He didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know if he could stand to have this moment be any more real than it already was. He was starting to sweat, the blue walls of the luxury suite closing in around him and the memories of that day so long ago playing through his head on a loop.
‘Ne me quitte pas, Maxim. J’ai besoin de toi.’
Don’t leave me, Maxim. I need you.
How could he possibly protect this tiny vulnerable creature from harm? When he had failed to protect his own mother?
‘I don’t...’ He coughed to ease the tightness in his throat, and banish the vicious memories. ‘I don’t have a preference. You can decide,’ he managed. Did it really matter what sex this child was, when he could never be a part of its life?
The sparkle of excitement in Cara’s eyes dimmed. He steeled himself against the vicious stab of guilt. He had already told her what he could offer, and what he could not. The child would have his name, his wealth and his protection, always, and that would have to be enough. He had nothing more to offer.
‘I’d like to know then,’ Cara murmured, turning back to the doctor.
Dr Karim smiled and pointed out something on the monitor with a wand. ‘Obviously, I can’t be one hundred per cent certain, but I’m fairly sure what we have here is a penis,’ she said with a chuckle.
‘A boy?’ Cara said, her tone thick with a hushed reverence that only made the hollow weight in Maxim’s stomach plunge. She turned and gripped his fingers. ‘Did you hear that, Maxim—we’re having a son.’
He nodded, then lifted her fingers to his lips, barely able to speak round the shame threatening to choke him. ‘I should go,’ he said. ‘To make the rest of the arrangements.’
‘Arrangements?’ she said, looking confused.
‘I must return to France today. I have arranged for you to remain at the hotel in London until the marriage can be performed at the mairie in Auxerre in ten days’ time.’
Why had he agreed to come to this appointment? It had been a foolish impulse that he now regretted. He’d never expected the child to be recognisable this early in its gestation. ‘I will see you at the airport in Burgundy. Remember to rest.’
‘I won’t see you for ten days?’ she asked.
He steeled himself against the tightness in his chest caused by the stunned dismay in her eyes. ‘Yes, I am afraid it takes ten d
ays to do the documentation before we can be married.’
Something he was pathetically grateful for.
He had planned to suggest they marry in London, but he was far too aware, even now, of Cara’s lush figure beneath the clinic’s starched robe. He still wanted her too much, even knowing that a life grew inside her. He needed this ten-day separation to ensure he got his hunger for her under some semblance of control.
‘You must rest,’ he said to Cara. ‘Doctor, thank you,’ he murmured, turning to the obstetrician.
Saying his goodbyes, he placed a kiss on Cara’s forehead, then made his escape from the airless room. Leaving the fear, and the memories and the insistent hunger behind him. For the time being at least. The weight in his stomach expanded.
He had ten days to pull himself together and seal off the raw, aching hole that had opened up in the pit of his stomach on seeing the image of his child.
His son.
And ten days to figure out how he was going to survive four endless months of marriage without jumping his son’s mother every single chance he got.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CAVALCADE OF black SUVs crested the hill. Cara’s breath caught as Maxim’s home appeared in the distance. Château Durand’s centuries-old stone architecture dominated the surrounding fields, making a defiant statement about the power and wealth of the man she had just married in a short civil ceremony at Auxerre town hall.
She’d never ventured onto Durand Corporation land during her months in Burgundy as the de la Mare housekeeper, but she’d heard all the local whispers about the derelict château Maxim Durand had bought and then spent a fortune renovating in the last few years.
Nothing could have prepared her, though, for the magnificence of the property as they drove towards it from the heliport at the winery complex where they’d touched down twenty minutes ago.
They drove through the gates in the high stone wall, making their way past a series of brick outbuildings before travelling along the driveway that led through lavish, perfectly manicured gardens designed in a geometric pattern Capability Brown would have been proud of. The house itself—not a house, a mansion—loomed large at the end of the drive, three storeys of elegant arched windows with pale green shutters. Wisteria and ivy clung to the stonework to add a fanciful charm, while the intricate wrought iron balconies on the upper levels and the red tiled roof blended perfectly with the turrets on each end of the imposing building, giving it the appearance of a castle fit for a king.
Cara risked a glance at her husband, who was busy speaking to someone in rapid French on his mobile phone. Maxim might not have been born a king, but he suited the role perfectly.
Had it really been ten days ago that she had agreed to marry him? The last week and a half had gone by in a blur. The days had merged into one, each one dominated by some new task: the meetings with Maxim’s legal team to outline the prenup he was offering her, which seemed scrupulously fair; the appointments with a barrage of stylists; the fittings with the couturier who had designed and made a whole new wardrobe for her in record time, not to mention the chauffeur-driven trip to say goodbye to Dora, who had been starry-eyed at the mention of who Cara was marrying.