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CHAPTER FIVE
THEDUSKSKY was filled with shards of light, splintered from the slow-falling sun like arrows of gold against a mauve and peach background. Stars were just beginning to spark overhead, and the air tasted of salt and summer. For the first time in years, her fingers itched to capture the scenery on a canvas. She closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the colours she would blend to distil exactly the right shade—it went beyond the colours for Tessa, it was about translating the atmosphere of that moment into a picture.
But with her eyes closed, her mind moved from the image of the sunset to the man at her side, silent and strong, haunting her not with anything he’d done, so much as just by his nearness.
Her eyes jolted open, and she turned to face him, the suddenness of the gesture drawing his face to hers. She frowned slowly, nerves fluttering inside her.
‘Alex,’ she said, his name hovering in the air between them, a little uncertainly. There was so much she didn’t know—questions she should have asked before marrying him suddenly erupted as a volcano.
His features prompted her to continue, then he reached for his beer, removing it from the nearby counter and taking a sip.
‘If...’ She paused, the words seizing in her throat. She forced herself to continue. ‘If we were to have kids, how would you see that working?’
‘Do you mean the biology of falling pregnant?’
Heat flooded her cheeks. ‘I meant the parenting, not the pregnancy part.’ Though the thought of growing round with his baby was doing strange things to her equilibrium, and now the idea of children wasn’t a strange, abstract concept, but a reality that was hovering just ahead of them. She could even imagine what their children might look like, with his eyes and symmetrical features and her glossy brown hair.
‘We’d make it work.’
She bit down on her lip. ‘That’s a little simplistic, isn’t it?’
‘What exactly are your concerns?’
‘You work a lot, right?’
He dipped his head in agreement.
‘So you’d barely see our child?’
‘My intention would be to scale back, once the baby was born.’
She angled her face, focusing on the disappearing sun.
‘That doesn’t suit you?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what?’
‘I just...remember how busy my dad always was. And then Stavros. I know you’re just like them...’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘But I’m not asking you to have and raise my baby. I want children so I can be a part of their lives.’
‘You keep saying children, not child. Why?’
She turned back to him just in time to catch the hint of a frown on his face. ‘Why not?’
It was an unsatisfying answer, but she let it go.
‘Did you have a nanny?’
He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it again. ‘No.’
That was strange. ‘But?’ she prompted, reaching across and taking a sip of his beer, because her champagne was empty. Only just realising, he reached for the bottle and replenished her glass, his face averted from hers.
‘There is no “but”.’
‘I got the feeling you were going to say something else.’
