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Bloody cunt-fucking buggering hell.
“Whoa. What just happened?”
“Did you use a condom?”
The words came out sharply pointed, in the voice Beatrice had once called Mum’s bossy voice, the voice she used for intransigent workmen and obstructive members of the local council.
“What?”
“Last night. Did you use a condom? Or did you just think you could come over here and stick your willy wherever you wanted, with no consequence?”
“Stick my…no. No, I came over with food. I didn’t plan—”
“Didn’t you?” She was standing now, clutching the sheet between her breasts. “Because that’s what you would say, isn’t it? Regardless of what you’d planned? You followed me here, accessed private information about my location, barged into my room when I was vulnerable, and…and—”
“And had consensual sex with you.” His voice was mild, but a muscle jumped in his square jawline, and his eyes had fire in them when he repeated himself. “And had consensual sex with you. Right, princess?”
“My name is Rosemary,” she snapped. “Not that it matters to the likes of you.”
He crossed his arms. Tilted his head, eyes narrowed. “Oh, it matters.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“It might turn out to be important down the road,” he said. “Given all the possibilities we both failed to prevent last night.”
“Have you given me a disease?” Some of the starch had gone from her voice.
“Have you given me one?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“So there’s only the one possibility we’ve failed to prevent.”
“Mmm,” he said.
And then, after a beat, “I’m Kal, by the way.”
“I know who you are.”
“Yeah?”
“Calvin Beckett,” Rosemary bluffed. He’d stolen the upper hand with his calmness, with his knowledge of things she didn’t know about, such as what one did next, and how one was to feel. “You’re the son of Yangchen and Merlin Beckett.”
“It’s Kal with a ‘k,’?” he clarified. “Short for Kalden with a ‘d,’ not Calvin with a ‘v.’ But it sounds like you’ve studied up on the rest of my pedigree, which could come in handy when you have to do the baby’s family tree.”
“There won’t be a baby.”
Though she couldn’t say it without thinking of one, tiny hands and feet, too much skin, perplexed wrinkles on its miniature forehead. For heaven’s sake. The closer she came to the end of her fertility, the more doggedly her mind insisted on reminding her of the lure of precious, small things.
“You can say that for certain?”
“Well, there certainly shouldn’t be. We’ve only”—she waved at the bed—“the once, after all, and I’m thirty-nine, which isn’t young, and I’m not about to tell you the
ins and outs of my cycle but suffice it to say that it’s highly unlikely I’ve ovulated in the past year, much less—”
“Twice,” he interrupted.
