Page 4 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

It was one sentence, twenty-one words, but after hearing and digesting them, Millie finally understood his nearly two decades of emotional uninterest. She’d been furious and so hurt but, because she was her mother’s daughter, she’d had enough pride to come up with a solution to banish Magnús from her life. And, damn, it had worked well.

Her stepfather was now a distant memory, someone she tried not to think about. But Millie still didn’t understand why her mum had lied to her for so long and why she died without telling her the truth. She and her mum had been so close and they’d shared everything. But she would never have known the truth if it weren’t for Magnús losing his temper.

Millie couldn’t help wondering who her real father was and why her mum had thought it so important to keep his identity a secret. Did he know about her? Did she look like him? Did she have any siblings?

She loved her mum, always would, but damn, sometimes she hated her for leaving her with so many unanswered questions. For leaving her to live with lies, for leavingher. Death, the ultimate form of abandonment.

Her mum’s death, her secrets and lies and Magnús’s uninterest in her, had coloured the rest of her life. Millie found it exceptionally difficult to trust anyone and, while she had friends, she wasn’t close to anyone. Nobody knew that behind the semi-famous jewellery designer was a messed-up woman with massive trust and family issues.

There was only one person she trusted fully, only one man who’d never lied to her or let her down—her husband of twelve years. The one she’d travelled to Reykjavik, unannounced, to see.

Today would be their second meeting. He’d find this one as unexpected as the first and she hoped this meeting would go as well.

When she’d suggested she and Benedikt marry it was a shot-in-the-dark solution, but within a few days Benedikt had a lawyer draw up a prenup and that was it.

They’d hammered out another agreement on his notepad and, despite it not being a legal document, it carried the most weight. Millie easily recalled their terms...their union would be a marriage in name only and Benedikt would not exert any control over her, provided she stayed out of legal trouble and out of the headlines. As her husband and trustee, he had agreed she could use her trust fund to study what she wanted, where she wanted, provided she got a degree,anydegree. And that he would entertain any other reasonable requests she made for money. They would correspond via email and would live their own, very separate lives.

After she turned twenty-five, they would discuss divorce and Millie agreed to give Ben the first option to buy her shares in PR Reliance International, when he was ready to do so.

Seven years had come and gone, then ten. Magnús had passed on. She didn’t go to his funeral and wasn’t surprised when he left everything to a lover. And, after studying jewellery design, she’d become a sought-after jewellery designer. Another two years passed and, in name only, she’d been married to Benedikt for twelve years.

Now it was time for them to divorce...

Because, while she never wanted to be married in the usual sense of the word—she had too many trust issues to risk her heart—shedidwant a child. She wanted the close relationship she’d had with her mum with her own child, she wanted to regain the feeling of being part of a team, her and her mum’sit’s us against us the worldfeeling.

But she was also very tired of being alone. She wanted someone to share her life and a child was a much safer bet than a lover. She could pour her pent-up love into a child. To give it to a lover was far too dangerous.

She’d had relationships and some lasted longer than others. But when her partners started pushing for more, when they started using words like ‘love’ and ‘commitment’ and ‘taking this to the next level’, she always found a reason to call it quits.

Her and Benedikt’s marriage was a marriage of convenience and she knew he’d had many, many affairs over the years. Their marriage was need-to-know information and nobody, to date, needed to know. And since the death of Magnús, only she and Benedikt knew they were hitched.

But everything would change, everythingneededto change, if she brought a new life into the world.

Millie swiped her finger across the screen of her phone and the sperm bank website she’d been looking at earlier populated her screen.

She intended to make full use of technology and have a baby the modern way. Just in case something went wrong down the line, she’d had her eggs harvested and now all she needed was a sperm donor to create her own little family.

Millie was surprised at how many men featured on the sperm bank’s database, and the range of diversity, and couldn’t decide whom she wanted to be her baby’s biological dad. Brains and athleticism were important to her, but, while she’d like him to be handsome, his looks weren’t crucially important. She had to make a choice and the baby doctors would do their magic in a laboratory before placing the viable embryos back inside her.

The image of Benedikt flashed on the big screen of her brain and Millie frowned. What made her think of her handsome, but uncommunicative, husband in name only? On paper, he would make a great donor, he was super-smart, very athletic, and, because he’d grown PR Reliance into an international empire and made them both ridiculously rich, she knew he was ambitious and driven. But she didn’t know any more about him than she did about the donors on the sperm bank website.

She glared at the screen. She wanted more, she needed the personality quirks of the donors. How would she know if she was choosing a man who was reticent and uncommunicative, narcissistic and selfish? How did she know if her baby’s father was outgoing? Or sensitive? Or temperamental?

And that was why she was struggling, the reason she couldn’t make a choice. She didn’t much care about eye colour or height, but she did care whether her child was going to inherit its father’s fatal flaws. Look, she wasn’t perfect, she was emotionally closed down and she struggled to trust and make friends, but she tried to be kind, tried to be a good person.

Millie sighed. Even if she had a donor in mind, she wouldn’t allow herself to become pregnant while she was still married to Benedikt, because it didn’t seem, or feel, right. She wanted to leave the past, all of her past, full of lies, behind her. Her mum, the person she had loved the most and who had loved her, had lied to her and died without telling her the truth about her biological father. Magnús colluded in the lies because, Millie presumed, he’d loved her mum.

To her, love was twisted, tainted for ever by untruths and deceptions. Honesty was her highest value and she couldn’t trust anyone to be completely honest with her. Love, a partnership and raising a child together required transparency and a level of trust impossible for her to reach, or believe in. No, it was better for her to raise a child alone. If she did this alone, she’d never be disappointed, hurt or lied to again.

It was a trifecta of self-protection.

That was why she was here, in Iceland after twelve years. Sending Benedikt an email with a blithe request for a divorce seemed like a cop-out. She felt she needed, at the very least, to have a face-to-face meeting with the man.

Millie looked up at the hotel manager’s approach and stood. ‘I’m sorry we were interrupted,’ he said.

‘Not a problem. Is there something wrong with my reservation?’

Stefán rubbed the tips of his fingers across his forehead. ‘I take it you didn’t get the email we sent yesterday?’

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