‘As soon as I’m back in the country,’ he added, trying to keep his voice even, the tone pragmatic, ‘I’ll send a car to get you, so we can continue this conversation in private.’ By which time he would be in complete control of his faculties again—if it killed him.
‘I’m not one of your employees, Lukas,’ she said, finally finding her voice.
‘Don’t I know it,’ he muttered as he walked past her to grasp the door handle. ‘Two weeks.’
The sparkle of temper in her eyes at his ultimatum was an improvement on the wary shock of moments before. So he’d take it.
He walked out of the room, refusing to look back. But as he made his way down the stairs his pulse pounded in his ears almost as violently as the heat firing through his veins from their aborted kiss.
He had two long weeks to get a grip before he saw her again.
But as he settled into the chauffeur-driven car parked outside the mews entrance the desire pooling in his groin became painful. He shifted in his seat. The dumb decision to kiss her hadn’t just hoisted him by his own petard; it might very well cripple him too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRONTE WATCHED AS the pink lines in the window of the pregnancy testing kit thickened and spread, like the anacondas writhing in her stomach and tightening around her throat.
It can’t be right. It just can’t.
She shook the white plastic stick frantically, but the two thick pink lines refused to disappear.
Collapsing onto the toilet seat, she fumbled one-handed with the instruction leaflet and scanned it again. Looking for an out. A reinterpretation that wouldn’t force her to face the truth.
She was pregnant. With Lukas Blackstone’s child.
No. No. No.
She’d taken the test as a precaution, sure she was overreacting, convinced it was just a formality. That she couldn’t possibly have fallen pregnant.
She’d been trying not to think about Lukas and everything that had happened two weeks ago—her emotions had been in turmoil for days after his visit. She’d hardly slept. So she’d made a concerted effort to put him, and his ultimatum, the kiss she’d been unable to resist and his threat to take Nico away from her out of her mind. But this morning she’d received a text from Lisa informing her that Lukas’s car would be arriving to pick her up at four o’clock—and it was only then that she’d realised it was two weeks since she’d seen Lukas. And slept with him. And she hadn’t had a period.
Standing on shaky legs, forcing herself to breathe, she dumped the test in the bathroom bin and stared at her face in the mirror.
So what are you going to do now?
She’d been in denial about what had happened in his penthouse, refused to deal with any of it. And now her situation was about a billion times worse.
Running away from your problems never solved anything.
When exactly had she lost sight of that, as well as everything else—her common sense, her practicality, her sense of self-worth?
He’d dragged her into his arms, pressed his face into her neck, made her feel needed, wanted, important, desired. And she’d responded, instantly and unequivocally. She’d kissed him back, letting her own needs consume her, despite his ruthless threat to take Nico from her, despite his arrogant demand that she become his mistress.
She touched a hand to her abdomen, panic and fear churning in her stomach and sending the writhing snakes into the pit of her belly... Or maybe it was the first sign of morning sickness.
A termination, of course, was the sensible answer. And the answer that Lukas would no doubt suggest. He might even try to insist upon it. But even the thought made the bile rise up in her throat and threaten to gag her.
Her hand pressed into her flat stomach.
She couldn’t have this baby. She didn’t even want to tell Lukas about it. If he’d been pushy and domineering up to now, surely he would be even more so when he found out how stupid she’d been. And that she’d lied to him.
Not only that, but what about Nico? He was her first priority. Would this give Lukas even more ammunition to have her declared an unfit guardian?
The memory of Lukas’s face, shocked and wary, and the way his whole body had stiffened when Nico had charged towards him on his visit two weeks ago spun through her mind and taunted her. As she recalled how he had changed during the course of the morning, how he’d made a concerted effort to talk to the boy, to communicate with him on a level he understood. How he’d reached out in that one unguarded moment and stroked Nico’s hair.
She had to be realistic. Lukas wouldn’t want this child. Maybe he had reluctantly begun to bond with Nico. As an uncle. But he’d made it very clear he did not want to be a father.
He would be furious at this turn of events. And while she wasn’t scared of his temper, she was terrified of wanting to ask something of him that he was incapable of giving.