‘Then don’t turn this into one!’ He turned the tables on her as quick as a flash. ‘You are my life, my heart, my soul, Evie,’ he added gruffly. ‘I would do anything for you; I thought you knew that.’
‘Except marry me,’ she said, then grimaced at herself for stupidly blurting it out like that.
His answering sigh was heavy. It wasn’t words but—good grief—it spoke volumes in other ways. ‘Is that what this is all about?’
‘No,’ she denied, and went to get up, but his hand came out to press her down again.
‘Talk,’ he commanded. ‘Or reconcile yourself to the uncomfortable prospect of spending the night right here.’
He meant it, too; that tough macho gleam was in his eyes again. On a sigh she subsided. He let go of her, recognising the sigh as a gesture of defeat. Evie turned her gaze back to the moonlit lake once again, felt a tightness pull around her chest, and said flatly, ‘I’m pregnant.’
CHAPTER FIVE
AS ANNOUNCEMENTS went, this one truly took the trophy. To his credit, Raschid didn’t groan in horror or curse and shout, or demand to know how the hell she had allowed such a stupid thing to happen. All the things he certainly had a right to do.
In fact, he didn’t do anything. He just continued to sit there, as silent as death, as still as stone, utilising that impressive bank of self-discipline Evie knew he possessed to hold himself in check while he attempted to take the shocking news in.
And it was awful—worse, much worse than she’d even envisaged this moment was going to be because she knew this man so very well, and knowing him meant she understood exactly what his silence was actually saying.
Raschid’s world and all it meant to him had just been effectively brought tumbling down around him. And this was more than just the noble Arab prince holding his emotions in check as he had been trained from birth to do in times of disaster.
He was sitting there like that because he was literally paralysed with dismay.
‘Say something,’ she prompted when she could stand his silence no longer.
‘Like what?’ he asked, then admitted grimacingly, ‘I find I am struck speechless.’
Well, speechless just about covered it, Evie thought painfully. ‘How, where and when seem good places to start,’ she huskily suggested.
‘Okay…’ At last he moved, turning his head to look at her—though Evie couldn’t bring herself to look back at him now.
‘How?’ He began with her first suggestion.
Her hunched shoulders gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t know how,’ she answered honestly. ‘Somewhere along the line, my birth control has let me down but I just don’t know how it did. The where depends on the when,’ she went on huskily. ‘Which was about six weeks ago,’ she calculated. ‘Which in turn probably means it happened during the weekend we spent together on your yacht in the Mediterranean,’ she assumed. ‘Though I will know better when I see a doctor…’
‘So this is not yet confirmed?’
Did he have to sound so damned hopeful? Her chest began to hurt with the tension she was putting on it, her throat locking up on a tight ball of emotion she didn’t dare release.
‘Home testing sets are pretty accurate these days,’ she informed him flatly.
Another long silence followed that, one that throbbed and pulled and picked at the flesh like an animal chewing on a dead carcass. Only Evie’s carcass wasn’t dead. It was alive and hurting in more ways than she would have believed possible.
Out on the lake the owl hooted its lonely call for a mate again. The moon slithered its eerie way across the glass-smooth waters—and Christina’s bouquet continued to float right there in front of them, making really heavy irony now of its good-luck significance.
‘You knew about this two weeks ago, didn’t you?’ he said suddenly.
What was the use in lying? ‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘Damn it, Evie!’ His control suddenly exploded, launching him to his feet as shock gave way to a burst of anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me then? Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me?’ He lashed at her. ‘The problems they are going to cause?’ A sigh shot from him, his dark face contorting with blistering condemnation as he violently spun his back on her. ‘What a mess!’ he muttered thickly. ‘What a damned mess!’
White-faced and shaken by his scorching response, Evie came more slowly to her feet to stand staring at him in utter dismay. For, no matter how terrible she had expected his reaction to be, she hadn’t expected anything quite so brutal as this.