He swore under his breath. He’d forgotten about Gustav Blanc’s fiftieth birthday party. As the editor of one of the last remaining international high-end fashion magazines to still make a profit, Gus was hugely influential in the fashion world, a man with the power to make or break brands. It didn’t matter that the Rosbel Group was sailing so high, keeping Gustav onside was necessary and prudent.
‘I’ll be back for the party,’ he said tiredly. ‘I need to go.’
‘Call me later?’
‘Unlikely. I’ve got too much on. I’ll get Fenella to keep you updated and let you know when we’ll be back in Madrid.’
‘I can’t have video sex with Fenella.’
‘Beth…’ He sucked in a breath and tempered his tone. She was only trying to lift his mood; he knew that, but it was his constant need to lose himself in Beth that had got him into this mess. ‘I can’t be distracted with that sort of talk. Keep me in your dreams and I’ll be home as soon as I can.’
He ended the call and cursed himself again. Keep him in her dreams? Where the hell had that come from? How was that resetting his marriage to where it was supposed to be? Sweet pillow talk was fine, but talk like that when working?
After stalking to his office door, he yanked it open and barked out an order for coffee.
Then he sat back at his desk, took a deep breath, pushed his beautiful wife far from his mind and reread the offending contract, praying not to find any further errors in it.
Beth paced the living room of the apartment, holding her phone with one hand and rubbing her queasy stomach with the other, trying her hardest not to take Xavi’s irritation personally. It was hard not to, and hard not to feel a painful sadness that the cloak of happiness they’d both been shrouded in had been so unceremoniously ripped away.
He was under huge pressure, she reminded herself. This buyout was a big deal. The business press had been reporting on it and were expecting to report its finalisation at any minute. Delays, no matter how small, always fed wild speculation.
She was letting her brain feed on wild speculation, another thing it was hard not to do when the memory of Xavi dumping her after a business trip with nights away from her had never lost its vividness.
History was not going to repeat itself. Xavi’s irritation at his situation was perfectly understandable, not a portent of anything bad being about to happen.
She rubbed her belly again. She’d been feeling queasy since she woke up, and it was now mid-afternoon. If Xavi hadn’t been so short and irritable, she’d have mentioned it. Mentioned, too, that her period was two days late…
The ringing of her phone made her jump, and made Diego, asleep in the corner of the room, lift his head curiously.
‘Hi, Erika, is everything okay?’ she asked her lawyer, trying to pull herself together.
‘All good here, thank you. Just returning your call.’
Oh, yes. She’d forgotten about that.
Organising her thoughts, she said, ‘Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. One thing I promised myself I would do with my inheritance was buy my old company, Miss Amore. I want to approach the owner directly, but I can’t find any information on him. The company was bought out not long after I started with them. I remember hearing at the time it had been bought by a businessman as an investment, but my investigative powers are clearly rubbish because I can’t find anything about him. Or her. I think it must be a shell company or something like it that owns it.’
‘You want me to find the owner for you?’
‘Yes, please. And I’d like a contact number so I can call them directly.’
‘We can make the approach for you, if you wish.’
‘No, thank you, I want to do it myself.’ It wasn’t like she currently had anything better to do with her time.
‘Leave it with me. Do you want me to call when I have news or should I wait for you to make contact?’
‘You can call me.’ No more cloak-and-dagger behaviour. No more going behind Xavi’s back. She would never keep another secret from him. Secrets were corrosive.
When Xavi got home, she would make her confession, drag the past into the present and then put it to bed, for good.
She cuddled up to Diego with the very strong feeling that when Xavi got home, she would be telling him he was going to be a father.
Beth’s very strong feeling proved right two mornings later.
Fed up of going to the toilet every five minutes to double-check her period hadn’t started and unable to bear the suspense a second longer, she’d taken Diego for a walk to the nearest pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test.
It was unequivocal. She was pregnant.
