CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER FIVE
‘If you would follow me, Mr Carver, Ms Fennell.’
Eden turned away from the line of lockers and smiled at Principal Evans. ‘Sorry, being back at high school is giving me flashbacks.’
The principal smiled. ‘I’m sure you were the model pupil, Ms Fennell.’
That was true academically. She had studied hard and been a high achiever. But outside class, things were a little trickier. She hadn’t been a troublemaker as such, but you couldn’t have a mother like hers and not end up with a target on your back so there had been quite a few altercations with the ‘mean girls’ at her school.
A few with some of the boys too. Boys who saw her mother’s long legs in their short shorts and thought ‘like mother like daughter’. It was one of the things that had first attracted her to Liam. He hadn’t been interested in her family or her background; he’d told her that it was just her and him and it had been exactly what she’d wanted to hear.
Of course, he had only said that to justify keeping his own life secret for the very obvious reason that he was married.
Her stupidity made her squirm and, pushing away the memory, she shook her head. ‘I wish. What about you, Mr Carver? How were your schooldays?’
Probably he’d been valedictorian, and quarterback for the school team, she thought, picturing his broad shoulders in a football shirt. No doubt he’d dated a cheerleader. Most likely, all of them.
Beside her, Harris’s smooth stride stuttered for perhaps a tenth of a second. Not enough to draw the attention of Principal Evans or his security detail, who were keeping pace discreetly alongside them.
But she’d noticed even though she didn’t want to. Her eyes were drawn to him, always, and not just her eyes. Whenever he was present, it was as if each of her five senses was tuned to the way he moved and to the shifting tones in his voice and when he left the room, everything seemed to go staticky inside her head so that she had to really concentrate on even simple tasks.
His grey eyes were cool and clear as he shrugged. ‘I don’t really have any strong memories either way. Once something is over, I prefer to look forward.’
She heard the warning in his words, but he really didn’t need to bother. Since that moment in his office when they’d almost kissed, he had been stiffly formal and careful to keep his distance. It was stupid to feel hurt. They’d had sex once, and it wasn’t as if she wanted anything from him, like a relationship or a future. Which was lucky, because today was the final day of her contract.
She should be pleased, and proud. Everything had, not just gone as she’d hoped, but exceeded her expectations. Quietly and by stealth, Harris Carver’s name had disappeared from the news headlines.
Today was his chance to reclaim his narrative.
‘We’re set up in the gym.’ The principal smiled apologetically. ‘I know that the scheme is for the senior school, but there’s been so much excitement about you coming in to talk, so I hope you don’t mind, Mr Carver, but we decided to let the lower years join us.’
The gym was packed. As well as the pupils, the entire staff appeared to be there too, but then it wasn’t often that you got up close to a real life, self-made billionaire. And Harris Carver was worth the entrance fee. He not only looked the part, but also had that aura of power and confidence that shrank the huge hall so that it felt like an average-sized room.
He was a good speaker too, despite not having received any coaching. She had checked that with him beforehand, but it seemed that he instinctively understood how to connect with an audience, speaking to the back of the room, fluently and without a script.
‘Do you think Mr Carver might take some questions?’ Principal Evans was looking at her hopefully when Harris finished.
She had anticipated this, and prepped Harris. Private schools might frequently get speakers like Harris Carver but for a public school, particularly one in a deprived neighbourhood like the Wendell Wells Academy High School, this was the rarest of opportunities.
Glancing at her watch, she nodded. ‘Fifteen minutes, and then we really will have to go.’
The questions were the typical kind of random, unfiltered ones that teens asked.
‘Do you have a private jet?’
‘Are you going to run for president?’
‘What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought?’
Above the roof of the gymnasium, she could hear the telltale thwapping sound of a helicopter hovering. She tilted her head slightly. Several helicopters, in fact. Which meant the news of Harris’s presence had leaked out as she’d known it would. She felt his gaze seek her out, so he had heard them too. After a moment, his mouth pulled up ever so slightly at the corners and she felt his approval shiver through her like a light summer breeze and she had to actively stop herself from just grinning like a fool.
