‘It was to me.’
Sitting up carefully in case she set off her fragile stomach again, she made a move with her legs that gave him no choice but to stand if he did not want her to unbalance him. Her head was still swimming and, pushing a set of fingers up to her brow, she was forced to remain sitting on his sofa when really she would have loved to just get up and walk out without speaking another word to him.
Pregnant…
At last the English translation had come to her. For some incomprehensible reason it had more impact in English. A hard word, abrupt—pregnant—no softness or sentimentality in it at all, unlike the so-much-gentler incinta…
‘You’ve lost weight.’
Lowering her hand she looked up and found he was standing several feet away, tall as a tree and blocking out most of the light from the window behind him, placing his face in shadow so she could not read his expression.
But she did not need light to feel the tension emanating from him.
‘You might as well call the doctor back and tell him not to bother because I will not see him,’ she said, looking away again because she could feel the first quivering beginning of hurt kicking in.
‘I am not ill.’ To prove it she made herself stand. ‘I am simply hungry because I forgot to eat today.’
‘And the day before that and the day before that,’ Nikos threw in. ‘There is hardly anything left of you and you are swaying where you stand. If you try to take a step you will probably hit the floor again—unless I catch you as I did before, of course, which is up for question right now because I am bloody angry with you, Mia. So angry I could give you a shake.’
‘You are angry—with me?’ Lifting up her chin her eyes sparked incredulous blue. ‘What do you think gives you the right to be anything where I am concerned?’
Ignoring that he said, ‘I’ve spoken to Fiona. You have been feeling unwell all week—’
Only for a week? Mia almost laughed at the understatement.
‘And you’ve been—going out drinking.’
Starting to wonder if she really had fainted again and not come around yet, Mia stared at his stiff censorious stance and waited to find out what her delirious imagination was going to make him say next!
‘With friends of Kat’s,’ he provided.
‘Fiona told you all of this?’ Even in her imagination she could not envisage his secretary would have offered up this kind of information about her.
‘No.’ He made a tense move with one broad shoulder. ‘I had—other sources.’
Other sources… ‘What other sources?’
‘I think you should sit down—’
‘I don’t want to sit down!’ Mia exploded. ‘I want to know what business it is of yours what I’ve been doing! And why you believe you can stand there like a disapproving father, censuring me!’
The moment she finished screeching at him she ruined it all by swaying when her dizzy head protested at the pressure she’d placed on it.
‘Sit down!’ he barked at her.
‘No!’ she fired back.
Only to release a groan that turned into a frustrated whimper when her stomach began to heave. Her hand went to cover it, her other hand lifting to hold her dizzy head. She heard Nikos mutter something not very polite about stubborn females, then felt his hands cup her elbows and she was being forcibly guided back down onto the sofa.
Then the doorbell went.
‘Stay right there,’ Nikos instructed—as if she was in a fit state to go anywhere!—and strode off.
Two minutes later he was back again, walking into the room with a middle-aged man carrying a doctor’s bag following in his wake, and Mia was back on her feet again, trying her best to look as if she was bursting with robust health.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Balfour,’ the doctor greeted briskly. ‘How may I help you?’
‘I really don’t—’