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Good question. ‘Because you’re...you. And I guess I thought you’d want me to be home with the baby, you know, being a mother...’
‘You will still be a mother, I imagine,’ he said, arching a single brow ‘And I do not care if you work or not. My assumption was based on what I thought your preference would be. It’s not a reflection of my wishes.’
‘So you don’t want me to work?’
‘I just said I don’t care either way,’ he said with the appearance of patience. ‘But if you are to return to work, we will need a solution to help, and I thought it would be better for the child if that person was someone they’d known from birth.’
It was all so damned logical and in her hormonal state that simply irritated her further. ‘Where would I even work? I only speak Spanish curse words.’
At that he laughed and, ridiculously, she did too, and the tension that had been curling around them shivered a little and then gave way, like a dam bursting its banks. ‘There is an international school,’ he said quietly, ‘just a fe
w miles away. Lessons are conducted in English.’
‘Teaching the children of rich moguls and tycoons?’ she asked, still smiling.
‘Teaching children,’ he emphasised. ‘Or are you so bigoted against wealth that you would judge the children who happen to be born to it?’
Another fair point that had her mood darkening once more. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We have time to make a decision.’
Yes, that was true; time at least was on their side.
‘The baby’s room,’ he said, opening the door to a room that currently housed little more than a bed and a small chest of drawers. ‘Obviously we will have it decorated suitably once we know the gender.’
‘I don’t think I want to know what we’re having. Not until it’s born.’
‘Why would you choose not to know?’
‘I want the surprise,’ she said with a shrug.
‘You do not think the baby will be a surprise in and of itself?’ he teased.
She tried to fight the temptation to banter with him. To succumb to his many, many charms. She’d done that once before and it had been disastrous.
‘You’re missing the point,’ she said with an attempt at coldness.
‘No, querida.’ He shook his head. ‘You are missing the point. We will decorate the room. We can paint it yellow. We can paint it green. We can paint it black, for all I care. We will make it a baby’s room rather than this. Just as I do not care if you go back to work or not. I am showing you my house, and showing you how I think it can accommodate you and our family, and your future. I am trying to show you that I have thought this through, that I want this to work, just like you asked of me, yet you seem to want to argue with me at every turn. Why is that?’
She couldn’t speak. Her heart was pounding, her mind was racing and her body was in flux. She was hot, despite the air-conditioning, and her cheeks felt flushed.
He took a step towards her, and then another, so that his strong body was almost touching hers. She stared up at him, her pale blue eyes meeting his stormy black ones and charging with electrical awareness. ‘You are nervous,’ he said simply.
‘I’m not nervous,’ she lied, her tongue darting out and licking her lower lip.
‘You are nervous,’ he said again. ‘Because you are my wife, and I am your husband, and you do not know what that means. We married for a baby, but we never talked about this.’
‘About what?’ The words came out as a husky croak.
‘About the fact that whatever madness drove us into bed that one time is still here, flaming at our feet.’
She drew in a sharp breath, surprise making her skin flush with goosebumps. ‘No, it’s not,’ she said, raising her chin in a gesture of defiance that was completely belied by the way her eyes clung to his lips. ‘Believe me, Antonio, I’m not so stupid that I’d make that mistake twice.’
His expression was scepticism itself. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’ She nodded sharply. ‘Sex has no part of this marriage.’
His smile was slow to unfurl and deadly in its danger to her. Because her heart began to beat off-rhythm and her pulse was thready. Legs that had been perfectly fine only minutes ago were wobbling now, threatening to give way.
