She told herself the difference was the baby. Not Kaspar.
It couldn’t be him. She couldn’t afford to let it be. She turned on him.
‘Before what?’
‘Just...before,’ he ground out. ‘I don’t know, Archie. You need to give me time. You’ve had months to get your head around this pregnancy. I’ve barely had a couple of hours. You’ll stay here until I have a plan.’
She could see what it cost him to admit to her that he, Kaspar Athari, had no idea what to do right at this moment. She could more than relate. But she couldn’t afford to crumble right now, much as she might want to. Much as the weaker Archie wanted to lean on him, even cling to him. She forced her head up.
‘I can’t stay here forever. I think Immigration might have something to say about that.’
Far from throwing Kaspar, her words seemed to galvanise him. The powerful, authoritative man the world knew was coming back. Shutting out once and for all that tiny glimpse she’d seen of a remotely vulnerable side to him.
‘We’ll sort that out.’ His disdainful rebuttal was aggravating. ‘We’ll have to. You’re carrying my baby. My blood. Which means, whether I like it or not, you’re now my family. And I’ll do whatever I need to in order to keep my family with me. I won’t allow this baby to grow up thinking she wasn’t wanted. Feeling she doesn’t have a home.’
‘It...he will have a home,’ she bit out, remembering at the last moment their agreement not to call the baby it. Surely there was no doubt that Kaspar’s current autocratic attitude stemmed as much from whatever horrors lay in his childhood as that it label had been?
‘His home is with me. The mother.’
‘And with me. The father,’ he said, narrowing his eyes at her. ‘I will not be an absent father. You can’t push me out of this, Archie.’
‘I’m not.’ Her voice was too loud, too fractured, but at least she now knew she was right about Kaspar’s past dictating his actions now. ‘You’re the father. I wanted you to know. I felt I owed it to you, to the baby, to give you the choice of being part of its life. But... I can’t give up my whole life just to stay in the States with you. I can’t even work out here, for one thing.’
‘I can take care of you.’
‘Out of what? A sense of duty?’ she challenged. ‘Not because you want me. Or our baby.’
‘What difference does it make?’ And it was only at that instant that she realised just how desperately she wished he could tell her otherwise. ‘I will take care of you. Both of you.’
‘I don’t want to be taken care of.’
‘Make your mind up, Archie.’ His barbed tone pierced its way through her, lodging inside her, twisting painfully. ‘An hour or so ago when I said you’d always been a strong kid, you were telling me how fragile you were. Now you’re telling me you can handle everything yourself?’
‘That isn’t what I said.’ Archie threw her hands up. He was distorting things, confusing her. Or was he right? Was she confusing things? She tried again. ‘I want to be...cared for. Not cosseted.’
‘And I will be a part of my child’s life.’
‘I’m not saying you can’t be...’
It was infuriating. And yet, somehow, it was also reassuring. The fact that he was planning for the baby’s—their baby’s—future. As though it had one. As though the fact that she might lose it the way she’d lost Faith wasn’t even a possibility for him. It was what she’d needed. He made her feel strong again. Just like he had a hundred—a thousand—times before. As a kid. Even if he didn’t remember it.
Suddenly she was tired of fighting. And scared. And it was making it harder and harder for her to think straight. Words began floating around her head. The risks she hadn’t even known about a few hours ago were now threatening to overwhelm her.
She really could lose this baby the way she’d lost Faith. Having her suspicions had been one thing, but to hear it so unequivocally was another.
She longed for him to fold his strong arms around her and pull her to his huge chest, comforting her and caring for her, as though he really wanted to. Not just out of some sense of moral decency. But he didn’t. They simply stood there, pretending they weren’t squaring off against each other.
‘I want you to be a part of our baby’s life, Kaspar,’ she said softly. ‘A big part. But I can’t stay here. Your life is here and that’s fine. But mine isn’t. And for what it’s worth, I don’t see you offering to give up your life and your work to follow me permanently to the UK, where you could also be with your child on a daily basis.’
Kaspar sighed. ‘We both know that your work is more relocatable than mine is. I have teams here that depend on me, patients that trust me to be there throughout their care.’
Archie scowled, though she knew he had a point. As much as she loved her job, it was fairly flexible, and unlike his it wasn’t a matter of life or death. ‘You just think your life is more important than mine,’ she finished petulantly, in spite of herself.
His dismissive shrug didn’t help.
* * *
‘There is no your life and my life. Not now. You’re carrying my baby so whatever our individual lives were like in the past, that’s all gone now. Like it or not, it’s our lives. I will not be apart from my child.’ Misery was etched into every line, every contour on his unfairly handsome face. ‘I won’t have her growing up the way I did, pulled between one parent and the other.’