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“You know what the results are,” she said to herself. “You know that you’ve been telling the truth. That should be what matters.”
“What should be what matters?” Nico’s deep voice startled her, and she jumped out of the chair, clutching the letter to her stomach.
He stood at the threshold, his dark hair rumpled as though he hadn’t bothered to style it after rolling out of bed—aka the couch—that morning. His suit jacket was slung over one arm, and a baby blue shirt sat open at the collar. Light gray trousers and a slim back belt highlighted his trim waist. Even disheveled and wearing a frown, he still had no trouble making Marianna’s heart beat faster. Nerves and excitement created flurries in her belly, and she pressed a hand there to quash the sensation. It was getting rounder now, and sticking out more obviously. Nico’s eyes tracked the movement, but he quickly looked away.
“Our results came,” she said.
He held out his hand. “I guess we’re about to find out what our future holds.”
This was it. The threshold. For her whole life, she’d let her brothers control what happened. Where they lived, what she did for fun, who she was allowed to hang out with. And while she never doubted their love for her, their actions had only created uncertainty and a lack of confidence in her. A perpetual questioning of what she knew. Marianna needed to take life by the horns now, or she’d forever be a woman who let men dictate how her life should run.
“I know what our future holds,” she said. “And I don’t need a letter to tell me.”
“I do,” he said. His eyes lowered to where the porcelain cat sat on the desk, and his lips tightened. “Why do you keep moving that damn thing?”
“To show you that change is safe.” She ran her nail over the corner of the envelope, feeling the crisp point catch on her skin. “Your life will get messy with a child. It’ll get complicated and exhausting and wonderful. It’ll be so different to how it is now.”
“All that, from moving some stupid ornament?”
“It’s not stupid, I know that for a fact. It’s something you care about, some part of the past you’re clutching to like it’s the only thing keeping you on earth.”
He glowered. “You don’t know me, Marianna.”
“No. But I want to.” She swallowed against the lump in the back of her throat. “I want to know everything about you. Not just for the sake of us giving our child a happy family, but simply for me.”
“And I want to know you. Which is why I need to read that letter.”
Her heart sank. “You still don’t believe me, even though I signed your prenup? I’ve done everything you asked of me, including this damn test.”
“A test which you don’t want me to know the results to.”
“I want you to know the results. I want you to know it here.” She tapped her chest. “Isn’t that more important than a piece of paper?”
“No. And it’s the only thing that can be proven, of all the potential lies you’ve told me.”
The words were like a slap across the face. “What do you want me to do? Give you proof that my hymen wasn’t broken before I came here?” Her voice had taken on a shrill edge. This was not going how she’d hoped it would. “I came right out and admitted that I loved Jules, but as a friend. It’s different. I don’t want to be with him.”
“I suppose this is the part where you tell me you want to be with me?” he drawled. The sarcasm made her flinch.
“I don’t understand why you think I’m a dishonest person.”
“Marianna, it’s not you. Everyone is dishonest. It’s human nature. It’s why these tests exist in the first place.”
She let a growl out. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I don’t care about ‘everyone.’ I care about us and our baby. I care about what’s going to happen next. Even if you open that letter and it proves I’m right, what then?”
“You will live here, and I will provide for you and the baby.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s not enough. I want to be here to have a real family with you.”
“There’s no such thing. What we have isn’t real.” There was something about his tone that made her want to reach out to him. He was lying through his teeth, and she could feel it. He was scared, protecting himself.
“You’re telling me that our weekend honeymoon and the night we spent together didn’t change things? That you holding my hand because I was scared to jump off the boat didn’t change things?”
He said nothing.
“That night, after we made love, you held me and you said esi eise theiki mou. I know what it means,” she said, gripping the arms of the chair so tight that her knuckles turned white as snow. “It means: you are mine. Esi eise theiki mou. You are mine, too.”
“We are legally married, nothing more.” But now his eyes were like burning coals, alive and passionate and wrathful. “That was the agreement.”
