Chapter Six #3
She licked her lips. He could feel the thorns rising up, tangling around her, but he was done with simply gazing up at them. It was time to bring out his metaphorical sword and start hacking a path through.
‘Willa?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘I think we both know that’s not true. That night is seared into my brain. And I know it’s seared into yours just like I know that you weren’t thinking about statistics.’
He got to his feet a second after she did. The difference was that Willa was clenching and unclenching her hands and shifting her weight onto the ball of her front foot as if she couldn’t decide whether to punch him or turn and run.
Fight or flight.
The most basic, evolutionary response to threat or danger. But there was no threat. He was just asking a question.
‘Then, you’re wrong.’ There was no emotion in her voice, and her eyes were devoid of anything other than hostility. ‘Like you were wrong about me hiding that I was engaged.’
‘I was wrong about that,’ he agreed. ‘But you’re hiding something from me now.’
Against the sudden pallor of her face, her eyes were sharply green. ‘Yes, I am. I’m hiding how appalled I am that someone as arrogant and ruthless and vengeful as you should be the father of my baby.’
She was lashing out but not because she was angry—or if she was, her anger was driven by something bigger and more powerful. Fear.
His ribs suddenly seemed too tight.
Was she scared of him? No, that wasn’t it. He replayed their conversation, tracking the changes in her manner from defensive to aggressive. This was about her. About why she thought she couldn’t get pregnant, even though she wasn’t using contraception.
I didn’t do it deliberately. I never thought it could happen.
He glanced over at Willa, her words echoing inside his head, and it was suddenly obvious why she would think unprotected sex would be so unlikely to result in a pregnancy.
And then he felt her gaze, and he knew that his hunch was right.
Knew, too, that she knew that he had connected the dots because she was backing through the door and onto the stone slabs of the terrace.
But he couldn’t let her leave alone this time.
He couldn’t leave her to deal with her anger and misery and fear on her own. Like he’d had to.
She was moving swiftly across the terrace, past the manicured lawn, ducking under the branches of the olive trees that covered the slope away from the villa. He caught up with her as she was crossing the flower-strewn hillside.
‘Please, Willa, wait—’
Now she turned, making a pushing-away gesture with her hands. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘Then, don’t talk. We can just walk.’
Her eyes blazed. ‘Don’t do that. Don’t act like you’re the reasonable one here. Or have you conveniently forgotten that you forced me to work for you? Forced me to come to your stupid private island.’
‘I was angry.’
The simplicity of his words or maybe their truth cut through her anger and panic, and he felt her hesitate.
And he wanted to push forward, corral her like he’d been doing ever since she walked into that meeting room at Milner’s and upended his life.
But he didn’t do or say anything. Instead he waited, again, like he had at the airport.
Because this was a choice he needed her to make willingly.
And it cost him to wait, to not demand, to not order or cajole, but he waited in the upbeat Aegean sunshine that seemed distractingly at odds with the intensity of the drama playing out beneath it.
And he kept waiting, until finally, she said quietly, ‘About five and a half months ago, I had a pain in my side. I thought it was appendicitis, and I went to the ER.’
He let his gaze move briefly over Willa’s profile. She spoke with the calm, steady voice of an adult reading a story to a child. But there was something about the set of her shoulders, as if she was struggling to hold up an unseen weight. Had been struggling to hold it up for some time.
‘But it wasn’t? Appendicitis?’ he prompted after a moment.
She shook her head, stared away.
‘They thought it was at first, and then they thought I might have an ectopic pregnancy. But then they did a scan, and that’s when they found the cyst in one of my ovaries.
They’re not actually cysts. They’re follicles and they found a lot of them.
But only one of them was infected. That’s what was causing the pain. ’
‘Did it need surgery?’
It took a moment for her to reply.
Finally, she nodded. ‘It did. It was a bit of a mess. Afterwards I spoke to an endocrinologist, and she said that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I have some of the symptoms, but I did a lot of riding and dance, so I’d put them down to that.
’ A pause. He felt her stiffen. ‘Anyway, she told me that I would struggle to get pregnant. So to answer your question, that’s why I thought I was safe. ’
He could still hear the traces of shock and hurt. No wonder she had been in denial.
