18. NIKOLAI
“Nikolai?”
I hear Andie’s voice in the doorway, and I can tell at once that something is up. It’s not the authoritative tone she took with me when she came by telling me she had advice for me on the matter of the new venue for our gambling.
No, she sounds nervous, something I’m not used to hearing from her.
I put aside my papers and look up, finding her standing in the doorway, looking more pale-faced than usual. Her hair is messy, damp strands hanging down at each side of her face. She’s clutching something in her hand, though I can’t tell what it is from where she’s standing.
“What is it?” I ask, rising to my feet, brows knitting together with concern.
“Can I…can I talk to you for a second?”
I nod, pulling out a chair for her, placing a hand on the small of her back.
I can feel that she’s shaking even from the barest touch, clearly struggling to keep it together in the face of whatever it is she has to say to me.
I move back to my side of the desk, taking a seat and lacing my fingers as I study her for a moment, trying to work out what could have gotten her into this much of a state.
“What is it?” I ask.
She draws in a deep, shaky breath, and then holds out her hand to me without saying a word. I glance down at what she’s holding—and, for a second, I can’t make sense of it at all.
“What’s that…?” I murmur, twisting my head to get a look at the white, plastic strips she’s holding. And then it hits me.
Pregnancy tests.
I grab them from her, staring down at the results. Positive. Both of them. I glance up at her to find her chewing her lip nervously, staring at me as she waits for a response.
“These are…?”
“I just took them,” she explains. “I…I missed my period, and I just wanted to be sure, one way or another. I got one of the guards to pick it up for me, and I…”
She continues to talk, but all I can do is stare down at the tests I’m holding, my head spinning as I try to make sense of it. Andie is pregnant. She’s really pregnant.
I am going to have a child…
And this business is going to have an heir. Exactly what my father wanted. And exactly what I imagined I would have to find some way around if I was going to keep this marriage intact, without giving away the truth of what brought us together.
“Nikolai?”
I realize I’ve been sitting in silence, and now she’s staring at me nervously, waiting for me to say something.
I rise to my feet, warming my face with a smile. “This is fantastic news,” I tell her, and I lean down to wrap my arms around her. She hugs me back, but I can still feel the tension in her body, the clear surprise at how enthusiastic I’m being about this.
“You…you mean that?” she murmurs.
I pull back, looking down at her with a cocked brow. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She twists her hands in her lap as I take my seat again, eyes still fixed on the tests. “I don’t know,” she confesses. “I just thought…fuck, I don’t know what I thought…”
“Hey, careful about using that kind of language around our child,” I remark jovially.
Her brows knit together. She doesn’t seem to be in the same place I am, far from expressing the same brightness and joy that’s running through me right now.
“You really…you’re really happy about this?” she asks me.
Vampires make terrible promises and even worse exes.
That is exactly why they make good stories. Pick one at Lokepub.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask her. “I’m going to have a child with my wife. It’s perfect.”
She shakes her head. “I just…I figured that you would have your own plans for the way things were going to go,” she confesses. “And I didn’t know that a child would fit into them. Given that I only seem to get in the way of things…”
“You heard my father,” I remind her. “He’s traditional, when it comes to his family, at least. He wants an heir to the business. A new generation who will step up to take over what we’ve both worked so hard to make happen. And now, we have that.”
Her eyes darken as I speak, and I can tell at once that I’ve managed to say the wrong thing. Isn’t she relieved, that this is what I want? Or is she pissed, somehow, that I’m too enthused about what we have ahead of us right now?
“Is that what this was all about?” she asks quietly.
“All what was about?”
“All…this!” she exclaims, gesturing between the two of us. “I mean, this marriage, us being together, all of it—did you just want to get me pregnant and have an heir for the family business?”
I reach out to touch her hand, but she snatches it back sharply.
“I didn’t plan on this,” I tell her. “But this was always the plan. Back when I was still meant to marry Natalie, the intention was?—”
“Oh, so you just planned this with whoever you happened to meet at the end of that aisle?” she replies, voice laced with pain. “I could have been anyone, could I?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?” she replies sharply.
“Because it sounds a whole hell of a lot like I could have been just about anyone, and you would have been happy to knock up whoever wound up with this ring on their finger.”
She lifts her hand to flash me the wedding ring that I gave her the day we were married.
It’s still a little big for her, sized for Natalie’s hand and not hers, but she has worn it every day since—and I thought that meant something to her.
I thought it was worth something to her.
I have tried to show her that I’m willing to provide for her, willing to give her whatever kind of life she wants, and now she’s talking like this is the worst thing that ever happened to her.
“No, Andie,” I assure her. “I’m glad it was you. I know you’re going to be an amazing mother?—”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she replies, her voice laced with unbridled bitterness now. “If you did, you would never have married me.”
“Jesus, Andie, what the hell does that mean?”
“You know what it means,” she retorts. “You made me walk away from my business. I try to offer you help, and you shut it down. And now I’m pregnant, and you’re talking like the only thing I’m good for is to just be your breeding stock.”
“Andie, I’m trying to give you a life that a woman married to me would expect,” I reply, doing my best to keep my voice steady. “And that means taking care of you. Giving you everything you need?—”
“Everything I didn’t ask for.” She rises to her feet abruptly, shaking her head. “I need…I need time to think.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice takes on a sharp edge. “I just…I need to clear my head, okay? I just want some space to figure out how I feel about all of this.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
She snatches the tests up off the table.
“Andie, please,” I insist, reaching out to grab her arm. “Don’t go. We need to talk about this?—”
“No, we don’t,” she replies, her voice hollow. And with one last look at me, she turns to storm out of the room, leaving me standing there and staring at the spot she was just standing in.
And wondering what the hell I’m going to do to make her see that my care for her isn’t some act I’m putting on.