by Dani Collins
He reminded himself to breathe.
* * *
This was too much.
Oriel shakily did her thing, then set the test on the empty box on the back of the toilet without looking at the result. She stared into her ghoulish reflection as she washed her hands, fighting back a hysterical cackle. Her birth mother was a Bollywood icon? Her one-night lover was an undercover DNA thief? Her career was about to be derailed by an unplanned pregnancy?
Non. She might have been able to handle one or two of those things, but not all of them. Not all at once. It was too much. Way too much. Her vision was fading at the edges, she was working so hard to keep from breaking down.
Especially because, deep inside herself, she knew what she wanted that test to say, and it went against everything she had ever told herself. She had long ago decided that when she was ready for children, she would adopt. She understood how important it was to offer a good home to a child who needed one, and she had a lot of love to give as well as many advantages.
A man had not been a necessary part of that picture, deliberately. Of course, she had always hoped to find someone who would make a life and family with her, but her mother was an icon who had molded the life she wanted rather than waiting around hoping for it to manifest on its own. Seeing how Estelle had managed to have it all—career, marriage, family—had made Oriel open to the idea of having children on her own timeline, by herself, without waiting for a committed relationship if that was what felt right when the time came.
Pinning her future on a man was very last century, yet here she was, secretly hoping that test would tie her to Vijay forever. He didn’t even want her! Not the way she longed to be wanted and loved. He might be nice enough to give her a hug when she was falling apart, but he’d also gone behind her back and he hadn’t called.
As she turned off the taps, she heard a knock at the door. “Can I come in?”
“I haven’t looked at it,” she said flatly.
He came in uninvited.
She really should learn to lock him out of rooms she was in.
She ought to bash him in the chest and make him leave her alone, but that was the problem. She was feeling very, very alone right now. Who could she explain this to? Her agent? Her parents? She had cousins and friends, but they were scattered all over, and no one had any shared perspective. They would say the wrong things. You found your birth mother? Wonderful! But it wasn’t. Her birth mother was already gone. You’re pregnant? Exciting! But no. It meant the career that was finally taking off would fizzle.
You were treated badly by a man? Tell him to go to hell.
She couldn’t. Because rather than lean around her to see the result, rather than take her by the shoulders and babble some unhelpful platitude, Vijay stood before her, quiet and calm, as though whatever happened next couldn’t shake him. He was solid and demanded nothing. He was here for her, and that meant the world.
“Why didn’t you want Jalil to date your sister?” she asked.
His brows went up at what must have sounded like a random question, but she’d been wondering ever since he’d mentioned it in Milan. Plus, she was putting off facing whatever that test was going to tell her.
What if she wasn’t pregnant? Would she announce she hated him and send him on his way? She doubted she could do that, and that was the most disturbing discovery of all.
“Jalil is much older than Kiran. I thought he must be showing interest in her because of her youth or the money we stood to make in the acquisition.”
“A nurse or a purse,” Oriel murmured. “That’s what one of my mother’s friends says older men are looking for when they date younger women. I kept thinking of that when I was with Duke. That I was resuscitating his career for him. Administering oxygen so I could gain something for myself. I felt like a fame whore.”
“Oof. Is this where the self-bashers meet? Because I feel like an ass for not believing my sister possesses sound judgment and knows her own heart. I interfered in her life and have overturned yours, all out of an arrogant belief that I know best.”
She gave him a chiding look, but appreciated his acknowledging how much he had tripped her up. She appreciated his humor, too. She had liked that about him from the first.
“I can’t tell Jalil anything about my birth mother,” she pointed out. “The information I had was wrong.”
“I think he just wants to know that a part of his sister lives on. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, but if I was, I can imagine how much it would comfort me to discover Kiran had a child.”
Oriel felt her mouth twisting at his sharing such a personal detail. She looked at her reflection—that remnant of a woman who was gone.
She noted the anxiety around her eyes, the lack of color in her lips. She had always known she was the result of an unplanned pregnancy, but she suddenly felt deep affinity for that mysterious person who had given birth to her. This was how Lakshmi must have felt. Overwhelmed. Frightened. Head pounding with the question, What do I do?
She couldn’t imagine how much more difficult this would be if Vijay or someone else were pushing her around, telling her what to do. The way it was sounding, Lakshmi might have had to fight just to give birth to her.
A ferocity rose in her, an instinctual, angry determination that arrived in her like a gleaming light of truth.
“If I’m pregnant, I’m keeping the baby.” Her eyes grew damp. It felt good to acknowledge that, even though it turned her crystal-clear future into a blurred vision through a fogged glass.
She looked straight at Vijay, letting him see that she would never be swayed on this.
He nodded thoughtfully, while his eyes narrowed with intensity.
“And if you’re pregnant...it’s definitely mine.”