‘I was on the pill before that, but I went off it then. It just seemed pointless, and it felt cruel, you know? Taking something to prevent getting pregnant.’
She breathed in sharply. ‘This daily reminder that I was a failure. Pretending I needed contraception when there was no risk of conception. It made me feel like a failure. A fraud.’
He heard her swallow, and her eyes seemed suddenly over-bright. With tears?
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Seeing Willa vulnerable was worse even than feeling vulnerable himself. It made him feel furious and frustrated. It made him want to uproot the ancient olive grove with his hands. It made him want to hold her close.
Reaching out, he caught her wrists.
‘You’re not a failure or a fraud.’
* * *
Willa felt the vibration of Ares’s voice crackle down her spine. He sounded fierce enough that it could have cut a fissure into the rock beneath her feet, and she felt as if the expression on his face was carved into her skin.
‘You have a great job at a world-renowned legal firm. And for the very good reason that you are an excellent lawyer. But you’re also pregnant, so your body hasn’t failed you. It’s done everything right despite the odds.’
She swallowed.
That didn’t stop her from being a fraud.
But Ares didn’t know that up until a little under six months ago, she had been living a lie.
She wasn’t entitled to any of it. Not her father or her stepsisters and stepmother.
Not her home or all those family lunches and Thanksgivings and Christmases.
Not even her surname. All of it had been dishonestly acquired twenty-nine years ago.
She was the unwitting accomplice to the longest of long cons.
And there was a price to be paid. A sentence to be served. Only now that sentence had been commuted. Or had it? Her panic closed around her, and she was shaking her head,
‘You don’t know that. What if the test was wrong?’
It was the reason she hadn’t wanted to talk about the pregnancy with him. Why she couldn’t allow herself to think forward even two weeks to the DNA test. Everything felt so fragile.
‘You did more than one test, didn’t you?’ His hands tightened a fraction around her wrists as if the question might cause her to bolt.
‘Yes. And they were all positive, but—’ She bit her lip. How could she explain how surreal it felt to read the word pregnant on a test wand? The impossibility of it. Like someone finding a bottle on the shoreline with a message addressed to them personally inside.
‘I don’t know anything about Polycystic Ovary Syndrome,’ Ares said, ‘but I can have an expert fly in tomorrow from anywhere in the world.’
Willa felt her heart lurch against her ribs. His words, the certainty of them, the intensity of his expression would never leave her, she thought, and she felt suddenly close to tears.
‘Why would you do that? You don’t even know if the baby’s yours.’
The air was suddenly so still she could hear the leaves from the olive trees as they fluttered onto the baked earth.
Before, when she was telling him about her PCOS, he’d looked unfazed; now though, he seemed off-balance. ‘Because,’ he said slowly, ‘I don’t want you to keep feeling appalled that someone as arrogant and ruthless and vengeful as me might be the father of your child.’
A faint flush of colour spread across her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
His mouth curved up minutely at the corners.
‘As my lawyer, probably not. But outside of our professional relationship, I think I deserved it. I shouldn’t have said the things I did either. I regret them.’
She felt his fingers tighten reflexively against her skin, and then her breath caught as they softened to caress the inside of her wrists, and his warmth seeped into her.
The world blurred. She cleared her throat. ‘What, even Hi, I’m Ares?’
‘Maybe not that.’
Her head was spinning. She was seeing stars, which made no sense because they were standing in bright sunshine. But then she realised they weren’t stars but the tiny gold flecks in the grey of his irises.
He was so beautiful. So steady and immutable, and he was still holding her wrists. Her pulse dipped with panic that he would suddenly realise and let go, and she thought wildly for a reason for them to stay standing where they were.
She half twisted her head towards where the sun was slipping down towards the blue Aegean. ‘It’s a beautiful view.’
There was a silence, and she assumed Ares was looking out to sea, but turning she found his eyes locked on her face.
‘Is that why I’m here? So you could show me the view?’
His words pulsed through her, followed like a shadow by a memory of the night when he asked her that exact same question. And she felt it simmer between them, this conspiracy of two. And she took a step closer, close enough that she could feel the press of his erection against her stomach.
He felt it too.
‘No,’ she said hoarsely, and she held her breath and watched the stars dance in his eyes, and she was still watching them when he leaned forward and kissed her.