‘How far?’
She gave a shrug of one sun-kissed, slender shoulder, and suddenly realised that she was going to have to admit that she’d let him go on taking her while she’d already suspected she could be pregnant. ‘I missed my second period last week,’ she told him with the usual defiant tilt to her chin. ‘I w-wanted to be sure before I told you.’
It was a weak excuse but he made no comment. He just stood there and gazed at her in total silence, his eyes and his expression telling her absolutely nothing.
Yet she sensed in him something—something that kept her very still in the warm sunshine, held in breathless waiting suspense for …
For what? she asked herself confusedly.
Then she knew exactly what because when his answer came it struck so deep that it actually felt as if it might have made her bleed somewhere.
‘That’s it, then,’ he said, and turned and walked away, leaving her standing there feeling cold, cast-down and rejected—feeling empty inside when, physically at least, she wasn’t.
An hour later she was standing in her bedroom when she heard the helicopter take off again. With white face, clenched teeth, closed eyes and hands coiled into two tight fists at her sides, she stood there in the middle of the room and listened until the very last whirr of those rotor blades had fluttered into silence.
‘That’s it, then.’ Those cruelly flat words had not stopped lacerating her since he had spoken them. There had been no enquiry as to her health—nothing but those three words that showed his contempt for both herself and their baby. Showed that the man had feelings cast in steel—he wanted the family island and did not care what he was forfeiting to get it.
She had expected nothing more from him but still the words had managed to cut her.
Then, quite without warning, the connecting door to his bedroom swung open. Mia started in surprise, whirling jerkily on her heel to find him standing where he should not have been.
The shock and confusion she experienced was so great that it sent her head spinning and the blood rushing from her brain to her tingling feet. Without really knowing why, since it had never happened to her in her life before, she quietly and silently sank into a faint.
‘What the hell happened?’ Alex’s voice was curt, gruff, grating at her eardrums as she came round again to find herself lying on the bed with him standing over her, his dark face a fascinating mix of anger and concern.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ she whispered frailly. ‘It w-was a shock when you walked in here.’
‘You thought I’d gone?’ He sounded so incredulous that she almost laughed. ‘I’ve only just arrived. Why the hell should I want to leave again so quickly?’
‘Why the hell should you want to walk into my bedroom during daylight hours?’ Mia countered waspishly.
He shifted uncomfortably, his expression becoming closed as he dropped down to seat himself on the edge of her bed. ‘I may be ruthless,’ he muttered gruffly, ‘but I’m not that bloody ruthless.’
It was such a small concession, such a very insignificant gesture on his part, that it really did not deserve the response it actually received yet …
Her arm came up, and of its own volition seemed to hook itself over his shoulder and around his neck as her eyes filled with weak, burning tears. She raised herself up and buried her face in the back of his shoulder—and wept.
Which of them was more shocked was difficult to determine. Mia was shocked at herself because, even in her darkest hours, she had never let herself do anything like this! She’d never cried in front of anyone—hardly ever let herself cry even in private—so she was shocked to find the flood-gates opening as abruptly as they did.
Alex was so shocked that he went rigid. She felt his shoulders grow tense, and his neck. She felt his heart thud against his ribcage as though the shock had jolted it out of its usual steady beat.
Then, with an odd, short, constrained sigh he was twisting around and putting his arms around her, holding her, saying
nothing but allowing her to do what she seemed to need to do—to weep in his arms as though her heart were broken.
But, as with all impulsive gestures, this one had to come to an eventual end. When it did, when the sobs changed to snuffles and she became aware of just what she had done and with whom she had done it embarrassment washed over her in a wave. It coloured her damp cheeks and made her shudder in horror. She pulled away from him, scrambled off the bed and made her way to her bathroom, leaving him sitting there with his dark eyes following her.
She didn’t look back, didn’t want to know what was going on in those eyes. She wanted privacy while she came to terms with what had just taken place in that sunny bedroom.
For the first time in too many years to count Mia had reached out to another human being for comfort. She despised herself for her weakness. She hated him for making her this vulnerable to him. And she hated this whole horrible situation that should never have started, but which now had to continue on its set course.
It was a course which settled her into the next stage of limbo. Surprisingly, Alex did not walk away and forget all about her now his part in the deal they had struck was done. If he was in Athens he came home to the villa every evening. He even began to eat his meals with her, talking, spending the evenings with her. He took her out—picnics to quiet bays in the afternoons, or into Skiathos town during the evenings to enjoy a stroll along the busy L-shaped quayside, now bustling with golden-skinned tourists.
But, true to his word, he never came to her bed again. At night she would lie there, aware that he was lying in his own bed on the other side of that connecting door, and know that he would never cross that threshold again.
Another month drifted by and then another, and a doctor was transported from Athens on a regular basis to check her over. Her weight gain was swift, so much so that she was certain that if she did not keep up her exercise, by swimming twice daily in the pool, she would blow up like a giant balloon.
She didn’t see the bloom on her face that seemed to glow with a secret kind of vitality or the way the rich redness of her hair had deepened, having a glossy sheen that shimmered like living fire in the sunlight.