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Tearing the paper off the bar of dark European chocolate she’d purchased at the corner store, she shoved a piece in her mouth and began the walk back to the boutique.
She was also hurt, she acknowledged. That Nik was to be engaged to a woman weeks after their own affair had ended stung. That she was just that forgettable. Her rational brain told her there were political factors behind it given the countess’s powerful family, but Vittoria Agiero’s stunning beauty was a kick in the ribs. As was the fact she was a blue-blooded aristocrat whom Sofi´a would be more likely to dress than ever rub elbows with.
She tore off another piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. Emotional gratification had never tasted so good. Not when her mixed cauldron of emotions also included her sorrow for Nik. Her heart went out to him for what he was going through. She wanted to be there to comfort him in the storm he was facing. And how crazy was that, because he’d made it clear he didn’t want her.
Still, it made her heart ache to look at the photos from his brother’s funeral, from his coronation day, which had taken place a month after Athamos’s death. He had looked stone-faced through all of it, devoid of emotion. But she knew it was all a cover for a man who carried his feelings bottled up inside of him.
Katharine gave the chocolate bar in her hand a wry look as Sofi´a made her way through the chime-enabled doors of the boutique.
“That’s one a day this week. You going to let him ruin your figure along with everything else?”
Sofi´a scowled at the woman who’d been her best friend since design school. “This has nothing to do with him. I was too hungry to wait for lunch.”
Katharine hung the dress she was holding on a hanger. “I think you have depression hunger. The to hell with it kind.”
“I’m also starving.” Sofi´a set the chocolate bar down on the counter and reached for the bottle of water she’d stashed behind the register. “Like nauseous hungry if I don’t eat lately. It must be the exercise.”
She’d been sweating it out in a fitness class every night to take the place of her dates with Nik. It was definitely helping her figure, despite the chocolate.
Katharine gave her a funny look. “You know what that sounds like, right?”
Sofi´a blinked. Blanched. “Oh, no. It couldn’t be. We were always careful. Obsessively careful.”
Katharine shrugged. “I’ve just never seen you eat junk food.”
A customer popped out of the fitting room at the back of the store. Her partner went to assist her. Sofi´a put the bottle down on the counter, a jittery feeling running through her. There was no way she was pregnant. She was on birth control.
She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the calendar. The blood drained from her face. Dear God. She was late. She hadn’t even noticed given the insanity of her life of late.
“Back in a minute,” she blurted to Katharine, grabbing her purse and hightailing it out the door. There was only one way to dispel the impossibility of what was running through her head.
At the drugstore, she snatched two pregnancy tests from the shelf, paid for them and flew back to the boutique, where she locked herself in the bathroom and administered them. Two solid blue plus signs later she stood looking at a disaster in the making.
“Sofi´a...” Katharine banged on the door. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Katharine’s tone was grim. “Open up.”
She opened the door. Held up the stick.
Katharine’s face dropped. “Did you do more than one?”
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Okay,” her friend said slowly, “This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to remain calm until you see your doctor. Then you can panic.”
Except seeing her doctor the following morning only triple confirmed what she already knew. She was pregnant. And no amount of denial or panic was going to change it.
* * *
Nik lifted his gaze from the seemingly endless document recapping plans for the immediate expansion of the armed forces, his eyes having glazed over ten minutes ago. Undoubtedly it was a complex, tightly timed schedule on how the government should move forward, but he failed to see how it required fifty pages to bring him up to speed. He’d gotten the gist by page five.
Exhaling deeply, his gaze slid to the pile of newspapers on his desk. Admittedly, part of his distraction might have to do with the picture of Sofi´a on the front page of the society section of one of the New York papers, her face turned down as she left her apartment. Beautiful Sofi´a Trumped by a Countess Licks Her Wounds blared the headline.
