Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride / The Spanish Husband / The Bellini Bride

His answering sigh was heavy. It wasn’t words but—good grief—it spoke volumes in other ways. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

‘No,’ she denied, and went to get up, but his hand came out to press her down again.

‘Talk,’ he commanded. ‘Or reconcile yourself to the uncomfortable prospect of spending the night right here.’

He meant it, too; that tough macho gleam was in his eyes again. On a sigh she subsided. He let go of her, recognising the sigh as a gesture of defeat. Evie turned her gaze back to the moonlit lake once again, felt a tightness pull around her chest, and said flatly, ‘I’m pregnant.’

CHAPTER FIVE

AS ANNOUNCEMENTS went, this one truly took the trophy. To his credit, Raschid didn’t groan in horror or curse and shout, or demand to know how the hell she had allowed such a stupid thing to happen. All the things he certainly had a right to do.

In fact, he didn’t do anything. He just continued to sit there, as silent as death, as still as stone, utilising that impressive bank of self-discipline Evie knew he possessed to hold himself in check while he attempted to take the shocking news in.

And it was awful—worse, much worse than she’d even envisaged this moment was going to be because she knew this man so very well, and knowing him meant she understood exactly what his silence was actually saying.

Raschid’s world and all it meant to him had just been effectively brought tumbling down around him. And this was more than just the noble Arab prince holding his emotions in check as he had been trained from birth to do in times of disaster.

He was sitting there like that because he was literally paralysed with dismay.

‘Say something,’ she prompted when she could stand his silence no longer.

‘Like what?’ he asked, then admitted grimacingly, ‘I find I am struck speechless.’

Well, speechless just about covered it, Evie thought painfully. ‘How, where and when seem good places to start,’ she huskily suggested.

‘Okay…’ At last he moved, turning his head to look at her—though Evie couldn’t bring herself to look back at him now.

‘How?’ He began with her first suggestion.

Her hunched shoulders gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t know how,’ she answered honestly. ‘Somewhere along the line, my birth control has let me down but I just don’t know how it did. The where depends on the when,’ she went on huskily. ‘Which was about six weeks ago,’ she calculated. ‘Which in turn probably means it happened during the weekend we spent together on your yacht in the Mediterranean,’ she assumed. ‘Though I will know better when I see a doctor…’

‘So this is not yet confirmed?’

Did he have to sound so damned hopeful? Her chest began to hurt with the tension she was putting on it, her throat locking up on a tight ball of emotion she didn’t dare release.

‘Home testing sets are pretty accurate these days,’ she informed him flatly.

Another long silence followed that, one that throbbed and pulled and picked at the flesh like an animal chewing on a dead carcass. Only Evie’s carcass wasn’t dead. It was alive and hurting in more ways than she would have believed possible.

Out on the lake the owl hooted its lonely call for a mate again. The moon slithered its eerie way across the glass-smooth waters—and Christina’s bouquet continued to float right there in front of them, making really heavy irony now of its good-luck significance.

‘You knew about this two weeks ago, didn’t you?’ he said suddenly.

What was the use in lying? ‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘Damn it, Evie!’ His control suddenly exploded, launching him to his feet as shock gave way to a burst of anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me then? Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me?’ He lashed at her. ‘The problems they are going to cause?’ A sigh shot from him, his dark face contorting with blistering condemnation as he violently spun his back on her. ‘What a mess!’ he muttered thickly. ‘What a damned mess!’

White-faced and shaken by his scorching response, Evie came more slowly to her feet to stand staring at him in utter dismay. For, no matter how terrible she had expected his reaction to be, she hadn’t expected anything quite so brutal as this.

‘What difference can two weeks possibly make to the situation?’ she demanded shakily.

He didn’t answer; instead a hand went up to grip the back of his angry neck, the action showing all the horror and frustration he was currently experiencing.

In fact, he couldn’t have been more horrified if she’d told him she’d infected him with some dreadful social disease.

‘Unless, of course, you’re hoping I may offer to do something about it?’ she then suggested, wanting to twist the knife she could almost see sticking out of his ribs where she had apparently plunged it.

It worked. He flinched. ‘No!’ he ground out, spinning round to glare at her. ‘Don’t ever,’ he gritted, ‘make a suggestion like that again!’

Well, at least that was something, Evie grimly acknowledged as she stood there staring into those glitter-hard golden eyes. But then, if he had said anything else—so much as glanced at her with a hopeful look in those wretched eyes—she would never have forgiven him.

As it was, Evie shuddered on a wave of sickening self-disgust for voicing such an option just because she wanted to score points off him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was never a choice you were going to be offered.’

‘Then why say it?’ he lashed at her.

Her small laugh was forced and shrill. ‘You couldn’t make your horror clearer if you were being faced with the end of my brother’s shotgun!’ She angrily derided the question.

‘You expect me to be ecstatic?’

‘No,’ she said heavily, turning away from him to stare bleakly out across the moon-kissed lake because looking at him now hurt just too damned much. ‘But a bit of tender concern at some point wouldn’t have gone amiss…’

The dry remark had his chest expanding on a strained intake of air. When he let it out again most of his anger went with it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘But, as you can no doubt appreciate, it is going to take me some time to get my head around this.’

‘Get your head around what exactly?’ Evie drawled, withdrawing behind her own stone-cold shell of self-protection. ‘The problematic mistress who has stupidly gone and got herself pregnant?’

‘It takes two to make a baby,’ he sighed.

‘But only one to bring it safely into the world,’ Evie pointed out. ‘Your part is done. Mine is just starting.’

A small silence followed that remark. Then Raschid demanded, ‘Are you suggesting that I ignore the fact that you are having my baby?’

Why? Evie thought bitterly. Are you offering up a suitable alternative? ‘I am suggesting that you get your priorities right,’ she said. ‘And remember your duty.’

Raschid stood staring into cold-cut lavender-blue eyes set in an excruciatingly beautiful face that showed not a hint of emotion anywhere on it—and at last it began to hit him just what she was saying here.

‘Don’t be foolish!’ he snapped. ‘In this case my duty is to you and the child!’ A long-fingered hand flicked out in a grim, tight throw-away gesture. ‘We will have to get married, of course.’

Still no words of love, Evie noted painfully. Still no words of caring. But oh, so arrogant, she observed. So damned sure of himself—so utterly dismayed by what he was so magnanimously offering.

‘We don’t have to do anything,’ she countered, feeling so cold inside now that she wished she hadn’t let his jacket slip to the grass when she’d got to her feet earlier.

‘I will have to speak to my father…’ he muttered, too busy lost in his own frowning thoughts to have heard her. ‘It is going to cause problems at home, but that cannot be helped now. I will…’

‘Excuse me,’ Evie inserted, and this time the sheer coldness of her voice managed to gain his attention. ‘But the way I see it, Raschid,’ she said firmly, ‘you don’t have a problem here. I do.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he jerked out, beginning to look just a little shell-shocked now.

‘I’ve never expected marriage from you,’ Evie informed him. ‘And I am not asking you for it now.’