Mel looks as white as a sheet, her chest rising and falling as she sags back against the floor, her eyes lifting to mine finally as she coughs one last time.
I let her hair go and watch almost with a certain level of fascination as it tumbles and falls around her face. There’s fear in her eyes, in the way they widen slightly and then darken as though light has blinked from them but it is the tears that come springing up in their depths that finally push me into action.
I kneel beside her and slide my arms around her back to lift her off the floor. She sinks into me, and I tighten my arms around her. ‘Can you walk?’
She nods her ‘yes’ against my bare chest, and I drag in air, flush the bathroom, and then fetch some water from the sink to clean her face off. She doesn’t say a word, and neither do I, but there’s a look that keeps sliding between us that says more than a thousand words.
I find a towel to wrap her in and heft her into my arms, walking out of the bathroom. I drop her gently to the bed and sit beside her. She closes her eyes and lies back against the sheets.
I watch her face as she inhales. ‘How long have you known?’
Her face tightens, but her eyes don’t open. She licks at her lips. ‘Known what?’
I get off the bed and start pacing, my mind running through the motions, a hot blend of emotions I can’t decipher spilling through me. She’s pregnant. That’s got to be it, right?
I fold my arms across my torso. ‘Can you at least look at me, Melissa?’
She pulls her legs into her body and curls up in a fetal position with her face away from mine. ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant, Xander. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
‘Is there any other possibility? When was the last time you saw your period?’
Her voice is a soft whisper in the breathing quiet of the room. ‘You don’t think that’s pretty personal?’
I grit my teeth to keep the snap from my voice. She’s disappearing into herself. Her face is still turned away from mine. ‘You might very possibly be carrying my child, Mel; I don’t see what could be more personal than that.’
I stalk to the window, staring out blindly at the sight that greets my eyes and yet seeing nothing.
She’s pregnant? She’s pregnant. She’s pregnant!
The thought runs through my head in many variations, and I walk back to the bed and crawl across the sheets until I can lift her face to meet mine. ‘I’ll call the doctor, you’ll go in for a test. If it’s a yes, no one must know.’
Her eyes open, a fiery fire light in their depths. She pulls away from me, her eyes shooting flames that burn in their intensity. ‘I wasn’t planning on screaming the news from the fucking roofs, Xander.’
She tugs her body from mine, but I haul her deeper into me. ‘What’s the problem, Mel?’
She wiggles restlessly in my grasp, her body rubbing up against mine. ‘Why do you think there’s a problem?’
‘Because you’re fighting me. You’re pulling away, refusing to look at me. Is there something I should know?’ I place my hand over her stomach, only now letting it sink into me that there might be a baby in there, already growing with life flowing in its veins. My heart is a wild stallion galloping in my chest. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted?’
She licks her lips and swallows. ‘Is that what you want?’
My hands curl into fists, and I let her go. She scrambles away from me. ‘Does it matter? We’re playing our parts perfectly well. I’m certain your father will be the happiest man when he hears.’
She bares her teeth in a smile that comes out as more of a grimace. ‘As will yours, I’m certain.’ She shoots back. ‘We should do the tests today. Maybe I’m only coming down with a stomach bug.’
I close my own eyes as she heads back into the shower. I lay back against the sheets, fold my arms over my eyes, and pull in a faint breath.
Mel’s words don’t make me feel good. Not any better than I had when she’d started spilling her guts into the toilet bowl.
I don’t feel much of anything. Not fear, not anger, not happiness. Nothing. I feel as though I’m locked away in a bubble, and it’s keeping away the emotions, preventing the fear lapping at the edges of my consciousness from making its way in.
The shower starts running, and I get off the bed, walking over to the closet where I find myself something to wear. My chest feels as though it’s full. Tight and heavy.
I can feel the rope tightening around my neck. With Mel pregnant, we might need to marry faster.
The thought isn’t as repulsive as it should be, and that’s when I realize I’m in serious trouble because now the emotions I hadn’t been feeling come to me. I still, my back tensing at the thought. My responsibilities will double—no triple, if there really is a baby nestled inside her.
And I have no doubt that there is. It’s been more than a month since the first time I’d taken her here, with Alec and Knox finding us the next morning. We’ve been in bed a thousand times since.
And now I’m worried that when I officially marry her, she’ll be in more danger, especially with me taking over as Capo. I worry I won’t be able to protect her as much as I should, that she could be used as my weakness.
I unfurl my shoulders just as the bathroom door opens behind me, and I hear Mel’s tread as she walks towards the closet. I turn to her. ‘You shouldn’t go anywhere without Romero anymore. I’ll have someone else for Lucian.’
Her shoulders stiffen, and she goes rigid right in front of me. She glares up at me, but my eyes trail down her body, trying to find any evidence of my fear.
Her stomach is still flat, apart from the slight curve at the base. She still looks exactly the same as she always has.
