The Consequence He Must Claim

“No. I don’t.” And he hated it. That much she could tell as she searched his expression.

She didn’t know if she was relieved or crushed. The idea that he might remember their intimacy and hadn’t bothered to call had tortured her at her lowest points. His not remembering exonerated him to some extent, but it told her the closeness she’d felt, the connection, was all in her mind. Her memories. As far as he was concerned, they’d never progressed past the incidental touch of fingertips when passing a pen back and forth.

And despite spending way too much time running through the million potential conversations she would have if she ever met him again, she didn’t know how to proceed. Especially when, in all of her imagined scenarios, she had at least washed her hair and worn real clothes.

“Are you recovered otherwise?” she asked.

“Completely. What was this reason you gave me for quitting?” he asked with brisk aggression, like his patience had been tested too long. “That you were pregnant?”

She flashed a glance upward. “How would that be possible?” He’d gotten her pregnant after she put in her notice.

“I’m no midwife, but it’s been eight months since my accident, not nine. You were dating that artist. Is it his?”

Three dates with the painter nearly two years ago, thanks very much to her work schedule, and he still thought it was a thing.

“I went into labor early.” She shifted to alleviate the pain in her torso. It was coming from his reaction, though, not her recent surgery. His lack of reaction. She’d always thought there was a hint of attraction on his side. He’d said that day that he’d always felt some, but maybe that had been a line.

This was too incredible, not just having to convince a man that he was a father, but that they had had the sex that conceived his son.

“I explained my reasons for quitting and then, um, we slept together. You really don’t remember that day?” she persisted.

He stood with his arms folded and his gaze never wavering, but revealed a barely perceptible flinch. “No.”

The way he was looking at her, like he was waiting for her to expound on the slept-together details made the pain squeezing her lungs rise to pinch her cheeks. A mix of indignation and agony and plain old shyness burned her alive.

She glanced at the clock, recalling that the nurse had said she’d wake her when Enrique needed to be fed, but that they wouldn’t let him go more than four hours. It had been three since he’d last been placed in the incubator.

“When I committed to five years, I didn’t know you’d be marrying before that.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, as I explained that day...” Oh, that day had been bittersweet, starting with their customary champagne toast to a project completed. She always loved that time. They so rarely relaxed together, but that was typically when they were both in good spirits. A real conversation about personal things might arise. She’d always felt close to him, then. Valued.

She cleared her throat.

“I realize one of the conditions of your taking over from your father was that you would marry the woman your parents chose for you. I just didn’t realize, when you hired me, how the timing would work. That you would get engaged before the five years of transitioning into the presidency were up.”

“So you gave notice because I was getting engaged. What did you think was going to happen between us, Sorcha?”

“Nothing!”

“And yet I’ve been named the father of your newborn. Keep talking.”

Pity he’d lost a week’s worth of memories instead of that habit of demanding his time not be wasted.

She dragged her gaze off his folded arms and the line of his shoulders. His nostrils were flared. He never lost his temper, but that contained anger was worse. She knew him. She knew with a roiling dread in her belly exactly how much he hated learning of any sort of perfidy. Keeping her pregnancy from him had been a massive act of self-preservation, but there was no way to protect herself now.

“Wives are different from girlfriends.” She licked her lips, aware that his sharp gaze followed the action. An internal flutter started up under his attention, but she ignored it. “I wanted to work for you, not her.”

“How were you working for her?”

“Little things.” She shrugged. “If she wanted tickets for the theater, she asked me to buy them.”

“That happened once! You bought them for me all the time.”

“Exactly. For you.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So when you told me in your interview that you would never become possessive, that was a lie?”