Chapter Six #2
There he was. The dark and foreboding angel of hell himself. Satan’s very own. Lucifer in a custom suit. The absolute worst man on earth who didn’t have access to the nuclear option.
She was stalling on coming up with new titles for him so that she didn’t catalog his physical features. His perfect, far too appealing physical features.
“I assume you have all the paperwork?” she asked.
“Of course,” Christos said, leaning back in his chair as if this meeting were a relaxing holiday. “This is merely a formality. All the terms have been agreed to.”
“That’s a stretch. I have pushed some of the terms as far as they can go. And I accept that.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear that you’ve reached a place of acceptance,” he said.
“That’s me. I’m the picture of perfect sanguine acceptance.”
The other members of the board, her legal counsel and his walked in.
They all took their seats around the table and began the meeting, going over everything that was in the contract she had already read.
The timings of different phases of the acquisition process, and the plan to keep her on in her position for guaranteed length of time, so long as she continued her work in a manner that kept the company meeting certain metrics.
It was extremely poor consolation, but it was the only consolation she was going to get. And it gave her time. Which she desperately needed. Time to figure out what she was going to do. Time to figure out what was important to her.
Because everything had changed this morning.
Whatever she had thought might happen, something different was happening now.
“I understand that this is not an ideal situation from the perspective of everyone in this room,” Christos said.
Totally detached as ever. His dark eyes met hers, and there was something there, but she couldn’t read it.
It was like staring into a well. Bottomless.
Fathomless. Maybe there was something at the bottom, maybe it was dry. Who would ever know?
Who could ever know?
“But I am grateful that we have come to satisfactory terms.”
She didn’t think he meant that. He didn’t care. If he’d had to come in and physically sword-fight everybody, he would’ve done that. Bloodshed would have worked for him to. And he probably would have appeared just as calm in the aftermath.
He stood, and so did she.
And the breath left her body as he crossed the room and moved toward her. He extended his hand, and because she thought he was certain she wouldn’t, she extended hers and shook his.
The contact of his skin against hers was like an electric shock. She had only experienced something like it one other time. God, she despised him. How could he make her feel this way? At this moment, when everything was a disaster?
“I hope we can keep you on, Miss Jones,” he said.
Then he dropped his hand and swept past her.
She grabbed her bag and walked past him. She had to go down and meet the father of her baby now, and she didn’t have time to ruminate over Christos. She didn’t have time to ruminate on anything. She said nothing to him as she bustled past him and pointed toward the elevator.
It opened, and she got inside. But he followed.
She should’ve closed the door, but that would have been an action tantamount to pettiness, and it wasn’t that she was above pettiness, she just didn’t want to look quite as ruffled as she felt. That was the problem. He cared about nothing, so he was continually in a state of being unbothered.
He said nothing to her in the elevator; he reached into his pocket and took out his phone, looking at the screen.
She did the same.
She didn’t have any messages.
He didn’t appear to have messages either, since he didn’t pause to read anything or respond.
It was almost impossible to believe she was about to be face-to-face with the man she’d had sex for the first time with. And it wasn’t something she wanted to process while standing beside Christos.
She did her best not to think about it. She was on another planet.
Today could honestly go straight to hell.
It was absurd.
She walked quickly out of the elevator and out of the building. She didn’t say goodbye to him. She wouldn’t.
And she moved as quickly as she could down the street, toward Rosie’s.
It was her favorite coffee shop, and normally she would be looking forward to a latte and a croissant.
But really not at the moment. Because she felt like she was going to throw up again, and she felt like maybe it would be easier to lie down in the middle of the sidewalk and take a nap. Because truly, everything was awful.
If she could sleep through the next few hours that would be great. The next few days. Hell, maybe the next few months.
She was going to need to actually go to a doctor. Maybe she had contacted him prematurely.
No. He didn’t get to be excluded from this. From the turmoil that it was causing her. From everything. If she was pregnant, then he needed to know, and now. Not so he got to make his choice, but so he had to live with the discomfort of it all alongside her. Because she deserved that.
