Bedded for Passion, Purchased for Pregnancy

‘She never even was…?’ Emma couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.

‘Which meant there was nothing to be upset about—nothing to grieve. Because it had never existed. Nothing had been lost. I was just a fool who for a little while had believed…’

‘You’re not a fool, Zarios.’

‘I loved that baby.’

It was hard for men—that much Emma could see. Her body was a melting pot of hormones, of changes not yet visible, but her pregnancy was real just the same. All Zarios had had was Miranda’s word—a word he had believed. And just as Emma loved her baby, just as she would move the world to make it right for the little life inside her, he had loved his, too.

Even if it had never existed.

‘I’m sorry.’ It wasn’t her mistake, it wasn’t her lie, but she truly was sorry. ‘It must have been hell.’

‘I found out there was no baby the week before you came to see me at my office to ask me for money. And when you told me that you were pregnant…’ Zarios closed his eyes ‘…it felt as if it was happening again.’

‘This one’s real!’ She tried to smile, tried to be brave—but what if she was wrong? What if it was already too late?

‘I know.’ He held her hand. ‘And, whatever the outcome, this little one is loved.’

There was no delaying the porter this time. Emma climbed over onto the trolley, trying to fathom the mind of a woman who would lie like that—and trying to fathom Zarios’s pain at being told that the little life wasn’t just over, but had never even existed in the first place.

‘Can he come with me?’

The bossy nurse was actually very kind. ‘What do you want, Ms Hayes? Of course it’s in all the papers that your relationship is over—and I don’t want any of my patients feeling pressured…’

‘I think I’d like him to come with me.’ Emma swallowed, terrified of the outcome, but knowing now that Zarios was just as scared, too.

‘Just some cold jelly on your stomach.’

It was routine to the sonographor. Oh, she was kind, but she was efficient and just a little bit distant—maybe she had to be? Emma thought. Having to regularly face parents whose dreams had been dashed.

‘I want this baby,’ Emma said, because it was imperative that she voiced it, that this little scrap inside her knew that it was wanted and loved.

‘I know.’ Zarios’s hand was over hers.

‘Do you want me to turn the screen away?’ the sonographor offered, but Emma shook her head, feeling the probe move over her stomach, watching great black and white shapes swoop and swirl on the screen, clouds dashing in and out of focus, like travelling at speed through a tunnel.

And suddenly there it was….

Floating in its little universe, safe and unperturbed by the drama that had taken place, its whole chest a heartbeat that pumped and moved, their baby swung as if on some invisible trapeze, whooping and wriggling and very much alive.

‘About ten and a half weeks…’ the sonographor said, clicking away. ‘Too early to tell the sex at this stage.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zarios spoke when Emma couldn’t.

‘I’ll print off some photos.’

Those were the sweetest words she had ever heard.

Rest and more rest were the doctor’s orders.

A slightly irritable uterus, a bruised lower back and an emotionally exhausted mother—there was nothing else he could prescribe.

Sitting in Zarios’s car, pale, shaken, clutching her photo, Emma stared at a world that seemed just a bit brighter somehow. All the dirty secrets were out in the open now, and the world was a better place for it.

Jake was getting the help he needed and her baby was alive.

Closing her eyes, she rested against the passenger window, locked in a twilight world between waking and sleep, vaguely aware that the car-ride was taking ages, but too sleepy to question why.

She was imagining herself on the beach road, but in control now—her parents were riding safely along with her, no crumbling cliffs or murky waters, just the shriek of gulls and the delicious salty fragrance of her home…

The car door opened.

‘We’re here.’

She blinked, seeing her home, her family home, for the first time since the funeral.

And she wasn’t so much in shock as he helped her up the stairs and into her familiar bedroom as simply at peace. There were no more questions.

The answers could wait till later.

She could hear banging, but she ignored it. Later—ages later—she was woken with grapefruit juice and toast by an unshaven, tatty-jeaned, strangely calm playboy, who stretched out on her single bed, watching her from its foot, his head on his hands, smiling as he watched her eat.

‘You look better.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘You do.’ He smiled over to her. ‘However, I have taken an executive decision and told my parents that you are not up to receiving visitors just yet.’

She didn’t say anything—scared she’d misheard, scared she might rush in on what was such a sensitive area—but Zarios was still smiling, a lovely self-mocking smile that quenched her thirst as much as the grapefruit juice did.

‘At thirty-four years of age I now have a mother who thinks she can tell me what I should be doing—I am to feed you soup, apparently.’

‘Sounds nice.’

‘And we are not to have sex till the baby is here.’

‘We’ll listen to a doctor on that one.’ Emma smiled.

‘And I am to “communicate better”, she has told me. Something apparently my father failed to do.’

‘I’m beginning to like her.’ Emma’s smile faded; suddenly she was serious. ‘When did you buy my house, Zarios?’

‘I put an offer in two days after the funeral.’

‘You were with Miranda then.’

‘I know.’

‘Did you tell her?’

He shook his head. ‘I cannot justify or even explain why I did it. I knew it would be tearing you up, having to go through things. I thought if I could just buy it as it was, maybe at some stage…I don’t know…’

‘You shouldn’t have…’ Emma gulped. ‘On so many levels, you shouldn’t have.’

‘Don’t make me feel guilty for not being open with Miranda—just know that it would never be the same with you. I tried so many times to close the door in my heart to you, and it kept springing open. I wanted to dislike you, to use you as I thought you were using me…Yet I couldn’t.’

He was playing with her feet, which she’d always hated. In fact she couldn’t imagine letting another person massage her soles or toy with her toes. But she let him.

‘I want to see you happy, Emma.’

‘I want to see you happy, too.’

‘I am happy…now that I know you are okay.’

‘So the board’s decision went your way?’

‘Naturally…’ He smiled—a different smile, though, a smile she had never seen before, one that made her want to smile, too.

‘What?’

‘When you are ready to read the newspaper, you will find out that “in a surprising move”, I, Zarios D’Amilo—’ he spoke in the deadpan voice of a news reporter ‘—have declined the board’s unanimous offer, choosing instead to amalgamate with associates so that I can spend more time with my family. That’s you, by the way,’ he added in his own voice. ‘Just in case you hadn’t worked it out. I know it is too soon now for you to be happy—that you haven’t had a chance to mourn your parents and that these last months have been hell—but one day I am going to make you happy…’

Tears slid down her face. Only this time she didn’t sniff them back. This time she just let them run unchecked, a salty catharsis showing that she didn’t have to go it alone any more.

‘I just miss them.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m glad they never found out about Jake. I’m glad they died thinking he was doing okay. But I wish—I just wish they had lived to find out about me. That I’d had more time to make them proud. They’d have been so proud now. Not…’ she gulped ‘…because of how rich you are. I know what I said, what my mother said…’

‘They wanted you to be happy, to be secure, and now you are.’

‘They don’t know that, though. They don’t know about the baby, about—’

‘Hey.’ Now he halted her tears. ‘Do you think this is an accident?’ His hand crept up to her stomach. ‘Can you not see that this is their gift—their way of letting you know that they’re okay? Of course they know.’

Oh, she wanted to believe that—so badly she wanted to.

‘Come here.’ He helped her out of bed, and on legs as wobbly as a foal’s she was led to her parents’ room. ‘Look’

She hadn’t been in her parents’ bedroom since before they had died, but there, above the balcony doors, was her painting.

‘They put it up?’ Emma blinked.

‘They did,’ Zarios lied, hoping she wouldn’t notice the edge of the hammer sticking out from under the bed. If she did, he decided then he’d make something up.