Expecting His Love-Child

by Carol Marinelli

  As the staff packed up and headed to the speedboat, as its engine faded into the distance, Millie felt a shiver—not of excitement, but of nervousness. Nowhere on earth could they be more isolated—now it really was just the two of them, with no distractions or duties to cloud the issue, no background chatter or waiters hovering.

  Stuck on a desert island with the man she loved—the same man who’d told her outright that he’d never love her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  EVEN without the intrusion of staff—even though they were quite literally, quite unbelievably, on a desert island and the purpose of their trip here was to talk—it couldn’t just happen on demand.

  Despite all her best efforts to relax, on the first morning Millie was impossibly awkward—up early, she slathered herself in sunblock, then dressed in a bikini, shorts, T-shirt and sandals. She banged into Levander at every turn in the vast kitchen as she fixed breakfast, trying to avert her eyes as he wandered around in a very low-slung towel, even more impossibly gorgeous than usual, yawning and stretching and drinking milk straight from the carton as she rigidly chopped fruit.

  ‘Do you want fruit salad?’

  ‘No.’ He leant over and took a slab of watermelon, his lazy eyes taking in her clothes, before smiling at her pursed lips. ‘Can you get a newspaper from the shop when you go?’

  ‘What shop?’ Millie asked, then instantly regretted it. She realised he was teasing her for being so over-dressed and gritted her teeth, slicing faster.

  ‘I’m going for a swim—coming?’

  ‘No.’ He was walking out through the door…the door that led to the beach, not the bedroom…and yet she was just so appalled at the prospect that she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand it a second longer. She was terrified he’d expect them to run around naked, like in some awful nudist colony…

  ‘Levander—’

  ‘Whoops—’

  The two words were said at the time.

  Levander turned slow and lazy towards her, giving her a very nice smile. ‘I nearly forgot to get my bathers.’

  ‘Pig,’ Millie mouthed at the gorgeous sight of his departing back, reeling at the change in him. Without his family, without the press, he was like the man she had fallen head over heels for on their very first night—better even than the man she had met on their very first night. But she was still furious with him for his hateful manner in Melbourne. Furious with him for the game he was playing. Furious with him for teasing. Furious with herself for still wanting him so.

  Sitting scowling and burning on the beach, watching Levander churning the surf with impossibly strong strokes, wasn’t going to help matters. When he was far enough out she took off her T-shirt and sandals, telling herself it was silly to be so shy. But she couldn’t even contemplate taking the top of her bikini off and going for an even tan. After all they’d done he’d already seen everything, but she’d never felt fatter or paler or more exposed, sitting on a vast beach in a tiny red bikini and watching him rise like some sexy Greek god from the water. And he was definitely sexy when wet, Millie thought, watching from behind her sunglasses as he walked over and proceeded to shake himself like shaggy dog, dripping water all over her.

  ‘The water is nice.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You should go in.’

  ‘I might mess up my make up,’ she spat back—even though she wasn’t wearing any.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said…’ He smiled at her petulance. ‘You actually looked very beautiful last night.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me now!’

  ‘I have learnt to fight dirty…’ His admission halted her a fraction. ‘I had to in order to survive—not just with my family, but before. I will try not to do it to you again.’ He lowered himself down beside her. He didn’t bother with a towel or anything, just laid his wet body on the sand and stared, squinting, up at the sun. ‘You don’t fight dirty—do you?’

  She stared down at him as he asked, and it was easier somehow to look at him, to answer him, with her sunglasses on. ‘I’ve never had to.’

  ‘I’ve spent all this time thinking you are like them—like the others—but I realise now that you’re nothing like them at all…’

  ‘Why does this have to be a fight, Levander?’ She frowned in bemusement, working hard to understand him. ‘Why—when surely we both want the same thing for our child.’

  ‘A family?’ he asked, and behind her glasses she screwed her eyes closed unable to answer his impassioned plea. ‘That is what I want.’

  It was Levander who broke the impossible silence. ‘How did your family take the news?’

  ‘They were shocked.’ Millie gulped. ‘Stunned, really. It was just the last thing they expected. I’ve always been so…’

  ‘Cautious?’ Levander offered, thinking of his own family’s perpetual warnings.

  ‘Not cautious.’ Millie frowned. ‘More—driven, I guess. Since high school, art’s been my passion. My trip to Australia took months to arrange. The only dream I’ve ever really had is painting. Unlike most parents, when they waved me off the possibility of their daughter coming home pregnant was the furthest thing from their minds.’

  ‘When did you tell them?’

  ‘About a month ago.’ Millie let out a long, shaky breath, then opened her mouth to carry on, and found that she couldn’t just yet. But Levander didn’t push. Instead, in his most surprising move since he’d grabbed her into that first fierce embrace at the airport, he wrapped his hand around hers, held it gently for a moment or two. It helped—really helped. Drawing from his quiet support, she was ready to continue.

