The Greek Tycoon's Secret Child (16 page)

‘I don't want to argue with you.' Mattie dropped her eyes and wondered what it was she was expecting. Or why she had even come. No, she knew why she had come. She fiddled with the food on her plate, shoving it around in useless circles, finally swallowing a mouthful although it tasted like cardboard.

‘Which begs the question, what exactly
do
you want?
And why don't we drop the game playing? You're enjoying your job, I'm working hard. How about moving on from that to why you called me out of the blue?'

‘Would you have called
me
if I hadn't gotten in touch with you?' Mattie had to ask that. Another taboo question in so far as she knew she wouldn't like the answer, but something still compelled her to ask it.

‘You made your position perfectly clear when we last met.' Dominic closed his knife and fork, for once deserted by his reliable, hearty appetite. He couldn't stomach another mouthful of steak, however good it was. In fact, he felt in dire need of another whisky and soda although he knew it wasn't a good idea. ‘I was the big, bad wolf who had managed to corner innocent Little Red Riding Hood and, even though he managed to secure her a safe passage through the woods and fix her up in a nifty little weatherproof cottage, he was still the big, bad wolf because he should have told her what he was going to do. Should have given her the opportunity to throw his offer back in his face and face her journey through the woods on her own. Hell, if you think I'm going to tell you that I would have pursued you nevertheless, then you'll be waiting forever.' Pride. Stubborn pride that had slammed back into place. The galling truth was that he would have contacted her. Made up some spurious excuse, but he would have got in touch with her, just because he would have needed to. Like an addict needing his fix.

‘Right.'

Her silent acceptance of his statement only fuelled his anger. ‘What did you expect me to say?' he pressed, angry with her for the stoniness that had him thrown and angry with himself for not being able to grab hold of
some of that legendary self-control for which he was known.

‘Nothing. The truth. Which is what you just said.' Mattie picked up her glass of water, realised that her hand was shaking, and immediately put the glass back down on the table.

‘I'm glad we understand each other,' she said, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that cost her dear. ‘This way, we can discuss what I have to say like adults.'

‘Discuss…what?' Dominic was getting more uneasy by the minute.

‘I'm pregnant.'

The silence was deafening. It seemed to stretch on and on and on. For hours. If it hadn't been all so deadly serious, she might have laughed, seeing this dangerously beautiful man who was usually never lost for words rendered so utterly speechless.

In fact, this bit of it was really just as she had imagined it would be.

Ever since she had found out herself, which had only been a matter of a few hours before.

Now those few hours seemed like a dream, like an event that had occurred months previously. All the questions she had asked herself in her terrified panic were no longer raging inside her head like demons. She was pregnant and that was simply a
fait accompli
. And lord knew, she would still be ignorant if she hadn't been to see her doctor because she had been feeling tired and putting on weight even though her appetite had vanished.

He had asked her the one question she had never asked herself and of course she had denied it. She couldn't possibly be pregnant. She was on the contraceptive pill!

‘I beg your pardon?' Those four words were dropped
like stones into a still pond and Mattie forced herself to meet his eyes calmly. At least, as calmly as she could.

‘You heard me. I'm pregnant.'

‘You asked me to come
here
to tell me this?' He shoved his plate to one side all the better to lean across the narrow table and close the space between them.

‘Would you rather I had never bothered to tell you?' Mattie shot back. ‘Believe me, it did cross my mind but then, believe it or not, I do happen to possess one or two moral values…'

‘Spare me the trip down hardship lane, Mattie…'

‘I'm telling you this because I feel you have a right to know that you've fathered a child. I do apologise if you'd rather I hadn't said anything!'

Mattie had never wondered what she would feel like if she ever discovered that she was pregnant. The truth was that she had never really considered it at all. She knew, though, that this was not how it should be. In an ideal world, she shouldn't be sitting in a bistro breaking this news to a man who wanted a baby about as much as he wanted a rampant dose of the bubonic plague. In an ideal world, she should be sharing this news with joy in her heart to a man who would hold her close and tell her that that was the greatest news he'd ever had.

Unfortunately life was never ideal and hers, in particular, seemed hell-bent on tripping her up.

Not that there wasn't a secret little happiness inside her, growing with each passing minute. A lot of wonder and, underneath the anxiety and doubts and fear, a seed of pleasurable completion was already sending shoots up, making her think how much she wanted this child, conceived in love even if the love was one-sided.

‘What I meant is, why did you bring me
here
to break this news? To this place? How are we supposed to con
duct a conversation here, surrounded by people and noise?' Dominic looked around him restlessly but then his eyes were back on her face, as if he couldn't tear them away for long enough to even scan the room.

‘I thought we might just have a quick chat—'

‘A quick chat!'

‘And then when you've had time to absorb it all, we could maybe meet and discuss things…in a bit more detail. If that's what you want…' Her eyes skittered away from his.

‘What do you think I want?'

‘Look, Dominic, I know this is a bit of a bombshell…'

‘And you once told
me
that I was the master of understatement!'

‘It was a shock to me as well.'

In the midst of his swirling confusion, this brought Dominic up short. Yes, it would have been a shock to her. She had only now started on the long, slow climb up the career ladder. To discover that she was pregnant must have been as much of a bombshell to her.

Her powers of recuperation were obviously second to none, he thought a little acidly. Because she certainly didn't look like a woman in a state of shock. She was calm, cool and utterly collected. The hallmarks of a woman relaying information without a shred of emotion to convey what she was really feeling.

‘How did it happen?' he asked in an effort to bring some normality to his wildly cavorting emotions. ‘Look, I'm going to have to get another drink. Want anything?'

Mattie shook her head and watched him as he walked up to the bar and then stood, restlessly tapping on the counter, while his drink was poured.

