He should inform her in a few pithy phrases that he wanted nothing further to do with her. His pride demanded it.
Dominic moved over to his desk, sat down and swivelled around so that he was facing the window.
‘Yes?’ His voice was equally cold.
‘Have I caught you on your way out?’ Mattie asked and when he told her that, as a matter of fact she had, she immediately and again wildly wondered where he had been planning on going. Bad move. She needed her wits about her to get through this call, not scattered to the four winds because jealousy was eating away at her like a poison.
‘What do you want?’ Dominic asked flatly.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Really?’ He stared out into the nothingness that sprawled outside his window and felt a surge of heady excitement made all the more powerful by the fact that he hadn’t been the one to initiate the contact. But hell, her voice sounded good. ‘What about? More of the same? Or have you come to your senses and realised that I might actually have had a valid point of view, after all?’
‘Where were you going tonight? Somewhere important? Anything you could cancel? I really would like to see you sooner rather than later.’ Her words came out in a rush and she found that she was still holding her breath while the seconds ticked by.
‘I suppose I could cancel my…appointment.’ What appointment? The only appointment he had was a date with the bottle of whisky back in his apartment and the television with the sound turned down. ‘I could come over to the apartment, I guess…’
‘I’ve moved out.’
Dominic simulated astonishment. She would have a field-day if she knew that he had phoned her boss to enquire about her and sheer pride refused to allow her that option. ‘Moved out? Where to? No, let me guess. Back to that loser of a boyfriend of yours, I expect. Running back to what you know even if it’s bad for your health.’
Mattie couldn’t help herself. ‘And do you think that you were good for my health, Dominic? Lying and cheating your way into my…into my bed.’ Into my heart, she nearly said, only biting back the dangerous words at the last minute.
‘Is that why we need to talk, Mattie? So that you can throw a few more accusations my way? Because if it is…’ If it was, well, he still wanted to see her, Dominic thought with disgust.
‘No.’ Mattie spoke quickly, already regretting her outburst. There was no place for that and she didn’t want to be distracted down that road.
She had had long enough to dwell on what he had done and yes, she was still furious with him, but under the fury was a niggling admission that he had really helped her. It was help that she would have rejected out of hand had he told her his intentions from the start.
The job suited her perfectly. It was challenging and well-paid and she enjoyed the people she worked with. She would never have landed on her feet like that without him. And like it or not, he had had a point when he had told her that had he really wanted to manipulate her, he would have dangled that particular carrot in his hand.
‘So…you still haven’t said.’ It irked him to flog this particular horse but, dammit, he had to know.
‘Haven’t said what?’
‘Where you’re living now, if you’ve left the apartment.’
‘I haven’t gone back to Frankie’s,’ Mattie said reluctantly. ‘Actually, I’ve found somewhere near Wimbledon. It’s small and not in the best of areas, but it does, and the rent’s a lot cheaper than I would be paying in central London.’
Dominic felt himself literally shudder in relief. ‘Where are you now?’ he asked, prepared to be magnanimous now that that particular nightmare scenario, the one where she was back with her ex and loving every minute of it, had been dispelled.
‘In that bistro two blocks away from where your office is, as a matter of fact.’
That came as a surprise. Dominic turned away from the window and slowly drew his chair up to the desk. ‘You mean you went to that bistro on the off-chance that I would be able to meet you there when you called?’
‘It seemed as good a place as any.’ Mattie glanced around. There was a fair amount of people filling it, all still in their work clothes. This wasn’t the sort of place where people went to get drunk. They had a couple of glasses of wine, maybe, something light to eat, but no rowdiness. Just the comfortable safety of people around. ‘I’ve got a table at the back. Will you be able to make it?’
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
Oh, yes, the world suddenly seemed a glorious place, filled with light and colour and…possibilities. Dominic shrugged on his jacket and almost whistled in the elevator down to Reception. His car was in the basement, but no need to take it when the wine bar was within walking distance.
She was there. Waiting for him! True, she had sounded a little cold on the telephone, but that could have been the reception. Mobile phones distorted voices and she would have been using her mobile, the one thing she had accepted from him because he had insisted on her having it. Knowing that she was safe because of that damned underground system she refused to abandon in favour of the taxi. He could remember the way she had looked at him and grinned when he had pressed it into her hand and then, over lunch, patiently showed her how to use it.
The fact was that she had called him, wanted to see him. They would talk, not in an atmosphere of anger as they had the last time, but cautiously, taking steps to iron out the misunderstandings. And he was prepared to do anything to iron out those misunderstandings because he couldn’t imagine life without her.
He made it to the wine bar in record time.
And there she was, as promised, sitting primly at the table at the back, wearing a dark grey dress and a black jacket. Dominic took a few pleasurable seconds just looking at her as she stared thoughtfully at the glass in front of her, tracing the circular rim with one finger.
She looked up just at that moment and their eyes met. Only for a few seconds, but he got the impression that dashing over to him and flinging her arms around him was not going to happen. Which made him walk rather more warily towards her than he felt like doing.