‘Hi, Mr Carver. My name is Alyssa and I wanted to ask you if you ever wanted to be an astronaut.’
There was a pause. ‘No, I never wanted to do that,’ Harris said slowly.
‘But why not?’ Alyssa frowned. She looked baffled and Eden could understand why. Even without the spacesuit, with his carved bone structure and cropped blond hair, he looked exactly like a Hollywood version of an astronaut. ‘I think going into space would be so cool.’
‘It is cool, Alyssa, but astronauts have to be a very specific kind of person. I’m not sure I’m that person. In some ways, I hope I’m not.’
There was a tension in his shoulders, as if he were carrying some invisible weight, but then it had been a long three weeks. She glanced at her watch. The helicopters would have got here first but it would be the news crews on the ground next and she didn’t want this to turn into a circus. Tapping the principal on the arm, she said quietly, ‘Let’s make that the last question.’
* * *
‘That went well.’
‘It did.’ Harris turned and nodded. The tension in his shoulders seemed to have lifted.
‘Three of the news channels have already covered the visit and it’s extremely positive. I have the links. I’ll send them over to you.’
‘Thank you. And thank you for all your hard work.’ He hesitated. ‘As you know, I had my doubts about whether this was a good idea, you working for me—’
‘Working with you,’ she said firmly but without any heat.
His eyebrow lifted. ‘I was concerned that you might have overpromised but you’ve more than delivered.’
‘You were easier to work with than I thought you’d be,’ she said after a moment.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Not surprised, but it can be hard to speak truth to power.’
‘I didn’t notice you struggling.’ He smiled in a way that made her feel grateful she was sitting down.
‘I did tell you that we needed to be honest with each other if this relationship was going to work,’ she said.
‘You did. But it seems a little one-sided. I mean, I know next to nothing about you.’
He was being polite or passing the time. It meant nothing, but she felt panic ripple through her like quicksilver and she couldn’t tell if it was because she wanted to keep herself hidden from him or, more confusingly, to tell him the truth.
‘Not much to know. I grew up in San Antonio. Went to school, college. Graduated, went to—’
‘Went to England,’ he finished her sentence. ‘Started the business. Do you want me to list your clients? Because I can. It’s all on your résumé, which I’ve read.’
‘The trailer is the best way to sell a film,’ she said, keeping her voice light and casual. ‘I don’t want to bore you with the four-hour director’s cut.’
He waited, and she held her breath, hoping he’d move on.
Damn, he was good at waiting.
She sighed theatrically because it gave her a chance to adjust her breathing. ‘Okay, I’ll trade you. You ask me one thing that’s not on my résumé and I get to ask you one thing.’
‘I’ve already told you so much—’
‘Yeah, stuff I can read on the Internet.’
‘Fine.’ He made a surrendering movement with his hands. ‘We each get one question.’
She should have tacked on some conditions, she realised as he leaned back, his grey gaze lingering on her face as if the answer were already there even though he hadn’t asked his question yet.
‘So, what made you go into this business?’
Was that it? She had half expected him to ask her something more personal than that. She knew she could have lied or dissembled about the things that made her feel exposed and stupid, but Harris had a way of looking at her that pulled memories and feelings to the surface. If one had come loose, she’d been scared the rest would come tumbling out like water pushing through a breaking dam.
‘I don’t know. I suppose I don’t like injustice.’
‘Meaning?’
‘That’s two questions.’
Her breath caught as he leaned back into the upholstery and stretched out his long legs. And waited.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t like people name-calling and lying and getting away with it. It’s not fair, or right.’ Her stomach knotted as she remembered how people had spoken about her sweet, hopeless mother and grandmother.
‘Why not be a lawyer? A litigator?’
‘That’s four questions.’
His mouth curved up infinitesimally. ‘Three. I was just qualifying what kind of lawyer.’
‘It takes twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to lose it. But it takes something in between to get a case to court and I don’t want to get bogged down in weeks and months of he said/she said. I want to make a difference in real time. No.’ She held up her hand like a police officer stopping traffic. ‘It’s my turn now, okay?’
