Chapter Three
From the moment he’d heard about her pregnancy he’d known that if the baby was his he would propose marriage. What choice did he have?
Discovering his adoption had split his soul in two.
Every foundation of his life had been shaken.
He’d learned that his own biological parents—whoever they were—hadn’t wanted him.
Hadn’t loved him. That on some level he had been rejected by people who should have moved heaven and earth for him.
It had changed him on every level. He had always been determined and driven, but overnight he’d shut everyone out.
Already enrolled at boarding school, he’d stopped coming home for the holidays.
He’d travelled with casual friends instead, choosing those superficial relationships rather than the lie that was his family home.
Parents who had raised him to believe he was a Machairas. It was all fake.
It was also a foundation of his character.
Whatever he might have been like, had he not learned the truth, a part of him had died that fateful day and left in place of that one version of Aristotle another entirely.
This one cold, with a heart that was entirely withdrawn.
Bitten by the reality of his circumstances, the fact he was an outsider, he had made an artform of avoiding his parents.
Then he’d gone home one year, when he was eighteen, and Rosemary had been there, ensconced as though she’d always lived on the estate, and he’d felt strangely jealous. Replaced and usurped. Because he had never really belonged; it wasn’t his home any more than it was hers.
He’d confronted his father once, after stumbling upon the court ruling pertaining to his adoption completely by accident, and the truth had been confirmed.
They couldn’t have children of their own, and so had adopted Aristotle.
They knew nothing of his birth parents, his father had said: they hadn’t wanted to know.
Aristotle was theirs, from the moment they’d signed the documents.
His father was, if anything, impatient with the conversation.
They had never intended for Aristotle to know because it wasn’t relevant.
He was a Machairas, because they said so.
Aristotle was forbidden from speaking to his mother about it.
For Aristotle, it had only served to stretch the black hole inside of him further, so that all the parts of him he’d once known were swallowed into its infinitesimal depths.
It was no surprise to Aristotle that his reaction to the pregnancy news had been one of visceral certainty.
His child would never doubt his or her place in his life. His child would know that he had fought for them, would know that they were wanted, valued. Even when he had no idea how to show that.
Even when it meant marrying Rosemary Richardson, the one woman he wanted to keep at a distance.
The one woman who seemed to destroy whatever grasp he had on his control. Twice now, she’d driven him over the edge of reason so he’d acted in a way that was deeply out of character.
‘Seriously? Get the hell out of my home!’ she shouted, dragging him back to the present with a thud.
He crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at her, ignoring the pang of guilt he felt at her obvious distress.
What choice did he have? Since he was a teenager, he’d lived with a sense of abandonment and confusion, a feeling that he didn’t know who he was or where he belonged.
There was not a chance in hell he’d risk that happening to his own child.
Rosemary’s discomfort was unfortunate, but not his primary concern.
Besides, she’d clearly intended to hide the truth of this situation from him, and their parents, which somewhat justified his overbearing approach—at least, in Aristotle’s mind, in that moment.
‘We need to have this discussion.’
‘But we’re not having a discussion!’ She laughed almost manically.
‘You’re riding roughshod over everything I say, coming in here like some pregnancy dictator, demanding I marry you!
It’s the twenty-first century, Aristotle.
You can be in the baby’s life to some extent, without dragging me down the aisle. ’
In the very back of his mind, he felt a flash of something like amusement.
He knew he was considered an ‘eligible bachelor’.
That his fortune was eye-watering enough to make a lot of women willing to ignore the fact he was intentionally emotionally unavailable.
What did intimacy matter when there was a never-ending credit card balance in the offing?
He ground his jaw, pushing the thoughts aside. He knew they weren’t entirely fair. Not in this instance, at least.
Rosemary was—clearly—not looking for money, or she would have been the one to approach him with this news.
She would have held it over his head to barter for whatever she wanted, not hidden away in this Putney bedsit.
She certainly wouldn’t be standing there with her pouty lips pursed and her eyes flashing daggers in his direction because he was offering to marry her. No, insisting on it.
