Ella decided she wasn’t going to let herself dwell on the turmoil that Keira’s choice had created.
It was done.
Now there was the baby to think about….
But Yevgeny’s response caused her to realize that she hadn’t even asked her sister when they planned to leave for Africa. She’d been too busy trying to cope with the magnitude of the shock. Keira had said she and Dmitri had already booked the tickets but that’s all she knew.
“Do you have any idea when they plan to leave?” It rankled to have to depend on Yevgeny for information but she needed to know.
“I believe they leave the day after tomorrow.”
“That soon?”
Ella was still absorbing this new upset when he asked, “What will you be thinking about?”
“Pardon?” For a moment Ella thought Yevgeny had picked up on her earlier hurt at Keira’s failure to come say good morning and was asking about her thoughts.
“You told the social worker you’d think about it.” Yevgeny had moved up beside her, causing the space in the ward to shrink. “What will you be thinking about?”
Ella frowned as she realized he’d overheard the last part of her discussion with Jo. She had no intention of revealing that Jo thought she needed counseling. The good thing was at least he hadn’t detected her hurt over Keira. “It’s nothing important,” she said dismissively. “It wasn’t about the baby.”
“Did you tell her I am going to adopt the baby?”
“But you’re not.” Inside, her stomach started to twist into a pretzel. Ella pursed her lips. “I told her you weren’t suitable.”
“You did not!”
“Yes, I did.”
His gaze blitzed into her. “Because I’m single?”
Ella didn’t glance away from his hard stare. “Among other things.”
“But once I’m married that will change,” he said softly and came another step closer. “You know that.”
Ella blinked. And found herself inhaling the warm scent of freshly showered male. This close she could see the crisp whiteness of his ironed shirt.
What was he up to now?
“You should’ve seen her.” His voice took on a husky, intimate tone. “She’s so beautiful—”
Ella recoiled. “I don’t care what your wife-to-be looks like!”
At her interruption, he looked puzzled, then he smiled. A smile filled with a burst of charm and humor that Ella hadn’t wanted to recognize in Yevgeny Volkovoy. It made him all too human. And irresistibly appealing. This wouldn’t do at all. She wanted—no, needed—to keep thinking of him as Keira’s overbearing, bullying brother-in-law.
“No, not my wife-to-be. The baby.” He chuckled. “She was awake… waving her hands and watching them. Smart and beautiful. You’ve seen her this morning.”
It was a statement—rather than a question.
Ella squirmed, reluctant to admit that she’d barely glanced at the baby while she was in the ward during the pediatrician’s consultation. Then she told herself she had no reason to feel guilty. Keira and Dmitri’s actions were not her fault.
Rather than answering his question, she changed the subject. “So you’re going through with it? You’re really going to get married?”
He nodded. “I want that baby.”
God, the man was stubborn. Didn’t he ever accept no for an answer? Time for him to learn he couldn’t always get what he wanted in life. Sometimes someone else’s needs came first.
This time, the baby’s best interests were paramount. Not his.
Letting out the breath she’d been unconsciously holding since that first whiff of his male essence, Ella said, “Well, you need to know that you’re sacrificing yourself for nothing. I’m not going to change my mind. And it’s still my decision. As the legal mother, I get to choose the parents the baby will go to.”
He went deadly still. “You will choose me—and my wife.”
Was that a threat?
Ella carefully assessed his motionless body, the face with the high Slavic cheekbones, skin stretched taut across them. Yevgeny needed to know she wasn’t going to let him bully her.
“Unlikely. This morning I gave Jo a list of the qualities I’m seeking in the prospective parents. Nothing you can offer meets the criteria. She’s going to bring me portfolios of prospective parents to look at—and I’ll choose a couple from there.”
The tension in the air became electric. “When?”
“Shouldn’t you be at work doing whatever it is that high-powered billionaires do?” Ella knew she was being deliberately provocative, but she’d never expected him to be this concerned about the baby.
“When?” he repeated, his face tight.
He wasn’t going to relent, she realized. “As soon as I’m back home—tomorrow probably.”
“And then what happens?”
“The couples have already been interviewed and screened. Police checks have been done. Once I choose a couple and the consent is signed, then the paperwork for the adoption can be filled in and submitted.”
“The consent?”
“Yes.” Ella explained further, “The legal mother can only sign the consent—that’s the formal document where she agrees to give up the baby—on the twelfth day. And yesterday, the day the baby was born, counts as the first day.”
From where she stood Ella could sense the intensity of his gaze. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was watching her, his head tipped slightly to one side, his brain working overtime. Yevgeny was busy hatching a fiendish plot. She was certain of it.
There was something curiously exhilarating about being the focus of all that raw, brilliant energy. He might come in a devastatingly well-groomed, freshly scented and well-built male package, but it was his mind that Ella found fascinating. That ability to concentrate with such single-minded intensity. The ability to conjure up solutions no one had come up with before.
She could kind of understand why women might be attracted to that….
“So you can change your mind anytime up until that twelfth day?” he asked.
Ella blinked—and wrenched herself away from her fancies. “In theory. But I wouldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be very fair to do that to a couple once I’ve told them they’ve been chosen.”
Determination fired in his eyes. “This baby will be mine—I will do everything in my power to make sure that happens.”
Despite the morning sunshine spilling through the windows of the ward, Ella shivered.
It was evening.
The sun was setting beyond the distinctive silhouette of the Auckland Bridge transforming the Waitemata Harbour to liquid gold. Turning his head away from the magnificent view, Yevgeny dropped down onto the king-size bed in Nadiya’s hotel suite and gazed contemplatively across at the woman standing in front of the dresser, the woman he planned shortly to reduce to screaming satisfaction.
Yet instead of dwelling on the pleasures of seduction, his mind was already elsewhere.
It was the end of day two. He had only