The way he said it made her heart lurch unsteadily in her chest. She wanted to set her chin with indignation, but it didn’t sound as though he was questioning her. At the same time, she realized this was her chance to firmly eject him from her life if she wanted to.
She couldn’t.
She swallowed the hot constriction in her throat. “Today I learned that everything I thought I knew about my birth parents was a lie. I wouldn’t do that to my own child. You are definitely the father.”
“Then, if you’re pregnant—” he spoke with steady resolve “—I’ll propose.”
The impact of that was so monumental, her ears rang. Her chest felt as though it was pierced by a stinging arrow.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Us.
“I owe any child I make everything I am capable of providing.”
Not about her, then. She realized how intently they’d been staring into each other’s eyes when she dropped her gaze. A giant brick seemed to settle between her lungs.
“I’ll refuse,” she warned through her tight throat. “I’m still angry with you. I don’t trust you.”
“Trust is difficult for me, too.” His mouth twisted. “But this isn’t about us, is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, voice nearly nonexistent. “Maybe we’re arguing over nothing.” They weren’t. Her intuition told her exactly what that test would say.
“Shall we see?”
Biting her lip, she nodded jerkily.
When she didn’t turn to retrieve it, he crowded close. One of his arms went around her waist to steady her as he leaned past her.
She tensed, ears straining. She felt the jolt that went through him. He sucked in a breath and his chest expanded.
A shower of sparkling lights filled her vision. She closed her fists into his shirt, afraid she was going to faint.
He made a small space between them and showed her the stick. She had to blink and blink to see its bright blue, unmistakable cross that indicated a positive. In a voice husked with reverence, Vijay said, “We’re having a baby.”
CHAPTER SIX
As Vijay reached across her to turn it off, she reached for it herself.
She must have still been mostly asleep, because as their hands bumped and their bodies shifted against one another’s, a startled gasp tore out of her throat. She sat up in a tangle of blankets, hair spilling across her face. She impatiently shoved it out of her eyes.
As she stared at him, recognition arrived with comprehension and memory. She sagged and pulled her knees up to hug them, giving a little choke of helplessness.
The angels in her phone grew more insistent. She grabbed it and stabbed to silence it.
“What’s the alarm for?” His voice sounded like a garbage disposal. He cleared his throat.
“I’m flying home to spend the rest of the week with my parents. I told you that.”
“That’s your vacation? Do you have a flight booked?” He rolled toward the nightstand on his side, picking up his own phone, but ignored the notifications.
“Yes.” She fell back onto her pillow and flicked through her messages.
His eyes were so gritty with lack of sleep, he could barely see his screen.
Last night, they’d eaten and she’d gone to bed while he had stood at the window, trying to assimilate the fact he was becoming a father. He might not trust easily, but after her indignant declaration about learning her birth history was a lie, he believed her about that much.
Family was an extremely complex knot of emotions for him. He had grieved the loss of his parents and grandmother with the support of his extended family. Then he lost his parents again when he realized what they’d been covering up. The people he had thought he knew had never existed. When he exposed that, he was called an ungrateful traitor and worse. The loving safety net he’d believed would always be there for him had been yanked like a rug. None of those relations would take his calls, and he was still angry and hurt enough that he wouldn’t pick up the phone, either.
Only Kiran had stood by him, and he would give his life to protect her. He’d gotten used to thinking she was all he would ever have.
Now he had this nascent, fragile idea of a person beginning to take up space in his heart. There was no question in him that he would claim his child with every part of himself and ensure his child’s life was intrinsically interwoven with his own.
So that meant doing the same with Oriel.
She was a far more complicated person to weave into his life. He still wanted her physically. Desire for her was simmering beneath all his best efforts to ignore it. He recalled her as an amusing, interesting companion over dinner, but real life was not a few hours of casual conversation. Real life was real. He knew very little about the real Oriel Cuvier.
He had thought he did. When she hadn’t called, he had convinced himself she was too stuck-up to reach out to a blue-collar boy toy.
Beneath her animosity and shock about her birth parents and the baby news, she was angry with him, though. Hurt. Because she thought he’d deliberately given her the wrong number. Because she thought he had only come to her room for a toothbrush, not her.
As he’d stood at the window wondering if it was time for him to quit being so damned suspicious of everyone around him, he’d heard her sniffle and realized she was giving in to the volume of emotions drowning her. He had crawled into bed fully dressed and curled himself around her.
She’d cried herself to sleep, and maybe he had dozed. Mostly he’d stared into the darkness, working through the thousand paths forward, trying to find the best one. His entire life needed to be reshaped around her and their child. They had a lot of decisions to make.
“Are you flying into Tours?” he asked her, recalling where her parents’ home was located. “What time does your flight leave?”
“Nine thirty.”
“Nine thirty-eight?” It was the only one aside from another in the late afternoon. “It’s not giving me a seat selection. I don’t think we’ll be able to sit together.” He booked it anyway.