Looking over to where he sat lounging casually, her stomach fluttered with nerves and anticipation. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. Quite a few were unaskable out loud, like what did you think of me when you saw me in that bar ? Or do you still dream about that night ?
And then suddenly she thought back to the moment in the gym when he’d hesitated. ‘Did you really never want to be an astronaut?’
For a moment he said nothing, just stared past her, but he didn’t need to say anything for her to know that his mood had changed. His features looked granite hard, and the easy warmth of moments earlier had faded from his eyes.
‘I’m not in the habit of lying to schoolchildren,’ he said slowly.
‘I wasn’t accusing you of lying. I was just surprised that it wasn’t a dream of yours.’
‘A dream?’
His anger caught her off guard but, in the light streaming through the windows of the limo, his grey eyes were shadows that offered no explanation for his sudden flash of rage. ‘Why would you think that choosing a dark, lifeless vacuum over everything on Earth would be a dream of mine?’ His skin was taut across his cheekbones. ‘It shouldn’t be anyone’s dream.’
She thought back to how they’d looked up at the night sky together, his body hard and hot against hers. It was stupid, but it felt as though he’d lied to her. ‘But you get alerts from the space station—’
‘I track it because a lot of our equipment is up there.’
That was probably true, but she knew instinctively that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. Only what was there to lie about?
‘You just seemed to know a lot about space, and usually when people are that informed it’s because they’re interested. So—’
‘So, you presumed to think you know me.’ Abruptly he leaned forward. ‘Three weeks. That’s how much time we’ve spent together. Do you think that’s long enough to know someone?’
‘Three weeks and one night,’ she said coolly. ‘And yes, I do think that’s long enough. Three weeks is pretty much all I ever have to get to know clients. I can’t do my job if I don’t know them because I don’t have a one-size-fits-all strategy, not even in a niche industry like yours. Or do you think I would use the same strategy for you as I would for Tiger McIntyre?’
She hadn’t picked that name by chance. The two men were in direct competition, and they were like chalk and cheese. There were also those rumours of a long-standing rivalry. It felt like an unsurprising choice, so she was shocked by the stunned expression on Harris’s face. Actually, he looked more shaken than stunned.
‘What has Tiger McIntyre got to do with any of this?’
‘He’s your biggest competitor.’
‘He is nothing like me.’
‘That’s not what I said—’
‘Then perhaps you should say what you mean.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you want me to do that, Mr Carver,’ she said stiffly, after a taut, electric moment that left her feeling shaky and singed. ‘You might not like what I say.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Then it’s fortunate our time together is at an end and that our lives were only briefly, and out of necessity, connected.’ Shrugging up his shirt sleeve, he glanced at his watch. ‘I have a conference call at four, but we can meet afterwards for the review.’
The review meeting was short and without incident. Avery gushed over her approach and her insight. Harris Carver thanked her politely for her work and she thanked him just as politely for giving her the chance to prove herself, and then they shook hands and she left.
It wasn’t as if she’d expected flowers. Most of her clients were grateful and relieved in equal measure when she started working with them but, by the end, their relief typically outweighed their gratitude because they had regained control of their lives.
‘He’s got a lot on today but he’s very pleased with you,’ Avery said as they made their way back to the office Eden had been using during her time at HCI. ‘I’m just going to freshen up and then we can head down to the lounge.’
Eden blinked. ‘To do what?’
‘There’s a party. Not for you,’ she added, laughing as she caught sight of Eden’s no doubt appalled expression. ‘Cathy’s going on maternity leave on Monday so we’re just giving her a little send-off.’
‘That’s very kind of you to invite me, Avery, but I’m not—’
‘Nonsense,’ Avery said firmly. ‘You’ve been like one of the team, and, besides, Cathy asked specifically if you would come. I know you wouldn’t want to disappoint a heavily pregnant woman—’
Growing up in a house full of women, she had always felt part of a sisterhood, but after losing her baby it had been hard at first to celebrate other women’s pregnancies. Sometimes she’d had to physically look away from their bumps. It was still hard, but she liked Cathy a lot and she wouldn’t be happy with herself if she didn’t go.
