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She made herself swallow, though she felt as if there were knives in her throat. Perhaps actual knives would have been an improvement.
She swallowed again. Then cleared her throat. “If this situation is as terrible for you as it appears to be, I have a solution. I am perfectly happy to raise—”
“I would strongly suggest that you not finish that thought,” Cristiano belted out, and she wished, then, that she had not been so desperate for him to speak.
Because it was worse when he did. His voice was so frigid she felt...chapped. And more, as if she was shaking apart at the seams, though it all seemed to be entirely inside her. As if she was built on a flimsy foundation that could tip over at the slightest provocation.
As if she had already, the longer he trained that pitch-dark gaze of his on her.
“You are carrying my child,” he said, and there was no crack in his voice. No chink in the forbidding sheet of armor where his face should have been. Granite and ice. Ice and granite. “A boy.”
“I know I am, thank you.” Julienne forced a smile. “That’s why I’m here, Cristiano.”
“How could this happen?” he bit out. “And I would advise you not to get cute with me, Julienne. I understand the mechanics. But we used protection.”
“Did we?” She sucked in a breath when his expression got, if possible, more forbidding. “That is to say, I can’t claim that I was paying the slightest bit of attention.”
His gaze was like flint. “I always use protection.”
“So did my mother, as she liked to tell the world after a few drinks,” Julienne said, with perhaps more flippant dark humor than necessary. “And yet here Fleurette and I are.”
“What did you use?” he demanded. “Surely between the two of us, this should have been impossible.”
“Whether it should have been impossible or not, it happened. Six months ago. It isn’t going anywhere.Heisn’t going anywhere.” But the way he was glaring at her seemed tinged with a kind of outrage, as if she’d done this to him.Deliberately.She blew out a breath. “And I was not using anything.”
“Do you have habit of propositioning men, hoping they take care of the practicalities, and then failing to pay attention either way?”
“I don’t have habit of men,” she retorted, not sure where this wellspring of dark humor had come from. But she laughed anyway. “There has only ever been the one.”
She saw his head tilt to the side, barely.
Barely.
And still, it was as if the room around them burst into flame.
Good job, Julienne,she snapped at herself.Remember how you weren’t going to tell him that? Ever?
Across from her, Cristiano had gone glacial. “I beg your pardon?”
Julienne winced. She’d never wanted to tell him this truth. She’d neverplannedto tell him anything. He hadn’t seemed to notice that night, and she’d assumed she’d never see him again. No need to burden him with the knowledge that he’d taken her virginity.
That was something she could hoard for herself. Like treasure.
But she rested her hands on the great roundness of her belly as she stared at him, so harsh and so bitterly cold, and really, what was the point of keeping these foolish secrets? What could any of it matter now?
“You do not habitually proposition men, is that what you’re telling me?” he asked when she did nothing but gaze at him, and it was more knives then, slicing deep.
“I do not. Habitually or otherwise.”
The tension between them rose even higher. She could hear it pressing against her ears. Making her head ache.
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” she continued brightly. “Perhaps I’ll begin a habit of propositioning men, now that I am involved in so many new things.” She rubbed her belly, and somehow found herself smiling at him over the child they’d made. Thechild.She forgave him his response because she wasn’t exactly at peace with it herself. How could she blame him? “You were the first. And yes, before you ask. The first proposition. The first man. The first father to my first baby.”
A terrible storm moved over his face, though his only physical reaction was the way his jaw worked. He looked away then, and she watched him press his finger and thumb to either side of his nose.
Fighting back something. She told herself she was glad.
But she found she was breathing far too heavily anyway.
