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But Leonidas shook his head, his time on Chrysá Vráchia teaching him one thing and one thing only: it would never be time. He had failed Amy during their marriage, in many ways; he wouldn’t fail her now.
* * *
‘Tuna salad, please,’ Hannah said over the counter, scanning the lunch selections with a strange sense of distaste, despite the artful arrangements. In the four months since arriving in London and taking up a maternity-leave contract as legal secretary to a renowned litigator, Hannah had grabbed lunch from this same store almost every day.
Her boss liked the chicken sandwiches and she the tuna. She waited in the queue then grabbed their lunches and made her way back to the office as quickly as she could.
There was a wait for the lift and she stifled a yawn, sipping her coffee. Her stomach flipped. She frowned. The milk tasted funny.
‘Great,’ she said with a sigh, dropping it into a waste bin. Just what she needed—spoiled milk.
But when she got to her desk and unpeeled her sandwich, she had the strangest sense that she might vomit. She took one bite of the sandwich and then stood up, rushing to the facilities. She just made it.
It was as she hovered over the porcelain bowl, trying to work out whether she was sick or suffering from food poisoning, that dates began to hover in her mind. Months of dates, in fact, without her regular cycle.
Her skin was damp with perspiration as she straightened, staring at the tiled wall with a look of absolute shock.
No way.
No way could she be pregnant. Her hand curved over her stomach—it was still flat. Except her jeans had felt tight on the weekend, and she’d put it
down to the sedentary job.
But what if it wasn’t just a little weight gain? What if she was growing thick around the midsection because she was carrying Leonidas Stathakis’s baby?
She gasped audibly, pushing out of the cubicle, and ran the taps, staring at herself in the mirror as the ice water ran over her fingertips.
Surely it wasn’t true? It was just a heap of coincidences. She had a tummy bug and her weight gain was attributable to the fact she was chained to a desk for twelve-hour days. That could also account for her recent exhaustion.
That was all.
Nonetheless, when she left the office much later that day, still feeling unwell, Hannah ducked into a pharmacy around the corner from the Earl’s Court flat she’d rented a room in.
She’d do a pregnancy test. There was no harm in that—it was a simple precaution.
In the privacy of her the bathroom, she unsealed the box, read the instructions, and did precisely what they said. She set an alarm on her phone, to tell her when two minutes was up.
She didn’t need it, though.
It took fewer than twenty seconds for a second line to appear.
A strong, vibrant pink, showing that she was, indeed, pregnant.
With Leonidas Stathakis’s baby.
‘Oh, jeez.’ She sat down on the toilet lid, and stared at the back of the door. Her hand curved over her stomach and she closed her eyes. His face appeared in her mind, unbidden, unwanted, and unflinchingly and just as he had been for months in her dreams, she saw him naked, his strong body and handsome face so close to her that she could breathe him in, except he was just a phantom, a ghost.
But not for long.
It shouldn’t have happened. Despite the fact she’d torn his note into a thousand pieces and left it scattered over the marble bench-top of the luxurious penthouse kitchen, his words were indelibly imprinted into her mind.
Well, regardless of his regret, and the fact he hadn’t respected her enough to say that to her face, she’d have to see him again.
There was nothing for it—she had to face this reality, to tell him the truth.
And she would—when she was ready.
* * *
