Page 28 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

She made it sound as if the idea appalled her as much as it did him and it shouldn’t have stung as it did. But her words scraped against old wounds inside him. ‘As if! You wanted this, all of this.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she said flatly. ‘I wanted to pay my bills. That’s all. That’s why I agreed to marry you. And I know you don’t believe me, just like you don’t believe that you’re the father of this baby, but both those things are true.’

Now she got to her feet. ‘I can’t prove the first so I’m not going to try to.’

She was standing close enough to him that he could have counted her freckles. Close enough that he could smell the clean, floral scent of her hair. Close enough that if he wanted to, he could have reached out and pressed her body against his.

‘But I can take a paternity test,’ she said quietly.

His heart thumped against his ribs. If she was offering to do that she must be pretty sure he was the father. He felt an ache in his stomach, like hunger, except he had no appetite. He was the son nobody wanted. His parents had next to no input in his life. How could he possibly raise a child?

What the hell are you talking about?

He swore silently. Of course he wasn’t the father. He’d get better odds on there being a white Christmas in Palm Beach. They’d had sex once. He’d worn a condom.

And condoms were only ninety-eight per cent effective.

He felt panic jump in his throat. But why? The odds of a condom failing on that one occasion were minuscule, and besides it was all too much of a coincidence her ‘finding out’ she was pregnant after they were married.

It was just the nearness of her throwing him into a state of confusion, making his head swim, and he hated that she could do that to him, and it was easier to hate her. Neater. Less unsettling. In fact, it was a relief.

‘Do one, don’t do one.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s your call. But don’t think for one moment that it’s going to change anything because it won’t.’

The skin over her cheeks looked taut, and her mouth was trembling a little but when she spoke her voice was steady. ‘You’re right, it won’t.’

Staring down at her, he frowned. He’d thought she’d protest, argue, throw her offer back in his face but she was calm and her face was still and shuttered.

‘Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll say what you want me to say. I’ll hold your hand and look into your eyes and smile at you for as long as it takes to convince your grandfather that you’re the man he wants you to be. The man you can never be in reality. And then we’ll go our separate ways like we agreed. And as for this baby.’

She took a step backwards, just as she had that day in the bedroom when all of this had been set in motion. ‘You were right about that. This baby is never going to be your responsibility so as of now that topic of conversation is off-limits.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ he snarled.

‘I didn’t imagine it wou—’ She broke off, her face tensing.

He frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said hoarsely and, eyes widening with panic, she clamped her hand to her mouth.

It was some three days now since Ondine had told Jack that he was not responsible for either her or her baby. Those words were in his head when he woke up every morning. They stayed with him as he fell asleep.

He frowned. And yet here he was, still on Whydah, watching her sleep. Shifting forward in his chair, he stared down at her, his eyes resting on her still, pale face.

But he still wasn’t convinced that he should be there. In fact, most of the time he felt like an imposter.

His frown deepened. Because he was one. Their marriage might be legal, but legal was different from real. And the reality was that he was paying Ondine to be his wife; only he needed facts to fit the fiction and, ironically, the only fact that would stand up to robust scrutiny was a pregnancy that had nothing to do with him.

His hand tensed against the armrest as Ondine moaned in her sleep.

Except it did. Whether they discussed it or not, this baby was making its presence felt, twenty-four-seven, because, despite its name, the sickness didn’t just happen in the morning. If anything, the nausea was worse at night. Which was why she was sleeping now, at two o’clock in the afternoon, leaving him to play the doting husband sitting by her bed.

For the optics, obviously. He could hardly abandon his wife in her hour of need. But also, because he couldn’t seem to look away from the woman he had called a devious, opportunistic little hustler. All of which was still true. But in light of everything else that was happening right now, it just seemed to matter less.

The doctor had repeated what that woman had said to him at the gallery. That the sickness was typically the sign of a healthy pregnancy, and he understood the science of it. But looking over at Ondine’s pale face, he still found it difficult to believe.

About as difficult as it was to believe that he was the father of this baby.

His shoulders stiffened. They hadn’t talked about that particular ticking time bomb since that day out on the veranda. But then they hadn’t talked much at all. Mostly because Ondine was either in the bathroom being sick or sleeping like now. If they happened to be in the same space she spoke, not to him, but in his general direction. Those occasional snatched conversations they’d had were brief and joylessly polite.

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