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‘LUCYREMEMBERSYOU,’ the caseworker commented.
‘Thank goodness,’ Cleo responded cheerfully. ‘I was worried she would forget our faces after two weeks.’
Lucy was smiling widely at her, showing the tooth that had finally emerged during their absence and which had, apparently, given her foster carer some sleepless nights. She lifted her hand to Ari’s jaw and giggled.
‘He feels just like a hedgehog, doesn’t he?’ Cleo quipped, because they had come straight from the airport and Ari hadn’t yet shaved. A shadow of dark stubble surrounded his wildly sensual mouth.
‘But it’s sexy,’ Ari informed her with all-male confidence.
And Cleo smiled as widely at him as his niece did. She was hoping the lawyer had some encouraging news for him, rather than the kind of depressing information he had received about the brother he had never met and now never would meet. Instead, he was hoping to raise his brother’s child, striving to make up for what he viewed as his late father’s neglect. Ari had a lot of heart. He mightn’t like to show the fact, but his search for his father’s second family was the proof of his compassion.
When they entered the senior lawyer’s imposing office, Cleo immediately saw that the older man was disconcerted by her arrival with his client.
‘Mrs Stefanos may—’ he began tightly.
‘Cleo and I have no secrets from each other,’ Ari imparted with scorching assurance.
Feeling embarrassed by the suspicion that she was unwelcome at the consultation, Cleo took a seat beside Ari, and only moments later she had to battle to keep her face composed because the older man plunged straight into the matter he wished to discuss. Sadly, Cleo would very much have preferrednotto be present once she realised what the issue encompassed.
‘Apaternityclaim?’ Ari repeated in a flat tone of emphasis in which no discernible emotional expression could have been read. ‘From whom?’
Cleo had gone rigid in her seat, her spine straight, her hands clasped tight on her lap, not a muscle moving in her small face. She had insisted on accompanying Ari to the appointment and pride would not allow her to show how distressed she was by the very idea of another woman giving birth to Ari’s first child.
They had discussed having children but had decided it would be a year or two before they did because, at present, Lucy had needs that could well demand a lot of time and attention and she had to be their priority. Furthermore, they needed to adjust to being Lucy’s parents before they could consider extending the family. But that Ari could still become a fatherwithoutCleo had never once struck Cleo as even a possibility! And now she was deep in shock at the discovery that the sex life prior to his marriage, which Ari had dared to say was none of her business, was promising to impact on both their lives in a way neither of them could have foreseen.
She sat in silence while Ari and his lawyer discussed prenatal DNA testing and the necessity of obtaining the birth mother’s agreement to the non-invasive procedure. It only required a cheek swab from Ari and a blood test for the expectant mother. Ari sounded so calm and yet she felt sick to the stomach! How could he be socalm? Had he suspected that there could be a potential pregnancy risk with some woman? Was he one of those men who could occasionally be careless with precautions? He had not been irresponsible with her. But how was she to know how he had behaved with other women in his bed? That thought made her feel even more nauseous and distanced from him because Cleo was now at a stage where she could not bear even tothinkof Ari having bedded other women, and now she was being faced with the prospect of having to deal with the evidence of that fact for the next twenty years.
Forget twenty years, she thought almost hysterically. Any child would be around and part of her life as well for the whole of their marriage and lives. Children grew up but they did not go away. Ari was very responsible. He would be a supportive father toanychild that washis. Such devastating news was a huge and cruel blow to receive in the very first weeks of their marriage.
Ari glanced at Cleo by his side, registering that she had not said a single word since her arrival. But then what did he expect after such an announcement? A paternity claim, his first. He was in shock, striving to hide it because Cleo was silently freaking out and he did not want to encourage her to feel that way. But he knew that, no matter how careful any male was, there was always the risk that a baby could be conceived. But to have a baby with thatparticularwoman? Ari gritted his teeth while acknowledging that thinking negative stuff about his potential baby’s mother was a very bad idea. He needed to stay off that fence until he knew more.
‘Ready?’ Ari was standing, looking down at her with an enquiring gaze because the appointment was over.
Cleo blinked rapidly, struggling to come out of the turmoil of her anguished thoughts and her sense of betrayal, but it was a serious struggle to pull herself together again. Shock, panic and dismay were all pulling at her simultaneously. Her image of Ari with a child who was not hers clawed at her like salt scattered on an open wound...
Yet Lucy was not her child, she reminded herself, sanity attempting to intrude on her intense mental upheaval. But Lucywasdifferent, she reasoned. Ari had not been involved with Lucy’s mother and Cleo was as much in love with tiny smiley Lucy as Ari was. If only Ari had not been such an unrepentant man whore, she found herself thinking helplessly, angry resentment assailing her because suddenly her shiny new marriage no longer seemed half as appealing as it had only hours earlier.
Not that that mattered, Cleo conceded unhappily. She loved Ari, flaws and all, and she was growing to love Lucy as well, and no way could she consider walking away from either of them for good. At the same time, however, she felt that she had to have some space to come to terms with what she had just learned. As it was, she felt utterly trapped by undesirable circumstances that couldn’t be changed. It was painful too to be forced to accept that, although she would suffer much from the development, she had no rights whatsoever in such a situation.
‘Just say what you’re thinking,’ Ari urged in a raw undertone in the back of the limousine, stunned by Cleo’s ongoing lack of either questions or comment about a development that had knocked him for six.
Nor did it help that the prospective mother was Galina Ivanova, who could quite correctly declare that he had refused to have anything more to do with her. Had the woman truly been chasing him in an effort to tell him that she had fallen pregnant? Had he so misread the situationandthe woman involved that he had inadvertently put himself very much in the wrong? He was appalled by the suspicion and determined to play his every next step by the book.
Cleo swallowed hard and breathed in deep. ‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ she mumbled bitterly, half under her breath.
‘Neither did I, but we’re married now. Difficult issues must be faced together and dealt with together,’ Ari murmured with a cool distance that she was painfully aware of. ‘Are you with me or against me on this?’
The silence stretched because Cleo truly didn’t know how to respond to that question in the state she was in at that precise moment.
‘In this instance, silence is not golden,’ Ari said very drily.
‘Whoisthis woman?’ Cleo asked tightly, having to force the question past her lips because she knew that she didn’t really want the answer. She didn’t want any image inside her head, particularly when she was thinking that it could be one of the bitchy wedding guests.
Ari frowned in astonishment. ‘You weren’t listening to what Oliver told us?’
‘I sort of zoned out,’ Cleo admitted grudgingly.
‘Galina Ivanova, the woman you let into my office on your first day...and I censured you for it,’ Ari reminded her doggedly. ‘It sounds as though that was, very much, my mistake.’
