Page 38 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

When I have this baby he’ll stop and slow down for a while and he’ll pay more attention to me.

Then the spark we have will rekindle and he’ll remember how he feels when he’s with me. I have to believe that.

I’m not crazy. I know what I felt. I know he feels it too. Maybe I just have to be patient.

13

BASTIAN

Raina’s sitting at the table when I come down for dinner, and she looks up the second I walk in.

I haven’t taken dinner with her in weeks, and the last time we dined together I was inundated with phone calls and she didn’t speak a word to me between them.

I don’t want to say she was hostile—that would be giving Akim a big ego—but she wasn’t her warm, friendly self. Tonight, she seems surprised, probably because I’ve been traveling, taking care of my business, and not around the house.

It’s been a month since I moved her out of my room and into her own, and a month since I went back to running things the way I did before she came into this house.

That means I’m gone as often as I’m here, and Raina should’ve gathered that something’s different this evening by the fact that Ingrid set two place settings instead of one.

“You’re staying for dinner?” she asks, pulling her eyebrows together in the middle. It’s a pained, lonely expression that tugs at my heart.

Even being separate from her for the past four weeks hasn’t dulled the spark I feel behind my ribs when she looks at me.

It’s a dangerous thing, and Akim is right to want to protect me. He’s just protecting me from ghosts that aren’t real.

The real threat is the flicker of hope in her eyes, that tiny wrinkle in her cheek that promises a smile she keeps hidden.

“I am.” I take my seat and unfold my napkin. Her plate is still full, totally untouched. “You haven’t touched your food.”

“I guess I’m not hungry.” She goes back to pushing food around her plate with a fork as I lift the lid off my plate to allow a poof of steam to rise. I sit, but she drops her gaze to her plate and her shoulders sag.

I feel personally responsible for that. The sadness she’s exhibited, which has been noted by both Demid and Ingrid, has only gotten worse since I removed her from my bed and took her phone away.

That sadness probably creates an environment that isn’t healthy for a growing fetus, but the alternative is more risky—for us all.

“You need to eat on time now at this stage.” My concern is real—Raina was unable to eat for a while being so sick. But she looks well, better than she did a month ago, with more color in her face. And her face is fuller too; she’s gaining weight. That’s good. “Has Nikitin been by this week?”

“Tuesday.” She takes a bite, chews, swallows. I can see how she’s forcing herself for me, and it makes my chest knot up uncomfortably. This woman is hooked on me, and I let her be that way.

I encouraged it by praising her, and god I want to pull her to myself and stop the uncomfortable pain she’s in.

But how?

It only leads to more pain. “He says everything’s where it should be for two months. We heard the heartbeat…”

Everything she says is layered with sadness, not at all the joy on her face when she announced to me she was carrying. I wanted to erupt in joy with her, but it would’ve been foolish of me to feed her hopes. It can’t happen. Raina and I are a dangerous combination.

“Good.” I start on my own plate, taking my fork to pluck a bit of meat. “You’ve been keeping to the diet.”

“Every bite of it.” She gives a small smile. “Ingrid treats that meal plan like scripture. I asked her for a piece of toast this morning and she looked at me like I’d asked for her firstborn.”

It’s good that my staff is keeping strictly to my orders, but I’m wondering if I’m too strict. If that’s contributing to her sadness. A bit of toast that’s not on the menu isn’t that bad. Maybe I’m too rigid. Maybe this whole thing is too structured.

We eat in silence for a moment, until she seems to deflate inward. The reason I came down to have dinner with her is to check on her wellbeing, but I’m seeing a woman I hardly recognized. She’s not the happy bubbly woman I spent time with for weeks while conceiving that child. This welfare check isn’t going how I planned.

“What have you been keeping yourself busy with?” I stopped getting requests to invite her friend over weeks ago. Raina probably can’t even call the woman now. Again, my fault, though if I weren’t so busy I could track her down and bring her here for Raina as a surprise.

“I’ve been reading. I take lunch in the garden when it doesn’t rain, though it’s going to get cold eventually.” Her eyes rise up to meet mine, and she sighs. “Ingrid taught me to make German schnitzel, and it was pretty good, but she only let me eat a small bite—the menu and all.”