‘You know I didn’t mean now.’ Her voice rose.
This was madness. Total and utter madness.
Except madness implied that Ram was acting irrationally, and there was nothing random or illogical about his decision to join her on the plane. He was simply proving a point, and getting his own way just like he always did.
She felt as though she was going to throw up.
‘You tricked me. You made me miss my flight and then you offered to let me use your plane just so you could trap me here.’
And, fool that she was, she had actually believed he was trying to make amends.
Her heart began to pound fiercely. Not only that, she’d apologised to him. Apologised for not telling him about the baby and thanked him for being so understanding.
But everything he’d said had been a lie.
How could she have been so stupid—so gullible?
Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she whispered.
He shrugged. ‘It was your choice. I didn’t make you do anything. You could have waited for a regular flight.’ His mouth hardened. ‘Except that would have meant talking to me. So I made a calculated guess that you’d do pretty much anything to avoid that—including accepting the offer of a no-strings flight back to Scotland.’
‘Except there are strings, aren’t there?’ she snapped. ‘Like the fact that you never said you were coming with me.’
He looked at her calmly. ‘Well, I thought it might be a little counterproductive.’
Her pulse was crashing in her ears. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ she said hoarsely.
Leaning forward, he picked up one of the magazines and began flicking casually through the pages. ‘Then you clearly don’t know me as well as you thought you did.’ He smiled at her serenely. ‘But don’t worry. Now that we have the chance to spend some time alone, I’m sure we’ll get to know each other a whole lot better.’
Her hands clenched in her lap. She was breathless with anger and frustration. ‘But you can’t just hijack this plane—’
‘Given that it’s my plane, I’d say that would be almost impossible,’ he agreed.
‘I don’t care that it’s your plane. People don’t behave like this. It’s insane!’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ He gazed at her steadily. ‘You’re pregnant with my child, Nola. Insane would be letting you fly off into the sunset with just your word that you’ll get in touch.’
‘So you just decided to come with me to the other side of the world?’ she snapped. ‘Yeah, I can see that’s really rational.’
For a moment she glared at him in silence, and then her pulse began to jerk erratically over her skin, like a needle skipping across a record, as he leaned over and rested his hand lightly on the smooth mound of her stomach.
‘Whether you like it or not, Nola, this baby is mine too. And until we get this sorted out I’m not letting you out of my sight. Where you go, I go.’
Blood was roaring in her ears. On one level his words made no sense, for she hardly knew him. He was a stranger
, and what they’d shared amounted to so little. The briefest of flings. A night on a sofa.
And yet so much had happened in that one night. Not just the baby, but the fire between them—a storm of passion that had left her breathless and dazed, and eclipsed every sexual experience she’d had or would ever have.
She’d known that night that a part of her would always belong to Ram. She just hadn’t realised then that it would turn out to be a baby. But now that he knew the truth was anything he’d done really that big a surprise? She was carrying his child, and she knew enough about Ram to know that he would never willingly give up control of anything that belonged to him.
Still, that didn’t give him the right to trap her and manipulate her like this, bending her to his will as though being pregnant made her an extension of his life.
‘You didn’t have to do this,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I told you I was going to get in touch and I would have done.’
‘I’ve saved you the trouble, then.’ He gave her a small, taunting smile. ‘It’s okay—you don’t need to thank me.’
She glowered at him in silence, her brain seething as she tried to think up some slick comeback that would puncture his overdeveloped ego.