by Dani Collins
“I could hold your hair,” Gisella suggested with a quirky smile.
“Yeah, Viktor has about had it with that, I think.” She couldn’t bring herself to admit she barely saw him. His silent treatment was worse than everything else combined.
“Is he there right now?”
“No. He’s at work.”
“Rozi... Is it just morning sickness? Because you look...”
Like her heart was breaking? It was.
“Do you love him?” Gisella asked.
She did, she acknowledged with deep misery. She had fallen in love against her better judgment and she couldn’t even tell him. He wouldn’t believe her. He didn’t trust her at all.
“It just happened, Gizi. I didn’t mean to get pregnant. I know you and I promised each other—”
“Oh, my God, Rozi. I’m not judging. I was sleeping with Kaine. I know exactly how it happens. That was a silly promise we made as kids. No, I’m saying if you’re not in love... This isn’t Grandmamma’s time. You can come home and we’ll take care of you.”
“How?” Rozi asked with an edge of hysteria. “Barsi on Fifth is going down the toilet. Viktor...” She sniffed. He had said he would set her up with a workshop when she was ready, but she doubted he’d help her now. She would have to look for work when she was feeling better. “For the sake of the baby—and Grandmamma—I should give marriage a try, shouldn’t I? She married Grandpapa out of necessity. It can work.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
Herself.
“Look, there’s actually more we need to talk about with the earrings,” Gisella said.
“I know, but I think I’m going to be sick again,” Rozi groaned as her stomach clenched and the clammy sweat of nausea descended over her. “I have to go. I’m sorry to dump all this on you and ask you to keep it secret. I had to talk it out. But it’s better if everyone just thinks I’m stuck in limbo here. They have enough to worry about.”
“I love you. I miss you.”
“Me, too.” She apologized again before she ended the call, then hurried to the bathroom to be sick. Again.
* * *
Viktor knew there was a damaged part of him that had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. He hadn’t been surprised when her family scandal erupted. He hadn’t even felt particularly betrayed. He had expected—maybe even wanted—something to happen that would prove Rozi was duplicitous after all. This way, his world view wouldn’t be disturbed. He could stay comfortable in his cynicism. Superior, even. And secure from the emotional stabs of life.
But as with the first days of their acquaintance, Rozi defied his expectations. She didn’t ask him for money to bail out her family, even though he watched her cousin’s company implode like a nuclear bomb, leaving a giant crater in her family’s livelihood. Their jewelry shop was forced to close its doors while their books were examined and the news coverage was extremely unkind.
Rozi didn’t use the money he did give her, either. She didn’t go shopping or try to use her connection to his name to salvage her family’s position. She didn’t ask him to take her out and show her a good time or see sites or look for a location for her own shop.
She left the house for doctor appointments and didn’t even charge the cost of her iron supplements to his card. When he did see her, she looked miserable.
Because the one fact that remained true and undeniable was that she was pregnant with his child—and it was making her sick as hell.
They weren’t sleeping together, so he couldn’t help her in the night if she needed him. His one suggestion that she call him had been met with an appalled stare and an indignant “I can manage.”
In the morning, if she showed up for breakfast, she was just as likely to turn green at some aroma and turn tail, not to be seen for an hour or more. He’d taken her back to the doctor, worried about her, and they’d said her nausea was not abnormal.
Not abnormal?
He’d pulled the doctor aside and torn a strip off him. He’d been given a bottle of electrolyte fluids and a phone number for house calls.
Dissatisfied with that answer, he made her an appointment with a specialist and came home early to collect her. He found her on the veranda, her tablet in her lap, her face buried in tissues as she cried her eyes out.
“What happened?”
She hadn’t heard him coming. She leaped to her feet and her tablet flew to the concrete tiles, shattering the screen.
“Nooo!” She moaned, shoulders slouched. “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?”
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he dismissed. It was nothing. Not worth that look of utter defeat on her face.
In fact, his concern for her health pushed him past worrying about entrapment and ploys.
“How much does your family need?” he asked flatly. “I’ll set up the financing later today.”
She had started to bend for the tablet, but straightened, expression stunned. Confused. “Why—? No.”
“What do you mean, no? The stress of your family situation is making your sickness worse.”
“I don’t want your money!” A spark of fiery spirit, the one he hadn’t seen since she’d learned she was pregnant, flared briefly to life as she glared at him from red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t want you to bail out my family or buy me a tablet. I don’t want anything from you. Nothing.”
“Calm down.” She was shaking. And her words sounded like a deeper rejection, threatening they were headed to a place they couldn’t come back from. “What’s going on? Who upset you? Who were you talking to?” He was glad the tablet was broken if it was upsetting her this badly.
She looked at the shards of glass with such hopelessness his heart clutched.
“Gisella is engaged to Kaine Michaels. He bailed out the shop.”
Viktor reeled onto his heels, but before he could absorb this turn of events and know what to think of it, she choked out a harsh laugh.
