Christmas at the Castello(12)

Her shoulders shot to her ears. "I don't know anything of the kind.  There is absolutely no reason why I, a perfectly healthy woman in my  first trimester, shouldn't be here."

"No reason?" he repeated, the glint in his eyes turning positively  flammable. "I stopped at the hospital and met with your supervisor. He  had no idea you were pregnant. He said you'd been sick on the job  yesterday and he'd been concerned but had put it down to first-day  jitters."

Her jaw dropped open. "You talked to my supervisor?"

"Didn't you just hear me, Diana?" His lips curved in a savage twist. "I  will do whatever it takes to make you see sense since you obviously  can't do it for yourself."

Which meant what? Fury at the boundaries he'd crossed mixed with fear  to render her speechless. Her gaze flicked over the clenched muscles of  his jaw, the tendons and veins that stood out in stark relief against  the strong column of his throat. Anger seemed to vibrate from every pore  of him. He was beyond furious with her.

"Congratulations," he rasped, reading her expression. "You have  successfully diagnosed my current mood. Now answer the question, Diana.  When were you going to tell me? After you had this all figured out in  that structured brain of yours? After you'd worked out how we divide our  paternal rights? Exactly how you want this to play out... What roles  you'd like me to assume in our child's life?" A dangerous glitter stoked  his gaze. "Because I can assure you, after this stunt, it has backfired  on you."

The breath whooshed from her lungs. "Coburn, I needed time to think, time to process. You can't blame me for that."

"No," he agreed tightly. "I can't. What I can be livid about is you  waltzing off to take this assignment when you knew you were carrying our  baby. Without telling me." He shook his head, a vicious expression  darkening his eyes. "I knew you were selfish, but this, this was  unforgivable."

Her heart thudded in her chest. "I was going to tell you this week as soon as I got settled."

"Instead, I found out from a receptionist I was going to be a father. A  receptionist. While I was getting into my car on the corner of Fifth  and Fourteenth to be precise." He stepped closer, until she could feel  the fury emanating from him. "You were afraid I would have made you  cancel your trip if you'd told me."

Her jaw dipped. He slid his fingers beneath it and brought her gaze back up to his. "Unbelievable. You are unbelievable."

She pulled out of his grip. "I am exercising my right to be an  independent human being. I was planning on consulting you with this  pregnancy every step of the way."

His mouth tightened. "Unfortunately for you, the time for consultation  and negotiation is over. You gave away that right the moment you elected  to leave the country without coming to me."

The ice in his tone spoke a dire warning. She swallowed hard as it slid  through her, chilling her despite the sweltering air. "You are upset,"  she reasoned, laying a hand on his arm in an attempt to redirect the  storm. "I agree I shouldn't have left without telling you. Let's sit  down and talk about it."         

     



 

He looked down at her hand on his arm as if it were a pest he wanted to  stomp under his feet. "No more talking. We play by my rules now."

Her heart skipped a beat. "What does that mean?"

"It means you have ten minutes to pack your things before we leave. The jet is waiting at the airport."

Her breath snagged in her throat. She shook her head and backed away. "I am not coming with you. I have a contract to fulfill."

"Not anymore, you don't. Your supervisor agrees the best thing to do is to send you home and bring you back another time."

Her dream vaporized before her eyes. She took another step backward, her head moving from side to side. "No, Coburn."

He stalked forward, his hand reaching out to snag her forearm as she  wobbled backward, nearly taking a fully clothed dip in the pool.  Desperation surged through her as her fingers closed around his waist,  her gaze rising to his ice-cold blue one. "Don't do this."

"It's already done."

Helplessness plunged through her. "In nine months I'm having this baby,  and once that happens I won't be able to do anything for years. This is  my time, Coburn." She punctuated the words with the slap of her palm to  his chest. "I won't let you take it away from me."

He looked down at her palm pushing ineffectually against his chest. As  if she was a juvenile in need of restraint. "Pull yourself together," he  advised coldly, lifting his gaze to her face. "You have your entire  life to do this. Just not now."

She gritted her teeth. She wanted to tell him his outrageous arrogance  wasn't winning this time. That he couldn't tell her what to do, not any  longer. But a tiny part of her, a part she'd been ignoring ever since  she'd arrived here and seen the physical challenges she'd face if this  nausea went on, which it might for another few weeks, had already been  questioning the wisdom of her decision. Was scared.

Did she need to accept that Coburn was right? That the timing was the  timing and she was powerless to fight it except with the knowledge that  she would come back. She would do this.

A tear slid down her face. Then another. She lifted her fingers to  brush them away, but the hot drops of desperation kept rolling like  runaway bandits down her cheeks. Once, just once, she'd wanted to do  something for herself. Something to bring her soul back from the depths  it had sunk to.

Coburn reached up and brushed her fingers aside, sweeping the tears  away with his thumbs. The hard glint in his eyes softened a fraction.  "This is not over," he said quietly. "It's just postponed."

"And what's been postponed for you?" she asked bitterly. "You are a  CEO. You have the ultimate power. You don't even want a baby. You want  to control me. This."

His mouth tightened. "I never said I didn't want a baby."

"Your complete avoidance of the subject said it for you. Every time I  tried to talk it through so we were on the same page, you said it was a  future conversation."

"It was a future conversation. The timing wasn't right for either of  us. But regardless of how I feel on the matter, the fact is, we are  pregnant. We need to deal with it, and running away and hiding isn't  going to work."

"I wasn't running away. This was planned."

"Before you added our baby's health to the equation."

She studied the taut, sharply defined lines of his face. This was a  Coburn she didn't know. The tough, impenetrable iteration of him that  had emerged from their bitter split.

A total stranger.

"Show me where your room is," he ordered. "We have one shot to get out of here tonight, and I'm not missing it."

Her shoulders slumped, exhaustion taking her in one fell swoop. She  didn't have the energy to lift another finger, let alone go through  another day like the one she'd just had.

She lifted her gaze to his. "I will come with you because I agree it's  the right thing to do. But you will not order me around, Coburn. Not  anymore."         

     



 

His rock-hard expression didn't change. "Let's go."

She led him into the hotel and upstairs to her room. She didn't have  much to pack because she'd brought only the bare essentials. They  checked out and traveled to the airport in a dark sedan with blacked-out  windows manned by two big burly security types.

With an ease only the Grant family's connections could produce, they  were ushered through a quick separate security check and onto the  company jet. Diana buckled into her seat and watched her dream fly out  the window as the plane took off, banking over the sprawling capital  city and heading west. So angry with Coburn, so angry at everything, she  laid her head back against the cushiony seat as soon as they were  airborne and closed her eyes.

She fell asleep almost instantly in the seductive coolness of the  perfectly climate-controlled jet. She woke halfway through their journey  as they refueled in Spain, ate the omelet the flight attendant served  once they were airborne and went back to sleep. She must have slept for a  long, long time, because when she woke again it was dark and Coburn was  nudging her to put her seat belt on for landing.

She rubbed her eyes, drunk on sleep, and slid the belt on. Looking out  the window, she searched for the bright lights of New York. It was  pitch-black outside. She looked at Coburn, confused. "Didn't you say we  were about to land?"

He looked up from his paperwork. "We are."

She looked out the window again. It was as if they were in the middle  of nowhere. Alarm bells rocketed through her. "Where are we?"

"About twenty miles north of an island in the Caribbean."

Her vision went red. "You said you were taking me home."