‘Understandably. I assume this development has changed your life a huge amount because you didn’t marry Tore Renzetti,’ Aristide stated, disconcerting her with the sheer level of his knowledge about her.
‘You’ve had me investigated…or something,’ she muttered without surprise, reckoning that such caution and precision went with his sharp-edged, ruthless personality.
‘Guilty as charged. I had to know what was going on and I’m afraid I still don’t understand that relationship,’ Aristide declared.
‘It was supposed to be a business alliance. I’m not sorry to have missed out on marrying the guy—I mean, I never met him—but I’mverysorry and guilty that my sister had to marry him instead.’
‘None of my business,’ Aristide forced himself to say when really he wanted every tiny detail of that arrangement because he had an overriding need to know everything about her. However, he had heard enough to know that the heir to Renzetti Pharma would not be hovering on the sidelines of Tabby’s life even though he had married another woman. Truly, that was the only angle, the sole possibility, that had still concerned him. If she had never met the man, there was no relationship to be considered. And if the sister had got him instead, that was even better.
‘I really don’t understand what you’re doing here. I’m newly pregnant,’ she pointed out uncomfortably. ‘Now that you know I’m going to have this baby, you can—’
‘I want to take you to see a good obstetrician and have you fully checked over,’ Aristide announced without hesitation. ‘It will be a private appointment in hospital. You are not obliged to agree to the idea but I would be grateful if you did.’
‘Why do you want to take me to see a doctor?’ Tabby was astonished by the suggestion.
‘According to one of my cousins, pregnant women glow,’ Aristide murmured wryly. ‘You’re still beautiful but you’re not glowing.’
‘I’d forgotten how charming you could be…saying all that instead of just biting the bullet and telling me the truth that I look like hell right now!’
‘It’s not like that—’
‘It’s exactly like that,’ she interrupted impatiently. ‘How soon could you set up the appointment?’
His luxuriant black lashes lifted on surprised dark golden eyes. ‘As soon as you like?’
‘I have to wait more than a week to see my GP, so it would suit me very well to visit a specialist sooner,’ Tabby confided in a rush. ‘I’m suffering from terrible nausea and maybe something could be done to alleviate that.’
‘I gather being pregnant hasn’t been a fun experience so far,’ Aristide remarked, still carefully choosing his every word with a caution that irritated her. It struck her that she preferred Aristide relaxed and outspoken because anything else felt fake.
‘Not so as you’d notice,’ she agreed. ‘So, if you organise this obstetrician, we should exchange phone numbers.’
Getting the message that she wanted to return to the bakery, Aristide vaulted upright again and dug out his phone, reminding himself that he had gained more than he had expected from this first visit. She hadn’t abused him, assaulted him or refused to speak to him. She was feisty but she could also be reasonable, logical. He would count the meeting a win, a crucial first step on the route he had chosen.
As they reached the street where his bodyguards awaited him, Aristide turned back to her. ‘I have one question but it’s controversial—’
But Tabby guessed what that question would be, following on from their clash at his apartment that first night. ‘Was I prepared to marry Tore for money?’ she whispered back to him. ‘Yes, but probably not for the reason you assume.’
Aristide was taken aback by that accurate guess and he still wanted to know more. ‘Maybe you’ll tell me about it some day,’ he teased, amused at the way she was playing him and holding back on giving answers. He could not recall when that had last happened to him with a woman.
Chapter Four
THE SPECIALIST’SWAITINGroom was plush and comfortable and Tabby was so disconcerted by the immediate keen attention their arrival received that Aristide had accompanied her into the consultation before she had had the chance to consider leaving him outside. She hadn’t objected to his presence during the blood test and, being of a practical bent, saw no reason why he shouldn’t learn the extent of her woes.
Mr Chapman was a middle-aged male in a smart suit and he wasted no time in informing them that her blood test had revealed a surprise, without revealing what that surprise was. In short, he was a showman and it was Tabby’s job to mention how very sick she had been feeling while he nodded without clarifying anything. She went into the room next door to lie down for the ultrasound with the deflated feeling that she would go back to her sister’s apartment knowing no more than she had when she had arrived at the hospital. The consultant joined her and Aristide.
‘Do you want me to leave?’ Aristide asked, taking her aback with that consideration.
‘No, my tummy isn’t a sensitive area,’ she chuckled and then she closed her eyes while the technician fiddled with the transponder wand, clearly unable to begin without the doctor’s prompt.
‘And this is why you’re feeling sick,’ she was informed and she opened her eyes.
‘There’s two of them!’ Aristide exclaimed with all the drama of a male told she was hosting an alien invasion in her stomach.
Tabby suppressed a sigh of concern. Two babies instead of one was an even larger challenge to accept but she was determined not to get anxious. ‘I’m a twin…’
‘You didn’t tellmethat your sister was a twin,’ Aristide complained, but it seemed a moot point as he was asking Mr Chapman questions about what he could see on the screen. She almost contradicted him because she had told him early on when he probably hadn’t been listening with much interest.
They emerged from the hospital, both of them sort of shell-shocked in their own different ways.