‘That was quick.’ Mattie gave him a tense, unrevealing smile. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon.’
‘I said ten minutes.’
‘I thought you might have had to get in touch with whoever you were meeting. Cancel whatever arrangements you’d made.’
Still the same bland politeness that he hadn’t wanted or, for that matter, expected. Still standing, Dominic glanced at the bar and then back to her. ‘I’m going to get myself a drink. What do you want? What are you drinking?’
‘Just mineral water, and no, I’m fine.’
‘Food? Shall I bring a couple of menus?’ Talking like strangers. He didn’t want this, but he would let her take her time to get where she wanted. Which had to be them, back together, or why else would she have made contact at all? It couldn’t have been easy.
‘Sure. Why not?’ Mattie shrugged and looked away. ‘Actually, you can order for me. Just some fish would be fine.’
Which he did, returning to the table a few minutes later with his drink in one hand and more confusing thoughts than he felt he could handle.
‘So, how are you?’ he asked, still as polite as hell. He sat down opposite her, cradled his drink for a few seconds before tossing some of it down his throat.
‘The job’s still brilliant.’ Mattie looked at her glass of water, up at him, and then back to the glass. She knew that she had to be very controlled here but it was damned difficult. Seeing him was so much worse than hearing his voice, and hearing his voice had been bad enough.
‘Why did you give up the apartment?’
‘You know why.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t jack the job in as well, in that case.’
‘Look, let’s get one thing straight. Whatever your motivations were, I love what I’m doing.’
‘So I’m not the monster after all?’
‘I don’t want to talk about that.�
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‘Then what exactly do you want to talk about?’ His patience was beginning to wear thin under the strained formalities.
‘What have you been doing these past few weeks?’ Mattie asked, diverting the subject and not very subtly. She had yearned to see him again, longed for him with every ounce of her foolish, love-struck being. Sure, she had spent hours nursing her bitterness at what he had done, telling herself that she shouldn’t be surprised because hadn’t she put him down as an arrogant swine from the first moment he had swept into her life? But then she hadn’t been in love with him. Which was what was really hurting now. Knowing what he was and still loving him so much that it was like a constant, pressing pain.
And she was scared as well. Scared at what he would be thinking in an hour from now, when she had told him what she had to tell him. Which was why she was more than happy to play for a little time.
‘Working hard.’ Dominic finished his drink and, as their food was put in front of them, ordered another.
‘And playing hard too?’
‘Care to define what you mean by playing hard?’
‘Forget it.’
‘No, I haven’t been seeing a bevy of women since you. Is that what you mean? Or would you rather shove me into the role of ruthless womaniser along with everything else? The sort of man who would open door two the minute door one closes?’ This wasn’t going quite the way he had thought it might and his earlier optimism that they would put their differences behind them was now beginning to bring home to him what a naïve fool he had been.
‘I don’t want to argue with you.’ Mattie dropped her eyes and wondered what it was she was expecting. Or why she had even come. No, she knew why she had come. She fiddled with the food on her plate, shoving it around in useless circles, finally swallowing a mouthful although it tasted like cardboard.
‘Which begs the question, what exactly do you want? And why don’t we drop the game playing? You’re enjoying your job, I’m working hard. How about moving on from that to why you called me out of the blue?’
‘Would you have called me if I hadn’t gotten in touch with you?’ Mattie had to ask that. Another taboo question in so far as she knew she wouldn’t like the answer, but something still compelled her to ask it.
‘You made your position perfectly clear when we last met.’ Dominic closed his knife and fork, for once deserted by his reliable, hearty appetite. He couldn’t stomach another mouthful of steak, however good it was. In fact, he felt in dire need of another whisky and soda although he knew it wasn’t a good idea. ‘I was the big, bad wolf who had managed to corner innocent Little Red Riding Hood and, even though he managed to secure her a safe passage through the woods and fix her up in a nifty little weatherproof cottage, he was still the big, bad wolf because he should have told her what he was going to do. Should have given her the opportunity to throw his offer back in his face and face her journey through the woods on her own. Hell, if you think I’m going to tell you that I would have pursued you nevertheless, then you’ll be waiting forever.’ Pride. Stubborn pride that had slammed back into place. The galling truth was that he would have contacted her. Made up some spurious excuse, but he would have got in touch with her, just because he would have needed to. Like an addict needing his fix.
‘Right.’
Her silent acceptance of his statement only fuelled his anger. ‘What did you expect me to say?’ he pressed, angry with her for the stoniness that had him thrown and angry with himself for not being able to grab hold of some of that legendary self-control for which he was known.
‘Nothing. The truth. Which is what you just said.’ Mattie picked up her glass of water, realised that her hand was shaking, and immediately put the glass back down on the table.
‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ she said, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that cost her dear. ‘This way, we can discuss what I have to say like adults.’
‘Discuss…what?’ Dominic was getting more uneasy by the minute.
