do that will never be questioned, even if we are apart?’ She didn’t want to tell him the truth behind her demands, but if it made him realise just how much she wanted this then it would have to be done.
She wanted her child to know who she was, not to think of her as a distant shadow in the background, as her own mother had become. It still hurt that a woman could turn her back so easily on the two children she’d given birth to, but she’d always told herself and Jess that their mother had been sick and didn’t know what she was doing. Now, with her own baby on the way, she seriously doubted this. Her mother just hadn’t wanted either her or Jess.
Nikolai’s dark eyes searched hers but she couldn’t look into them for fear he’d see the pain she felt about her mother and she looked beyond him to the passing city as the boat headed back along the river to the pier they’d left earlier.
‘Why would I ever question that?’ He moved a little closer, as if sensing there was much more to her demand.
She looked back at him, feeling the cooling wind in her face. ‘I have already told you my sister and I were in care as children.’
He frowned and looked down at her, his mouth set in a firm line of annoyance. She was well aware now that he hated personal conversations, anything that meant he might have to connect emotionally. Did he think she was trying to make him feel sorry for her?
Before he could say anything which might stop the flow of words from her, she continued. Whatever he thought, this was something that had to be told. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life, whether living with Nikolai or not, worried that she might be classed as an unfit mother and her child taken from her. She knew what it felt like to be that child.
‘We were taken into care because my mother couldn’t look after us. She’d rather have cuddled a bottle of something strong and alcoholic than hold my sister, and certainly hadn’t worried about me.’
She looked directly at the passing buildings, into the mass of stone and windows that created a maze that ordinarily she’d long to explore. Now it was just something to look at. She couldn’t look at Nikolai, didn’t want to see the disapproval on his face. All she wanted was the promise that, no matter what happened between them, she could be a mother to her child.
‘Do you really think I would keep a mother and child apart?’ The stinging anger in his voice forced her to turn and look at him, and his dark eyes sparked with annoyance, heightening her own sense of anxiety.
‘You made it virtually impossible for me to refuse the marriage deal.’ Had he forgotten how he’d dominated that discussion?
‘You were the one who quickly accepted the suggestion of funds for your sister.’
‘It wasn’t exactly a suggestion, Nikolai. It was more of a demand. It probably even comes much closer to blackmail.’ She should tell him about her father, about the fear and rejection she’d grown up with.
Darkness clouded his eyes, as if the spring sun had slipped behind a cloud. ‘It was not a demand and most certainly not blackmail. What kind of man do you think I am that I need to use such underhanded tactics?’
Defiantly she looked up into the icy blackness of his eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest but she knew this had to be dealt with before they married. She didn’t want to enter into a marriage, even a loveless one, with unresolved issues such as these. She couldn’t live with that uncertainty hanging over her.
‘I don’t know, Nikolai. You have made it clear marriage isn’t something you want to enter into freely, and yet you insist your mother lives under the illusion that we are in love. What kind of man does that make you?’
‘I want only the best for my child. That’s what kind of man I am.’
* * *
The boat bumped against the pier and Nikolai looked at Emma, wondering just what kind of monster she thought he was. Did she really believe he would separate her and their child, after all he’d told her about his childhood? Anger rushed through him and he couldn’t look at her any more, couldn’t take the accusation in her eyes.
Had he made a mistake, insisting on marriage? He couldn’t walk away from his child, but none of this felt right.
No, it had to be this way. It was the only way he could prove he was not like his father, that despite the genes inside him he had his mother’s goodness, he could be a good father. He wanted his son or daughter’s childhood to be very different from what he’d known—and from what Emma had known, if what she’d told him was anything to go by.
‘Do you really believe a loveless marriage is the way to achieve that?’ she demanded hotly.
Her question caught him off guard and neither of them moved, despite the need to leave the boat. That word again. Why did love have to come into everything?
‘Our marriage will achieve that precisely because it won’t be swallowed up by nonsense such as love.’ The hardness of his tone shocked her; he could see it in her eyes, feel it radiating off her.
‘And what if one of us falls in love?’ Her bold question challenged him from every side. Nikolai’s suspicion about the ever-helpful Richard increased.
‘If what you told me before is true, that will not happen. Neither of us believe in love—unless of course you are already in love with another man?’ Again that irrational jealousy seeped into him as he thought of how happy she’d been talking to Richard on the phone. How she’d smiled and laughed.
‘How can I love another man when I have known only you?’ The hurt in her voice was clear, but his rational sense had jumped ship, replacing it with intense jealousy for a man he hadn’t even met. A man who could make his fiancée smile so brightly that happiness danced in her eyes.
‘Do you love Richard?’ He couldn’t think clearly, and didn’t even register her words properly, but fired the question at her. She gasped in shock and stepped back from him.
‘You think I am in love with Richard?’
‘Why is that so implausible?’ Impatience filled him at her act of innocence. She’d used that act once before.
‘Because he’s a friend. But I’ll be honest with you—it hurts like hell to feel anything for someone who feels nothing for you. But you wouldn’t know what that’s like, would you, Nikolai?’
Before he had a chance to ask more, she left him standing on the deck and he watched as she disembarked and strode away from him. What the hell had all that meant?
EMMA HAD TRIED to keep alive the flicker of hope that things had changed between them after returning from their engagement party. Nikolai had avoided the painful discussion they’d had that night, but had played to perfection the role of adoring fiancé. Yesterday on the boat had doused that hope and now the ever-increasing nausea was making everything so much more difficult to deal with.
‘I’ve cleared the diary for today,’ he said as he strode across the room to stand looking, brooding, out over the park and the vastness of New York beyond. His withdrawal from her made her feel insignificant and rejected, feeding into her childhood insecurities which were growing by the day.
‘You did that yesterday; please don’t feel you have to do it again.’ A wave of nausea washed over her. She pressed her hand against her forehead, her elbow on her lap, and curled over as a sharp pain shot through her. She didn’t feel well enough to do anything this morning, least of all play happy bride-to-be with Nikolai.
Was it the strain of everything: the way he’d manipulated the whole marriage deal, using the one thing she wouldn’t wish upon any child, least of all her own? Another cramp caused her to take in a sharp breath and she bit down against the pain. There was something wrong. Very wrong. Panic rushed through her like a river breaking over a waterfall. She wanted this baby