A Ring For The Greek's Baby

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Her good hand crept to her abdomen, resting on it as though she were protecting a baby bird. ‘It’s not the baby’s fault it wasn’t planned. I’ll cope. Somehow.’

‘I’ll support you in any way I can. You know that, surely? You and the baby will want for nothing.’

‘I’m not after your money, Loukas.’ Her eyes came back to his. ‘I just wanted our baby to know its father. I’ve never met mine. I don’t even know who he is and he has no idea I even exist. Even my mother isn’t sure who he is.’

Loukas could hear the regret in her voice. He wasn’t close to his own father but at least he knew who he was and he shared his surname. Which brought him up against another huge stumbling block. Marriage. The only way his child could legally have his name would be for him to marry Emily. He wasn’t against marriage per se. It was an institution he believed in—for other people. People unlike him who didn’t have the sort of baggage he was lugging around. Baggage that still gave him sweat-slicked nightmares. Baggage he couldn’t get rid of because his half-sister Ariana lived with the consequences of what he’d done every single day of her life.

A sharp-clawed fist clutched at his gut.

Marriage?

To a girl he had only met a month ago? A girl who was now carrying his child? A girl he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind because she was sweet, clumsy and shy.

Could he do it? Could he sacrifice his freedom for the sake of a child he had never planned to have?

He had a responsibility towards his child. He wasn’t the sort of man to shirk responsibility. That was what his father was like, but not him. He faced up to problems. Assessed them. Dealt with them. Conquered them.

He could provide money without marriage, plenty of money, although having contact with the child would be tricky if he wasn’t living under the same roof. He wanted to be involved but had no idea how to go about it without marrying Emily. He had seen too many fathers, including his own, who provided everything money could buy but gave nothing of themselves. He didn’t want to be that sort of father, but he didn’t know how to conduct a relationship—any relationship—except at arm’s length.

‘We should marry as soon as possible.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Emily said. ‘No one has to get married because of pregnancy these days. Even couples in love don’t always get married when they have a child together.’

‘I want to be a part of my child’s life,’ Loukas said. ‘I want him or her to have my name.’

‘They can still have your name. But I’d only like you to be involved if that’s what you want. A child can tell if its parent wants to be around them or not.’

Loukas wondered about the dynamic between Emily and her mother. There seemed a subtext to her words that hinted at some tension. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to support you, Emily. You can trust me on that.’

Her gaze met his. ‘Will you publically acknowledge the baby as yours when it’s born? Or would you prefer me to keep it a secret to protect your privacy?’

Loukas frowned. There was no way he was going to disown his own flesh and blood. Not like his father, who had insisted on a paternity test and then, when it had come out positive, still insisted the poor woman get rid of his baby. ‘Of course I’ll acknowledge it. This is my mistake, not the child’s. I accept full responsibility for it.’

‘Then please don’t insult me by asking me to marry you,’ she said with a look hard enough to crack a nut.

Loukas wondered what had happened to the girl who couldn’t wait to get married and have babies. Four kids and an Irish Retriever, if his memory served him correctly. Why then wasn’t she grasping at this chance to land herself a rich husband? Though he hadn’t taken her for a gold-digger. That was what had most appealed to him about her the day of the wedding. She had a guileless innocence about her. She reminded him of a friendly puppy who wanted to be loved by everyone.

But what was insulting about his proposal of marriage? He could think of hundreds, possibly thousands, of women who would jump at the chance of a proposal from him. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that marriage was the best option all round. It would give him the best chance of supporting her and the baby. It wasn’t as if it would have any of the toxic elements of his parents’ marriage. Emily and he were not in love with each other, so the marriage could be drawn up as a parenting contract. A formalised parenting contract that gave them the benefits of marriage without the emotional baggage of a normal relationship.

He would broach the topic again once she was feeling a little better, but this time he would lay out what was going to happen: a convenient mid-term marriage to parent their child. Perfect solution. ‘Do you need anything now? Some money to buy baby stuff or—’

‘No, I haven’t needed to buy anything yet...’ The colour drained out of her face again and she wobbled on her feet as if the floor was uneven. She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I—I think I might have to give dinner a miss. I’m going to lie down for a bit...’

Loukas lunged forward and caught her before she hit the floor. Emily folded like a rag doll in his arms, her chalk-white face lolling to rest against the wall of his chest. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Feeling a bit faint...’

He reached for his phone with his free hand, the other keeping her close. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’

She pushed back against him, her eyes troubled. ‘No, please don’t do that. I’ll be fine in a minute or two.’

What about in half an hour? Later that night? The following morning? Who was going to take care of her, to watch over her, to make sure she didn’t faint and hurt herself? He couldn’t leave her like this. What if she had a fall? She could end up with a brain injury or worse. She was his responsibility now. The knowledge cemented his decision to marry her. How else could he keep a close eye on her if he lived in another country, or even a few streets away? No. This was the only way forward. ‘Do you want to lie down? Here, I’ll carry you.’

He scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom. It looked like someone had ransacked the room or got dressed for a night out in the middle of a hurricane. The wardrobe was open and a variety of clothes strewn about, some on the end of the bed, others draped over a chair and more on the floor. The dressing table was scattered with make-up detritus: brushes, pots, hair products and a hair straightener. He laid her slight figure on the bed.

She lay back, folded her bandaged hand over her forehead and closed her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry about this.’

Loukas took her good hand and stroked her slender nail-bitten fingers. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault.’

It’s mine.

CHAPTER THREE (#u030d4e62-3430-5e1a-93da-9d0b1dcc7f04)

IN THE END Loukas decided against calling an ambulance. But, as soon as Emily’s dizziness passed, he insisted on taking her to hospital. Hospitals were not his favourite places, with their palpable sense of urgency. The lights, the sounds, the smells, and the nerve-jangling scream of sirens as the ambulances came rocketing into the receiving bay, made his heart threaten to beat its way out of his ribcage. It brought back the memory of the afternoon when his sister had been rushed to hospital, clinging to life.

But he wanted Emily checked out.

She, however, was not so keen on the idea.

She stood with her arms folded and her heels dug into the carpet beside her bed as if someone had glued her to the floor. ‘But I don’t need to go to hospital.’

‘You fainted twice in the space of half an hour,’ Loukas said. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own until I get you checked out. What if you fainted in the middle of the night and hit your head and got a brain injury?’

She pouted like a small, obstinate child. ‘You’re being ridiculous. First suggesting marriage and now a trip to the emergency department. The staff will think I’m crazy. Pregnancy isn’t a disease, you know.’

‘I want that finger checked out,’ he said, trying another tack. ‘It needs to be looked at under ultrasound in case there are any fragments in there. If you got blood poisoning it would be disastrous for the baby.’

Her face suddenly fell. ‘Oh...’

He held out his hand and she silently slipped hers into it. He closed his fingers around her hand, privately marvelling at how small it was compared to his. But everything about her was tiny. He felt like a giant next to her. She barely made it up to his shoulder in heels and he could just about span her waist with his hands. Not that he would be able to do it once her pregnancy started to show. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact she was pregnant. Inside her womb his DNA was getting it on with hers and making a baby.

His baby.

The thought of bringing a child into the world that he would be totally responsible for made his head pound with dread. What if he screwed up? It wasn’t easy being a parent even when you planned to be one. He had no idea how to be a father. He was hopeless at familial relationships. He kept people at a distance. Even the people who mattered to him he kept at arm’s length.

That was why casual relationships worked so well for him. There were no emotional expectations. No closeness. No bonding. No one got hurt. What if he hurt his child? Not physically, but emotionally? Didn’t kids need close emotional bonds with their parents to thrive and reach their full potential? He had been close to his mother until his father got sole custody of him in a bitter divorce, only to dump him in an English boarding school when he got tired of being a single parent. After years of living so far away from his mother, Loukas hadn’t been able to rebuild the relationship to the way it had been before. He knew it hadn’t been his mother’s fault. She had done everything in her power to make him feel loved and wanted.

It was he who was the problem.

He’d never wanted to be that vulnerable again. To need someone so much, only to have them ripped away from you. He had taught himself not to need. These days the only needs he had were physical, and he dealt with them efficiently and somewhat perfunctorily, which was probably why the sex with Emily had stood out in a long list of impersonal hook-ups. Stood out so much he could still feel it in his body, the erotic echo of it moving through his flesh like aftershocks if he so much as touched her.

But, while marrying her would solve one problem, he was too well aware it could stir up others. He would offer commitment but not love. The concept of loving someone made all those childhood demons come back to haunt and taunt him: you love them, you lose them. You love them, you hurt them. He would be committed for as long as their marriage lasted but he would not—could not—promise anything else.

Loukas tucked Emily into his car and made sure she was comfortable before he took his place behind the steering wheel. ‘I haven’t finished with the topic of marriage,’ he said, glancing at her as he turned over the engine. ‘It’s the best option going forward.’

She flicked him an irritated glance. ‘You know what? I’m going to ignore that. I did not hear you say the M word.’

Loukas had never felt more serious about something. It was the perfect solution and he wasn’t going to back away from it. ‘We’ll make a formal announcement after we get you checked out.’

‘You can’t force people to marry you, Loukas. You just can’t do that.’

Don’t be so sure about that.

* * *

Emily was embarrassed about turning up at Accident and Emergency when there was essentially nothing wrong with her. The waiting room was full of sick and injured people much worse off than her, but Loukas had insisted, and had all but bundled her into his top-of-the-range hire car, casting her worried glances all the way to hospital as if she was going to expire right there in front of him. Not only had he insisted on taking her to hospital, but he’d also returned to the subject of marriage with a steely determination that was a little terrifying, to say the least. Surely he wasn’t serious? She hadn’t had the energy to argue with him back in the car. The nausea and dizziness had made it impossible for her to string two lucid thoughts together, and the thought of marrying Loukas Kyprianos was a thought a long way from being lucid.