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Joanne came back a short while later, a studied blank look on her face. Diana’s heart seized in her chest. She knew that look. It was the one she used when she had tricky news to give to a patient.
“You are pregnant,” her doctor confirmed quietly. “I take it this was unexpected?”
Disastrous. Untenable was more like it. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to be a mother. Hell, she wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. Of course she wanted kids. But now? With Coburn? A haze of unreality spread over her that was so thick, so unnavigable, she couldn’t claw her way through it.
“There are options, you know.”
“No.” She barked the word out. That was not an option. Ever.
“Okay. I’d like to examine you, then. Just to make sure everything is okay. And since you have a rare blood condition in your family, I’d like to take some tests for that.”
Diana nodded. She somehow made her way through the next half hour without screaming, without losing her composure as Joanne examined her, because she was too numb to feel anything. This was supposed to be her time. Her chance at a new life. And she had messed it up royally over her lust for a man who had already wreaked havoc on her life for long enough.
Oh. My. God.
Joanne sent her off with a promise to deliver the test results in a few days. Diana found herself in the park across the street with a cup of peppermint tea in her hand, sitting on a bench while she watched the dark crimson and orange leaves fall off the trees as fall set in. It was just enough normalcy to convince her she hadn’t entered some alternate universe where condoms failed on the one night you had sex with your ex whom you were now tied to for at least the next two decades.
Anger spread through her, slowly overtaking the numbness. How could this happen? Because it was clearly her problem. Coburn had washed his hands of her that night at his place, had made it clear she meant nothing to him. He would support this baby, no doubt; he was that kind of a man. But if she could have dreamed up the worst possible scenario of anything and thrown it at her husband, it would not have made Coburn any greener than the thought of a baby.
Her stomach lurched, protesting even the tea. She set the cup down and breathed in through her nose. Her husband hadn’t even been capable of talking about a baby when she’d broached the subject casually to test the waters because she’d known someday it was in the cards for her. Whether it had something to do with his tumultuous, on-again, off-again relationship with his brother, Harrison, or his aloof family upbringing, she wasn’t sure. She’d just gotten the message loud and clear it wasn’t on his agenda.
That awful scene in the boardroom when they’d been allocating the pieces from their life together as if their marriage was a board game ran through her head. A bubble of hysterical laughter formed in her throat. What would have happened if she’d thrown a baby into the mix? Her husband had been halfway off the ledge without such a mind-numbing complication as their flesh and blood being tied together for eternity.
She sat on the bench as the bright midday sunshine faded to late afternoon, trying to absorb the enormity of the news she’d been given. The spontaneity, the freedom she’d craved to spread her wings, was about to be taken from her by the little person growing inside her. Her life as she knew it was about to change irrevocably.
Panic clawed at her throat, a terror she had never known before it reached up to steal her breath. Was she supposed to tell Coburn and have him insist she not go to Africa, which she knew he’d do? Or did she go, knowing there was no medical reason why she shouldn’t? First trimesters were uneventful, as Joanne had said. She was perfectly healthy and strong. She could scrap her plan to go for a year and simply execute her initial contract.
Her thoughts slowed, her breathing calming as her decision cemented itself. When she looked up to see the sky darkening over the park, purple streaks lacing a hazy gray sky, she got up, tossed her cup into the garbage can and flagged a cab. At home, she finished packing and closed off all the loose ends of her life. Except for the biggest one of them all.
Two days later, she stepped on a plane bound for London, where she would stay overnight with a friend, then continue on to Africa. Her mind was resolute and focused. She was grabbing her dream with both hands. Then she would call Coburn when she was settled and give him the news that would undoubtedly rock his world. She liked the idea of having a continent between them when that happened. It seemed so much less confrontational.
CHAPTER FIVE
