‘That wasn’t my intention.’
‘What’s going on, Caius? You know the doctor has said everything is OK. It was nothing serious. You don’t have to keep your distance in case you harm me, or the baby.’ She wasn’t quite ready to spell out how much she wanted him, not when he was being so distant.
And then before he could say anything she blurted out, ‘You looked happy today, Caius. Happier than I’ve seen you before.’
Caius thought of that moment with his friends on the polo pitch. He hadn’t been happy, not really. He’d been happy to see Poppy among the crowd and then she’d looked at him and for some reason he’d needed her to think he was happy so he’d laughed, but the emptiness inside had mocked him. Because this charade was over.
Today he’d seen a glimpse of the world he’d left behind, hedonistic and frantic, and he’d felt no remorse or hunger for it.
He’d tried to pretend he could be part of Poppy’s world, but he couldn’t, because this wasn’t the serene,boring, arranged marriage he’d always envisaged for himself. It was anything but serene and boring. It was alive and electric and full of desires that terrified him with their intensity.
Today, when she’d come up onto the stage to give him the trophy, he’d wanted to rip her dress open and feast on her and then bury himself so deep inside her he’d never get lost again. And he’d wanted to do that to sate the beast inside him, but also, and more disturbingly, so that he could ignore the way she made him feel. He had an awful suspicion he needed her for his very survival.
The fact that he’d lost his bearings so completely and had blindly put himself at risk of needing someone with an emotional intensity he’d avoided his whole life was…absolutely terrifying. It spelled chaos and destruction.
He said, ‘I’ve been playing make-believe, Poppy. Trying to make-believe that this can work.’
Poppy stood before him and a part of him marvelled at her regal grace. She was a queen and she was every inch a queen now. A fertile goddess. And she deserved more than a man who wasn’t worthy of her.
She frowned now. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about the fact that the honeymoon is over. We’ve given everyone a show and now we can get on with our original plan, which was to appear together for occasions and maintain our separate lives.’
‘You’re still blaming yourself for the baby.’
Caius shook his head even as that image of Poppy’s pale, stricken face came into his mind. ‘No, I know it wasn’t my fault. Our fault.’ But he had used sex to avoid dealing with his emotions and he could never forgive himself if that was what had led to the scare.
He said, ‘Since being back in New York, I’ve realised how much work I have to do here.’
‘What about our daughter?’ Poppy’s voice sounded a little faint.
Caius had a flashback to when Poppy had told him she was pregnant in this very room, and it nearly felled him to think of all that had happened in the meantime.
‘I will be in her life, as much as I can be, but she will be better off with you, in Valdere.’ Before he could stop it, Caius had a vision of a little girl with dark red hair, running to him, and it filled him with an almost giddy feeling. He shut it down. He did not know the first thing about being a father and he did not have the emotional skills to be able to deal with a daughter. The prospect that he would disappoint her was far greater than any fantasy alternative.
‘You need to go back to Valdere, Poppy.’
Poppy wasn’t sure how she was still standing. She hated Caius in that moment. Because he was rejecting her with the cold precision of a knife sliding through her ribs. Straight to the heart.
And she shouldn’t be surprised, because she had known. Because even if he hadn’t shut down her attempt to ask him if he saw a future for them, from the very start—that day on the hill on the lake island—he’d laid out how it would be. Humiliation crawled over her skin.
He no longer even wanted her.
She desperately needed to claw back any sense of control she could. ‘You originally only wanted to be married for a year.’
His face looked stark, stripped of all emotion. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ll change the marriage agreement. I think a year is more than enough. It’ll be better for the baby not to have any memory of a marriage that is a charade.’ Great, now she was calling their daughterthe baby. But she couldn’t bring herself to saydaughterin front of him. All the dreams she’d dared to dream of them being a family, finding some sort of happiness against the odds, mocked her viciously now.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘It is. We can liaise about any future requirements to meet through our teams.’
Before Poppy’s veneer of ice could crack she turned and went to the door. As she put her hand on the knob Caius said from behind her, ‘Poppy, wait.’
But she didn’t want to hear it. Was he going to apologise? The thought made her insides curdle. She just said, ‘Goodnight, Caius.’ And left.
The following morning Poppy was on a private jet back to Valdere, along with a doctor and nurse. Caius had insisted. As if he cared. He might still care about the baby, but he’d never cared for her. He’d wanted her, yes, and he’d just seduced her into thinking it was more with his well-worn seduction routine. But the man she’d seen at the polo match—vibrant and surrounded by his peers? That had been the old Caius Mansur de Roche and he was obviously eager to get back to what he did best.
