‘No?’ The look Markos gave her down the long length of his aristocratic nose spoke of his disgust. ‘Then tell me what it was like, Eva.’
Eva had absolutely no doubt that this past three weeks—with the two of them skirting around each other, being outwardly polite and inwardly a seething mass of emotions and unanswered questions—had been leading up to this confrontation. A confrontation she had no idea whether or not she was ready for, but she accepted it was coming anyway.
‘Did Jack tell Yvette about your meeting?’ Markos pressured.
‘I have no idea,’ she answered honestly. ‘He may have done. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have.’
Markos gave a disgusted snort. ‘I can think of plenty of reasons a man wouldn’t tell his heavily pregnant second wife that he was going off to meet his first wife!’
‘I said it wasn’t like that!’ Eva glared at Markos. ‘Jack and I had…unresolved issues we needed to talk about—no, damn it, not those sort of issues!’ she snapped angrily when she saw how the censure in Markos’s eyes had deepened. ‘There was so much anger between us still when we parted and divorced. I had wanted a baby so much, and Jack— He refused even to consider adoption, and he was totally against the idea of IVF with another man’s donated sperm. It caused a huge rift and we drifted apart. He began to have affairs—’
‘Just a minute.’ Markos’s voice was husky as he halted her. ‘I thought you told me that you were the one who couldn’t have children.’
A frown creased her creamy brow as she slowly shook her head. ‘I couldn’t have said that because it isn’t true.’
No, she hadn’t exactly said that, Markos realised, slightly dazed.
What Eva had said was that she and Jack had had tests, and that it wasn’t possible for them to have a child together. He had made the assumption that night, because of Eva’s distress, that she was the one incapable of having a child of her own.
Markos frowned darkly. ‘But if Cabot Grey is sterile, then how are he and Yvette—?’
‘Don’t ask.’ Eva gave a weary shake of her head. ‘As far as the world is concerned—and, more importantly, Jonathan Cabot Grey Senior—the baby Yvette is expecting is Jack’s son and heir. And I think it’s best for all concerned if it remains that way.’
Markos felt short of breath—as if someone had punched him hard in the chest. Damn it, he hadn’t used contraception when the two of them made love because he had believed a pregnancy was impossible! ‘So you are able to have children?’
‘Yes,’ she confirmed flatly. ‘In fact I— Look, as our conversation has gone this far, I might as well be completely honest with you.’
‘That would certainly be a novelty!’ He looked at her coldly.
Her eyes flashed deeply golden. ‘I have never been dishonest with you!’
‘Except by omission.’
‘Perhaps,’ she acknowledged heavily, her gaze no longer quite meeting his. ‘The truth is I decided some months ago to have a child of my own by IVF.’
Markos’s thoughts were already reeling from one realisation to another, one question to another, and each one was becoming wilder than the last. Eva could have a baby, after all. In fact it now appeared she had coolly and calmly decided to do exactly that ‘some months ago’…
His gaze sharpened. ‘And can it be that you were considering the blue-eyed blond-haired Glen Asher as a possible candidate to be the donor for this IVF?’
The warmth of colour entered the paleness of Eva’s cheeks. ‘I considered it, yes.’
‘And did he agree?’ Markos grated harshly, feeling a fury building up inside him the like of which he had never experienced before.
Eva’s smile was completely lacking in humour. ‘We didn’t get far enough in our friendship for me to broach such a sensitive subject as IVF with him.’
Markos gave a disgusted shake of his head. ‘Why not just forget the whole idea of IVF and instead just go to bed with him and hope for the desired result? He would certainly have been willing!’
Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed before speaking. ‘After my marriage to Jack I didn’t want the trauma of being intimately involved again. Nor did I want the complication of having my child’s life ripped apart by estranged parents, and so I thought—I thought a legal contract with a sperm donor, followed by IVF—’
‘It seems to me, with all your talk of “I didn’t want” and “nor did I want”, that you weren’t thinking of anything or anyone but yourself, Eva,’ Markos cut in coldly.
No, she hadn’t, Eva acknowledged numbly. The woman she had been—cool and businesslike, and determined not to become physically involved with any man—had made her decision to have a baby without emotion, without any real thought for the emotional consequences of those actions.
The woman she had been…
Eva knew she was no longer that hurt and disillusioned woman. She had ceased being that woman even before she and Markos had made love together. She had become another woman completely when she’d fallen in love with him…
It was a love which she knew, just from looking at the disgust now on Markos’s face when he looked at her, was even more doomed than her marriage to Jack had been.