‘I’m pregnant.’
The silence was deafening. It seemed to stretch on and on and on. For hours. If it hadn’t been all so deadly serious, she might have laughed, seeing this dangerously beautiful man who was usually never lost for words rendered so utterly speechless.
In fact, this bit of it was really just as she had imagined it would be.
Ever since she had found out herself, which had only been a matter of a few hours before.
Now those few hours seemed like a dream, like an event that had occurred months previously. All the questions she had asked herself in her terrified panic were no longer raging inside her head like demons. She was pregnant and that was simply a fait accompli. And lord knew, she would still be ignorant if she hadn’t been to see her doctor because she had been feeling tired and putting on weight even though her appetite had vanished.
He had asked her the one question she had never asked herself and of course she had denied it. She couldn’t possibly be pregnant. She was on the contraceptive pill!
‘I beg your pardon?’ Those four words were dropped like stones into a still pond and Mattie forced herself to meet his eyes calmly. At least, as calmly as she could.
‘You heard me. I’m pregnant.’
‘You asked me to come here to tell me this?’ He shoved his plate to one side all the better to lean across the narrow table and close the space between them.
‘Would you rather I had never bothered to tell you?’ Mattie shot back. ‘Believe me, it did cross my mind but then, believe it or not, I do happen to possess one or two moral values…’
‘Spare me the trip down hardship lane, Mattie…’
‘I’m telling you this because I feel you have a right to know that you’ve fathered a child. I do apologise if you’d rather I hadn’t said anything!’
Mattie had never wondered what she would feel like if she ever discovered that she was pregnant. The truth was that she had never really considered it at all. She knew, though, that this was not how it should be. In an ideal world, she shouldn’t be sitting in a bistro breaking this news to a man who wanted a baby about as much as he wanted a rampant dose of the bubonic plague. In an ideal world, she should be sharing this news with joy in her heart to a man who would hold her close and tell her that that was the greatest news he’d ever had.
Unfortunately life was never ideal and hers, in particular, seemed hell-bent on tripping her up.
Not that there wasn’t a secret little happiness inside her, growing with each passing minute. A lot of wonder and, underneath the anxiety and doubts and fear, a seed of pleasurable completion was already sending shoots up, making her think how much she wanted this child, conceived in love even if the love was one-sided.
‘What I meant is, why did you bring me here to break this news? To this place? How are we supposed to conduct a conversation here, surrounded by people and noise?’ Dominic looked around him restlessly but then his eyes were back on her face, as if he couldn’t tear them away for long enough to even scan the room.
‘I thought we might just have a quick chat—’
‘A quick chat!’
‘And then when you’ve had time to absorb it all, we could maybe meet and discuss things…in a bit more detail. If that’s what you want…’ Her eyes skittered away from his.
‘What do you think I want?’
‘Look, Dominic, I know this is a bit of a bombshell…’
‘And you once told me that I was the master of understatement!’
‘It was a shock to me as well.’
In the midst of his swirling confusion, this brought Dominic up short. Yes, it would have been a shock to her. She had only now started on the long, slow climb up the career ladder. To discover that she was pregnant must have been as much of a bombshell to her.
Her powers of recuperation were obviously second to none, he thought a little acidly. Because she certainly didn’t look like a woman in a state of shock. She was calm, cool and utterly collected. The hallmar
ks of a woman relaying information without a shred of emotion to convey what she was really feeling.
‘How did it happen?’ he asked in an effort to bring some normality to his wildly cavorting emotions. ‘Look, I’m going to have to get another drink. Want anything?’
Mattie shook her head and watched him as he walked up to the bar and then stood, restlessly tapping on the counter, while his drink was poured.
She had been right to meet him in a public place. A bit of a cowardly move but a good one, because at least here he couldn’t give vent to his obvious temptation to storm at her, which was what he wanted to do. If he raised his voice one decibel she could always walk out, and anyway he wouldn’t. His arms were tied with people all around them. He would be forced to discuss this like an adult and she needed him to do that. One wrong word from him and she felt that she might crack. Under the calm exterior, emotions were just waiting to burst their banks and lord only knew what she would say to him if that happened. Tell him that she was glad that she was pregnant? Tell him that she had fallen in love with him? Put him in a position where his horror at an admission like that would force him to kindly but politely remind her of the pact they had made, the non-involvement pact that she had broken?
Maybe he might even accuse her of getting pregnant on purpose so that she could drag commitment out of him even though she knew that commitment was the equivalent of a four-letter word to him.
‘You asked me how it happened,’ Mattie said, as soon as he had sat back down. Polite. Businesslike. Because to him this would be business and not particularly pleasant business. ‘I…I came off the Pill for the last six months I was with Frankie. We weren’t…and, anyway, I thought it was a good time to give my body a break, so the first time we…well, I wasn’t protected. Silly, I know, but I didn’t think. By the time I started back using contraception, well, obviously it was too late…and I didn’t know because…’
‘OK. I get the picture.’
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