More Than a Convenient Marriage?

Tell her your secret, a voice whispered insidiously in his head.

He slipped his hand into his pocket to close his fist on the velvet box. No. It wasn’t necessary. They were doing great. Her brother was on the other side of the world, not questioning where Adara’s husband had come from. Gideon had dodged any curiosity from that quarter and there was no use rocking the boat.

Even though guilt ate him alive at the way Adara couldn’t seem to get enough of watching her niece over the webcam. But what could he say? Yes, let’s allow strangers to dig into my past so we can adopt a baby?

She hadn’t brought it up again, but she didn’t need to. It was obvious what she wanted and he couldn’t do it.

Assaulted by a fresh bout of shame and remorse, he ducked it by glancing at his watch. It wasn’t like Adara to keep him waiting.

Moving to her room where the bulk of her clothes and toiletries remained while their architect prepared renovation plans for a new master bedroom, Gideon was aware of a fleeting apprehension. He rarely checked in on her while she was getting ready. There was something about watching a woman put on makeup and dress to go out that triggered old feelings of being abandoned and helpless. He shook off the dark mood that seemed so determined to overtake him tonight, and knocked before letting himself into her room.

She was a vision of sexy dishevelment in a blue gown not yet zipped up her back. Her hair had ruffled from its valentine frame around her face, curling in soft scrolls around her bare shoulders while her flawless makeup gave her lips a sensual glow and added dramatic impact to the distempered expression in her eyes.

“Problem?” he asked, noting the splashes of color where gowns had been discarded over the chair, the bed, and even the floor. Perhaps they should rethink the room sharing. This kind of disorder could wear on him.

“I told you we were eating out too much. I look like a lumpy sausage in every one of these. This one won’t even close and my makeup doesn’t match...” She was whipping herself into quite a state.

He bit back a smile, aware that he’d be on the end of a swift set down if he revealed how cute and refreshing he thought this tantrum was.

“Maybe the zipper is just caught. Let me try.”

“It’s not caught. I’m getting fat.” She stood still as he tried to draw the back panels of the silk together and work the zipper upward. Oh, hell. This wasn’t just a snagged zip, and now he’d done it: put himself in the position of having to acknowledge to his wife that she had gained a pound or two. Might as well go up to the roof and jump right now.

“See?” she wailed when he kept trying to drag the zip upward.

“Honestly, I don’t see any weight gain,” he insisted while privately acknowledging that spending as much time as he did caressing this body, a small and gradual gain would go completely unnoticed. “You’re probably just getting your period. Don’t women feel puffy then? You must be due for one.”

Even as he said it, he was caught by the realization that she hadn’t had one since, well, it would have been before they’d become intimate in Greece. At least a month ago.

He bristled with an unwelcome thought that he dismissed before it fully formed.

While Adara stood very, very still, her color draining away in increments.

Instinctively, Gideon took hold of her arm, aware of the way she tensed under his touch, as if she wanted to reject it.

“I, um, never get back to normal right away after a miscarriage,” she summed up briskly, not looking at him while her brow furrowed. Her arm jerked to remove his touch as she shrugged into a self-hug. “You’re probably right. It’s just a particularly bad case of PMS bloating.”

Except she’d also mentioned a few days ago that her breasts were sore because her bra was too tight.

Or tender because of something else?

He could see where her mind was going and it scared him because he really would lose her if she fell pregnant again.

“I use a condom every time, Adara. Every time.” He’d been meaning to book a vasectomy, as permanent protection, but hadn’t been ready to take the necessary break from sex.

“I know,” she said so quickly it was almost as though she was trying to shut down the conversation before the word could be said, but it was there, eating the color out of her so she was a bloodless ghost refusing to look at him.

“So I don’t see how—”

“I’m sure it’s impossible,” she cut in crisply. “And I’d only be a couple of weeks, not starting to put on weight, but I won’t be able to think straight until I’m sure.” Peeling the delicate straps of her gown off her shoulders, she let it fall to the floor and stepped out of the circle of midnight blue. Her strapless green bra didn’t match the yellow satin and lace across her buttocks, but it was a pretty sight anyway as she walked into the bathroom. “I think there’s a leftover test in the cupboard...”

She closed him out, the quiet click of the door a punch in the heart. He rubbed his clammy hands on his thighs, insisting to himself it was impossible.

Even though Adara thought it was possible.

And she wasn’t happy about it.

How could she be?

Bracing his hands on the edges of the bathroom door, he listened for the flush and heard the sink run. Then, silence.

He ground his teeth, waiting.

Oh, to hell with it. He pushed in.

She’d pulled on an ivory robe and stood at the sink, a plastic stick in her hand. It quivered in her shaking grip.

He moved to look over her shoulder and saw the blue plus sign as clearly as she did. Positive.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE VOLUME OF emotions that detonated in Adara was more than she could cope with. Dark and huge as a mushroom cloud, the feelings scared her into falling back on old habits of trying to compress them back into the shallow grave of her heart.

“The test is old, maybe. Faulty,” Gideon said behind her.

“It was the second one in the box from when I tested myself a few months ago.” She threw the stick away and washed her hands, scrubbing them hard, then drying them roughly before she escaped the bathroom that was luxuriously cavernous, but way too small when her husband was in it with her.

And she was pregnant.

Again.

Shock was giving way to those unidentified emotions putting pressure on her eyes and rib cage and heart. She didn’t want him watching as they took her over and she had to face that it was happening again.

“You should go,” she said briskly, keeping her back to him. “Make my apologies. Tell people I came down with the flu or something.” She was distantly aware of the cold, slippery satin on her arms bunching under her fists, her whole being focused on listening for Gideon’s footsteps to leave the room the way she was silently pleading for him to do.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not in the mood to go out right now,” she said sharply, grasping desperately for an even tone to hide how close she was to completely breaking down.

“Adara, I’m—”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry!” she whipped around to cry. Distantly she was aware of her control skidding out of reach, but the storm billowing to life inside her was beyond her ability to quell. “Maybe this is all the time we have with our children, but I won’t be sorry they exist!”

Her closed fist came up against her trembling lips, trying to stem the flood that wanted to escape after her outburst.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said with quiet ferocity, moving toward her with what seemed like a wave of equally intense emotions swirling around him.

Their two force fields crackled with condensed energy as they met, heightening the strain between them. Adara looked into his face, really looked, and saw such a ravaged expression, such brutally contained anguish, her insides cracked and crumbled.

“Whatever happens, I’m staying right here.” He pointed at the floor between their feet. “I won’t leave you alone again. This is happening to us.”

Emotion choked her then, overspilling the dam of denial to flood her with anguish and insecure hatred of this body that didn’t know how to hang on to babies. Futile hope combined with learned despair to make her shake all over. She couldn’t hold it back, had to say it.

“I’m scared, Gideon.”

He closed his eyes in a flinch of excruciation. “I know,” he choked out, and dragged her into his protective arms, locking her into the safety of a hard embrace. “I know, babe, I know.”

It all came out in a swamping rush of jagged tears. She clung hard to him as the devastating sorrow she’d never shown him was finally allowed to pour out of her. Every hurt that had ever scarred her seemed to rise and open and bleed free, gushing until it ran out the toxins, gradually closing in a seal that might actually heal this time.