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'So this is not yet confirmed?'
Did he have to sound so damned hopeful? Her chest began to hurt with the tension she was putting on it, her I throat locking up on a tight ball of emotion she didn't dare release.
'Home testing sets are pretty accurate these days,' she informed him flatly.
Another long silence followed that, one that throbbed and pulled and picked at the flesh like an animal chewing on a dead carcass. Only Evie's carcass wasn't dead. It was alive and hurting in more ways than she would have believed possible. Out on the lake the owl hooted its lonely call for a mate again. The moon slithered its eerie way across the glass smooth waters and Christina's bouquet continued to float right there in front of them, making really heavy irony now of its good-luck significance.
'You knew about this two weeks ago, didn't you?' he said suddenly.
What was the use in lying? 'Yes,' she replied.
'Damn it, Evie!' His control suddenly exploded, launching him to his feet as shock gave way to a burst of anger. 'Why didn't you tell me then? Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me?' He lashed at her. 'The problems they are going to cause?' A sigh shot from him, his dark face contorting with blistering condemnation as he violently spun his back on her. 'What a mess!' he muttered thickly. 'What a damned mess!' White-faced and shaken by his scorching response, Evie came more slowly to her feet to stand staring at him in utter dismay. For, no matter how terrible she had expected his reaction to be, she hadn't expected anything quite so brutal as this. 'What difference can two weeks possibly make to the situation?' she demanded shakily. He didn't answer; instead a hand went up to grip the back of his angry neck, the action showing all the horror and frustration he was currently experiencing. In fact, he couldn't have been more horrified if she'd told him she'd infected him with some dreadful social disease.
'Unless, of course, you're hoping I may offer to do something about it?' she then suggested, wanting to twist the knife she could almost see sticking out of his ribs where she had apparently plunged it.
It worked. He flinched. 'No!' he ground out, spinning round to glare at her. 'Don't ever,' he gritted, 'make a suggestion like that again!'
Well, at least that was something, Evie grimly acknowledged as she stood there staring into those glitter-hard golden eyes. But then, if he had said anything else-so much as glanced at her with a hopeful look in those wretched eyes-she would never have forgiven him.
As it was, Evie shuddered on a wave of sickening self disgust for voicing such an option just because she wanted to score points off him. 'It's all right,' she said. 'It was never a choice you were going to be offered.'
'Then why say it?' he lashed at her.
Her small laugh was forced and shrill. 'You couldn't make your horror clearer if you were being faced with the end of my brother's shotgun!' She angrily derided the question.
'You expect me to be ecstatic?'
'No,' she said heavily, turning away from him to stare bleakly out across the moon-kissed lake because looking at him now hurt 'just too damned much. 'But a bit of tender concern at some point wouldn't have gone amiss.'
The dry remark had his chest expanding on a strained intake of air. When he let it out again most of his anger went with it. 'I'm sorry,' he apologised gruffly. 'But, as you can no doubt appreciate, it is going to take me some time to get my head around this.'
'Get your head around what exactly?' Evie drawled, withdrawing behind her own stone-cold shell of self-protection. 'The problematic mistress who has stupidly gone and got herself pregnant?'
'It takes two to make a baby,' he sighed.
'But only one to bring it safely into the world,' Evie pointed out. 'Your part is done. Mine is just starting.'
A small silence followed that remark. Then Raschid demanded, 'Are you suggesting that I ignore the fact that you are having my baby?'
Why? Evie thought bitterly. Are you offering up a suitable alternative? 'I am suggesting that you get your priorities right,' she said. 'And remember your duty.'
Raschid stood staring into cold-cut lavender-blue eyes set in an excruciatingly beautiful face that showed not a hint of emotion anywhere on it-and at last it began to hit him just what she was saying here.
'Don't be foolish!' he snapped. 'in this case my duty is to you and the child!' A long-fingered hand flicked out in a grim, tight throw-away gesture. 'We will have to get married, of course.' Still no words of love, Evie noted painfully. Still no words of caring. But oh, so arrogant, she observed. So damned sure of himself-so utterly dismayed by what he was so magnanimously offering.
'We don't have to do anything,' she countered, feeling so cold inside now that she wished she hadn't let his jacket slip to the grass when she'd got to her feet earlier.
'I will have to speak to my father .. .' he muttered, too busy lost in his own frowning thoughts to have heard her. 'It is going to cause problems at home, but that cannot be helped now. I will .. .'
'Excuse me,' Evie inserted, and this time the sheer coldness of her voice managed to gain his attention. 'But the way I see it, Raschid,' she said firmly, 'you don't have a problem here. I do.' 'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' he jerked out, beginning to look just a little shell-shocked now. 'I've never expected marriage from you,' Evie informed him. 'And I am not asking you for it now.' 'Are you mad?' he choked. 'Of course you will marry me! What else can we do?' Oh, his sensitivity knew no bounds! Evie mocked him bitterly as she bent to retrieve her discarded shoes. 'I wouldn't marry you, Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah, if you came gift-wrapped in rubies!' she hissed as she straightened up again. 'I have too much damned respect for myself, you see!'
'Are you saying that I don't respect you?'
'Do you?' Evie flashed back. 'You see, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that I wasn't fit to marry before I became pregnant with your child!'
At last those angry golden eyes began to bum with a pained understanding of what was actually going on here. Remorse tightened his arrogant features. .
'Evie ... ' he sighed, the hand he used to capture her wrist tense with frustration. 'I have handled this badly,’ he acknowledged. 'I apologise.'
