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carried this secret for four months?” The words seemed to emerge from a closed mouth, hissed between tight lips.
“I’ve only known for two weeks,” she whispered. Her heart clenched as she saw a shadow of confusion cross his features. He stared at her a few more seconds, then turned abruptly away again. He strode around the perimeter of the large room and approached her until he was standing over her, his shadow invading her space.
“May I see your belly?” His voice emerged low and quiet, yet clearly a demand. His request wasn’t polite, but then it wasn’t a gracious situation. Sara rose to her feet ungracefully. She knew her face was blazing as she lifted her T-shirt and pushed down the waistband of her bike shorts.
She avoided his eyes and looked down at her belly. It looked so vulnerable, pale and soft, a slight curve that announced the presence of a third person in the room.
Elan slowly lifted his right hand and reached out to her abdomen with his fingers extended. She heard his intake of breath as the tips came to rest on her skin. Gradually, gently, he lowered his hand until it covered her belly, cupping the roundness.
Her womb stirred under his touch. A sudden rush of sensation flooded her limbs. She struggled to keep her breathing under control. Didn’t dare look at his face. Her nipples tightened involuntarily and she tore her eyes away, desperate that he not see the way her body responded to the gentle pressure of his hand.
For, even now, Elan’s touch made her body hum with thrilling awareness. A dangerous awareness of his hard-sprung masculinity, his harsh beauty. Humbling awareness of the razor-sharp intellect that matched her own. But above all, awareness of the man who had loved her that night with a passion and tenderness that would haunt her as long as she walked the earth.
He pulled his hand back. “We must marry.”
The words, spoken low and fast, blew away the fog of sensation that had engulfed her.
“What?” She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded strangled, distant. With a tremendous effort of will she looked up at his face.
His eyes blazed with black fire. He looked directly at her, his features set in an expression of determination.
“You will be my wife.”
She fumbled with her shorts and T-shirt, covering the exposed flesh of her belly. She felt altogether naked and exposed in the face of his authoritarian command.
But she shook her head.
Elan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.
“I can’t marry you.” Her voice was clear, quiet but resolute.
“Why not?” The words flew from his mouth in a growl.
“Because…”
Because you don’t love me.
She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Certainly in her mental anguish she’d imagined the possibility of a proposal. It was, after all, the honorable thing to do. And Elan was an honorable man.
She was “in trouble” and he was the man who’d gotten her that way. Even in the twenty-first century it was still common politeness that he should offer to give the child a name. It was the same reason her father had proposed to her mother, decades ago, when her oldest sister had come unexpectedly into existence.
Elan regarded her with total astonishment. His brow lowered farther as he raised his hands to his hips. “You refuse me?”
Sara swallowed hard. Her hands flew to her belly and clutched each other, fingers trembling. “Yes,” she whispered. “I can raise my child alone.”
The confusion that darkened his face tore at her heart. For an instant she itched to step toward him, throw her arms around him and shout “Yes, I’ll marry you, I’ll be your wife and bear all your children and we’ll live happily ever after!”
And the thought brought a fresh flush of color to her cheeks. A twinge of embarrassment that she could harbor such childish fantasies. That she could dream even momentarily of a happy future with a man who’d made it crystal clear that ardent women were the bane of his existence.
No doubt her mother had nurtured those same foolish fantasies when she’d chosen marriage over single motherhood—a miserable marriage that had drained her strength and kept her constantly pregnant or tending to a baby, despite her increasingly poor health. That had kept her chained to a cruel man who cheated on her and to a succession of low-paying part-time jobs that would never give her the means to escape.
Sara didn’t intend to make that same mistake.
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