“See, Gisella has secured us a mark. We no longer need you.” The bitter sarcasm in her tone abraded like diamond grit. “My cousin has cold-bloodedly seduced a different billionaire into saving the family so we won’t lose Grandmamma’s lifetime of work. This pregnancy trap of mine was completely unnecessary.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s what you’re thinking!” she cried, wildly waving an arm. Her eyes grew brighter, lips trembling until she bit them. “Good thing you’re so much smarter than him. Kaine Michaels is a fool, falling in l-love—”
She clapped a hand over her mouth and he tensed, hating when she was sick. Hating it.
But for once this wasn’t a nausea spell. She was holding in emotion, an anguish that was so painful she closed her eyes and drew slow hissing breaths in her effort to withstand it.
Terror like he’d never known scythed through him, ghoulish and heart-stopping. “Is it the baby?”
He reached to take her arm, as if he could somehow keep her this side of a tragedy he didn’t want to contemplate.
She jerked from his touch, like he was some kind of monster. “It’s not that kind of pain,” she choked.
She hugged herself and he realized with alarm how thin she was. Her jeans were loose, not hugged to her hips. Her wrists seemed even more delicate and her cheekbones jutted more prominently in her face. But of course she was losing weight. She barely ate and everything that went down came back up.
Fresh concern slammed through him. All he could think was that he had to get her to a doctor. Fix this. Make her well. Make her capable of smiling again.
“I came home to take you to the specialist,” he reminded gruffly.
She might have whimpered, as though he was asking more of her than anyone should. Then she visibly tried to pull herself together, brushing her fingers under her eyes and drawing a congested breath.
“You�
�re probably happy I’m being punished like this.”
“For God’s sake, how could you think that? Of course I’m not happy you’re sick.”
She didn’t even look at him. Just stared at the broken tablet with such a dejected expression, he couldn’t bear it.
“Come here.” He held out his arms. His entire body hurt. He ached to hold her. Needed to. More than he needed his next breath.
She twitched her shoulder in rebuff, stepping back and turning away.
The action kicked his heart out of its hole. It sat askew in his chest, throbbing and raw.
“I haven’t become any different just because Kaine bailed out my family,” she said in a ragged voice. “Just because I don’t need your money doesn’t mean I’m not still the same opportunist you love to hate.”
“I don’t hate you.” He ran his hand down his face, erasing the tension, but the constriction in his throat stayed there, turning his voice to gravel. “Stop upsetting yourself like this. You’ll make yourself sick—”
But here it came, genuine nausea this time. She paled, groaned with frustrated agony and covered her mouth as she ran into the house.
He tipped back his head and drew a deep breath, trying to regain his equilibrium. Trying to put himself back together before she returned.
He didn’t hate her. How could she think that?
You’re probably happy I’m being punished like this.
Was that how she felt? Punished?
He was protecting himself, yes, but he hadn’t seen his withdrawal as an action that could cause her pain.
When she didn’t come back and they grew late for their appointment, he went searching for her. She was fast asleep, curled on her side on her bed, cheeks tracked with salt.
He draped a blanket over her, then sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her pale lips and the bruised circles under her eyes. He picked up a cool lock of her hair, not wanting to wake her, but needing to touch her, even if it was only a silky tress wound around his finger.
I haven’t become any different just because Kaine bailed out my family.
How did he feel so outdone by a stranger’s actions? Ashamed, even. Rozi had been worried about her family all this time. He had held off making offers, certain she would ask him for money, but she hadn’t said a word. Had being right been so important to him?
He was programmed to protect the family assets. Her cousin’s scandal had been a shock when it arose. He had reacted with exactly as much aggression and protectionism as he would if any other threat had arisen against Rika Corp.
But he shouldn’t have turned his back on helping her even before she asked for it.
He hadn’t meant this to become such a schism between them. He hadn’t meant to put up such a wall between them that she thought he didn’t care she was sick. That he was glad she was suffering. He couldn’t bear how frail she seemed.
He leaned down to press the lightest of kisses against her cool, white cheek.
As he drew back, she came awake with a start, eyes flashing open. For one fraction of a second, a sleepy, welcoming light shone in her gaze. It was the warmth of sunrise, bathing him in a glow of promise. All the turmoil in him settled and he was renewed.
Then a deep vulnerability hollowed out her gaze. She broke eye contact, glancing around in confusion, rolling onto her back and sliding to put more distance between them.
“The appointment,” she said in recollection. “I was only going to lie down for a minute while my stomach settled.”
The shadows came back into his soul, like wraiths in their cold emptiness.
“Stay here. You obviously need the rest.” He set his hand on her hip, trying to reassure her, but she was already rolling away, pushing off his touch with the tangle of the blanket, kicking her feet toward the far side of the mattress.
“I want to go. I read that it might be the vitamins. Maybe there’s another kind I can take.”
