing glare. ‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’
He raked his hair with his fingers. ‘You should have told me you weren’t well. What were you thinking?’
‘Being sick doesn’t come with the job description of corporate trophy wife,’ she threw back. ‘I’m supposed to be glamorous and perfectly groomed and ready for you at the click of your fingers, remember?’
He stood staring at her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You think that is what I always expected of you?’
‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked with an embittered look.
He swallowed tightly and sent his hand back through his hair. ‘You have it so wrong, Emelia.’
‘I know you probably won’t believe me, but this is not something I planned,’ she said. ‘Not like this. I wanted to have a baby but I wanted us to both want it.’
He was so silent she started to feel uncomfortable, wondering if his mind was taking him back to what the press had speciously claimed about her relationship with Peter Marshall.
‘This baby is yours, Javier,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘You have to believe me on this. There has been no one but you.’
‘No one else is going to believe that,’ he said, pacing again.
Emelia flattened her mouth. ‘So that’s what’s important to you, is it? What other people think? You didn’t seem to mind what people thought when that nightclub singer draped herself all over you.’
He frowned darkly as he turned back to face her. ‘Emelia, this is not helping. We have to deal with this.’
‘You have to deal with it,’ she said. ‘I have already dealt with it. I want this baby more than anything. It’s a miracle to me that it’s happened.’
‘How many weeks are you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘The doctor thinks only a month, if that.’
He gave a humourless laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Dios mio, what a mess.’
‘This is a child we are talking about,’ Emelia said, feeling a little too close to tears than she would have liked. ‘I don’t consider him or her to be a mess or a problem that has to be solved. I want this baby. I will love it, no matter how or why or when it was conceived.’
Javier saw the shimmering moisture in her eyes and felt a hand grab at his insides. Her hormones were no doubt all over the place and he wasn’t helping things by reacting on impulse instead of thinking before he spoke. No wonder she had been so het up about his regular trips to Moscow, especially when that ridiculous article came out on his return. ‘Emelia, we’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘I will support you. You have no need to worry about that. You and the baby will want for nothing.’
She looked at him with wariness in her grey-blue gaze. ‘I’m not sure I want my child to grow up with a parental relationship that is not loving and secure.’
He came over and unpeeled her hands from around her body, holding them in the firm grasp of his. ‘There are not many things you can bank on in life, Emelia. But I can guarantee you this—whatever happens between us will not affect our child. I won’t allow it. We will have to put our issues aside. They can never have priority over the well-being of our child.’
Her expression was still guarded. ‘You’re not ruling out divorce at some stage, though, are you?’
He drew in a breath, holding it for a beat or two before releasing it. ‘There is no reason why a divorce cannot be an amicable arrangement,’ he said. ‘If we feel the attraction that brought us together is over, I see no reason not to move on with our lives as long as it doesn’t cause upset to our child.’
She pulled out of his hold and hugged herself again. ‘We clearly don’t share the same views on marriage,’ she said. ‘I’ve always believed it should be for life. I know things can go wrong but that’s true of every relationship, not just a marital one. Surely two sensible adults who respect each other can work their way through a rough patch instead of bailing out in defeat.’
‘I find it intriguing that you are suddenly an expert on marriage when you were the one to leave the marital home, not me,’ Javier said. ‘You pulled the plug, remember?’
Her mouth was pulled so tight it went white at the edges. ‘That is so like you, to put the blame back on my shoulders, absolving yourself of any culpability. You drove me from you, Javier. You had no time for me. I was just a toy you picked up and put down at your leisure. I had no assurances from you. I didn’t know from one day to the next whether you would be called away on business. Business always came first with you. I gave up everything to be with you, and yet you didn’t give me anything in return.’
‘I beg to differ, cariño,’ he said. ‘I spent a fortune on clothes and jewellery for you. Every trip I returned from, I gave you a present of some sort. I know many women who would give anything to be in your position.’
She glared at him hotly. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? I don’t want expensive jewellery and designer clothes. I hate those clothes and ridiculous shoes upstairs. They make me feel like a tart. I’ve never wanted any of that from you.’
‘Then, for God’s sake, what do you want?’ he asked, goaded into raising his voice.
She looked at him bleakly. ‘I just want to be loved,’ she said so softly he had to strain his ears to hear it. ‘I have dreamed of it for so long. My father couldn’t do it without conditions. I thought when I met you it would be different, but it wasn’t. You want something I can’t give you, Javier. I can’t be a trophy wife. I can’t be a shell of a person. I have to love with my whole being. I gave you my heart and soul and you’ve crushed it beneath the heel of your cynicism.’
Javier watched as she turned and left the room. She didn’t slam the door, as many women would have done. She closed it with a soft little click that ricocheted through him like a gunshot.
ALMOST a week went past and Emelia saw very little of Javier over that time. He hadn’t even come to bed each night until the early hours of the morning, which made her wonder if he was avoiding talking to her. He seemed to be throwing himself into his work until he fell into bed exhausted. Even in sleep she could see the lines of strain around his mouth, and on the rare occasions when his eyes met hers during waking hours they had a haunted shadowed look.
Aldana had come across Emelia being sick a couple of mornings ago as she’d come into the master suite to change the bedlinen. The housekeeper’s dark gaze seemed to put two and two together for she said, ‘Is that why you came back to Señor Mélendez—because you need
