‘So the Mummy and Daddy option will come into play. Is that it?’
‘That’s not what I said!’
‘Then what exactly are you saying?’
‘As you know, my parents have an apartment in London...’ But she cringed at the thought of taking them up on what would be their inevitable offer. Probably not even an offer. They would insist.
She had spent too many years doing her best to maintain her independence, and somehow she just knew that if she caved in to parental pressure at this point—even well-intentioned parental pressure—she would fall into a trap from which it would be nigh on impossible to escape.
‘Over my dead body.’
‘We could work something out,’ Susie muttered, staring at the ground. ‘Okay, I accept that my job doesn’t pay enough...isn’t stable enough... And I...’ She swallowed painfully as a vision of her limited options raced through her head like the steel jaws of a trap, propelling her into a place she fought hard against. ‘I don’t want to run crying to my parents for financial assistance. It’s bad enough that they’re going to try and shove it down my throat the second they hear that I’m pregnant.’
‘They won’t do any such thing if they’re aware that you’re financially being taken care of by me.’
‘I don’t want to be taken care of financially by you!’ She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, opened them and stared at him without blinking. ‘I might not be one of life’s great financial successes but I’ve never wanted to rely on anyone. How do you think you’re going to feel when you’re stuck having to dole out money to me?’
‘Don’t worry about how I’m going to feel. I’m fully capable of handling my feelings. And, whether you want to rely on someone or not, you now don’t have an option.’
‘This isn’t how I saw my life going,’ Susie said quietly. ‘I always thought that I would find Mr Right and everything would be done in the correct order. Love...marriage...babies...happiness and contentment and growing old together...’
Instead, how had she ended up? Pregnant by a man who had only ever seen her as a bit of fun—a guy who felt condemned to do the honourable thing and marry her for the sake of a baby he hadn’t asked for.
Sergio’s jaw hardened. This was not what he wanted to hear. Anecdotes about her ideal life weren’t relevant, given the circumstances.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘what sort of life would we have together? This was always going to fizzle out sooner rather than later...’
There was a pause that lasted only a heartbeat as she foolishly prayed for him to jump in and announce that that would not necessarily have been the case. He didn’t. What had she expected?
‘And now you’re proposing we artificially sustain it so that we can be shackled together. In the end, don’t you think that you’ll resent me? Feel chained? Who wants to be a prisoner of their own good intentions?’
‘There’s no need to be dramatic.’ Sergio swept aside her speech with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘Two out of three marriages end up in the bin, and they’re generally the ones that kick off with the starry-eyed belief that the good times will last for ever. A union that is approached from the point of view of a business arrangement stands a far better chance of lasting the course.’
‘And naturally this would be one of those “business arrangements”?’
‘Neither of us was braced for this situation, but now that it’s occurred we can’t indulge in regret and hand-wringing and it’s not helpful for you to dwell on what you would have ideally wanted. This may come as a shock, but it’s not an ideal world.’ He paused. ‘There’s no reason why we can’t make this work. You want to moan about chains and shackles? I don’t know how many chained, shackled prisoners fall into bed with one another and make love like tomorrow may never come...’
Inappropriately, he felt himself harden. The way she dropped her eyes and licked her lips nervously only served to accelerate the surge in his libido.
Susie couldn’t meet his eyes. Everything was unravelling at the speed of light and yet she couldn’t help herself—couldn’t turn off the full-frontal attack his proximity made on all her senses even as she resented his stupid assumption that sex might somehow make up for everything else that wasn’t there. Like love.