She had been right to meet him in a public place. A bit of a cowardly move but a good one, because at least
here he couldn't give vent to his obvious temptation to storm at her, which was what he wanted to do. If he raised his voice one decibel she could always walk out, and anyway he wouldn't. His arms were tied with people all around them. He would be forced to discuss this like an adult and she needed him to do that. One wrong word from him and she felt that she might crack. Under the calm exterior, emotions were just waiting to burst their banks and lord only knew what she would say to him if that happened. Tell him that she was
glad
that she was pregnant? Tell him that she had fallen in love with him? Put him in a position where his horror at an admission like that would force him to kindly but politely remind her of the pact they had made, the non-involvement pact that she had broken?

Maybe he might even accuse her of getting pregnant on purpose so that she could drag commitment out of him even though she knew that commitment was the equivalent of a four-letter word to him.

‘You asked me how it happened,' Mattie said, as soon as he had sat back down. Polite. Businesslike. Because to him this would be business and not particularly pleasant business. ‘I…I came off the Pill for the last six months I was with Frankie. We weren't…and, anyway, I thought it was a good time to give my body a break, so the first time we…well, I wasn't protected. Silly, I know, but I didn't think. By the time I started back using contraception, well, obviously it was too late…and I didn't know because…'

‘OK. I get the picture.'

‘Look, I'm sorry.' Mattie felt a dismaying sense of unreality and had to struggle to get her thoughts together. ‘I know you think that this is probably going to turn your world upside-down, but it won't.'

‘And how do you work that one out? Clarify for me.'

You don't even care, do you?
she wanted to shout. ‘Nothing's going to change between us. It's only right that you should know but it's a formality—'

‘A formality!' Dominic banged his fist on the table.

‘Ssh!'

‘Don't tell me to be quiet, Mattie! You chose this ridiculous venue to break this news, well, you'll just have to live with the fact if I don't collude and duck down quietly!'

‘Shouting isn't going to get us anywhere.'

‘And what are you proposing we do? What's this
anywhere
you have in mind?'

‘Maybe we shouldn't have met here after all,' Mattie whispered, biting her lip. Several people had looked around when his fist had hit the table, and she could feel their ears flapping at the prospect of an impromptu cabaret show even though they had returned to their conversations.

‘You picked the place!'

‘Could you keep your voice down?'

‘I'll shout as loudly as I like!' Dominic deliberately raised his voice a few more notches and was rewarded by sudden silence from the tables surrounding them. Then he sat back and folded his arms and looked at her.

How dared she think that she could be carrying his baby, only to tell him that his involvement was reduced to a mere formality?

She looked pale and tense and he had a sudden urge just to go round the table, pull her to her feet and wrap his arms around her until the paleness and the tension were both wiped away.

‘We need to get out of here,' he said roughly. ‘This is no place to discuss a subject like this and you know
it. We'll go back to my apartment. It's only ten minutes' walk away and at least we'll be private there.'

‘No way!' The thought of being alone with him in his apartment, the place where they had shared so many good times, where her love had taken root and grown without her even realising, made her flush with panic. ‘If anything, we can go to…to my place. But there's nothing we can say there that we can't say here.' She discovered that she was wringing her hands, like a damsel in some Victorian saga, and she shoved them safely out of sight on her lap.

‘Fine.'

Which was not the description she would have used as they sat in total silence in the back of the cab on the way to her flat. Hideous might have been more apt. And if she felt like this now, trapped and miserable and longing for the impossible, when they weren't even alone, how was it going to be when they were in her very tiny sitting room?

It felt like ages before the taxi arrived at the tired converted Victorian house.

‘You live
here
?' Dominic asked in a scathing voice. ‘You gave up the apartment to move into this?'

‘It's affordable,' Mattie said briefly, turning to unlock the front door. She could feel his presence behind her and it sent ripples of awareness shooting up and down her spine like moth wings.

‘It would be,' Dominic commented from behind her, looking at the eight little cubby-holes used for the post, ‘considering how many people are crammed in here. I suppose you're at the top?'

Mattie ignored him, even though it wasn't too difficult to imagine what he was thinking as they mounted the stairs towards her flat. Peeling wallpaper, threadbare car
pet, bare bulbs hanging at intervals from the high ceilings.

‘You do realise,' he said, once they were inside her flat and she had shut the door behind them, ‘that this is unacceptable.' He stood in the middle of the room and looked around him with a practised and disdainful eye.

‘I happen to find it very comfortable.'

‘A sitting room with a bed shoved up one end, a bathroom that can only accommodate an anorexic and a kitchen…' he strolled into the kitchen, cast the same disapproving eye around ‘…a kitchen just about big enough to house a table and two chairs, provided mobility isn't high on the list of priorities. It won't do.'

Mattie felt tears spring up into her eyes and she turned away quickly, but not quickly enough.

His arms around her were like a sanctuary and a haven and she turned around into him, feeling his warmth settle over her like a blanket.

‘It's not just you now.' His words sank into her hair. ‘You're having my baby and I won't let you tackle this pregnancy alone, in a dump like this, never mind when the baby's born.'

‘You won't
let
me?' Mattie pushed herself out of the treacherous embrace and walked towards the window, to turn round and face him. ‘I didn't come to see you so that you could…could
manipulate
me…again!'

‘I don't give a damn what you call it, Mattie, but hear me now and hear me very carefully…' His voice was low and travelled from his mouth to her ears like an arrow, a deadly, speeding arrow. ‘You will not bring any child of mine up in a place like this. You will not labour up flights of stairs when you're pregnant, risking a miscarriage. You might not care for me laying down the law, but that's exactly what I intend to do.'