One Night to Risk It All

“Well...thanks. But why?”

“Because I am not going to give up on you, agape mou. On us.”

“Because you love me so much?” she asked, her heart hammering, her palms sweaty. She’d asked it to put him off. To mock him. Instead, she found herself standing there shaking, a part of her praying his answer would be yes.

“Not at all. Love isn’t in the cards for a man like me, Rachel. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But a family... I thought I would like to try.”

She swallowed hard. “But I need more than that, Alex. I need more than just you trying. I’m not going to be your happy family experiment, it’s not fair.”

“You don’t have a happy family, experimental or otherwise at the moment, so why not?”

She tried to ignore the punch to the gut his words delivered. But it was impossible. Because she’d lived the past eleven years holding her family together. Being what they needed. And now it was gone.

It was gone and she didn’t know what to do without it.

It was like realizing that pieces of her armor had been stripped away. Threatening to expose her. Vulnerable. So soft and easily hurt.

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, as if that might hold what was left of her armor close to her skin. As if it might protect her.

Suddenly she was very aware of the baby inside of her, and that, in spite of the fact she had a human in her, she’d never felt so alone or frightened in all of her life. As if everything, inside and out, had turned completely alien.

She would take pictures of herself being intimate with her former almost-lover hitting the news any day over the feeling that had grabbed her by the throat just now.

“I...I need to go,” she said. “Send the plane. I’ll pack.”

“No. Lucy will pack for you. You rest here and I will see to all the arrangements.” For Alex, he seemed almost contrite.

“You don’t have to come.”

“You don’t want me to?” he asked.

“No.”

“You can’t always get what you want, agape.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“SHOW-OFF,” SHE SAID, looking around the penthouse and walking toward the window, looking out at the ocean below.

The flight to Cannes had been quick and uneventful. The uneventful part he credited to the fact that Rachel had ignored him the entire time.

“What? The hotel room you put me up in was very nice. And the room service was excellent.”

Something flashed in her eyes that he didn’t like. Pain. Shame. “You aren’t authorized to joke about that night,” she said. “I don’t like the reminder that you used me.”

“No more than you used me. You were engaged to another man, after all. You were hardly blameless.”

“You knew, though. I didn’t trick you.”