She did.
She heard heavy footsteps near her, and she turned slightly, to see Christos moving toward the door of Rosie’s at the same time she was. They both reached for the door. “Why are you following me?”
He scowled. “I’m not.”
“It seems like it to me.”
Really, she did not want the man that had just acquired her company to be present at this meeting. She’d already dealt with one awful meeting that he was central to. She didn’t want him at this one.
“Get coffee somewhere else. Anywhere else,” she said, stepping inside. But he was close behind her.
“I am meeting someone.”
She stopped. And looked up at him. And suddenly, the world began to fall away.
She had thought that it was crumbling before, but that had been theoretical.
It was really crumbling now. Like everything that held her to the earth was breaking off in great chunks and leaving nothing behind.
Any moment now she was going to start falling.
Falling and falling. Into that well in his dark eyes, or maybe hell. Who could say?
“Who are you meeting?” she asked, her mouth suddenly dry.
“No one of any interest to you.”
“Who are you meeting, Christos?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m meeting someone,” she said, her eyes filling with tears against her will. No. That would be…outrageous.
Impossible.
Where did you find the phone, Sylvie?
Outside of the publishing event. A publishing event that Christos Onassis had been present at.
No.
Because that man could not be the man that she had carried on all those text conversations with. Because Christos didn’t have a heart, and that man had a heart. He had…he had comforted her when she was at her wits’ end because of Christos himself, so it couldn’t be…
His eyes sharpened. “Who are you meeting?”
Her throat was constricted; it was nearly a whisper. “I don’t know what he looks like.”
And she knew satisfaction for one second. Because he looked as if his own world had done very much the same thing hers had done.
He was shocked. Which really did a lot to eliminate what her next question and accusation would have been. That he had done this to her on purpose.
He hadn’t.
He hadn’t known.
Brilliant tactician, Christos Onassis, genuinely had not known that he was talking to her. He hadn’t known that she was the woman that he’d met for sex.
He had no idea, all through that meeting, when they were sitting across from each other, that she was pregnant with his baby.
Just as she hadn’t known who she’d been speaking to, who she’d met that night.
Who the father of her baby was.
That’s why you reacted to him the way that you did.
No. God. It was awful.
It was terrible.
He… She had known. Her body had known. That was absurd.
She had felt this rising tension every time she saw him because her body had known.
She hadn’t been able to put the two together because she just hated him so much.
She hated him so much even now as they stood there with people moving around them, getting visibly frustrated with the fact that they were taking up so much floor space standing there motionless, staring at each other, unable to move. She hated him.
Even as the truth seemed to bloom and throbbed between them.
“Let me see your phone,” he said.
“You don’t need to see it.” She picked it up and went back to the text screen.
Kid: I’m here.
He took out his own phone, and she saw her message pop up right there.
“This is unbelievable,” she said.
He was still saying nothing.
“Aren’t you going to say something? Are you going to throw your head back and laugh and say something about how this was part of your evil plan?”
She had already accepted that it wasn’t.
But honestly, seeing him stunned was disconcerting.
She would almost prefer to see him laugh maniacally, because then at least one of them would know what was going on.
At least one of them would have some hint of a plan, whereas at the moment, neither of them had any idea what they were doing.
She was an idiot. And he was an asshole. And the two of them were having a baby.
No.
That thought wrenched her apart inside. She was screaming inside. Running out the door, in her heart. But in reality she was just standing there. Staring. Unable to move.
A baby. Christos’s baby. If she thought that he was ruthless when it came to business, how much more ruthless would he be in a situation like this?
It was incomprehensible.
“What do you drink?”
“A latte. And I usually get a croissant. But I’m not sure that I…”
He turned away from her and went up to the counter. “An espresso, please. And a latte. A croissant as well.”
It was weird to watch him be civil to someone. She just wasn’t used to it.
She watched his back, trying to…make some sense of this.
And when he turned to her, her heart stopped beating.