“Rozi,” he said to her back, watching her stiffen at the gravity of his tone, but he needed to make one thing clear. “I know this pregnancy wasn’t deliberate. I’m not happy you’re sick. I want you to be well.”
He waited, thinking maybe she would tell him how to make them well again, but when she spoke, she only said, “Then let’s see what the doctor says.”
* * *
The doctor prescribed antinausea pills that made her so drowsy, she started to nod off at the dinner table, completely missing whatever Viktor had been saying.
Viktor swore sharply, muttering, “This is impossible.”
It was.
He helped her to bed, saying, “I’m going to call the doctor, see if we can try a lower dose.”
Maybe it was the numbness of the pills. Maybe it was simply despair, but she heard herself say, “You said this would work. You’re the one who can’t be trusted.”
She heard his breath suck in as though she’d stuck a knife in his belly, but maybe she imagined it. Her head hit the pillow and she fell into near unconsciousness.
But he was right that this was impossible, she decided over the next few days. They couldn’t go on like this. She couldn’t. Her heart had broken a little when she had read Gisella’s email. Not because Kaine had acted where Viktor had initially refused. She didn’t expect him to bail out strangers just because she happened to get herself pregnant with his child.
The fact that Kaine had been moved by his love for Gisella had filled her with happiness for her cousin, but anguish for herself. Gisella had what Rozalia wanted—a man who returned her love. Her cousin was marrying for love and when they made a baby, it would be an expression of their love for one another.
Not a chain that bound a pair of strangers into a lifetime of mistrust.
Part of Rozi still believed she should marry Viktor for their baby’s sake, but her feelings ran deep enough that any tiny rebuff or dark look from him rent a hole inside her. His inability to trust her was already chipping away at her, making her future look so bleak she could hardly face it.
Maybe he no longer wanted marriage. They hadn’t talked about it since Benny’s scandal had broken, when Viktor had firmly rejected attaching his family name to her soiled one.
The more she dwelled on it, the more she knew she couldn’t marry him. She might have to raise a baby with a man who didn’t love her, but she couldn’t live with him and sleep with him and stand by his side, suffering an eternity of silent anguish.
She almost took the coward’s way out and left for New York without talking to him, but she knew it would only undermine his faith in her even more.
So she made her arrangements, packed, then had his car drop her outside Rika Corp’s headquarters. She was shown directly into his empty office.
He joined her immediately, before she’d had a chance to take in more than an impression of mahogany relics and fine art that reflected his signature style of aristocracy and understated luxury.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly having been pulled from a meeting. He closed the door with a firm clip. “I thought your next appointment was a week from tomorrow.” He reached inside his jacket for his phone while raking a sharp gaze from her face to her feet.
“That’s not—” She linked her hands before her and tried to look calm and resolved when she was actually terrified and already beginning to miss him. “I’m going back to New York. For Gisella’s engagement party.”
His brows slammed together. “When?”
“The car is downstairs. I’m on my way to the airport.”
“And you tell me this now?” He glanced toward the door he’d come through, looking as though his mind was trying to wrap up whatever he’d been discussing.
“I’m not asking you to come with me. In fact—”
He swung his attention back to her, his forbidding glare like a roundhouse kick to the face.
She licked her lips, clinging to her composure. “I’m not running away. I’m not. It’s a return ticket. I plan to come back within a week. Unless you would prefer I stayed there.”
“Of course it’s not what I would prefer.” His voice roughened and tightened with intensity. “If you had given me more than five minutes’ notice, I would have arranged a charter and taken you myself. Give me an hour and I will.”
“I don’t want you to.”
His head flung back as though she’d raked her nails down his cheek.
“I want you to stay here and believe me when I say I’m coming back.” Her chest constricted as she threw down that gauntlet. Her grip was going to leave fingerprint bruises on the backs of her hands. “I want to prove to you that I can be trusted. It’s the only way I can see us moving forward in—” her voice thinned and she fought to make it strong enough to be heard “—in any capacity.”
He was not a slow man. His incisive brain was getting there before she had to spell it out.
“And what sort of capacity do you envision?” His expression was already altering with comprehension, hard and implacable, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking beneath that wall. Couldn’t decipher what he was feeling. Not beyond umbrage and refusal to accept what she was saying before she’d even spoken the words.
She threw herself the final distance, into the very heart of the firestorm.
“I’ve found an apartment.” Inside she writhed in agony. Only her voice revealed her pain, and only in its hollow emptiness. “I’m confident I can find a job to support myself. I don’t expect you to pay my bills. We’ll work out a custody arrangement before the baby is born.”
He might have been gray beneath his normally swarthy tan, but her vision was fading in and out with anxiety.
“Now who is trying to punish?” he charged in a voice filled with gravel.
“That’s not what this is.” In fact, she was beseeching him for understanding. “We’re barely speaking, Viktor. You’re not even coming home for dinner.”