‘Let’s skip the insults, shall we?’ he snapped, as he tried to get his head around the fact that in her belly his child grew. His child! A child he’d never asked for nor wanted. A child he would never be able to love … that he didn’t know how to love. ‘I thought you were into honesty, Izzy? Except now I come to think about it you haven’t been very honest all the way along, have you?’
She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just how long have you known about this pregnancy?’
She met the accusation which blazed from his face. ‘For a couple of weeks,’ she admitted.
A strange light entered his eyes. He looked like someone who had been trying to solve a puzzle and had just found the last missing piece stuffed down the back of the sofa. ‘When we were in bed—the morning I got the phone call from Khayarzah about Leila—you knew you were pregnant then, didn’t you?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t know. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t sure.’
‘But you didn’t bother to tell me? Even today you kept quiet. You let me come here and …’ She’d let him lose himself in the refuge of her arms. Lulling him into sweet compliance with the erotic promise of her body.
‘We had sex, Tariq!’ she declared brutally. ‘Let’s not make it into something it wasn’t!’
She could see the faint shock which had dilated his eyes, but his reaction was breathing resolve into her and Isobel felt something of her old spirit return. Was she going to allow him to speak to her as if she was some worthless piece of nothing he’d found on the bottom of his shoe? As if she counted for nothing?
‘I didn’t tell you because I knew how you would react,’ she raged. ‘Because I knew that you’d be arrogant enough to think it was all some giant conspiracy theory instead of the kind of slip-up that’s been happening to men and women ever since they started fornicating!’
His eyes bored into her. ‘I’m assuming that marriage is what you want?’
Isobel’s eyes widened. Hadn’t he been listening to a word she’d been saying? ‘You must be mad,’ she whispered. ‘Completely certifiable if you think that I’d ever want to sign up for life with a man like you. A man so full of ego that he thinks a woman will get herself deliberately pregnant in order to trap him.’
‘You think it’s never been done before?’ he scorned.
‘Not by me,’ she defended fiercely, closing her eyes as a wave of terrible sadness washed over her. ‘Now, please go, Tariq. Get out of here before either of us says anything more we might regret.’
His impulse was to resist—for he was used to calling the shots. Until he realised that this wasn’t the first time Izzy had called the shots. It had been her, after all, who’d had the courage to end the relationship. And, yes, he had been arrogant enough to think that she might just be playing a very sophisticated game to bring him to heel.
But Izzy didn’t do game-playing, he realised. She hadn’t told him she thought she was pregnant because she’d feared his reaction—and hadn’t he just proved those fears a thousand times over? He looked at the haunted expression on her whitened face and suddenly felt a savage jerk of guilt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly.
Her eyes swimming with unshed tears, she looked at him. ‘What? Sorry for the things you said? Or sorry that you ever got involved with me in the first place?’
He flinched as her accusations hit home. ‘Sit down, Izzy.’
She ignored the placatory note in his voice. He thought he could spew out all that stuff and that now she’d instantly become malleable? How dared he tell her to sit down in her own home? ‘I’ll sit down once you’ve gone.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you do. Because there are things we need to discuss.’
She wanted to tell him that he had forfeited all rights to any discussion with his cruel comments. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Because Tariq was her baby’s father. And didn’t she know better than anyone how great and gaping the hole could be in a child’s life if it didn’t have one?
‘And we will,’ she said, sucking in another deep breath, her hand instinctively fluttering to her still-flat belly. ‘Just not now, when emotions are running so high.’
Tariq watched the unfamiliar maternal movement and something tugged at his heart. To his astonishment, he found that he wanted to ask her a million questions. He wanted to ask whether she’d eaten that day, whether she had been sleeping properly at night. He’d never asked for this baby, and he didn’t particularly want it, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel empathy for the woman who carried that baby, did it?
He looked at her with a detachment he’d never used before. She did look different, he decided. More delicate than usual, yes—but there was a kind of strength about her, too. It radiated off her like the sunlight which caught the pale fire of her hair.
He should have been gathering her in his arms now and congratulating her. Laying a proprietorial hand over her belly and looking with pride into her shining eyes. If he had been a normal man—like other men—then he would have been able to do all those things. But he knew that all he had was a piece of ice where his heart should be, and that was why they were just gazing at each other suspiciously across a small bedroom.
But this was no time for reflection. Whatever his own feelings, this had to be all about Izzy. He had to think practically. To help her in any way that he could.
‘You obviously won’t be coming back to work,’ he said.
Impatiently, she shook her head. ‘I hadn’t even thought about work.’
‘Well, you don’t have to. I want you to know that you don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll make sure you’re financially secure.’