‘Okay, then, you’ve twisted my arm.’
She was still getting used to being part of a team. At school she had been a bit of a loner. University was better in terms of feeling that people had accepted her for herself but by then she had already been so guarded. Liam’s deceit and abandonment had left her warier, and wearier, than ever. But she had enjoyed working here.
The party was in full flow by the time they arrived.
‘Wow, there’s waitstaff.’
‘HCI isn’t a family business, but we try and take care of our staff,’ Avery said proudly. ‘Mr Carver has always been very clear about that. And generous too.’
‘Would you like some champagne?’ One of the waiters was leaning in with a tray of glasses. ‘Or we have a non-alcoholic elderflower fizz?’
‘Actually, what I’d really like is a cup of tea. Milk, no sugar.’ She smiled sheepishly at Avery. ‘I know, but I always miss it when I first come back to the States.’
Avery smiled. ‘If that’s how you want to celebrate. And you should be celebrating, Eden. You did an amazing job.’
She smiled at Avery. She liked the head of Comms. Avery was a role model from an older generation, but she had championed a younger woman, which was inspiring.
‘I would say I’d love to work for you again, but I think that’s the last thing either of us would want.’
Avery shook her head, serious suddenly. ‘You’re a good fit for HCI. If I had a staff job, I’d be offering it to you now.’
‘Thank you, I’d love to work for you. You have a great team.’
‘Well, Harris is a great boss.’
Eden felt her smile stiffen. Avery was not alone. Everyone at HCI thought the same. But then look at Liam. Presumably his wife and friends all thought he was one of the good guys too. Or maybe they didn’t, and she was the only mug to think he was perfect. Either was a depressing thought. Maybe that was why she felt so deflated, and the party felt less like a celebration and more like a marking of the end of things.
But then, after three weeks of working long into the evenings, it was the end. No wonder she felt so shattered.
Her eyes flicked to the door as she caught a glimpse of broad shoulders, her stomach flipping, but it wasn’t Harris. She knew he wasn’t going to appear. That weird conversation in his office with Avery standing there like a chaperone was going to be the outro to this strange, shimmering episode in her life. And it was for the best, she told herself firmly. But just the same her gaze jerked over to the door as it opened again.
Not him.
‘Shall we grab something to eat?’ Avery was looking at her curiously and, pulling her gaze away from the door, Eden shook her head. ‘I think I might skip the food. I’m catching a flight in a couple of hours.’
‘To London?’
‘San Antonio. To see my family. It’s a surprise.’
That was another consequence of Liam getting back in touch like that. It had reminded her of the secrecy surrounding their relationship, the lies she’d told her family, and she had felt all that remembered guilt on top of her new guilt for not confiding in them. She wanted to make amends now that the shock and pain of his revelation were no longer visible on her face.
She took a sip of her tea and frowned. It tasted weird.
The milk at home had been off too. Maybe it was the weather. She’d read somewhere that thunderstorms could curdle milk and there had certainly been plenty of those over the last few weeks.
Like the one the night she and Harris had run to the hotel.
Pushing aside the memory, she walked over to Cathy.
‘You look incredible,’ she said as they hugged. Cathy looked just like one of those women who modelled for pregnancy stores online. Her hair was lustrous, and her skin had a kind of luminous quality to it as if it were being lit from the inside.
Cathy smiled. ‘You should have seen me seven months ago. I had all these breakouts, and my hair was greasy. I was so tired all the time and everything tasted weird. I kept throwing away stuff because I thought it had gone off.’
The door opened again, but this time, Eden didn’t turn to look. Instead, she stared at Cathy, a cool, clammy panic trickling down her spine.
‘Would you excuse me a moment?’ She smiled. ‘I’m just going to nip to the cloakroom.’
She managed to keep the smile in place right up until she shut the cubicle door. Pulling out her phone, she checked her period tracker. Everything had been so crazy since she’d arrived in New York and she’d lost track of time.
Even using her longest cycle, she was still two weeks late.
Two weeks.
