She felt an uncharacteristic reluctance as she switched on the projector. Once she concluded the presentation she was going to be alone with her thoughts. Alone with things she couldn’t postpone thinking about anymore.
* * *
It happened as she reached almost the end of her presentation.
With her laser pointer pointed at a far-off wall, instead of at her company’s financial forecast on the rolled-out projector screen, she lost her train of thought—as though someone had turned off a switch in her brain.
She searched the audience for what had thrown her.
A movement—the turn of a dark head—a whisper or something else? Had she imagined it? Everything and everyone else faded into background for a few disconcerting moments. Had her equilibrium been threatened so much by her earlier discovery?
The resounding quiet tumbled her out of her brain fog. She cleared her throat, took a sip of her water and turned back to the chart on the screen. She finished the presentation, her stomach still unsettled.
The lights came on and she smiled with relief. Several hands came up as she opened the floor to questions. She could recite those figures half-asleep. Every little detail of her company was etched into her brain.
The first few were questions she had expected. Hitting her stride, she elaborated on what put her company a cut above the others, provided more details, more figures, increasing statistics and the ad revenue they had generated last year.
Even the momentary aberration of a few minutes ago couldn’t mar the satisfaction she could feel running in her veins, the high of accomplishment, of her hard work bearing fruit.
She answered the last question, turned the screen off and switched on the overhead lights.
There he was. The reason for the strange tightening in her stomach. The cause of the prickling sensation she couldn’t shed.
Diego Pereira. The man who had seduced her and walked away without a backward glance. The man whose baby she was pregnant with.
She froze on the slightly elevated podium, felt her gut falling through an endless abyss. Like the time her twin sister had dragged her on a free-fall ride in an amusement park. Except through the nauseating terror that day she had known that at some point the fall would end. So she had forced herself to sit rigid, her teeth digging painfully into the inside of her mouth, while Liv had screamed with terror and laughter.
No such assurance today. Because every time Diego stormed into her life she forgot the lesson she had learned long ago.
Her hands instinctively moved to her stomach and his gaze zeroed in on her amidst the crowd. She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look into those golden eyes that had set her up to fall. Couldn’t look at that cruel face that had purposely played with her life.
She forced herself to keep her gaze straight, focused on all the other curious faces waiting to speak to her. It was the most excruciating half hour of her entire life. She could feel Diego’s gaze on her back, drilling into her, looking for a weak spot—anything that he could use to cause more destruction.
At least he’d made it easy for her to avoid him, sitting in one of the chairs in the back row with his gaze focused on her.
She slipped, the heel of one of her three-inch pumps snagging on the carpet as she moved past him. Just the dark scent of him was tripping her nerves.
Why was he here? And what cruel twist of fate had brought him here the very same day she had discovered that she was pregnant?
* * *
Diego Pereira watched unmoving as Kim closed the door to the conference hall behind her, her slender body stiff with tension. She was nervous and, devil that he was, he liked it.
He flicked through the business proposal. Every little detail of her presentation was blazing in his mind, and he was impressed despite his black mood. Although he shouldn’t really be surprised.
Her pitch for investment today had been specific, innovative, nothing short of exceptional. Like her company. In three years she had taken the very simple idea of an advice column into an exclusive, information-filled web portal with more than a million members and a million more waiting on shortlists for membership.
He closed his eyes and immediately the image of her assaulted him.
Dressed formally, in black trousers that showed off her long legs and a white top that hugged her upper body, she was professionalism come to life—as far as possible from the woman who had cried her pleasure in his arms just a month ago.
He had even forgotten the reason he had come to New York while he had followed her crisp, confident presentation. But the moment she had realized he was present in the audience had been his prize.
She had faltered, searched the audience. That seconds-long flicker in her focus was like a nervous scream for an average woman.
But then there was nothing average about the woman he had married. She was beautiful, brilliant, sophisticated. She was perfection personified—and she had as much feeling as a lump of rock.