  ‘When I got back from Australia, after a couple of weeks I plucked up the courage and went to a clinic—you know, to get checked…’

  ‘There was no need,’ Levander said. ‘It was a first for me too, without…’

  She couldn’t really tell with her glasses on, but Millie could have sworn he was blushing a touch—and she was too, just recalling the mortification she’d felt, sitting waiting for her unlucky number to be called.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know that at the time,’ Millie said with a tight smile. ‘But, yes, the only test I failed was the pregnancy one. I didn’t know how to tell them at first, and even when I did I didn’t tell them it was a…’ She swallowed hard before saying it. ‘A one-night stand. I sort of let them think—well, that we cared.’

  ‘We do.’ It was perhaps the single nicest thing he’d said to her. ‘What else did you tell them?’

  ‘I said that…’ Blushing, cringing, she could hardly bring herself to say it.

  ‘You’d better tell me.’ He smiled over at her embarrassment. ‘If I am going to meet them, perhaps I should know.’

  ‘I said that your family owned a shop near Anton’s gallery.’

  ‘A shop?’

  ‘A little shop.’ Millie cringed again.

  ‘So they think I am the local greengrocer’s son?’ He was joking, but seeing her anguished expression he realised she wasn’t. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Well, not a greengrocer’s. I said that they ran a clothes shop. Obviously they know the truth now.’

  ‘But why would you not tell them in the first place? Surely it could only have made things easier…’

  ‘Or scarier for them.’

  He stilled beside her.

  ‘This is their grandchild, Levander. Knowing who you are, how powerful you could be…well, I guess they’ll be scared for the same reasons I am.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight you, Millie.’

  ‘Then don’t.’ Regretting the warning note in her voice, she sought diversion. She didn’t want to push things to another ugly head—here was their chance to find each other. ‘Let’s paddle.’

  ‘Paddle?’ Levander frowned. ‘The boats are…’

  ‘Paddle.’ Millie laughed. ‘With our feet.’

  He had no idea what she was talking about, Millie realised, taking him by the hand towards the lapping foreshore—had no idea what it
was to stand in the surf and just enjoy the heavy pull of salt water as it gushed around your ankles.

  A playboy who didn’t now how to play.

  But he learnt quickly.

  She’d braved Brighton in an English summer, so it was really nothing to throw off her inhibitions, take his hand and run screaming into the warm Pacific Ocean. Just one bemused frown from Levander, as she skidded a fistful of water in his direction, then he quickly caught on and skidded one back. They played in the water like carefree children, Levander spluttering with laughter as she dived underneath and caught his ankles. She held her breath as he had his revenge, ducking her under, and then his strong thighs caught around her and pulled her up to the surface. She gulped in air—until his mouth caught hers, kissing her so hard, so fiercely her head swam. Not from lack of oxygen but from the sheer intensity of his kiss.

  ‘This we do well…’

  ‘We do…’ She hated that she was so weak, so lily-livered with him—hated how her body screamed for him. And yet somehow she revelled in it, revelled in the new dimension he had brought to her existence.

  ‘And it is better than fighting…’ He was kissing her neck, kissing it so deeply surely he was bruising her, and bruising her mind as well…His voice was a plea as he tried so hard just to talk to her. ‘Millie, I can’t do that without this…’

  He carried her to the water’s edge and laid her down. It had been pointless her wearing a bikini top, because it was now halfway around her neck. Then it was completely tossed aside, and Millie watched with a fleeting smile as the ocean claimed an hour of shopping.

  She could feel the wet sand on her back as her body curved in—could feel the cool weightlessness of the water contrasting with his warm, heavy body as he lay on top of her. Hands that had once been tentative were brave now as she slid his bathers down, her nails dragging into his firm buttocks as the ocean claimed its second gift. She savoured the taste of the salt water on his skin as his shoulders enveloped her, one strong arm lifting her head above the water as his other hand wrestled with the flimsy straps of her bikini bottom. His erection was stronger than the ocean as it pressed against her—his need, his want for her all-encompassing, as hers was for him.

  The blissful stab as he entered her, swelling deep within, made her whole body arch into his. He rocked deep within her, defying the waves, each rush of water up her body a contrast as he pulled his gift back. Every time she attempted to catch her breath as the pounding waves receded he filled her further, refusing her even a second to regroup. Her calves locked behind him as Levander surged inside her, where he had lived in her restless, aching dreams every night since first they’d been together. With each deep thrust she welcomed him back, and as measured as the ocean an orgasm so intensely fierce she felt as if she was going under claimed her again.

  When his first ever playtime was over, when they were too tired to be brittle, too happily exhausted to argue as blazing day faded into a long, long night he told her.

  Some.

  Drip-fed her his torture—about the lying-down rooms they’d been sent to, about the staff. Though most of them had cared, quite simply there hadn’t been enough of anything to go around.

  Not enough food, or clothes or nappies—the most basic necessities all lacking—and attention, affection, the most thinly stretched of them all.

  Before he revealed anything though, he made it absolutely clear that he never wanted her sympathy or pity—but that if somehow, by knowing him, she could maybe understand him, maybe choose to stay, if that was what it took, then he would tell her.

  ‘She was his cleaner.’ Staring up at the sky as they lay together, wrapped in each other’s arms, he told her, walked her slowly through his very private hell.