Don’t panic, she told herself quickly, pushing back against the memory of Harris. His hand gripping her shoulder. Breath hard and hot against her throat. A dark flush along his cheekbones and that storm of passion in his eyes.
But they had used a condom.
Trying to steady her breathing, she leaned against the wall, wishing the cool bricks could soothe her fevered brain enough to think straight. Ever since she’d opened the office in New York her cycle had been all over the place. Her friend, Lauren, who was a doctor, had told her that flying long haul could sometimes do that.
She ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to shift that metallic taste. Trying not to remember the last time she’d tasted it, trying to stem the panicky thoughts swelling up and filling her chest.
So do a test. There was no harm in checking. In fact, it would put her mind at rest, she thought as she returned to the party, and picked up her bag.
‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ It was Cathy.
‘Sorry, yes.’ She held out her phone. ‘It’s a bit of a family emergency,’ she lied. ‘But I’ve got your socials, so I’ll keep an eye open for any announcements—’
She glanced across the room and froze. Harris Carver was talking to Avery, but he was watching her. Her heart began to beat like a jackhammer. Earlier when she was talking to Avery, she had been scanning the room for him because she was stupid enough to want to see him again just one last time, but now the idea of talking to him, being in his orbit, made her feel hot and dizzy, and cornered.
‘Are you okay?’ Cathy was staring at her anxiously. ‘You look really pale. Do you want to sit down?’
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘It’s just been a long day. I have to go, but take care—’
She broke off. Harris Carver was moving purposefully across the room, and, snatching up her bag, she turned and made her way to the door.
‘Eden—’
She darted out of the room and narrowly caught the elevator. But as the doors closed, she caught a glimpse of his narrowed grey, questioning gaze.
She stopped off at a drugstore on her way back to her apartment. Twenty minutes and one test later she was standing in the bathroom in just her blouse and bra, staring dazedly at the stick on the edge of the bath. Or more specifically at the word in the window.
Pregnant
That couldn’t be right. It must be faulty. Thankfully, she had another two back up tests sitting on the kitchen counter.
But she couldn’t make her legs move. There was no point. The test was right. She knew it was because she could remember how it had felt the last time. Only that time she hadn’t known what it was she was feeling. It had been winter, cold and damp. She’d thought she was coming down with the flu and that was why she felt so heavy and exhausted.
She and Liam had gone to Chicago to see a band they loved, and it had been snowy. Liam had almost slipped over in the street, and she’d grabbed his arm. He had pulled away and she’d thought it was because he was embarrassed.
It wasn’t that. Much later, when she had been torturing herself by replaying their relationship over and over again, she had realised that he hadn’t wanted her to think that he needed her for anything. And she’d wished she could go back in time and let him fall on his backside. Or, better still, push him in front of a snow plough.
He had broken up with her by text, and even then he had lied to her.
I’ve met someone.
As if it had just happened when, in fact, he’d been married for two years. Was it any wonder then that when the cramps started, she had thought it was just her body going into shock?
They’d told her at the hospital. That she was pregnant but she was losing her baby. So, she had never done this part. This testing and watching the future emerge in a small white rectangle.
Back then, with Liam, she would have been thrilled. They’d talked about getting a place together. He’d sometimes teasingly called her ‘wife’. They would have celebrated, cried, talked about names. Of course, none of that had meant anything. All of it, the talking about the future, the joking about marriage, had been lies designed to keep her hooked and stop her realising that he wasn’t as invested in their relationship as she was. In reality, she’d always been on her own.
Just like now.
Only now she wasn’t celebrating. She was terrified. Terrified at the thought of being a single mom. Terrified that this baby would be snatched away from her because she wasn’t ready or happy or capable of being good enough. And she knew that she wasn’t good enough. Just look at how unthinkingly she had got pregnant.
Worse than that, she’d done what she’d always striven to avoid doing. She had got pregnant by a man who didn’t want her. The curse had come true. She was going to be another Fennell woman raising a baby alone.
Her body tensed as the buzzer to her apartment vibrated through the apartment, cutting across her panic. It was probably some food delivery guy dropping yet another pizza to her neighbour. But he’d work it out.