She had kissed him. That ruthless mouth had traveled all over her body. Had licked the most intimate part of her.
Those hands had touched every curve.
She had moved her hands over his chest. She had taken him inside of her.
She wished that she could feel something. Some connection, some sense of intimacy. It was too jarring to think of him as the man that she had spent all that time talking to.
And it was even more impossible to think of him as the man that she had slept with.
Except…
The aftermath. The way that he had withdrawn from her like that: that felt like Christos.
The way he had gone dark.
That actually made sense. As did his desire for anonymity. Because, of course, anyone would have known who he was. And for some reason, he had needed anonymity to communicate with her.
Was there another facet to this man that she had never considered?
She supposed that if there was, she of all people should have some insight into it, but she only felt more confused.
“Did you know?”
“No,” she said, laughing as they went over to a table and sat.
“Not at all?”
“I had no idea. Did you?”
He looked truly appalled by the thought that he would’ve ever slept with her while knowing it was her. Great. Somehow, he had managed to take her deepest fear, turn it into one she hadn’t even known she had, but include some of the original features. He really was a modern marvel, that man.
“I did not know.”
“I thought… I thought I was coming here to meet a stranger. I thought that the hardest part about today was that I was going to have to look into an unfamiliar face and discuss the terms of…whatever is going to happen here. But it’s worse.
Because I’ve already negotiated to deal with you, and I know that I hate it. I know that I hate you.”
He laughed. “What a waste of energy. Hate.”
“Is it? Because I have it on good authority that you hate your father.”
His face turned to stone. “Anything that I said to you in the confines of a text conversation might well have been overinflated. Did it never occur to you that I might have just wanted the sex?”
She would be tempted to think so. But the truth was, Christos could have anyone. In person or online. So it really didn’t make any sense why he would’ve been wasting time with her, unless he had been saying something somewhat honest.
“So now what?” she said.
“Obviously a paternity test.”
“Prenatal paternity tests have risks. I know because I had to look it up for a book that I helped edit.”
“A risk is acceptable. Everything has risks.”
“Are you kidding me?”
He shrugged. “No. Why would I be kidding?”
“Because we’re talking about your child.”
“Maybe.”
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
But she was boiling with rage. She could barely contain it. She thought that she was going to overflow. To burst.
“I was a virgin, you arrogant bastard.”
He froze. And just at that moment, a woman came over with their order.
Christos didn’t bother to try to smile, but she did.
The woman set the food down and then went away.
“Impossible.”
“Oh, good. Now you’re going to tell me about my own vagina. I look forward to hearing all your opinions about my uterus, which I am certain is going to be in the next part of the conversation.”
“I am just saying, what virgin would meet a man for anonymous sex in a hotel room?”
“One that thought she was in love with him.”
She shouldn’t have said that. Because she wasn’t. Not now. In truth, she hadn’t been, not ever since she had really accepted that he wasn’t going to contact her again. So it didn’t feel so awful to admit it now. Mainly because it wasn’t the biggest, most awful thing hovering between them.
“You really are a fool,” he said.
“I guess so. But who spent so much time talking to a fool?”
He said nothing. “This is a terrible place to have this conversation.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But I didn’t know what else to do. I just found out this morning.”
“Before the meeting?”
“Yes.”
“You told me right away, even though I hadn’t been in contact with you?”
“I didn’t overthink it. I knew that whatever decision I made, I wanted you to suffer along with me.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That is more ruthless than I tend to think you are.”
“I’m feeling ruthless, to be honest.”
For a second, she looked across the bistro table at him and felt completely upended.
How had they just been sitting across from each other in a conference room?
How had he been the man on the other side of those texts?
How had it come down to this? She wasn’t going to think about the fact that he was the man she had made love with.
Because that was an even more difficult truth to wrap her mind around.
“This changes everything,” he said.
“We don’t know what it changes yet. We haven’t fully processed—”
“There’s nothing to process. You’re pregnant with my child, and so you will marry me.”