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Damn it. To Tia’s absolute surprise, sympathy appeared to be contagious. She’d come here ready to go into bat for Hamish, to make them pay for what they’d done to him, but this was too much. To show them how ‘happy’ she and Hamish were was one thing. To flaunt a potential pregnancy under their noses quite another.
“Then again,” Ewan continued, throwing back the rest of his wine and topping up his glass as he said, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. You might be afflicted by the same condition as me, brother.”
“He’s not,” Cressida said softly, her eyes on Hamish, her features pinched.
Ewan turned to face her. “How the hell do you know?”
“Because he’s got someone pregnant before,” Cressida whispered.
“You?” Ewan looked now like he wanted to be sick.
“No, before me.”
Tia was aghast. She knew, without Hamish having said as much, that the news of his previous girlfriend’s conception and then abortion was deeply private. Clearly. Even Ewan hadn’t known.
The betrayal hit Tia like a sledgehammer. “That’s enough,” she said, her voice emerging with clear authority and a calmness she definitely wasn’t feeling.
Cressida’s eyes slid to Tia’s, anguish in their depths. “You didn’t know?”
Hamish reached beneath the table and put his hand on Tia’s. At first she thought he might be removing hers, but instead, he pressed it there, like he needed the contact and was afraid of losing it. “Of course she knew,” Hamish said. “She is my wife. There is very little about me that Tia doesn’t know,” he continued, his gaze encompassing his entire family. “What Tia means is that this conversation is hardly appropriate for this setting. Perhaps we could all remember that my private life remains very much that: private.”
Ewan muttered something under his breath but it was impossible to discern the words, only the tone—anger.
Tia was about to excuse herself—she was most definitely done—when Eleanor stood up, a determinedly cheery smile on her face as she moved to the door and pressed a bell. A staff member appeared almost instantly—seriously, Tia wondered, where were they lurking?—and Eleanor said, “Please have dessert and cheese brought.”
Tia’s stomach groaned at the thought of any more food. Cressida, she noticed, had also barely eaten, but she was continuing to empty her glass, which Ewan topped up with incredible regularity. Every time the bottle emptied, a member of staff replaced it with a full one.
As if he could read her thoughts, Hamish leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Don’t worry. It will be over soon.”
Chapter Eleven
UNCONSCIOUSLY, HAMISH HAD THOUGHT Tia’s air of untouchable elegance and control was a question of how she presented herself. Her clothes, makeup, hair, heels, discreet yet obviously expensive jewellery.
But later that night, when she stepped out of the en suite ready for bed, he realised how wrong he’d been. Even dressed in a pair of cotton shorts and a singlet top, with bare feet and her hair out, brushed so it fell over her shoulders, she looked like a work of art. Still untouchable, he reminded himself, even as his body stirred to life and grew hard, remembering all the small ways they’d touched and flirted over drinks and dinner, the way his body had yearned for hers.
“Well,” she said, voice crisp. “I’m not pregnant yet.”
It took him a moment to process what she’d said. He couldn’t stop staring at her. This could be a serious problem.
Then, he heard her, and forced himself to look properly at her face, to read beneath the mask of cool disinterest she was wearing and see the tightening around her eyes.
“Hey,” he said, standing, hoping his arousal wasn’t visible. He walked across to her. “It’s still too early, right?”
“Technically.”
He smiled. “Not technically, actually. Tomorrow’s the day they said to start testing from.”
She bit into her lower lip. This time, it wasn’t calculated; it was just Tia. Thinking. Angsting. Trying not to angst.
“I just thought maybe—”
“Too early,” he said, tilting her chin so her face lifted to his. And all the air sucked out of the room—again—in what was becoming a sort of norm for them.
She lifted a hand to his chest and pressed it there. “You took off your tie,” she murmured.
“It was choking me all night.”
“That wasn’t the tie,” she said. “It was the tension.”