It buzzed again, loud and insistent. Whoever was pressing that buzzer was not going to give up, and, darting into her bedroom, she snatched up a pair of pyjama bottoms and pulled them on.
‘Whatever it is, I didn’t order it,’ she snapped, yanking open the door. ‘So, could you stop—’
Her voice died in her throat.
It wasn’t a pizza delivery guy. It was Harris Carver.
She stared at him, her legs suddenly unsteady. Her lungs felt as if they were bruised on the inside. He couldn’t know. Of course, he didn’t. But what was he doing here? The panic she had been working so hard to stifle rose to her head in a rush and she stared at him mutely.
‘You left your jacket at the office.’
He held it up, and after a moment she took it from his outstretched hand.
‘Thank you. You didn’t need to bring it round.’
‘I wanted to check if you were all right. You left in a bit of a hurry and Cathy was worried about you. She said you’d had some kind of family emergency.’
Had she said that?
‘Everything’s fine.’ She lifted her chin, smiled stiffly. She felt as if she were made of glass, that her skin was transparent and that she was open to him, just as she had been in that hotel room. Only that had been sex, and this was—
What was this?
The many, all equally unsettling answers to that question made her grip the edge of the door as if it were a cliff edge. ‘I’m fine.’
Try telling that to your face , she thought as his gaze moved over her silk blouse and down to her striped pyjamas. She must look like a crazy person.
‘It’s nothing I can’t handle.’
‘You don’t look like you’re handling it.’ Before she could stop him, he had taken her elbow and was gently guiding her back into the apartment.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered.
She sat, but then almost immediately got to her feet again as he turned and began striding away from her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting you a glass of water.’
‘I don’t need one—’ She reached out to grab his arm, but it was too late. He was already in the kitchen. There was still a chance he might not notice the boxes of spare tests—
But then she felt his sudden stillness. And it was how she imagined it would feel when a star collapsed in on itself in some giant, epic implosion. She knew without even needing to open her eyes that he had seen them, so she opened them anyway because choosing not to see something didn’t stop it happening.
He was holding one of the boxes in his hand. His beautiful carved face looked like a bronze Emesa battle mask, and she felt her ribs snap tight as his grey gaze locked onto hers. She knew that she had gone pale, and that there was no way to hide that.
‘You can’t be pregnant. We used a condom.’ There was a short, stifling silence as his gaze switched to the other boxes on the counter, then back to her face.
‘Are you pregnant?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Have you done a test?’
She licked her lips, the directness of his questions making her sway a little as if his words were a series of jabs to her body. ‘I’ve only done one and it could be wrong—’
Her voice faded, but then the look on his face was enough to rob anyone of speech.
‘How pregnant are you?’
‘I don’t know. Six, maybe seven weeks.’
She could see him doing the maths. ‘So, it could be mine?’
It? She swayed slightly as a rush of fury that was as fierce as it was unfair surged through her, but she didn’t feel like being fair. She felt like weeping and hiding from this man who had already disassembled her poise and steadiness and was now barking questions at her like an inquisitor.
‘If you mean my baby, that’s none of your business.’
Which was a lie. It was very much his business. But earlier on today he had pretty much told her that she had nothing to do with his life. Obviously, she knew that was not a reason to hide the truth from him, and she would have told him at some point. But right now, she had hardly processed it herself and he was here wanting to call the shots just as if she were still working for him. But this baby wasn’t some proposal that needed his signature.
‘None of my business,’ he repeated slowly and the tension in the room ratcheted up several notches.
‘What?’ She stared at him coolly, but given that she was dressed for work and sleep at the same time it seemed unlikely that she was pulling it off.
‘We had sex once. We weren’t exclusive,’ she lied.
‘You were sleeping with other people?’ He seemed stunned.
‘Oh, and you weren’t.’ Just thinking about him with some other woman made her feel wronged. Which sounded insane even in the privacy of her own head.
‘Don’t judge people by your own standards, Eden.’
