A Ring for the Greek's Baby

His phone rang in his pocket and he fished it out, mouthed, ‘Excuse me,’ and answered it. He spoke in fluent Greek and she listened with one ear while her gaze drifted to his immaculately tidy desk. Unlike hers, which always looked like a child with a temper tantrum had taken to it. She was close enough to see what was open on his computer screen. Her heart gave a funny little skip. It was a popular and informative pregnancy site she had looked at herself. It touched her that he was showing an interest in the development of their baby. It was easy for fathers to feel shunted aside by the process of pregnancy and childbirth but he obviously wanted to equip himself with as much knowledge as he could.

Loukas put away his phone. ‘Sorry about that. I was waiting on an important call.’

Emily pointed to the screen. ‘Have you found that site helpful?’

His expression was too inscrutable to be described as sheepish but she couldn’t help feeling he’d been caught a little off-guard. ‘Yes and no.’

Emily frowned. She had found it the most helpful of all the sites she’d checked. ‘Why no?’

He looked as though he was trying to swallow something too big for his oesophagus. ‘Things can go wrong during pregnancy.’

‘Like miscarriage?’

His eyes flinched, as if blinking away a horrible thought. ‘Women still die in childbirth. It might be not as common as a hundred years ago but it does still happen.’

Emily wondered what had triggered him looking at the website. Was it concern for her, rather than interest in the baby’s development? ‘Why did you look at the website?’

His face got that boxed-up look about it she had come to know so well. ‘It has been a long time since I sat in a Sex Ed class.’

She fought back a smile. ‘M

e too. I don’t think I heard anything about morning sickness and extreme fatigue. I just remember condoms and courgettes and squirming with embarrassment at the snickering boys.’

A smile tilted his mouth, transforming his features and bringing life to his eyes. But then a shadow passed over Loukas’s face, dimming his gaze. ‘Are you worried about what could happen to you?’

‘Well, I guess I’m not so keen on getting stretch marks.’

He was still frowning in that I’m-being-serious-and-this-is-no-time-for-jokes manner. ‘I read about a condition where the amniotic fluid leaks into the mother’s bloodstream and it’s virtually always fatal. Then there’s post-partum haemorrhage. A mother can bleed out in minutes if help isn’t available.’

‘I’m not going to die, Loukas,’ Emily said, in a joint effort to reassure herself as well as him. She had skated over the risks section on the site. Her image of childbirth was a pink-faced, bunny-rug-wrapped infant in an exhausted but blissful mother’s arms with a doting husband and father present. Nowhere in her imaginings had there been any emergency blood transfusions, crash trolleys and panic-stricken doctors.

Loukas didn’t look all that convinced. ‘And the risks actually escalate if it’s a twin birth.’

Emily laughed. ‘Will you stop it? It’s bad enough accidentally falling pregnant with one baby, let alone two.’

A beat of silence passed.

‘Give me your hand,’ she said.

Loukas held it out and Emily placed it on her tummy, which was a little podgy for someone who was only a month into a pregnancy. But, given she was a comfort eater from way back, that was not so surprising. A family block of fruit and nut chocolate had to go somewhere and her tummy seemed to be where it had chosen. ‘In a couple of months you’ll be able to feel knees and elbows wriggling around in there.’

A look of awe passed over his face. ‘Can you feel anything yet?’

‘No, it’s way too early,’ she said. ‘It’s weird to think a new life is in there getting its act together, isn’t it?’

He removed his hand after a long moment. ‘We should discuss names at some point. And if we want to know the sex of the baby before it’s born. Would you like to know?’

‘Would you?’

‘You can make the decision, Emily. You’re the one doing all the hard work, so surely you deserve that privilege.’

She gave him a rueful look. ‘I used to think I’d want to be surprised when it’s born, but I figure you’re a little over surprises, right?’

One corner of his mouth twitched. ‘You can say that again.’

* * *

The lawyer arrived a short time later and the business of the pre-nuptial agreement was over soon after. As if to soften the blow, Loukas took Emily for a short walk through an olive grove to have a picnic in a secluded cove not far from his villa. The fringe of cypress pines provided some much-needed shade from the intensely hot sun, and she sat on the rug he’d laid down on the sand and looked longingly at the view of the sparkling ocean just metres away.