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‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’
He gripped her elbow tightly, manoeuvring her off the floor.
It was all Saskia could do to hide her surprise and school her features into some semblance of a smile as he ushered her firmly through the throng.
‘I’m here to support you,’ she managed in a low voice, once they were out of the way of the main crowd. ‘To support your charity.’
He expelled air slowly through his teeth, making a hissing sound.
‘You’re not needed, Saskia. Go home.’
‘On Valentine’s Day? At a ball for couples?’
‘You’re not needed, Saskia,’ he repeated, his teeth gritted.
‘But I want to be here.’
She would have thought that his expression couldn’t darken any further, yet somehow it managed it.
‘You have no place here.’
A closeness tightened around her. She tried to fight it.
‘I’m your wife...’ The whispered plea fell from her lips, but it didn’t seem to soften the granite-faced Malachi towards her at all. If anything, he appeared all the more impenetrable.
‘So stay in that part of my life. I don’t want you in this part.’
She wasn’t hearing him right. She couldn’t be.
Panic threatened to overtake her.
‘You can’t pigeonhole your life like that.’
‘I can. I do. My business life and my charity work have always been two distinct areas of my life. They don’t mix and they don’t need to. Why should our crafted marriage be any different?’
‘Because...it is,’ she cried helplessly. ‘Because we’re different. Whatever this was meant to be at the start, it’s real now, and we’re having a baby together. Or is our baby not real to you any more? Is she not welcome in your life?’
He advanced on her. So close that she couldn’t stop herself from backing up, right into the wall behind her. It reminded her of that night back in his apartment at Christmas time. Except this time when he lifted his arms and placed his hands on either side of her head it felt more like a cage than ever.
‘Our baby is the only real thing about all this,’ he said.
His voice was rasping. Much too rough for her to mistake the emotion in it. Not that she was about to.
‘And she will always be welcome in my life. All areas of my life. And she will be loved more than you can imagine.’
‘And yet here I am, the mother of that child, and you don’t even want me dipping a toe into the waters of any other part of your life.’
She barely recognised her own voice—it was loaded with something she couldn’t quite identify. Or didn’t want to.
‘You’re a master at compartmentalising your life, aren’t you?’
She realised her voice was too sharp, too high, but she couldn’t stop it. And his expression was so bleak, so haunted, that it scraped inside her. Like a scalpel blade to her chest wall. And when he spoke, in that distant, cold tone, she half expected her skin to freeze and blacken with frostbite.
‘You say it like it’s a bad thing. Besides, I would have thought that was something you would welcome. After all, it benefits you, too.’
‘How does it remotely benefit me?’ she exploded.
‘We aren’t a couple, Saskia. We never were. I was your rebound and then you fell pregnant. But I was never the man you were in love with.’