  ‘When she fell pregnant…well, I am told my father said he would keep her as his mistress, that he would provide for her and the baby. But that was not enough for my mother. She wanted him to marry her, or at least be faithful…On both counts he refused. She was very proud, very headstrong….’

  Millie smiled as he stated the obvious.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like her already—you’re clearly your mother’s son.’

  He frowned as if it had never entered his head—frowned and then smiled as he shrugged, as he accepted a little piece of his history. ‘To her family’s fury, she walked out on him.’

  ‘Her family’s fury?’

  ‘Her family disowned her—and that was okay. For more than three years we were okay. Until…’He wasn’t smiling now, took a moment to regroup, to continue. ‘My father got married to Nina. She was pregnant with the twins, and my mother guessed that my father and Nina were planning to flee. He gave her a lot of money all of a sudden, and came round many nights in a row to play with me—but those are the sort of plans that can’t be discussed. She had a cough then. I can remember that. But he didn’t know how ill she was. All of a sudden my father wasn’t there any more, and my mother was really ill. When she left me at the baby house to go to the hospital she said my father would come.’

  ‘And they didn’t trace him…’

  He gave a wry laugh, but it wasn’t mocking. ‘They were not even married. She registered me with his surname, and in Russia you take you father’s first name as your middle—Levander Ivanovich Kolovsky, which means Levander son of Ivan—but who was going to search? I was just one of many. Better than most, really.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because I had her for a little while…‘ He closed his eyes and she didn’t know if he was blocking it out or seeing it again. ‘I had once seen normal—I knew how to behave, knew how to read, to write, because she had taught me. Without that I know I would have gone crazy.’

  ‘Like the child you told me about—the one who screamed at bedtime?’

  ‘Like him.’ Levander nodded. ‘But I am stronger because I had her. That is not me being sentimental—’ he checked that she understood ‘—already I knew normal—we were poor, but we were happy.’

  ‘You can really remember?’

  ‘Very well.’ He nodded again. ‘I had a lot of time to look back. I remember her reading, I remember her singing, I remember I swore and she slapped me…’ He actually laughed at the memory. ‘Most of the children there don’t even have that. They are abandoned there at birth—that is all they know. I did not scream or cry—I believed my father was one day going to come and get me, because that was the last thing she told me. I kept to myself when I could, and learned to defend myself when I couldn’t—and I studied hard. I achieved the Gold Medal at school, which goes to the best student. I was accepted at Moscow University, and then my father found me.’

  ‘He’d been looking?’

  ‘Apparently he sent money every month—and letters and cards, but I never saw them. I don’t know if my mother’s family kept the money. I just don’t know. Eventually he traced me. It caused a lot of problems when I came to Australia. Iosef and Aleksi were furious with my father. Furious that he had left me behind and that they had never been told. They tried hard to get close to me, but I just couldn’t trust them. I was not easy to live with. I was so angry with them—with the world.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Iosef left to study medicine as soon as he was old enough. Aleksi is in London. We have never been close. I never let them get close…’ he finally admitted.

  ‘What about Annika?’

  ‘Annika…’ He shook his head hopelessly. ‘She just wants everything to be fine.’

  ‘Can it ever be?’

  ‘I don’t know. This is the first time I have ever spoken about it….’ She thought about her own fears, her own doubts, her own worries, and tried to fathom never once voicing them.

  ‘They are so ashamed of the past…but it is my past, Millie. If they cannot accept that then they can never accept me. The finest tailor, the cars, the money—they only dress up the outside. That was my life, and they cannot face it. To this day my father and Nina live in fear that the secret will get o
ut—that people will judge them…’

  And it would be so easy to judge, Millie thought. So easy to loathe a man who could walk away from his own son.

  ‘He says that he regrets—’ His voice broke, just a tiny husk in that strong fluid voice, and it ripped through her. ‘He regrets what I have suffered, and now he is trying to make it up to me.’

  ‘Can he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She was crying as he answered, and trying so hard not show it—scared to wipe the tears away in case he saw them. She could see now just how much Janey’s words would have eaten at him—that his own child might have existed unknown on the other side of the world…

  ‘All that time—all my life there—I wanted him to come and get me. I wanted him to see me and be proud—and in the end, yes, he did come and get me. I got my wish.’

  But it was so very little, and so very late.

  ‘Can you?’ Millie rasped. ‘Can you somehow forgive him?’

  ‘That is something I need to decide.’ Levander nodded at the insurmountable challenge. ‘And given his health, I’d better make my decision soon.’

  Levander’s next question pierced the long silence that followed. ‘Would marriage be so bad? Do you see now how important it is to me?’

  ‘It won’t keep us together…’ She swallowed hard, wondered how she could ask from him what she needed to hear. ‘Levander, if you don’t love me…a piece of paper isn’t going to change anything.’

  ‘It will change a lot for me.’

  Which wasn’t the answer she wanted. Even if he was trying to help, with each word he just hurt her more.

  ‘I would look after you; I would never be unfaithful; I would always do the right thing by you. And if you still have doubts, then I tell you this—we don’t have to love each other for this to work. We will love our child, and that will be enough.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN