A Child Claimed by Gold

by Rachael Thomas

  * * *

  Emma was late. She’d arrived at Central Park early and wandered around taking photographs until midday, the time specified by Nikolai in his reply to her text. She’d tried to put her reason for being in New York to the back of her mind and had almost succeeded when she had become engrossed in taking shots of the park. Now the impending meeting with him loomed large but she couldn’t recall which way she’d come. She looked around at the tall buildings surrounding the park and wondered if she’d be able to find her way back out. She was tired from travelling and early pregnancy was not being so kind to her. Panic rose up. She’d have to ask someone for directions.

  ‘Excuse me, is it this way to The Boathouse?’ she asked a mother pushing a pram, trying hard not to look down at the child. It would be too much like looking into her future and she wondered how she was ever going to cope on her own. Nikolai had made it more than clear that what they’d shared was just one night. He’d been so adamant about it she began to question her reasons for telling him personally. It would have been much easier just to call him, tell him he was going to be a father. It was her conscience and knowing what it felt like to be rejected by her father that had made her come.

  All through the flight one question kept going round in her head: would her own father have wanted to be part of her life if he’d been given the choice like this? The day she’d first met him, after she’d begged her mother to tell her who he was, rushed back at her, as did his icy words. It’s too late. I don’t need or want you in my life.

  ‘Keep walking and you’ll see it.’ The mother’s voice dragged her back to the present. She smiled at Emma before heading on in the other direction. With unease in her heart Emma watched her walk out of sight. That would be her by the end of the year, but she was certain she wouldn’t be here in New York, looking happy with life.

  She shook the thought away and looked at her watch again. She was fifteen minutes late. Would Nikolai still be there? With the pain of her father’s rejection stinging her heart, the need to see Nikolai, to tell him and give him the chance to be part of his child’s life, deepened. She quickened her step but within a few strides they faltered. He was standing where the path turned through the trees and, despite the distance, she knew it was him, as if her body had registered his, known he was close.

  She could also tell from his stance that he was not happy about being kept waiting. She breathed in deeply, then let the breath out in a bid to calm her nerves and quell the nausea which threatened to rear its head yet again. Within days of returning to London she had woken each morning feeling ill and had at first put it down to all that had happened between her and Nikolai. After all, losing your virginity to a man, only to have him walk out in anger, was not the best experience in the world. Not once had she considered there was a lasting legacy of that night.

  As days had turned into a week, she’d known she couldn’t ignore the encroaching doubt any longer and had purchased a pregnancy test. The fact that it had taken several more days before she’d been brave enough to use it only served to increase the weight of dread which filled her from the moment she woke each day. When she’d finally had enough courage to use the test, her worry had increased as the ominous blue lines appeared, confirming that the hours spent with Nikolai had most definitely had consequences—for her, at least.

  She walked towards him now and with purpose pushed those long, lonely weeks aside in her mind, focusing instead on what had to be done. She kept her chin lifted and her eyes on him all the time. Anything else would be to show uncertainty or, at worst, fear. She wasn’t scared of her future any more and, although it was going to be a struggle, she was looking forward to giving her child all she’d never had. What she did fear was telling Nikolai and, from the rigid set of his shoulders, she’d been right to fear this moment.

  He made no move towards her, not even one step, and she hated him for doing that. He could have made the moment easier for her. Was he punishing her for contacting him? For making their one night something more? Each step she took must have shown her anxiety a little bit more. She should have called him as soon as she’d taken the pregnancy test, but shock had set in. She hadn’t even been ready to accept it herself, let alone blithely call him up and tell him their one night had created a child which would join them for ever.

  How did you tell a man who’d made it blatantly clear he didn’t want any kind of commitment that he was a father? Her mother obviously hadn’t done it right, but could she? She was about to find out.

  As she drew level with him, the inky black of his eyes held accusation, just as they had done in the hotel room the morning after they’d spent the night together, the night she’d lost her virginity to him. The firm line of his lips looked harder than they had that morning but she refused to be intimidated, just as she refused to acknowledge the hum of attraction rushing through her just from seeing him, being near him again.

  She couldn’t still want him; she just couldn’t.

  ‘You are late.’ He snapped the words out and stood his ground. Six foot plus of brooding male towered over her, sending her heartbeat racing in a way that had nothing to do with nerves at what she had to say. She hated the way she still wanted him, her body in complete denial of the numbness in her mind. How could she still want a man who’d rejected her so coldly after she’d given him her most precious gift?

  ‘I couldn’t find my way through the park...’ she began, trying to instil firmness into her voice, but he cruelly cut her off.

  ‘Why are you here, Emma?’ The hard glint in his eye sparked with anger but she wouldn’t allow him to make her feel like a guilty child. What right did he have to stand there and dictate to her what she should have done and when? He was the one who’d strode from the hotel room in Vladimir without a word to her after tossing her his card. He was the one who hadn’t handled this right.