She stamps her feet up to me, making no pretense of the fact that she’s angry. ‘Why don’t you just lock me up and throw the damned keys away if that makes you feel better.’ She blinks sharply. ‘It’s not my fault I’m pregnant!’
My jaw ticks. ‘I wouldn’t blame you for that.’
She sucks her lips between her teeth, her eyes glittering dangerously. ‘Then what’s that look in your eyes? I haven’t been actively working to tie you down. Why the hell do you do this at the slightest sign of trouble?’
‘Do what?’
‘Self-sabotage.’ She walks away to the closet herself, where she finds something to wear. I watch as she dresses, no comeback in my head, and no words on my lips.
Is that what I’m doing? I don’t believe so, but I’m uncertain how to feel with another baby on the way.
I stretch out an olive branch. ‘I’ll get you a pregnancy test.’
She throws me a long, angry look, the curve of her hips tucked away securely in the denim she’s zipping up at her waist. I exhale a rush of stiff air.
It feels a hell of a lot better to be talking to her clothed. My cock doesn’t seem to recognize the fact that we’re having a fucking argument.
She finds a shirt and slips her hands through the sky-blue cotton of it. ‘I’m sure I’m capable enough to do that for myself.’
‘I want to do it for you.’
She chuckles softly, but there’s no humor in the hard words that slip from her lips. ‘Will you need to get me a DNA test when it turns out positive?’
I prowl towards her, her eyes widening the closer I get, her chest heaving with anger, mine with fear. ‘I know you haven’t been with anyone else but me, Mel. There will be no need for that.’
She exhales and the tears pooling in her eyes come spilling down her cheeks. My pulse spikes. I don’t want to be the cause of her pain. I’m not worthy of it. ‘You hate me, don’t you?’
I pull her into my arms. ‘I could never hate you, Melissa.’
She glances at me and then away. ‘But this isn’t what you want.’
It isn’t what I don’t want either. Another baby means someone else to disappoint, to protect. Another human that I could hurt.
‘I don’t know Melissa. Can we take this a moment at a time? I’ll get you the test kit from the store this evening.’
I let her go, already feeling her loose and the chasm growing between us. It doesn’t matter much if she’d gotten pregnant deliberately. It won’t matter because we’re to be married anyway.
But that budding fear that had grown back in the room becomes a tree as the day grows into the afternoon. My attention slides. I’m all over the place, unable to focus on anything for more than a few minutes at a time.
I end my meeting with my men, and Alec finds me at his club, nursing a drink a little bit past noon. He’s probably been informed of my presence by one of his men.
He slides into the private booth beside me and pours himself a drink from the bottle. He swallows a loud gulp, winces, and drops the glass with a thud to the table. ‘You’re drinking in the middle of the day.’
I shrug. Maybe the drink will dull the spiral of my thoughts. I’d tried work, but it hadn’t worked out much.
I’d even spent an hour at the gym, punching at the bag, hitting my fear for her into the bag, and the murky swirl of thoughts had somehow become worse. ‘So are you, Alec. What do you want?’
‘Do you plan on finishing the entire bottle?’
‘I’ll pay for it. You don’t need to worry about it.’
He smiles and pours himself another drink, but his eyes are sharp. He shifts closer. ‘What’s wrong?’
The music from the club pounds up at me, drifting through one ear and out the other. The sounds offer no distractions. ‘Why do you think something’s wrong?’
He takes another drink from his glass. ‘Maybe because you’re here in the middle of the day, gulping down my expensive whiskey like water.’
He can be trusted. He’s, after all, my brother. And I wonder how he’ll feel about this. Maybe I’ll know how to feel myself. ‘Mel’s pregnant.’
I don’t tell him there’s a slim possibility that it is, in fact, a stomach bug, or that she hadn’t picked my calls when I’d called this afternoon, or that the thought that she might not be pregnant makes disappointment seep into my guts.
Alec finishes his drink and drops the glass gently to the table. ‘Congratulations are in order then. I’d expect you to look a whole lot happier than this, though.’
I close my eyes, but I can feel the heat of his gaze. ‘You don’t understand Alec. She’s pregnant. She is carrying my baby.’
‘Yes. I realize that. That’s what being pregnant means.’
‘She’ll have a painted target on her back. The Russians and their damned Cambodian spies will take one look at her and know.’
I open my eyes to find Alex nodding sagely. ‘Oh. I see where you might be inclined towards the drink.’
I glare at him, my fingers flexing around my glass. ‘I’m not asking you to make any wisecracks right now, Alec.’
He inclines his head and leans forward. ‘You’re worried about her. You’ve always been. You’ll always be. So long as you’re never able to let her go, pregnant or not, she’ll have a target on her back. You’ll need to find a way to deal with that.’
By the time I make it to the store with Ryder, where I wait in the car while he buys the test kit, I’m angry at my fucking self.
I needed to speak to her. Right away. When we pass by a florist’s, I have Ryder stop the car, and I buy two dozen yellow roses.
It’s an apology as much as it is a gift.