‘Maybe, don’t judge, period, Harris,’ she snapped back. His name fizzed on her tongue like sherbet. ‘What gives you the right to—’
‘Fathers have rights too.’
Was that true? Panic stabbed her stomach. His voice was hard, all menace and that authority he wielded so casually in the office, but which felt terrifyingly out of place in this small apartment.
‘Being there at the moment of conception doesn’t make you a father except in the biological sense.’
‘So, I am the father.’ He moved then, leaning in, his hands pressing against the wall on either side of her.
‘I didn’t say that.’ Being here with him was making her brain malfunction. She wanted him gone. Wanted to be alone so that she could process. But she also didn’t want him to leave. There was something solid and reassuring about his presence and after last time—
She could remember it as easily as if it had happened yesterday. She hadn’t understood what was happening. She had been alone and so scared—
She was still scared now, but at least she wasn’t alone. Only she wasn’t ready to deal with his reaction when she hadn’t even come to terms with her own. And it wasn’t fair of him to make this about himself. This was happening to her.
‘You need to leave,’ she said finally. ‘I have a flight booked for San Antonio this evening, so I need to pack.’
He was looking at her as if she had grown a set of horns.
‘I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.’
‘You’re not my boss anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.’
His face was harsh beneath the kitchen spotlights. ‘I can tell you this, I’m not going to be letting you out of my sight until I know for certain if that baby is mine or not.’
‘What are you going to do? Put me under house arrest?’
He took a step back, but his hands were still on either side of her face, his arms and chest crowding her back against the wall.
‘That’s not a bad idea.’
‘I was joking.’ She felt a rush of panic. Could he make that happen? The whole thing was too ludicrous to contemplate but there was a tension to his body that made her think that, from his perspective, it was a definite possibility. ‘You can’t keep me locked up here for the next seven or eight months.’
‘I won’t need to. You can do a paternity test at seven weeks.’
She felt her stomach twist. A paternity test. This was all moving way too fast.
‘But I just told you I’m only about six weeks pregnant.’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes snapped up to meet hers and he lifted his hands from the wall. ‘Which means I need you to come with me and stay with me for at least a week.’
‘No—’ She was shaking her head, but he didn’t even notice or most likely he had noticed but he didn’t care.
‘I’m not going to stay with you. I don’t need to. I have an apartment. You’re standing in it.’
‘I’m not talking about staying in New York. You won’t relax here, and you need to relax, and rest.’ He assessed her face. ‘You’ve been working flat out for weeks now and don’t bother trying to tell me otherwise. I know how many hours you’ve put in, and that would take a toll on anyone. But you’re pregnant. You need to take extra good care of yourself, and the baby.’
‘I can take care of myself and my baby,’ she began but he cut her off.
‘But it would be much easier if you didn’t have to think about anything else. I can make that happen. I have a villa in St Barth’s. It’s fully staffed, so you won’t have to lift a finger. You can just lie by the pool for a week and then we can take the test.’
They didn’t need to do one but, given that she had pretty much told him that she had slept with other people, he was hardly likely to believe that.
As for resting and relaxing, with Harris living under the same roof as her that seemed unlikely.
Her hands balled at her sides. He was glancing impatiently at his watch, and she desperately tried to think of an alternative to his crazy suggestion.
But then she remembered his knock on the door earlier. This was not a man who would give up or be open to persuasion. She would have to fight him, only she couldn’t fight the way he did, as if it was all or nothing. Not even on a good day, and she was so tired and strung out right now.
How could that be good for the baby? Her lungs sucked inwards, scrabbling for breath. She felt not just tired now but sick with panic. She couldn’t lose this baby too. Harris was right about her needing rest. Only that wouldn’t happen here in New York. Or in San Antonio.
There would be too many questions to answer at home.
Maybe a week away in the sun might give her the space she needed and make him back off a little. It would be worth going if both those things happened.
‘Fine,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’ll come to St Barth’s with you. For a week. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I need to shower and pack, so why don’t you go sit in that nice, air-conditioned limo of yours and I’ll be down when I’m ready?’
Without giving him a chance to respond, she turned and walked back into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.