  ‘Did you think throwing a business card onto the bed was a nice way to end our night together?’ Her words spiked the spring air around them, but he didn’t flinch. His handsome face didn’t show a single trace of any other emotion beyond controlled annoyance. This just prodded at her anger, firing her up. ‘We need to talk, Nikolai. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘About the consequences of our night together?’ He’d guessed. Guilt and shock mixed together and she looked up at him, not yet able to say anything.

  He moved towards her, dominating the spring air around them, and while she heard people walking past she couldn’t do anything other than focus on him. If she looked away, even for just a second, all her strength would slip away.

  ‘By consequences, you mean pregnancy.’ Finally she found her voice. Her sharp words didn’t make a dent in his assured superiority, but saying them aloud filled her with panic.

  ‘Yes, exactly that. I assume you haven’t flown halfway around the world to tell me about the article. You’re here to tell me you are expecting my child.’ He looked straight into her eyes, the fierce question in them mixing with accusation. Was he blaming her?

  Emma looked away from the impenetrable hardness in his eyes and wished it could be different, but no amount of wishing was going to change those two bold lines on the pregnancy test she’d finally had the courage to use. She was pregnant with Nikolai’s child and, judging by his response to her arrival in New York, he did not like that particular revelation. It didn’t matter what he said now, she had to face the truth: she was very much alone.

  She let out a soft breath, trying to come to terms with what she’d known all along, finally accepting why she’d wanted to tell him in person. She’d had the faint hope that he would come around to the idea, be different from her father. But no. If the fierce glint in his cold black eyes was anything to go by, he didn’t want to be a father at any price. She would do this herself. She didn’t need him—or anyone. ‘Your powers of deduction are enviable, Nikolai. Yes, I’m pregnant.’

  * * *

  Nikolai braced himself against the worst possible news he
could ever be told. He couldn’t be a father, not when the example he’d seen of fatherly love still haunted his dreams, turning them into nightmares if he allowed it.

  He looked at Emma, the one woman who’d captured a part of his heart. Ever since she’d left he’d tried to tell himself it was because he’d shared a bit of himself with her, shared secrets he hadn’t wanted anyone to know. He still couldn’t comprehend why he’d done that when she’d had the power to make it completely public, shatter his mother’s peaceful life and destroy his hard-won business reputation. He was thankful he’d stopped at the unhappy marriage bit, glad he hadn’t told her the full horror of how that marriage had come about. How he’d come about. If she knew the truth she wouldn’t want him to have anything to do with his child, of that he was sure. But, although he had shared some secrets, he would now do anything he could to ensure those she didn’t know about stayed hidden away.

  ‘And did you leave Vladimir in such a hurry because you thought you’d discovered extra facts for the story? Perhaps you rushed off to get it in?’

  The anger he’d felt when he’d realised she’d left not only his room and the hotel but Vladimir itself still coursed through him. He’d had to leave her in the hotel room because of the desire coursing through him. He’d needed the cool air to dull the heavy lust she evoked in him with every look. He hadn’t intended it to be the last time he saw her. He’d intended to go back and talk calmly with her, hear what she would want if the worst had indeed happened.

  ‘No.’ She looked down, as he quickly realised she always did when confronted with something difficult, as if she too was hiding from past hurt—or was it guilt for throwing herself at him just to get a few snippets of inside information? When she looked back up at him, her eyes were shining with threatening tears. ‘I had a call from my sister and left soon after you did.’

  ‘A call from your sister? So, after we’d worked together on the article, you thought spending time with her was more important?’ Her face paled at his icy tone and a rush of guilt sliced briefly through him before he pushed it aside. She’d run out on him to play happy families with her sister.

  ‘She was upset.’ Emma looked up at him as if imploring him to understand. ‘We only have each other. I left her to go back to Moscow but there wasn’t any time to contact you again. It’s not as if I knew there were such consequences then.’

  ‘When did you first discover these consequences?’ The fact that she must have known for at least a few weeks infuriated him more than the fact that she’d used him, seduced him into taking her to bed and spilling secrets.

  ‘I’ve only fairly recently had it confirmed...’ He moved even closer to her, dominating the very air she breathed and halting her words in mid-flow.

  ‘And now we have to deal with it.’ His attention was caught by passers-by, happy in the spring sunshine when he now had the weight of guilt pressing down on him, all but rooting him to the spot like one of the large trees of the park.

  This was his fault. He should have been more careful, more in control, but if he was honest with himself he should never have given in to the attraction in the first place. Not with the woman who had the power to destroy his and his mother’s happiness. What the hell had he been thinking? What had happened to his usual self-control? Emma had happened. She’d completely disarmed him, which he strongly suspected had been her intention all along.

  ‘Deal with it?’ He heard the panic in her voice and turned his attention back to her, to see she’d paled even more dramatically. She needed to sit down. He did too, but the restaurant would be busy, far too busy to discuss an unplanned pregnancy and the ramifications of such news.

  ‘This way,’ he said as he took her arm, ensuring she came with him. He strode towards the edge of the park where he knew the horse-drawn carriages would be waiting for customers. They could talk as they toured the park and, more importantly, she wouldn’t be able to run out on him this time. She would have to face their situation, just as he’d had to as he’d gone over this very moment in his mind during recent weeks. In the carriage she would have no choice but to listen to him and accept that his solution was their only option.

