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And while he stared at her, his gaze too dark and much too certain, she counted. The way she’d absolutely not done on the way here because it was impossible and she refused. But she did it now.
Seven weeks since that night in the compound and she hadn’t bled in all that time. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had. It certainly hadn’t been in the ten days before she’d left for Idaho to find him, because she would have remembered having to deal with that while pretending to everyone she knew that she was going anywhere but where she was really heading.
“I assumed this couldn’t possibly be an issue,” she said after a moment, aware she sounded more like her mother than herself. Harsh and accusing, and that was just to start. She couldn’t imagine the expression on her face and wondered if she was more like her mother than she’d ever believed possible. “And I’m sure it won’t be. But why didn’t you make sure that something like this could never be in question?”
“Did you see a condom in that compound, Susannah? Because I did not. Perhaps I assumed you would be on birth control yourself.”
“I find that hard to believe. I was the virgin in the scenario, not you.”
“And I was a holy man who’d been on the top of a mountain for four years. How did I know how you’d spent your time out there in all that sin?”
“You’re one to talk. My understanding is that the entire point of becoming a cult leader is to avail yourself of the buffet of attractive followers.”
Leonidas smiled, and under the circumstances Susannah thought that scared her most of all.
“Did I not mention that I was entirely chaste that entire time?” His smile deepened, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Untouched and uninterested for four years. I have been entirely faithful to you throughout our marriage, Susannah. As you have been to me. Surely this is something to celebrate.”
But she was sure that she could hear a steel door slamming shut as he said it.
“It was an accident,” she said, but her voice was barely a whisper. “It didn’t mean anything. It was only an accident.”
And if he planned to answer beyond that enigmatic expression on his face, she would never know. Because that was when there was a discreet knock on the paneled door and the doctor stepped back into the room.
“Congratulations, madame, monsieur,” the doctor said, nodding at each of them in turn while Susannah’s breath caught in her throat. “The test is positive. You are indeed pregnant, as you suspected.”
And this time, it was Susannah who turned to stone.
There was no other word to describe it. One moment she was standing there, furious and affronted and so very certain that this was all a mistake, and then the next she found herself a hard thing all the way through, as every part of her rejected the notion outright. Physically.
Because she couldn’t possibly be pregnant.
But one hand crept around to slide over her belly and hold it, just in case.
She barely noticed when Leonidas escorted the doctor from the room. He could have been gone for hours. When he returned he shut the door behind him, enclosing them in the salon that had seemed spacious before, and that was when Susannah walked stiffly around the settee to sit on it.
Because she thought it was that or grow roots down into the black herringbone floor.
He crossed back to the fireplace and stood there again, watching her, while the silence grew fangs between them.
His dark, tawny gaze had changed, she noticed. It had gone molten. He still held himself still, though she could tell the difference in that, too. It was as if an electrical current ran through him now, charging the air all around him even while his mouth remained in an unsmiling line.
And he looked at her as if she was naked. Stripped. Flesh and bone with nothing left to hide.
“Is it so bad, then?” he asked in a mild sort of tone she didn’t believe at all.
Susannah’s chest was so heavy, and she couldn’t tell if it was the crushing weight of misery or something far more dangerous. She held her belly with one hand as if it was already sticking out. As if the baby might start kicking at any second.
“The Betancur family is a cage,” she told him, or the parquet floor beneath the area rug that stretched out in front of the fireplace, and it cost her to speak so precisely. So matter-of-factly. “I don’t want to live in a cage. There must be options.”
He seemed to grow darker as she watched, which she knew was impossible. It was a trick of the light, or the force of her reaction. He couldn’t summon his own storm.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, and this time there was something in his low, fierce voice that made her break out in goose bumps.
