Frowning, he took in the small, homely apartment, so different from the wide expanses of his own. Small feminine touches marked the huge difference between Ella’s lifestyle and his own lone wolfish nature. His eyes pounced on the manila envelope, one he recognised from the morning of their last meeting. Had she signed them? Were there now two signatures on the paperwork?
Dorcas swept around him, pawing at the door which he presumed Ella had hidden herself behind. Ignoring the half whining dog, he turned back to the sound of the boiling kettle clicking itself off. Oddly tempted by the thought of pouring the hot water into the waiting cup, his eyes snagged on one of the many vitamin bottles and stopped.
Everything stopped.
His heart crashed in his chest as he grasped the bottle in his hand and drew it close for further inspection, for further confirmation he no longer needed. Pregnancy vitamins. White knuckles framed the name on the bottle. Ella Riding. And in that moment, he knew. He knew from the look in her eyes when
she’d seen him standing at the door, before fleeing. He knew instantly that it was his. A baby. Their baby.
* * *
Ella took giant gulps of air from where she sat with her back against the bathroom door, her heart unaccountably in tune with the gentle whines from Dorcas scratching at the wood. She didn’t even know how Roman had found her. She had been sharing the apartment with Célia for almost a year. Her name wasn’t on the lease, but she didn’t imagine that it would have taken much for Roman to uncover the relevant piece of information if he’d chosen to do so.
She’d thought she might have had more time. More time to figure out what to do, to figure out what it meant to her now that she was pregnant. Now that she couldn’t have the divorce she’d wanted, that she couldn’t have her freedom.
Because the moment she’d seen the little blue cross appear on the pregnancy test she’d known that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, keep Roman from her life, from their child’s life. Not after what they had each experienced in their own childhoods. But that hadn’t meant that she’d been able to reach out to him, to tell him about it. No. She admitted to herself now that she’d been a coward. And that just as surely as she’d taunted Roman about making his own bed, she would now have to lie in one of her own making.
Though she did not presume to know what Roman’s reaction might be, she knew her own. She’d promised herself that she’d never be beholden to another’s whims again and she’d meant it. But she also wanted to ensure that her child had the best chance in life for a happiness neither of its parents had so far achieved. She would do everything in her power to make sure that this child never felt an ounce of what she or Roman had. The cycle of vengeance had to end. And she could only hope that he would want that too.
Levering herself off the floor, she turned the handle on the door, only to find it immediately pressed inward by Dorcas’s wet grey nose nudging the wood aside. She buried her head into Ella’s hip and hand, her tail thrashing against the doorframe.
The small gesture of affection—the kind of physical comfort she hadn’t known she’d needed—brought tears to her eyes but she wiped them away, knowing that she would need all her armour for the conversation that was to come.
She rounded the corner of the small living space of the apartment and stopped under the weight of Roman’s intense gaze.
‘Were you going to tell me?’ he demanded.
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
She bit back a sigh, knowing that he had every right to ask such questions of her. ‘If you look in the drawer to the left of the stove, you’ll find a plane ticket to Russia booked for five days’ time.’
‘When did you find out?’ His clipped words lashed at her, and she took every single one with her head held high.
‘I guess about a month ago, but I wanted to make sure before I spoke to you.’
Roman looked towards the drawer she had indicated, but made no move to check the truth of her words. That he didn’t touched her. Soothed her a little, fanning the dull flame of hope in her chest.
He poured the water from the kettle into the cup of tea she’d had waiting before he’d knocked on her door, before she had been ready for him, and set it on the counter top between them as if unwilling, yet, to risk any physical contact between them.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked finally, his focus laser-sharp as she nodded.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
She sighed her yes more than said it.
He nodded once. ‘You will return to my side,’ he declared, inflaming the rage banked momentarily by their previous detente.
‘Why?’ she asked, genuinely curious.
‘Does everything have to have a damn explanation?’
‘Yes. In this case it does,’ she replied, choosing to ignore the angry outburst. ‘Because, really? There’s very little between us aside from resentment and lies. And that is not something that I will inflict on my child.’
‘So, you are keeping it?’
‘Of course!’ Ella’s outraged declaration thrummed through the air between them, beating at him accusingly. ‘You would ask me—?’