He twisted his head slightly, so he could graze her brow with his mouth. It was a gesture of reassurance, possession. Then he spoke.
‘Are you worried I’m getting bored with you? Is that it? If so, there’s no need. I don’t want you worrying, OK? I meant it when I said I missed you. I don’t like it when I have to go away and, if you’ve noticed—’ the slightest edge crept into his voice ‘—I tend not to do it unless it’s unavoidable. Don’t I take you with me everywhere?’
‘Yes,’ she answered in a low voice. ‘You’re very good to me, Markos. It’s just that—’
‘Yes?’ The edge had sharpened an iota.
She must have registered it, because he saw that look fleet in her eyes again. But this time she did not relapse into silence. This time she spoke.
‘Suppose something happens, Markos.’
His eyebrows rose.
‘What sort of thing? Earth gets hit by an asteroid?’
She swallowed. ‘No, I mean, like…something to us. Something that—that changes things.’
‘Like you get tempted away to Mexico with another man on the strength of a dodgy promise of a cut-price emerald necklace?’ he jibed gently, without rancour. He didn’t like the way she’d got the conversation back to this subject.
But his attempt to steer her away from it failed.
He could feel her body tense in his arms. She wasn’t looking at him, and he could see she’d shut her eyes.
‘What sort of thing, Vanessa?’ There was no humour in his voice, but no edge either. He kept it studiedly neutral. Sometimes that was the best way to flush out what someone was trying to say.
Or conceal.
Suddenly, with the kind of certainty that came to him when he was in a business negotiation and he knew that his opponent was making a feint of some kind, Markos knew that Vanessa was about to get evasive.
Well, he wasn’t having that. She was the one who’d turned the conversation heavy. Now she could follow it through.
‘What sort of thing?’ he repeated, keeping the same neutral tone in his voice.
He felt her swallow again.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Honestly—nothing.’
Why did women do that? thought Markos, suppressing the irritation that had sliced through him again at her response. Why did they start to say something, then say ‘nothing’ in that tone?
‘Vanessa?’ He wanted this sorted—now. He really wasn’t in the mood for it—it wasn’t the kind of conversation he’d ever been in the mood for—and coming right now, when his body and mind were replete and relaxed, when he’d just spent days travelling to the other side of the world and back again, and getting hassled by his aunt while he was there, it was definitely not what he wanted.
But it had to be done. It wasn’t a topic he wanted to come up a second time.
‘You can’t just say “nothing” like that, and then go silent on me.’
He could feel the tension stiffen her body, but he hardened his heart. This had to be sorted, or it would just louse things up further down the line, and that was the last thing he wanted. Life with Vanessa was too good for him to want it to do that.
‘So? What sort of thing?’ he prompted.
There was a long—overlong—pause. Then, finally, she answered him.
She’d opened her eyes, and was looking straight at him, tension and apprehension in their amber depths.
‘Supposing I got pregnant,’ she said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR A LONG moment, there was complete silence. Then, very, very carefully, Markos spoke.