‘I have something to tell you,’ she confessed. ‘But I need you to promise me that you won’t get angry.’
‘Strange request, that,’ he drawled, lifting up his arms to fold them beneath his head. ‘I feel myself growing angry at the mere suggestion.’
‘I thought you might.’ She grimaced, sighed and then began. ‘I’ve had a very bad day today,’ she informed him. ‘Almost the worst of my life.’
‘My fault, I presume.’
‘Hmm … Yes and no,’ she replied. ‘Meeting my aunt didn’t help. Then you and I rowed and you took off like a maniac. I was feeling pretty miserable by then, I can tell you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed.
She shrugged the apology away. ‘Then something really frightening happened,’ she told him. ‘So I got Nikos to take me back to Rafina so I could visit a doctor.’
His eyes sharpened, his arms dropped down so his hands could clasp her around her waist. ‘Why?’ he raked at her. ‘What happened to you?’
‘He examined me,’ she explained as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Confirmed my worst fears … You do trust me, don’t you, Andreas, not to have ever been unfaithful to you?’ she then asked carefully.
‘Of course.’ He frowned, impatient with what he saw as an irrelevance, coming as it did right in the middle of what she was telling him. ‘Stop making a meal of this,’ he rasped. ‘And tell me what the hell is wrong with you!’
‘M-my uterus is enlarged,’ she said, not finding this as easy as she’d expected it to be. ‘H-he did some tests.’ She took a deep breath, then let it out again. ‘I’m—I’m pregnant,’ she announced.
It took a moment, while Claire sat there across him and waited with bated breath. Then he uttered a very rude word, and in an act of blind fury he toppled her off his chest and launched himself out of the bed. ‘I thought you had agreed not to do this!’ he bit out as he paced angrily away from her.
‘S-six weeks to be exact,’ Claire continued unsteadily. ‘Andreas—I need you to—’
‘How many times do I have to go through this hell?’ he raged right over the top of whatever she’d been going to say. ‘You cannot be pregnant!’ he turned to blast at her. ‘I am infertile, for goodness’ sake! I am infertile!’
Trembling too much to dare try to stand up and go to him, Claire drew up her knees and hugged them to her chest. ‘The doctor explained that,’ she murmured shakily.
He went off in a fury of Greek.
Sitting there like that, Claire closed her eyes tightly and waited for the furious stream to stop before grimly forcing herself to continue. ‘He said that research into male infertility is relatively new. That they are only just discovering that a man’s sperm count can change virtually by the m-month.’
‘I’m not listening to this.’ Reeling almost drunkenly, he made for his own room.
‘H-he said if you only did the test once,’ she stammered after him, ‘then you could have just chosen an unlucky day!’
‘An unlucky day?’ he repeated, coming to a taut standstill. Then he twisted his dark head to look at her. What she saw written on his face made her insides shrivel. ‘I had five years of unlucky days, Claire,’ he reminded her bitterly. ‘Try talking your way around that.’
She nodded, and swallowed, her blue eyes determined even while they swam with tears. ‘Ap-apparently he used to be Sofia’s family doctor,’ she explained. ‘He …’
‘No.’ Andreas immediately denied that. ‘Our family doctor is in Athens—’
‘And this doctor was Sofia’s family practitioner before she married you!’ Claire inserted. ‘He—he w-wants to talk to you—confidentially,’ she told him. ‘H-he says he has some information y-you may like to hear ab-about Sofia …’
Something happened, Claire wasn’t sure exactly what, but something most certainly cracked that death mask he was wearing clamped over his face—before he turned and walked into his own room without a word.
She wilted like a dying swan, her long neck folding over her knees. Her heart was pounding heavily, her lungs almost completely locked inside the tension surrounding them. And her brain seemed to have closed itself down altogether, because she could not think of a single thing beyond that expression on his wretched face as he’d walked away.
Something landed on the bed beside her. Her head shot up, blue eyes despairingly vulnerable as they searched out his. But Andreas had shut off completely. ‘Ring him,’ he commanded.
‘Ring who?’ She frowned in confusion.
‘This—doctor.’ A long, taut finger pointed stabbingly at something beside her on the bed; glancing dazedly down, Claire saw it was a mobile telephone.
‘But it’s the middle of the night,’ she protested.
‘Then wake him up,’ he insisted.