Page 38 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

‘I see what you mean. Thank you for showing me,’ she said, suddenly stiffly polite.

‘It was my pleasure. My grandfather is really the expert though.’ He reached into his back pocket. ‘Which reminds me. We need to take a selfie and send it to him. He’ll be chuffed to bits.’ He turned to where the housekeeper was putting out a jug of fresh lemonade on the table. ‘Sally, could you come and take a photo for us?’

They had taken lots of photos already. At first she had found it awkward and intrusive, not to say unsettling, having to paste a smile on her face and nestle in close to Jack. Now she was more used to it, so it was easier to strike a pose, but still.

‘Wait a minute. I just need to—’

Jack frowned. ‘You don’t need to do anything. You look beautiful.’

It was just words, but she felt a mix of panic and fascination as his golden gaze grazed her face.

‘What about if you stand back-to-back?’ Sally suggested. ‘Lean in on your mallets. Oh, yes, that’s super-cute.’

They leaned in, then turned to face one another, and Jack pulled her against him, his hand curving around her waist, his beautiful mouth curling into one of his devastating smiles. ‘Thanks, Sally,’ he said, taking back the phone. But as he stared down at the screen, the smile on his face stiffened.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, recovering his poise. ‘They just look a bit staged. Why don’t we try—? No, Ondine, no—’ But it was too late, she snatched the phone and was staring down at the screen.

‘What are you talking about? They look great. I mean, yeah, they look like we posed for them, but that’s kinda cute. It looks like we’re having fun. I don’t see why you don’t like them.’

And then she saw why.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe. She just stood there, the phone trembling in her hand in time to her pulse as she zoomed in on herself.

She was wearing a vest dress and a cropped cardigan, both from chain stores, but it wasn’t her budget wardrobe that had caused Jack to recoil. It was the small but unmistakable outline of a bump pushing against the fabric.

‘He doesn’t know yet.’ Jack’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked up at him, her throat knotting around a lump of something that was surely too solid to be tears. But why? She knew he felt this way. It was why she’d been avoiding the conversation.

Now, though, she could no longer ignore it because the camera didn’t lie.

‘He can’t find out this way,’ Jack said quietly, but firmly. ‘I just need some more time—’

Her heart contracted. It was the same impulse that had stopped her from telling her parents about not getting pregnant and Garrett’s betrayal. And to be fair, even though she had agreed to do so, she hadn’t told Oli about marrying Jack or the pregnancy. But that was different. Her brother might be the smartest, most sensible teenager on the planet, but he was still a teenager who hadn’t even had a serious girlfriend yet and it was her job to protect him, not make him anxious about what would look like a shotgun wedding.

And, given her track record with husbands, he would be anxious. Her mouth thinned—and speaking of husbands, she was done with being fair.

‘What for?’ She gave him a small, stiff smile. ‘Just use your legendary powers of persuasion. No, actually, scrap that! I’ve got a better idea. You could just deny everything.’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘You’re really good at that.’

His eyes narrowed, the smiling, charming man of moments earlier vanishing before her eyes. ‘I can’t deny what isn’t true and I’m sorry if you don’t like that but—’

She suddenly felt sick, only not like before. This wasn’t hormones. It was misery and anger and a horrible sense of the wrongness of what she had done, what they were doing.

‘No, what I don’t like is having this baby edited out before it’s even born.’

He flinched, or maybe it was just the light in her eyes because now his lip was curling.

She held up her hand.

‘Don’t. Just don’t, okay? I’m going to lie down. Alone.’ And without giving him a chance to reply, she turned and stalked towards the house.

Pushing his plate away, Jack stared across the table at the empty chair where Ondine had sat at breakfast and lunchtime and would have sat this evening if she hadn’t sent a message via Sally that she was tired and would be having an early night.

Maybe she was tired, but she was also avoiding him. And punishing him.

Staring down at his uneaten dessert, he had to clench his hands to stop himself from hurling the plate across the room. He had been tempted to storm up to her room and demand that she join him for dinner, but she would undoubtedly refuse and he could hardly force her to join him.

That would defeat the point anyway because what he wanted was for her to want to join him. What he wanted was for it to go back to how it was when they were playing croquet and their eyes would collide with the same force as if they were trying to roquet one another only instead of pushing them further apart, it seemed to pull them closer.

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