Imogen closed her eyes, instantly rejecting the idea. She couldn’t see him.
She couldn’t.
It was bad enough that she’d fallen in with his plans so easily, worse was that she’d fallen in love with him. Completely.
Her hand curled over her stomach and a war
m tear rolled out of her eye, landing on her belly. She dashed at her cheeks.
“Here’s fine,” she said to the driver, craning her neck as soon as Harrods loomed into view.
The driver pulled over, and she handed him a twenty-pound note before alighting onto the busy sidewalk. She was almost immediately swept up into a young family but she side-stepped and ducked her head down, moving quickly towards the lights that would allow her to cross.
As a child, she’d loved Harrods. On the trips she’d made into London with her father, he’d brought her to the ancient, proud shop, letting her buy afternoon tea from the food court and then select a toy from the toy hall. They hadn’t had a lot of money and so these small luxuries had been all the more impressive.
She moved through the revolving door and bypassed the food court. Her stomach churned nauseously at the gentle odour of seafood she could smell as she passed. Instead, she headed to the nursery section.
It was enormous, and as with the store she’d been to with Theo, it was full of the finest pieces. She propped her shoulder against a marble column, her eyes focused on the prams without really seeing them.
And there, in the privacy of a packed store, surrounded by happy couples on their way to becoming families, she replayed the conversation again and again, each time, tripping on Elena’s certainty that he’d consulted with a lawyer regarding custody.
Custody.
The word was instantly unpalatable and ugly to Imogen, for it implied ownership of an object. Was her baby truly to be born into a world that demarcated it as an item of possession from the moment of birth?
A shiver of revulsion trembled on her spine as she shook her head, rejecting everything about the idea.
She couldn’t let it happen.
And a sense of spirit and strength, the same determination that had brought her to London to tell Theo the truth, flooded her again now.
She would not meekly fall in with Theo’s plans. She was this child’s mother, and she had a duty to act in his or her best interests.
Dreams of her own Happily Ever After with Theo Trevalyen faded into the background as she knew with all her heart what she needed to do.
“Can I help you, madam?” A man in the trademark Harrods uniform appeared beside her.
Imogen stared at him for a moment longer than normal and shook her head. “Not unless you happen to be a lawyer?”
*
“What do you mean you’ve ‘lost’ her?” Theo looked from his mother to Raquel, his temper only kept in check by the absurdity of the idea. “She’s a person, not a bag. How can you have ‘lost’ her?”
Raquel returned his look with equal confusion. “She was here, and then she wasn’t. No one’s seen her.”
Concern pounded in his chest. He lifted his phone from his pocket and dialed Imogen’s number. It went straight to voicemail, which could mean one of four things.
Her battery was flat. Unlikely; he knew she charged it religiously. She was on the phone – definitely possible. Or she was underground, on a tube? Maybe, but why? The fourth he didn’t particularly want to contemplate but it was there on the periphery of his mind. What if something had happened to her? He was high-profile. Though their relationship had still – miraculously – escaped the notice of gossip columnists, it didn’t follow that someone hadn’t learned of Imogen’s existence… Oh, God.
The thought was anathema to him.
“How do you lose the guest of honour at her own damned party?” He demanded, his mother’s gaze flushing to the floor.
“Technically,” she responded, obviously mistaking the depth of her son’s concern, “it was a party for your child.”
A muscle jerked in Theo’s cheek. “She is the mother of that child and it’s about time you start realizing that.”
Raquel could see interested gazes turning their way and she spoke quietly in an attempt to defuse the situation. “She must be somewhere. Perhaps she went shopping?”