How much more time? A week? A month? And then what? When the holiday romance burned itself out? When he finally didn’t want you any more because all he wanted was an affair...? Nothing permanent. Nothing binding between them.
She heard again in her head his warning to her that horrible, horrible morning in Bermuda when she’d walked out and gone to the airport to fly to New York alone.
‘What had you in mind? I made it clear, right from the start, that I was only talking about a few weeks together at the most...’
A hideous, hollow laugh sounded inside her. A few weeks? Oh, dear God, now she had the means to be with him, to keep him in her life, for far longer than a few weeks...
A permanent, perpetual bond between them.
Her features twisted.
No, it wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all.
I wasn’t supposed to fall for him.
She swallowed the nausea rising in her throat again.
I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant...
CHAPTER TEN
NIKOS EXITED THE brand-new office building, heading for the car that waited for him at the kerb. He glanced up at the sky between the tall serried ranks of modern office blocks in downtown Hong Kong. The clouds had massed even more, and the humid air had a distinct chill to it. The wind was clearly rising. The local TV channel had been full of news of an impending typhoon, speculating on whether it would hit the island or not.
Back at his hotel, he noticed that the typhoon warning notice had gone up a level. His mouth set. He still had more meetings lined up, but they might have to be postponed if the weather worsened. Once a typhoon hit in force the streets would be cleared of traffic, the subway shut down and the population kept indoors until it was safe to go out again.
From his suite at the top of the towering hotel, with its view over the harbour, he could see the grey water, choppy and restless, and watched frowningly as ocean-going ships came in from the open sea beyond to seek shelter from the ferocious winds that were starting to build. The way things were going, it was more than likely his flight back to London would be cancelled.
Frustration bit at him. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck here in Hong Kong with a typhoon threatening!
He forced himself to be rational. He’d set the security agency he used for personal protection to the task of tracking down the woman he had to locate—and that would take time. Even as he thought this a memory darted with piquant power—the memory of his first evening with Mel, bantering with her about how she should take a bodyguard with her on her travels to keep all predatory males away from her...
How long ago that seemed—and yet also as if it were only yesterday...
Automatically, he checked his mobile and email—still nothing from the agency. With a vocal rasp, he got stuck back into his work yet again.
Patience—that was what he needed. But he wasn’t in the mood to be patient. Not in the slightest.
* * *
The tube train taking Mel into the City, towards the London offices of the Parakis Bank, was crowded and airless. She felt claustrophobic after the wide-open spaces of America, and she was dreading the ordeal that lay in front of her.
She should have phoned first, she knew, but she hadn’t been able to face it. Nikos probably wasn’t even in London now—why should he be? But maybe she could talk to his PA, find out where he was, how best to get in touch with him. At worst she could leave the painfully written letter she’d got in her bag. Telling him what she had to tell him...
She’d written it last night, rewriting it over and over again, trying to find the right words to tell him. The right words to tell him the wrong thing. That their holiday romance had ended in a way that neither of them could possibly have foreseen. That neither could possibly have wanted.
Yet even as she thought it she could feel emotion rising up in her—feel the conflict that had tormented her since her first shocked and disbelieving discovery of what had happened. Conflict that had never abated since—that was going round and round and round in her head, day and night.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
The train glided to a halt at another station and the doors slid open. More people got off. Then the doors slid shut and the train started forward again, out of the lighted platform area and back into yet another tunnel. Stop, start, stop again, start again—over and over. And still the words went round and round in her head.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
She was pregnant, with an unplanned baby, by a man who had only been a holiday romance. That was the stark truth of it.
It was the very last thing she had ever thought would happen.