Page 15 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

‘I only knew him in a business environment, but he could be a difficult bastard.’

Whenever Millie thought she might be missing out on something by not having a man in her life, she remembered what her mum went through with Magnús. She’d never allow that to happen to her. She’d rather be single and uncontrolled than married and miserable.

‘So after your mum died, you thought that rebelling was a good idea,’ Ben murmured. Millie stiffened and then realised there was no judgement in his voice.

‘I was hurt, angry and confused. I wanted his attention so I acted up. After I found out he wasn’t my dad, I wanted to punish him for not loving me and for not telling me sooner he wasn’t my real dad, fornotbeing my real dad,’ she explained, her shoulders up around her ears. ‘I tried to make his life as difficult as possible.’

Ben mused, ‘I was, reluctantly, impressed by how well you handled his Ferrari. You were clocked at some ridiculous speed on the highway. How did you manage not to kill yourself in that thing?’

She grinned, remembering the exhilaration of having all that power under her control. ‘I was, am, a very good driver,’ she told him. ‘I did clip a pavement going too fast turning into a one-way street. I put a deep gouge in his midnight-blue paintwork.’

‘Good for you,’ Ben told her. He flipped the windscreen wipers on to a higher setting and Millie noticed that snow was falling in a steady stream. While she’d been nattering away, the weather had turned worse.

‘Are we close to your house?’ she asked.

‘Very,’ Ben assured her. ‘We’ll get home safely, I promise.’

He pushed a button on his steering wheel and tuned into a local radio station. The female presenter was talking in fast Icelandic and Millie quickly lost track of her words. Her Icelandic was very rusty indeed.

She caught Ben’s grimace. ‘It’s getting worse,’ he said. ‘The northern parts of the country are being hammered. The city will be shut down tomorrow. It’ll remain shut for a day, maybe two.’

It took Millie a moment to process the information. ‘So, my flight tomorrow afternoon will be cancelled?’

He nodded. ‘Definitely.’

She grimaced. ‘I have an appointment with the bank tomorrow, to get into my safety deposit box.’

‘They will postpone it,’ Ben told her, swinging into a snow-covered drive. He pushed a button on his visor and a double garage door rolled up. He entered the tidy garage, filled with big boy toys, and parked his SUV next to a Ducati superbike. A snowmobile and a jet ski sat on trailers. ‘If you need to get back to London urgently, then you should try to rebook your flight as soon as possible, maybe go on standby to get the first flight out.’

Millie shook her head. ‘I’m not in that much of a hurry. There’s nothing Ineedto get back for, I’m free until the New Year. But I don’t want to take advantage of your hospitality,’ she added when he didn’t reply. She rooted around in her bag and pulled out her phone. ‘Can you give me five minutes while I contact the airline?’

‘You could do it when you get inside.’ Ben’s smile made him look younger than his thirty-eight years. ‘Or you could ask me to organise it for you. One of the perks of working a thousand hours a week and enjoying some success is that I have people to do that for me.’

‘But I don’t,’ Millie pointed out.

‘While you’re with me, you do,’ he told her and told his onboard computer to call Einar and, in English this time, asked him to find her a London-bound flight as soon as the airport opened. Einar agreed.

Ben left the car, stood between his open door and her seat and bent his head to meet her eyes. ‘When you come back in two weeks, Millie, you will be able to do everything you didn’t do this time.’

But Ben would be in St Barth’s, so her list of things to do when she returned to Reykjavik wouldn’t include sleeping with her husband.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I’MSORRY, I don’t understand,’ Millie said, looking from an onscreen Olivier to Ben and back to Olivier again.

She sat next to Ben on the couch in his home office. In his home across the city Olivier sat on a couch, his forearms resting on his knees. He was a little older than Ben, dark-haired and dark-eyed.

Ben didn’t waste any time explaining to Olivier that they were married, or why they’d married twelve years ago. He simply told Olivier it was time to end their association. Olivier didn’t react to Ben’s statement and Millie wondered if implacability was a trait that ran through Icelandic veins. What shocked them? She’d loved to know.

‘Are you saying that we can’t get divorced until we’ve been legally separated for six months? But we haven’t lived together for twelve years! We’veneverlived together!’ Millie protested.

‘But the state doesn’t know that,’ Olivier gently told her. ‘You need to file a permit notifying that state that you want to get divorced, then proceedings can start. Divorce doesn’t happen quickly in Iceland.’

‘How long?’ Ben asked.

‘It usually takes around a year after the period of legal separation has passed. I don’t expect it will take that long with you, you have nothing to argue about, but it’s best to be prepared.’

Millie groaned. That long? Was she supposed to wait a year before she tried to fall pregnant? No way!

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