  ‘Where are we going?’ She pulled back against him as if she was on the verge of bolting again, backing up his reasoning for taking a carriage ride like a tourist.

  ‘Somewhere we can talk. Somewhere you’ll have no choice but to sit and hear what I have to say, how we are going to deal with this.’ Still she resisted and he turned to face her, sliding his hand down her arm to take her hand in his. As he did so, that fizz of energy filled him once more and he could see her face again, full of desire the night she’d taken his hand in Vladimir. The night they’d conceived a new life. His child. His heir. ‘You are not going to slip away so easily this time, Emma, not now you carry my child.’

  * * *

  The determination and bravado slipped from Emma and her body became numb. She was too tired to fight any more, too tired to worry and fret over the future, and Nikolai’s suggestion of sitting down seemed the best option. She walked hand in hand with him through the park. To onlookers they would have appeared like any other couple, walking together in the sunshine, but inside dread had begun to fill her, taking over the sizzle of attraction from just being with him again. Exactly how did he intend to deal with it?

  ‘We’ll take a ride round the park,’ Nikolai said as he stopped beside a horse-drawn carriage and she blinked in shock. Was this just another of his romantic pastimes to distract her? Then the truth of that thought hit her. That was exactly what he’d done in Vladimir. He’d gone out of his way to distract her and had even successfully managed to keep her from meeting his grandmother.

  He’d been keeping her from knowing more about his family and, thinking back to the moment they’d met, she could see he’d been evasive about the story of rags to riches she was supposed to cover. Why, then, had he said the things he had that morning after they’d made love, giving her a deeper insight into the childhood which had shaped the man he now was?

  She still couldn’t shake off the sensation that he’d wanted to say more but had guarded against it. Had he really believed she would put all those details in the article? She’d just wanted to create a fairy-tale story to go with the amazing photographs she’d taken, but he’d accused her of manipulating everything to get what she wanted.

  ‘Trying to make me all soft again, are you?’ The words were out before she had time to think of the implications. If she’d been clever she would have never let him know she’d guessed his motives.

  ‘There is nothing to go soft about. I need to know exactly what you submitted to World in Photographs about my family and then we can discuss what happens next.’ He opened the door of the carriage and, with a flourish of manners she knew he was displaying for the purpose of getting what he wanted, waited for her to climb in.

  Emma looked from his eyes to the park around her and beyond that to the tall buildings of New York, a place she’d never been to before. What choice did she have? She was alone in a city she didn’t know and pregnant with this man’s baby.

  ‘I have my laptop at the hotel, I can show you exactly what will be in it.’ The painful knowledge that he’d rather discuss an article she’d written than talk about their baby cut into her. She sat in the seat, wishing she hadn’t got in the carriage. The idea of playing the tourist with him again brought back heated memories of that first kiss in the sleigh.

  ‘Did you use anything to do with what we talked about after our night together?’ His voice was deep and firm, quashing those memories instantly as he snapped out the question.

  ‘No,’ she said and looked directly at him, into the depths of eyes that were shuttered, keeping her out and his thoughts locked away. ‘I never wanted to pry into your family history, more to show an insight into your country. It was what Richard had suggested in the first place.’

  ‘Who is Richard?’

  ‘A photographer I met while on my cours
e. He works for World in Photographs and helped me get the contract to write the article about your family.’ She had nothing to hide, so why shouldn’t she tell him about how she’d got the contract in the first place? If he chose to see it in the wrong light, that was his problem.

  ‘What do you owe this Richard for getting you the contract?’ The sharpness of his voice made her look at him quickly, but the coldness of his eyes was almost as bitter as the wind in Vladimir had been.

  ‘Nothing. All I wanted was to take the best photographs I could and showcase your country, weaving in some of your family stories, which I have achieved without adding in anything you told me in your hotel room.’

  ‘Then for now I trust you,’ he said as the carriage pulled away, the sudden movement making her grab the seat to steady herself. Instantly his hands reached out to hold her and from the seat opposite she felt that heated attraction connect them once more. Their eyes met; she looked into the inky blackness and swallowed as she saw the glint of steely hardness had given way to something more dangerous—desire. She couldn’t allow herself to fall for his seductive charms again; she just needed to deal with the consequences of their night together and leave before she fell even further and deeper for him. Irritated by the direction of her thoughts, she pulled away and sat back in the carriage seat, desperate to avoid his scrutiny.

  If he didn’t trust her with his secrets then why had he told them to her? Had that also been a way of manipulating her to do what he wanted, make her think what he wanted her to think? It had not occurred to her until now that what he’d said might not have been the complete truth.

  ‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Nikolai,’ she said defensively, and looked away from the dark eyes, feigning an interest in the tall buildings clearly visible above the newly green trees of the park. Maybe if she took a few shots from the carriage he’d see she was as unaffected by him as he appeared to be by her.