screwed up the napkin in his lap, dropped it next to his plate. Cruel either way. Because the one thing she had in common with Carla was the one thing he’d hated about her the most.
God, and Dr Carmichael had assured him she was healthy. She didn’t look healthy. And hadn’t she practically fainted on him earlier? She was gaunt, her arms perilously thin and when she’d taken off her sunglasses to come inside, the dark circles under her eyes had threatened to swallow up her whole face.
And right now a niggling concern tugged at the edges of his admiration for her appetite. For there had been those rare times that Carla too had eaten well, getting his hopes up that maybe she was recovering, only for her to spend the next few hours locked in the bathroom purging herself of every last calorie.
He watched the woman opposite put down her knife and fork and take a sip of water. Any second now, he thought, the past flooding back with bitter clarity, she’ll excuse herself …
But, instead, she surprised him by sitting back in her chair with a look of utter contentment on her face. ‘That was amazing,’ she said. ‘I am so full.’
He might have smiled in other circumstances, if he hadn’t already been counting. He knew the drill. Twenty minutes would be enough for her body to absorb vital nutrients for his child. He just had to keep her sitting there for twenty minutes.
The plates were cleared away, an order for coffee taken. The woman stuck with water though she’d been offered decaf. She made no attempt to go to the bathroom. He didn’t like that he couldn’t find fault with either of those things, even though there was an abundance of things about her that still rankled, from the way her hands fidgeted when she wasn’t eating to the fact that this meeting was even necessary. But it was her appearance that was right up there near the top of the list.
Though he had to concede she looked better for eating. There was colour in her face now, he noticed, her cheeks faintly blushed, her lips pink and wide and surprisingly lush now that he thought about it. Strange, how much difference colour made to her features. Even her eyes seemed to have found colour somewhere, maybe because her face was no longer dominated by the dark circles under her eyes. Clear blue, like crystal clear pools where you could almost see the bottom but for the ripples on the surface, they looked almost too big for the rest of her face. He searched them now, wishing the ripples away so he could find out what it was that motivated her, what had really brought her here today, but they chose that moment to skitter away and he was left wondering—was she hiding something?
There was only one way to find out. ‘Okay,’ he said, placing a small voice recorder on the table between them, ‘let’s get down to business.’
Angie licked her lips. A moment ago she’d been enjoying the afterglow of the best meal she’d ever had, her tastebuds still tingling, alive with new flavours. But that was then. Now she felt his resentment coming in waves across the table and she didn’t understand why. His tone and his words made it sound as if they were in the midst of some kind of business meeting rather discussing the future of the child she carried. ‘What’s that for?’
‘For the record, Mrs Cameron. Rest assured, you’ll be given a copy.’
She blinked. ‘You don’t trust me.’
His eyes pinned her across the table and for the first time she noticed just how dark they were, as dark as his voice was deep, as if they’d both been tapped from the same dark cavern, deep below the earth. ‘Who said anything about not trusting you?’
Was he kidding? His answer was right there in his eyes, if not in his actions. ‘But you don’t trust me. You only bought me lunch because you couldn’t trust me to eat it otherwise.’
Across the table he sat back hard against his seat back, the movement unwittingly drawing her eyes to the pull of fine, crisp cotton against broad masculine chest, a random thought approving of the contrast of white cotton against the olive skin at his open neck. ‘Put it this way,’ he said, and she blinked, annoyed with herself that she’d been distracted. She had no business noticing such details. She didn’t want to notice such things. Certainly not about him.
‘The thing is,’ he continued, ‘I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. And, even if we did know each other, given the fact it’s months until this child is born, I think it’s wise to ensure from the beginning there are no misunderstandings down the track. Don’t you?’
‘What kind of misunderstandings?’
He shrugged, no casual shrug but a deliberate and calculated movement of those broad shoulders. This time she didn’t allow her eyes to linger longer than to get the impression that he would just as easily shrug her off, if only he could. ‘Either one of us could say things today and then change their mind before the baby is born.’
‘I’m not changing my mind!’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’
‘And you don’t need the recording.’
‘No?’ He leaned forward. ‘But what if I were to change my mind? Trust works both ways, Mrs Cameron.’
If he changed his mind? Angie sat back in her chair, her fingers knotting in her lap, her fingertips finding the absent place where her rings had once been. He was messing with her head, talking trust and misunderstandings. She’d assumed she’d turn up today and he’d agree to take the baby. It was that simple.
Wasn’t it?
‘So what you’re actually telling me, Mr Pirelli, is that you’re not a man to be trusted.’
Even as his mouth curved into a smile, one look at his cold, glittering eyes and Angie realised she’d just overstepped some unseen line. ‘Like I said,’ he clarified in that deep voice that seemed to rumble its way through her very bones like the growl of a jungle cat and sounded just as ominous, ‘we don’t know each other. And this is no stray cat or a dog we’re talking about. This is a child. My child. A baby that won’t be born for six months. You think I’m going to leave that to chance? I want whatever we decide on paper. I want it watertight. And I don’t want there to be any chance that one of us can change our minds. Not where this baby is concerned.’
She sighed, dropping her head into her hands. This was so not how she’d imagined this meeting going. But maybe she’d been naive in thinking this would be simple. Maybe he was right. For it wasn’t as if they were talking about a puppy that had wandered into the wrong house that she was returning. It was a baby, a child that had been implanted into the wrong woman and which wouldn’t be born for six long months. Of course they would need some kind of record of their agreement. ‘Okay,’ she conceded, ‘we’ll do it your way.’
‘Good,’ he said, impatience more than satisfaction weighing down the word as he leaned forward to switch the machine on. ‘Let’s get on with it. First to the basics. You’re currently approximately twelve weeks pregnant with a child that is not your own, is that so?’
‘That’s right.’
‘After being mistakenly implanted with my biological child rather than your own embryo.’
She nodded, adding a late, ‘Yes.’
‘And you called me yesterday to tell me this.’
‘Yes.’
‘And
