‘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