Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘Not our baby,’ she said again and her voice might have quivered but her eyes were resolute and she frowned. ‘Are you going out?’

Roel dealt her a hard mocking look. ‘What do you think?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘That’s my business.’

Long after his departure, she was still hovering in the hall hugging herself as if she were cold. Eventually she pulled herself together and walked back out to the terrace. The staff had already cleared the table. She thought of the tiny life in her womb and wondered if it was suffering because she hadn’t eaten and her eyes stung like mad. She ordered toast and a chocolate drink for supper.

And all the time she was trying not to dwell on how Roel had behaved. As if he utterly despised her. As if she was beneath contempt. As if she had got pregnant deliberately and planned to sell her baby to him for the highest possible price. He had hurt her but she still felt that it was better that he had voiced what he was feeling. But she wished he had not gone out. An hour after his departure, she called him on his mobile phone.

‘Are you coming home soon?’ she asked with fake cheer.

‘I’m not coming home at all,’ Roel breathed icily.

‘Before you make your mind up about that,’ Hilary muttered anxiously, ‘I should warn you that if you stay out all night I’ll be very unhappy about it. I don’t think I could just sit here

waiting either. I’d be so worried I’d have to come and look for you—’

‘We are not having this conversation.’ He killed the call.

Half an hour later, bolstered by her toast, she called him back. When he answered she heard a soft feminine giggle somewhere close by and her heart sank to her toes. ‘Are you with a woman?’ she demanded sickly.

‘If you phone again, I won’t answer.’

‘I think we’re worth fighting for but I couldn’t forgive infidelity…’ she warned him shakily, her throat thick with tears.

‘Emotional blackmail doesn’t work with me.’

‘What about hysterics? Look, I know I sound like a maniac but all I want is for you to come back here and talk.’

‘But I don’t want to and you will not make me do what I don’t want to do.’

It was one in the morning when Roel appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was lying awake in the moonlight and she had left the door wide so that she could listen out for his return. Sitting up with a jerk, she switched on the bedside lamps. Black hair tousled, dark stubble outlining his obdurate jaw line, Roel stared across the depth of the room at her. Without hesitation, she scrambled off the bed and raced over to hurl herself at him. He had come back. That was all she cared about at that instant.

‘No…’ That single word was very decisive, very, very unyielding. He set her back from him with cool hands.

She fell back a step, horribly crushed by that rejection, suddenly conscious that with her mussed hair and red swollen eyes she had to look like hell. She was also fearfully aware of the weak part of her willing to do or say anything to hold onto him. But she knew that wouldn’t work. If she crawled, Roel would walk right over the top of her and despise her even more.

‘I’ve reached certain decisions,’ Roel delivered.

‘It takes two people to make a decision in a marriage,’ Hilary dared.

‘Not when only one of them is in the wrong,’ Roel splintered back at her without hesitation.

Hilary sucked in a slow deep breath. If she fought with him, he would only get angrier. It wouldn’t hurt her to stand a little humble pie while emotions got the chance to simmer down.

‘I want you to have a medical examination so that the relevant dates can be checked. Before the baby is born I want to be as certain as I can be that it’s mine,’ Roel drawled with no expression at all.

Her face pinching tight with pained mortification, she backed away from him. ‘You have doubts?’ she whispered and she was appalled that he could even suspect that someone else might have fathered the child she carried.

‘Some women would kill for a tiny percentage cut of what that baby will be worth to you in financial terms,’ Roel contended.

‘Oh…I don’t think any woman would kill to be me just at this moment,’ Hilary mumbled unevenly because, instead of returning to talk, he had returned to annihilate her hopes.

‘Naturally I’ll have DNA testing carried out as a final check after the birth,’ Roel continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m aware that you could have conceived during those two weeks you spent back in London. I think it’s unlikely but I’d be foolish not to seek full confirmation.’

‘Yeah…’ A shadowy attempt at a smile briefly skimmed her tense mouth. ‘Why hesitate when you’ve got yet another golden opportunity to humiliate me?’