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He swung back around. ‘Scared?’
‘Yes. Scared.’ She nibbled her lip, reminding him of her fear on their wedding night. The fear, it seemed, she’d always had of him, and now he’d given her even greater reason to be afraid. How could he have ever thought this would have worked? That a man like him, scarred inside and out, could love someone—and more importantly, more laughably, be loved himself?
‘We can still divorce,’ he heard himself saying.
‘What?’ Milly’s eyes rounded, her jaw dropping. ‘You don’t mean that.’
He didn’t know what he meant. He felt dazed, overwhelmed by the emotions that had spiralled through him in the course of a single evening. Realising he cared for Milly, telling her the truth, realising she didn’t care about him. And now a baby. A child, the very thing he’d wanted all along...
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted rawly. ‘But at this moment it seems sensible.’ He breathed out slowly, remembering what he’d told her back when they’d been ironing out all the details, how he wouldn’t touch her once she was pregnant. No matter how amazing their chemistry had been, it was clear a real relationship was not possible. He was a fool to think, even for a moment, that it could have been.
‘In any case,’ he told her, ‘now that you are carrying my child there is no reason for you to stay in Athens. You can return to Naxos tomorrow.’
Milly stared at him for a long moment, her expression impossible to read. ‘Is that what you want?’ she asked finally, and Alex made himself nod. It was better this way. It had to be.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is.’ He paused, searching her face, trying to see if there was any affection or hope there, but she wasn’t giving anything away, her face closed up, her eyes shadowed. ‘I assume it is what you want, as well. You said Naxos was your home.’
Her gaze slid away from his. ‘Yes...’
‘So there is no difficulty.’ He didn’t quite make it a question, but he waited, willing her to say something. Anything. One word from her, he thought, and he’d take it all back. He’d demand or even beg that she stay.
But he’d put himself out there too much already tonight. He’d told her everything; he’d made himself more vulnerable than he could bear, and he didn’t think he had it in him to do it again, not without a word, something from her to give him hope. Help him to believe.
And so he waited for a full heart-stopping minute, and she didn’t say anything. Not one word. She just nodded slowly, and, filled with equal parts anger and pain, Alex walked out of the room.
Milly slept in the second bedroom that night; Alex heard the click of the door, and then, to his further grief and pain, the turn of the lock. Did she think he was going to invade her bedroom, demand his rights?
It took him hours to fall into an uneasy doze, and in the morning, when Alex woke, gritty-eyed after a restless night, he found that she had already gone.
‘She called a taxi,’ the concierge informed him apologetically when Alex confronted the man downstairs. ‘Quite early...she said she was catching a morning flight back to Athens.’
‘Of course.’ He turned away, not willing to show a stranger how those words felled him. Clearly Milly couldn’t wait to leave him. He’d expected to have her accompany him back to Athens, and then take his yacht to Naxos. But, no. She’d gone her own way, without even saying goodbye. She’d wanted quit of him as soon as she could.
It was better this way.
The words felt meaningless to him now, because it didn’t feel better at all. He felt hurt and angry, filled with a grief that was deeper than he’d even imagined it could be. Yet could he really blame Milly for taking the out he’d offered?
No, he couldn’t. Alex took a deep breath as he cloaked himself in a cold, icy calm. He wouldn’t be angry, not this time, and he wouldn’t be hurt. Neither would he care.
Yet Milly’s absence ate at him all the way back to Athens, and then for the next two weeks as he heard nothing from her, and refused to reach out himself, out of both pride and hurt. He did satisfy himself that she’d got back to Naxos safely, having spoken to Yiannis, but with Milly he did not share a single word.
It was better this way.
Maybe if he kept repeating it to himself, he’d believe it one day. Believe that he could live alone and be, if not happy, then at least satisfied. But he felt neither, and every day that passed was a solitary torture.
Several times a day Alex found himself picking up the phone, starting to dial. He’d just call to see if she was all right. To check on her pregnancy. But every time he started to press her number, he stopped. He would not do it. He couldn’t.
And then, three weeks after that awful night in Rome, both the beginning and end of everything, Yiannis called, his voice sounding far too grim.
‘Alex,’ he said. ‘It’s Milly.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT ALL HAPPENED SO QUICKLY. One minute Milly was walking along the dusty road to Halki, trying to enjoy the crisp autumn day and not feel the swamping of misery that had accompanied her most days since leaving Alex in Rome, and the next she was sprawled belly-down on the road, grit embedded in her hands and knees and chin, everything stinging and smarting.
Too dazed to realise what had happened, Milly simply lay there for a moment, shocked by how quickly she had fallen. Painfully she got to her hands and knees, one hand cupping her belly protectively; at fourteen weeks, she had a small, neat bump. Then she felt a trickle of hot wetness between her thighs, and everything in her clanged with panic.
Somehow she managed to get to her feet; her body ached all over and her hands, knees, and face were smeared with blood and pebbled with grit. But worse, far worse, was the fear that she was bleeding. That she might be losing this baby.
