‘Did you seriously think that Glen Asher—that any man,’ Markos continued disgustedly, ‘would just calmly agree to cold-bloodedly, cold-heartedly donate his sperm for you to be impregnated with?’
She moved agitatedly. ‘As you’ve just pointed out, I don’t believe I had been thinking straight for some time.’
She didn’t particularly care for the way Markos was now looking at her from between narrowed lids, as if she were a specimen under a microscope—a hitherto unknown species he was trying, and not succeeding, to understand. And what little he did understand he didn’t particularly like.
‘You could be pregnant now, Eva.’
‘What…?’
His mouth was a thin straight line. ‘Three weeks ago I believed, from our previous conversation, that you were incapable of becoming pregnant, rendering precautions unnecessary when we made love together. Did you take any steps yourself to prevent a pregnancy?’
Eva stared at him uncomprehendingly. No, of course she hadn’t. There had never been any reason for her to. She had known she couldn’t become pregnant during her marriage, and there had been no other man intimately in her life since her divorce, so there had never been any need for the use of any sort of contraception.
Markos had now been intimately in her life—however briefly. Several times.
‘Are you pregnant, Eva?’ Markos repeated harshly.
Was she? Eva desperately tried to recall when she had last had a period and failed utterly, her mind having gone a complete blank.
Of course she wasn’t pregnant!
Was she…?
* * *
Markos didn’t feel in the least encouraged by the way Eva’s face had turned a sickly grey colour. As if she were fighting down nausea.
Nausea possibly caused by early pregnancy…
The irony of this situation wasn’t lost on Markos. Eva’s cousin, and other ambitious women like her, would, he knew, quite happily become pregnant as a way of entrapping a wealthy man into marriage. Typically Eva—contrarily so!—she had decided to become pregnant by totally eliminating any physical intimacy or personal knowledge of the man who had made her so!
Unfortunately for Eva that was never going to happen if it turned out she was now carrying his child.
‘Well?’ he prompted tersely.
Eva determinedly gathered her scattered thoughts together, knowing this was neither the time nor the place for her to dwell on the chaos of her own thoughts. ‘I can’t believe you’re so full of yourself, Markos, that you actually believe yourself to be so virile a woman would become pregnant from just one day of unprotected sex with you!’ she added mockingly.
The coldness in those deep emerald eyes deepened. ‘One day during which we indulged in several occasions of unprotected sex,’ he corrected harshly.
She gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Markos, but I guess you really aren’t as potent as you thought you were.’
Was that disappointment he was feeling? Markos wondered scowlingly. Or did he feel disappointment because he had realised, with the flatness of Eva’s denial of pregnancy, that their relationship—friendship—whatever—had now to come to an end?
There had been too much said for the two of them
to carry on with even their business arrangement as if nothing had happened.
‘Damn it!’ Markos cursed. ‘Why do you have to be so damned complicated?’
She gave a wistful smile. ‘Just unlucky for you, I guess.’
Markos thought back to the first time he had seen Eva at Senator Ashcroft’s drinks party, to his instant awareness of her, his instant attraction to the voluptuously beautiful woman in the red gown who’d drawn him towards her like a magnet. Then the situation had been uncomplicated. Then she had just been a lushly beautiful woman in a red gown that he had wanted to make love to.
Markos had never done complicated. A woman either was or was not interested in a brief and meaningless affair. He had never had the time or the inclination for anything more than that.
‘Am I allowed to leave now?’
Markos’s mouth tightened and he looked up to find himself the focus of beautiful gold-coloured eyes that danced with bittersweet laughter.