Devastatingly real.
And then he realised she was staring and the scowl returned.
‘Eat up,’ he ordered, the hard lines of his face back in control. ‘And then we’ll talk.’
He couldn’t believe how much she could eat. Simone would have poked and prodded and chased around bits of tuna in her salad and still left half of it sitting in her bowl, whereas this woman had devoured—no, demolished—her entire plateful, as if it was the first decent meal she’d had in years. Then again, maybe it was, given the way the woman was now reaching for the bread to mop up the gravy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman even eat bread, come to think of it. But then he’d never seen any woman eat like this one.
At least he knew that she wouldn’t be going home hungry. More to the point, his baby wouldn’t go hungry tonight.
His baby. Even twenty-four hours on, the very concept still sent a shudder through his veins, the news so unexpected and left-field he was still having trouble trying to assimilate it.
Once upon a time he’d prayed for it to happen, if only so he could see Carla smile again and know that she meant it, if only so that she might finally find that elusive happiness she sought.
But the whole IVF process had been so intense, so clinical, and as it turned out, so laden with despair and disappointment that it had been a relief when the doctors had put a stop to it. He’d written off his chances of having a child then.
That it should happen now, so many years later, was a victory as bitter as it was sweet.
Because by some freakish accident, by some cruel twist of fate, he was going to be a father after all.
It had finally happened.
But why—damn it all, why—in the womb of this woman?
Cruel twist of fate?
Or cruel joke?
He 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?