Her outraged gasp echoed in the empty room. Heleft?!
Howdarehe leave her again?
Fury had her chasing him back down the corridor.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded, a blinding anger pouring through her veins at the thought that he would leave her, leavethem.
She came into the living area and saw him yanking his tie loose with three firm pulls. He shucked out of his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, as if he was just about to get started, rather than depart. He anchored one hand on his hip, as the other flew to fist his thick, dark hair, apparently utterly ignorant of how the sight of him like that melted both her insides and her brain at the same time.
Maybe it was the pregnancy she thought. Maybe—
‘Have you had the tests and the scans?’ he asked, his question pulling her thoughts back to the room but not in a direction she had expected.
She swallowed before answering. ‘Yes.’
He closed his eyes for a beat. ‘Is everything…?’ She thought she almost heard his breath shudder in his lungs, and she realised that he was worried.
‘Everything is fine,’ she rushed to reassure him.
He nodded, only opening his eyes after. Something in his gaze turned then. She suppressed the urge to shiver. There was a coldness there that she’d never once seen in him all those years ago. Age and experience had put that there, and for just a moment, she regretted it.
‘And you answered all their questions? About the medical history?’ he asked, bringing her back to the present.
On the surface his tone was polite, but there was something cold about the question. She ignored the warning signs, irritated instead by the implication that she would have already messed something up. Just like everyone had always expected of her. Just like she had done with GG.
‘Of course I did,’ she replied.
‘Family history?’
‘Yes, Micha. I gave them my family history too.’
‘And mine?’ he asked. ‘What information did you give them aboutmyfamily history?’ he demanded, his tone morphing from polite to pointed in the space of a heartbeat. ‘Would you have told them about my mother’s gestational diabetes?’
Her thoughts crashed to a halt.
‘I don’t think that has any—’ Maria hesitated.
‘You don’tthink? Well, that’s medically accurate, Maria.’
‘I didn’t know,’ she confessed, shamefaced.
‘You didn’tknowbecause you didn’task, because you didn’t tell me!’ he shouted.
‘I didn’t tell you because I thought you would force me to marry you,’ she shouted back.
‘Oh, wewillbe getting married, Maria,’ Micha declared with such supreme confidence it was maddening.
‘Why do you think it is yours?’ she struck out.
‘Are you going to lie to me and tell me it’s not?’ he retorted.
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly. She ground her teeth together, hating that he knew her so well. Hating that he knew she wouldn’t resort to lies.
‘Then such dramatics are unnecessary,’ he said with infuriating cold-hearted logic. ‘We will marry.’
‘No, we won’t.’
‘Yes, we will,’ he insisted.
