A baby he didn’t even know existed.
A baby she had deliberately chosen to conceal from him.
And just like that she knew his being here wasn’t some cosmic coincidence: he was coming to find her.
Before that thought had even finished forming in her head he was there, standing in front of her, and suddenly she wished she was sitting down, for the blazing anger in his grey gaze almost knocked her off her feet.
‘Going somewhere?’ he asked softly.
She had forgotten his voice. Not the sound of it, but the power it had to throw her into a state of confusion, to turn her emotions into a swirling mass of chaos that made even breathing a challenge.
Looking up at him, hoping that her voice was steadier than her heartbeat, she said hoarsely, ‘Mr Walker. I wasn’t expecting to see you.’
He didn’t reply. For a moment his narrowed gaze stayed fixed on her face, and then her skin seemed to blister and burn as slowly his eyes slid down over her throat and breast, stopping pointedly on the curve of her stomach.
‘Yes, it’s been a day of surprises all round.’
His heart crashing against his ribs, Ram stared at Nola in silence. He had spent the last two hours waiting at the check-in desk for her, his nerves buzzing beneath his skin at the sight of every long-haired brunette. At first when she hadn’t turned up he’d been terrified that she’d caught another flight. But finally it had dawned on him that she was probably just hoping to avoid him, and therefore was going to arrive at the last minute.
Now that she was here, he was struggling to come to terms with what he could see—for seeing her in the office had been such a shock that he’d almost started to think that maybe what he’d seen might not even have been real. After all, it had only been a glimpse...
Maybe it had been another woman with dark hair, and after months of thinking and dreaming about her he’d just imagined it was Nola.
Now, though, there could be no doubt, no confusion.
It was Nola, and she was pregnant.
But that didn’t mean he was the father.
He felt himself jerk forward—doubt and then certainty vibrating through his bones.
If that baby was another man’s child, he knew she would have met his gaze proudly. Instead she looked hunted, cornered, like a small animal facing a predator it couldn’t outrun.
In other words, guilty as hell.
With an effort he shifted his gaze from her stomach to her face. Her lips were pale, and her blue eyes were huge and uncomprehending. She looked, if possible, more stunned than he felt. But right now feelings were secondary to the truth.
‘So this is why you’ve been giving me the runaround?’ he asked slowly. ‘I suppose I should offer my congratulations.’ He paused, letting the silence stretch between them. ‘To both of us.’
Watching her eyes widen with guilt, he felt new shoots of anger pushing up inside him, so that suddenly his pulse was too fast and irregular.
‘I wonder—when, exactly, were you going to tell me you were pregnant?’
Looking up into his face, Nola felt her breath jerk in her throat. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him. Angrier than she’d ever seen anyone. And he had every right to be.
Had she been standing there, confronted by both this truth and the months of deception that had preceded it, she would have felt as furious and thwarted as he did. But somehow knowing that made her feel more defensive, for that was only half the story. The half that didn’t include her reasons for acting as she had.
Lifting her chin, she met his gaze. ‘Why would I te
ll you I’m pregnant? As of twenty minutes ago, I don’t actually work for you anymore.’
Her hands curled up into fists in front of her as he took a step towards her.
‘Don’t play games with me, Nola.’
His eyes burned into hers, and the raw hostility in his voice suffocated her so that suddenly she could hardly breathe.
‘And don’t pretend this has got anything to with your employment rights. You’re having a baby, and we both know it could be mine. So you should have told me.’