Thatwas why he’d stayed away.Thatwas why he’d known he would do everything in his power to avoid her.
“A lot, though?”
“Why does this matter?”
“I’m just interested.”
“Are you really?”
“I guess I must be. Did you sleep with anyone after me?”
He hated that he had. He hated that he’d promised to be honest, and the only way he could answer that was with an affirmative. What difference did it make that he’d thought of Elodie? That it had only been two women. That he’d grown bored of trying to find the same connection, the same buzz, and focused instead on his work.
“Elodie—,” he said, his voice a growl.
And there it was. Hurt. Betrayal. She covered it quickly, but not quickly enough. Or perhaps it was just that Raf was so in tune with her that he could read every micro expression that ran across her features.
“I never intended to see you again,” he pointed out with a calm he didn’t feel. “I moved on with my life.”
“I get it, it’s totally fine, obviously. Like you said, it was a one-night stand. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, we would never have seen each other again.”
That was an accurate summation of their situation, but it felt to Raf as though he’d swallowed a fish bone. His throat seemed to have something lodged in it, so he reached for his water and took a deep drink, rather than try to say anything else. He felt as though he’d dug himself some kind of grave, and he didn’t know how to close it over.
“What about you, Elodie? After that night, I presume you went on with your life.” He was being a coward. He wanted to know if she’d thought of him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Every single interaction with this woman was a huge red flag, yet here he sat regardless.
“Obviously.”
“But there was no one else.”
She’d told him as much, when she’d turned up pregnant on his doorstep. That was one of the reasons she had been so certain the baby was his.
“Like I said that night, one-night stands aren’t really my thing.”
“But you haven’t dated?”
Her gaze was now fixed on a point over his shoulder, fork loaded with risotto hovering just above her plate.
“I haven’t had time,” she said. “I work whenever I can, and I’ve been exhausted.” Her eyes flicked back to his, a small smile tightening on her lips. “Apparently that’s a side effect.”
Of pregnancy. Their baby. That ancient, primal pride soared in his chest again, leaving him with a feeling of being King of the world.
“Have you had any others?”
“Side effects?”
In calmer conversational waters, she lifted the risotto and ate it. He watched as she chewed, the movement of her lips endlessly distracting. God help him, he needed a cold shower and a date with his right hand. This situation was becoming seriously untenable.
“I’ve been a bit off food,” she said, glancing at the risotto and smiling more genuinely now. “Though that seems to have faded. I had a headache for a couple of weeks. Nothing that really worried me, and everything was easy to ignore or explain away. But when I realized the date and counted back over my calendar, I saw I’d skipped a cycle.”
“You didn’t realise?”
She shook her head. “Silly, I know. But I stopped taking the pill, about a week after we…after that night. I figured there was no need for it anymore. So, it didn’t really flag as unusual—I guess if I’d thought about it all, I would have presumed my body was just readjusting.”
“You did a test anyway?”
“I just…had a feeling,” she said, with a shrug.
“You must have been shocked.”