“I can’t take you home with me.” She sat up. “What do expect? That you’ll just sleep with me in my old bedroom?” She gave their shared blankets a disdainful look.
“If there’s no room in your parents’ chateau...” He wondered how she would react when he told her where he came from. “Then I’m sure I’ll be able to find something online.”
“I’m not being a snob,” she said impatiently. “I’m saying I don’t know what to tell them. Who am I supposed to say you are?”
“Your fiancé?” he suggested pleasantly.
“Oh, was I asleep when you proposed? I didn’t hear it.”
“Because you told me you would refuse.” He sat up and swung his legs off his side of the bed, not wanting her to see that her rebuff had landed and left a bruise. “I’m saving my breath until I’ve answered a few questions for myself.”
“Such as?” She dropped her feet off her side of the mattress, but twisted to look at him.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “You travel for work and I’m president of the Asia division. How will we address that? Where would we call home?”
She held his gaze. Swallowed. Then she gave him her back again. “You’re right. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m planning to tell my parents about...” Her voice grew muffled as she looked down and spoke to her lap. “About my birth mother. But that’s all. For now.”
Did it sting that she didn’t want to tell her parents she was pregnant with his baby? Yes, but he accepted that the news about her birth family was delicate enough.
“I haven’t told Jalil that I’ve spoken to you.” They were still sitting back to back with the width of the mattress between them. “If you’re not ready to speak to him, I’ll tell him you need time to break it to your parents. He’ll understand. I can say your work schedule is very demanding, and you’ll be in touch when you have a break.”
She gave a humorless choke of laughter. “I’ll have to tell my agent that I’m pregnant. Once I do that, I anticipate my work schedule will become much less demanding very quickly.”
“Oriel.” He twisted to set his hand in the middle of the mattress. “I—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” She rose abruptly. “I know I’m sounding bitchy. I’m not blaming you. The timing could definitely be better, but I’m not sorry I’m pregnant.”
Nor was he, which was a very strange realization to absorb.
He rose and opened the curtains, letting in a blast of morning sunlight that made him wince.
When he turned to look at her, she was staring at him. She stood in bare feet and rumpled pajamas with unbrushed hair. Her face was naked, her brow crinkled.
He decided this was how he liked her best, even though she was so lacking in defenses, it made his chest tighten.
“Were you planning to have kids at some point?”
She gave a confused shrug. “My career hasn’t left a lot of room for thinking about starting a family. When I did, I didn’t worry too much about whether my fertile years were passing me by. I’ve always assumed I would adopt because I was adopted.”
She chewed her lip, and her brow wrinkled even harder as she continued. “I’ve always felt loved by all my family, but there’s no ignoring the fact that everyone looks and sounds like at least one other person. They have odd quirks that mark them as related. I tried not to let it bother me that I didn’t have that because it couldn’t be changed, but I’ve always had this sense of...missing out. Or...missing someone?” Her mouth trembled, and she firmed her lips.
The sun caught on the dampness in her lashes, making his lungs burn.
“I’m so sorry I’ll never meet Lakshmi. That’s what I was crying about last night. I do want to meet Jalil, sooner than later. And I want to meet this baby.” She set her hand on her belly. “I’m really excit
ed to see...” Her smile wavered with emotion. “A little bit of myself?”
His heart caved in. He moved around the bed, reaching for her.
She threw her hand up to hold him off. “I’m still angry with you.”
“Fair.” He caught her hand and used it to reel her closer. “But know that I feel the same. That baby is a part of me, and I can’t imagine not being in our child’s life every day.”
Her gaze searched his, and the question was on his lips. Will you marry me? Even the bright sunshine and dancing dust motes became too much to have between them. He drew her closer, softly crashing her curves into his hardening body.
He wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to take her to bed and reestablish the connection they had shared in Milan. Her lashes fluttered, and her mouth trembled. Her grip tightened on his fingers where their hands were clasped.
He had been waiting for this, the warmth of her, the scent in her hair, the feel of her as he drew her closer. He tipped his head and started to lower his mouth across her parted lips—
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She jerked back and pulled herself free of him.
The chill of her absence was an abrupt bucket of ice water splashing over him. He pushed his hands into his pockets, hoping to disguise that he was aroused.
“I did try to text.” She was hugging herself again. “But you didn’t. You’ve only ever sought me out for...investigative purposes.”
“That’s not true.” If she only knew how obsessed he’d been all these weeks. “I had dinner with you because I wanted to. I shouldn’t have come to your room without telling you everything, but I couldn’t stay away. That’s the truth, Oriel.” He ran his hand through his hair, agitated at being forced to reveal himself this way. “When you didn’t get in touch after, I accepted that you didn’t want to pursue anything beyond what we’d agreed to. But once Jalil’s theory panned out, I had to see you again. I wanted to see if we still react to each other like this. And we do.”
Lust was a churning furnace within him, waiting to explode at the first breath of oxygen she blew across it.