Chapter Thirteen
Agustin waited impatiently. It was growing late. Mara’s plane should have landed by now. He did not understand what the holdup could possibly be.
He paced the entry. The baby monitor Senora Silva had provided sat on the end table, crackling occasionally if Julia moved in her sleep. But no cries of distress erupted from the speaker.
So he paced, getting more and more angry. Yes, it was certainly anger—not fear or worry.
When the door finally pushed open, and Mara slid inside as though she was trying to creep into the house without being heard, Agustin stood, arms crossed, tamping down his fury.
Maybe.
She let out a squeak of alarm when she saw him. She even jumped, some of what she carried clattering to the floor. She let out a breath as he stepped forward and flipped on a light.
“I thought you were going to leave,” she hissed at him. “Did you not get my email? The countess has her answer ready, and she wants you to—”
“I do not care what the countess wants,” he replied, not bothering to keep his voice down. It would not carry to Juila from here. “She has made me wait, so she can as well. Where have you been?”
“I had to make a few stops at my apartment and the store,” she told him, sounding as tired as he’d ever heard her. She seemed pale. Unsteady.
He moved forward to help pick up some of the things she had dropped despite his frustration. “Allow me.”
“No. No need.” She hurriedly dropped to her knees and began to gather everything. It all seemed to be in grocery store bags, some of the contents having spilled out.
There was one item that snagged his attention, particularly when she slapped her hand over it as if she was trying to hide it from him.
She kept her hand over the box, but he had seen enough. Slowly, as though moving through molasses, he crouched. He reached out, peeled her hand away from the box.
A pregnancy test. Clearly.
He looked at her, hoping to find some other reason for this. But her head was turned away from him. Purposefully not meeting his gaze.
“Do not read anything into this,” she said quietly. “I can handle this. I will handle this.”
Handle. Handle…this. Pregnancy…
“No. You will not.”
Pregnant.
Mara stared at the test and its readout. She was pregnant. With her boss’s baby, and he hadn’t even given her the space to handle this herself. He waited right outside the door.
She could have stopped by her place and taken the test in the privacy of her own apartment before returning to the island, but she’d been procrastinating. She’d been in denial, hoping proof there was no baby would magically appear instead.
So she supposed it was her own fault she was staring at the test, the positive result clear, with her boss on the other side of the door.
She couldn’t find a singular thought to hold onto in this moment. She had no one to blame. She had been foolish and reckless, and she knew better. They both knew better, but…
Well, apparently even adult women could make foolish, reckless mistakes when it came to sex and chemistry.
If she’d been thinking she would not have returned without having taken the test. But she’d spent precious time trying to talk herself out of this ridiculousness, and then the plane and car had been ready, and she’d been so late.
The timer on her phone went off, causing her to jump. Both at the jarring sound she’d forgotten to prepare for and the fact that the door immediately flew open and Agustin stepped in.
There was no hiding the result. Perhaps she should have never come back. Perhaps she should have run away. Perhaps she should have disappeared, so he would be forced to contend with the countess and Julia and not her.
But she had returned, pregnancy test in hand, for what?
Because you could not leave Julia. Because she could not leave him.
“I do not understand how this can be,” he said, staring down at the clearly readable pregnancy test.
She glared at him as her stomach gave an ungovernable lurch. “Yes, it’s a real mystery, Agustin. However could it have happened?”
“But you…” He shook his head, eyes still on the test on the counter. “I assumed…”
But she could not care about what he’d assumed when what little was left in her stomach was rising once again. She gave him a nudge out the door, shut the door in his face and threw up again.
What a misery this was.
The door reopened. Agustin stepped back inside, looking frustrated and thwarted, all foreboding determination as he regarded her. “You will have no choice now.”
She knew what he was going to say, but still she shook her head. Still, she denied it, because it could not be.
“We will be married. At once.”