‘Let’s think about our parents,’ he said, trying a different tack. He knew how close she was, not only to her father, but to his mother as well. Their bond was obvious to anyone who observed them together.
And no wonder. His mother had been starved of affection from him ever since he’d learned the truth of his adoption. If he were a better man, he’d have been glad that she’d found it in the form of her relationship with Rosemary.
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Because you know how this will affect them.’
‘They don’t need to know,’ she pleaded, her voice higher in pitch than usual.
He shook his head and, despite his best efforts, his voice came out with a hint of condescension. ‘You’re not thinking clearly. Life is long. Are you seriously going to hide the truth of our child’s parentage from them?’
She twisted her fingers so sharply in front of her stomach he thought they might fall off. ‘I…yes.’
‘No,’ he admonished immediately. ‘For one thing, what if the child looks like me?’
Her eyes widened and her hands went from writhing themselves into knots to both pressing to her stomach, as though she could somehow stem that betrayal.
‘We can cross that bridge when and if we get to it. Besides, you’re not a lot like your parents, beyond your complexion. I’m nothing like my father.’
He shouldn’t have been surprised by the way her words seemed to slice through him as daggers might have, but they were so unexpectedly frank, calling out something he’d known for years and dismissed, up until that fateful afternoon when he’d found the court ruling detailing his adoption, quite by accident.
‘We are not lying to them about this.’
Her jaw clenched visibly. ‘Since when are you such a stickler for the truth?’
He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. If there was one character trait that could be reliably ascribed to him, it was that of honesty. Though, he supposed, with Rosemary, their interactions had been necessarily kept from his mother and her father.
‘You have two choices, Rosemary. Marry me, or prepare for a fight.’
He hardened himself against sympathy when he saw the way she blanched and reached behind her for a chair to collapse into. Her eyes though stayed hooked to his, anger and accusation in their depths.
‘I despise you.’
He ignored the way that sparked something in his gut. Something that made him want to reason with her, to apologise. He was doing what he had to, to show his child that they were loved and wanted, to avoid the rejection he’d known for so much of his life.
‘Be that as it may, we’re having a baby.’
He stood there watching her, studying her, waiting as she squeezed her eyes shut then dipped her head.
‘I know.’
‘So, what’s it to be?’
She glanced up at him, her expression showing sheer mutinous rage.
‘What do you think, you son-of-a-bitch? Obviously, given the options, I’ll marry you.
’ And then, with a spirit that seemed to come from nowhere, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of her shock, she stood, closing the distance between them and jabbing a finger at his chest. ‘But make no mistake about it: I will never forgive you for this.’
Beyond peeing on several sticks to confirm her pregnancy, Rosie hadn’t done anything to adapt to this change in her circumstances.
Perhaps it had been a form of denial, or a way of staving off the reality of this while she came to terms with being pregnant.
AKA giving herself the space, and grace, to accept what her future would look like.
So it wasn’t really a surprise that Aristotle—upon learning this—turned into some kind of pregnancy control freak, booking her an immediate appointment with a top London obstetrician, which included a full suite of blood tests and an ultrasound.
She tried to ignore the fact that Aristotle was by her side as the obstetrician smeared goopy liquid on her stomach and ran the wand over it. Tried to ignore the fact that he was only a foot away, staring at the same screen she was.
‘Would you like to know the gender of the baby?’
Rosie’s heart clenched. The baby. Tears formed in her eyes as she stared at the grainy image—their child, recognis-ably a little person, bobbling around. She pressed her teeth into her lip to stop from crying, shaking her head a little.
‘I—no.’ She glanced up at Aristotle, and then wished she hadn’t. His face was like thunder—a storm about to burst. As though this was the worst confirmation he could have expected. He clearly wasn’t riding the same emotional waves she was.
So why propose?
Why forcibly shoehorn himself into her life, this pregnancy?
It hadn’t even occurred to her that he’d want a part of this.