the heat and wound up this light-headed, walking through gelatin. He could barely breathe.
“The proposal is being prepared along with a selection of suitable résumés. Are you headed to London? I have staff on standby if you need them. Let me know.”
“I’ll go straight to her flat, but didn’t you put someone on her the minute you learned she was pregnant?” He snapped the words, straining to hold on to his temper, not wanting the pregnancy to be real, but slamming walls of protection into place with reflexive force anyway.
This would be the longest flight of his life. His palms were clammy, he was so fixated on ensuring the safety of his child. If she was pregnant, he wouldn’t breathe easy until he had Cinnia locked behind the Sauveterre vault-like doors.
“I came here the minute I learned,” Killian said. “Less than two hours ago. Although I gather the guard has been aware for a few weeks. Preliminary surveillance reveals she’s paying one of my competitors to keep the paparazzi at a distance. They’re good enough they would notice if someone started watching her, so we’re maintaining a distance. She’s staying at her mother’s, by the way.”
Henri nodded and shook Killian’s hand.
“Merci,” he said distantly. “And one of my siblings knows about this?” He struggled to take in that incredulous piece of the news along with the rest.
“Yes.” Killian refused to say which one.
From there, Henri operated like a robot in a sci-fi thriller. Get to her. Order the car, text his pilot they were flying to London, climb on the plane, blow through any obstacle without regard.
Wring Ramon’s neck. It had to be Ramon. Was he still in touch with that friend of Cinnia’s? Cinnia had told him Vera had married last year.
Henri couldn’t imagine either of his sisters learning something of this magnitude and keeping it from him. They were far too softhearted to leave him in the dark, knowing how heavily the family’s security weighed on him.
But Ramon would have taken the necessary steps to guard her. He wouldn’t be satisfied with leaving Cinnia to make her own arrangements.
It was all a jumble and nothing would make sense until Henri saw her. Topmost in his mind would be… What the hell had she been thinking?
Cinnia was tired. Not just tired because she was building two more human bodies with her own, but because today was one thing after another. Nell had been quick to tell her it was because Mercury was in retrograde, when she’d used the phone from the pub where she worked to say that the Wi-Fi was on the blink at the flat.
Perhaps it was true, since Cinnia’s new partner running her London office was having phone and network issues. She was forwarding all the office calls and emails to Cinnia today. Cinnia had asked her tech guy to check both, but he was stuck in traffic. Again, thanks to a certain planet traveling backward, apparently.
Dorry, bless her, had something going on at school. She was doing most of her learning online these days, accelerating to finish early. She usually sat at the desk in the parlor across the hall, answering the handful of calls Cinnia typically received, allowing Cinnia to concentrate on the piles of work in front of her.
Not today. Nope. Today Dorry was out and their mother was “pitching in.” Which meant rather than screen calls and take a message, or look up a price and answer a simple question, she said things like, “Sorry to interrupt, love, but they want to set up a video chat. How do I do that again?”
When her mother knocked for the billionth time, and pushed in without waiting for an invitation, and the phone hadn’t even rung this time, Cinnia snapped, “Mum. I’m working.”
“Well, he wasn’t going away, was he?”
Cinnia glanced up and the sight of Henri struck her like an asteroid. Like an atomic bomb that had been packed with nuclear energy bottled up by the weeks of being apart from him. Instantly she shattered into a million pieces—and had to sit there trying not to show it. Her entire body stung with the force.
He was painfully gorgeous. Cutting-edge dark blue suit, a narrow line of ruthless red in his striped tie, clean shaven, tall and trim and larger than life, as always. His intense personality honed in on her with that piercing quality that made her insides twist with joyful reunion.
It was quickly choked off with a quake of abject fear.
She wasn’t ready for this.
Because the flutters in her belly were not just the butterflies of excitement he always inspired. They were the movement of his offspring.
She said a word that was very unladylike.
“Lovely to see you, too.” His mouth curled in something that was the furthest thing from a smile.
“You called him?” she accused her mother, because that’s what one did in times of deep stress: attack the people who loved you unconditionally.
She couldn’t believe it, though. She’d been so careful to hide her pregnancy, practically living like a shut-in since she had begun to show. In the most uncompromising of terms, she had bribed and cajoled and threatened her family into silence. How had he found out?
“I did not.” Her mother chucked up her chin in offense, silver coif trembling. “But it’s long past time you did, isn’t it? Shall I hold your calls?”
“Oh, thanks, Mum. That would be great.” Cinnia rolled her eyes as her mother closed the door, locking Henri into the library with her.
“Trella told you?” She lowered the angle of her laptop screen to see him better over it, but quavered behind it.
“Trella?” His sister’s name came out with the weight of grim consideration. “I was wondering which one of them it was. How the hell does my sister—” He held up a hand. “We will come back to that.”
“You haven’t talked to her?” Oh, damn. Sorry, Trell.
Cinnia glanced at her phone, wanting to warn her friend that big brother was on the warpath, but she had to survive his wrath first.
She took in the way he looked like a caged lion, tail flicking and muscles bunched, ready to pounce. They had argued in the past, but he’d never been this angry. He’d never looked at her like this—as though whatever he’d felt for her was completely gone.
Their breakup had been agony for her, but it was nothing compared to the raw squirming torment that accosted her under that accusatory glare of his.
“How, um…” Wait. If Trella hadn’t told him, did he even know she was pregnant?
She scooched her chair a little tighter to the desk and tugged her lapels over her noticeably more ample breasts, adjusting the angle of her laptop one more inch, hoping to hide what was pressing up against the edge of her desk.
“Why are you here?” she asked shakily.
“You know damned well why I’m here.” He planted his hands on the two-hundred-fifty-year-old Chippendale masterpiece that her mother refused to sell. “Stand up.”
“You came to school me on my manners?” She pretended she wasn’t torn to shreds inside and lifted haughty brows. “Sorry I didn’t rush around to greet you like a long-lost relative!”
He made a choked noise.
“Yes, chérie. I think there is a certain courtesy concerning relatives that you have grossly overlooked.” His hazel-green eyes were stainless steel. Chop-chop, his gaze warned. Prepare to be sliced and diced.
She had known he would be angry, but this was so unfair. Her hand wanted to go protectively to the bump that had sent him away and was now bringing him back, but not with so much as a hint of pleasure at seeing her again.
She had