Reunited for the Billionaire's Legacy(15)
But none of this changed the fact that she was pregnant now. She either brought this child up with Coburn in a loveless marriage based on sex or they negotiated joint custody and passed the child back and forth like a tennis match.
She grimaced. Neither sounded appealing. To live with Coburn knowing he would never love her the way he once had would tear her heart out. Treating her child like a pawn in their separate agendas seemed equally distressing. Unless she found a way to control her feelings. Unless, she expanded in an “aha” moment, she took her emotions out of the equation. Which would by definition mean no sex. Just a convenient partnership to bring up their child.
Not what Coburn had been envisioning, surely, by his speech on the plane. But the only way she could play this without ending up a victim of her feelings was to negate them.
She thought about what she’d said to him. About marrying again... Thought about how completely he had owned her just now when she had kissed him. There would never be a man like that for her again. He was right. You came across that once in a lifetime if you were lucky. She’d had her turn.
What clinched it for her finally was Coburn’s statement about giving their child a better emotional base than he’d had. She wanted that. She wanted her baby to grow up with parents who cared about his or her emotional well-being—parents who didn’t treat their offspring like a chess piece in the game of marriage. Parents who cared about more than what grades the child brought home or what school he or she got into.
Her eyes fluttered closed. In that, she and Coburn were united. Not a bad thing to devote your marriage to.
When the sun got too hot to take, she stood up and brushed the sand from her limbs. For the first time in a week since her doctor had uttered those momentous three words, she had clarity as she walked back along the beach. Her husband might not like her plan, but that was all that was on offer. He could take it or leave it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THE SUN dipped into the sea in a spectacular orange and crimson ending to a brutally hot day and the scents of the island descended over the cottage in a dozen different perfumes that stroked the senses, Coburn was just about to tell the cook his wife was feeling unwell and ask if she would take a tray up to her room when Diana appeared on the deck overlooking the water.
She had changed into one of the filmy, understated dresses Arthur Kent’s PA had left in her room for her, the fuchsia silk dress embroidered with tiny white flowers making her look delicate and untouchable. His eyes narrowed on her ultraslim figure. The dress was too big for her even though it was her usual size. She had lost weight. She had not been well, and that needed to stop for the sake of their baby. She would listen to reason.
He watched as she walked to the railing that overlooked the rolling waves and rested her elbows on the edge. Her back was ramrod straight, the haughty tilt of her head at a fighting angle. Was it that much of a bitter pill to come back to him for the sake of this baby? Was being with him that distasteful?
His lips compressed into a tight line as he clenched his hands by his sides. Until she’d left him in a move he could never have anticipated, he had always thought his rocky road with Diana would level out. That these were the hard years with them where they were finding their way and they would learn to compromise. He had been in a state of shock when she’d left, if the truth were to be known. He had expected her to come back to him as she always did when they fought, when she gave in to the inevitability that was them. But days had grown into weeks, and when he had finally called to end the standoff, she’d refused to speak to him.
His mouth curled in a grimace. His naïveté was staggering. The belief that if you loved someone enough you could overcome the differences that had ultimately pushed you oceans apart.
Something low and heavy stirred in his gut. He had tried so hard to put this woman out of his head. And still she tied him in knots.
“Give us fifteen minutes,” he murmured to Lucie, the cook.
Snaring the bottle of nonalcoholic champagne he’d chilled from the refrigerator, he took two glasses from the cupboard and joined Diana on the deck.
The fading light cast his wife in a golden glow as he came to stand beside her at the railing. “Is your nausea anything to worry about?”
She turned to face him, her dark lashes fanning down over her cheeks in a wary look that said the fight was not over. “It should settle down in a few weeks.”
“You’ve lost weight. Isn’t that hard on the baby?”
She shook her head. “Lots of women lose weight in the first trimester. I’ll gain it back quickly when the pregnancy accelerates.”
He caught the agitated gleam that flared in her eyes. “You’re nervous.”
“Of course I’m nervous. In nine months, maybe less, I’m going to be bringing a new life into the world. A child that is totally dependent on me for everything, every minute, every hour of the day.”
“Us,” he corrected, setting the bottle and glasses on the table beside him. “We are having this child. You aren’t alone in this, Diana.”
“I love how men say that,” she mocked. “You aren’t the ones carrying the baby. You aren’t the ones suffering the debilitating nausea and you aren’t the ones sleep deprived from getting up in the night.”
“Because we can’t,” he pointed out. “But there is such a thing as a bottle and we can take turns.”
Her gaze skimmed over his perfectly pressed shirt. “I can just see it now. You walking the living room floor at two in the morning with the baby draped over your shoulder as you rehearse your presentation for the next day.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I will.”
“Right. And when you start leaving zeros out of numbers and cost the company millions it’ll still be all good.”
He scowled. “Now you’re being ridiculous. This goes to the issue of control and you hating the fact that you’re losing it.”
She waved her arms around them. “And what is this? What would your slick tongue call this? Persuasion?”
“Reason,” he returned with a sigh. “I thought the afternoon might have put you in a better mood.”
“What? Lounging in the sea and sun is supposed to make me forget you’ve kidnapped me to make me see your way?”
He elected not to answer that, instead picking up the champagne and uncorking it. She flicked a glance at the bottle. “I can’t have any of that. Another joy of being the one carrying this baby. At least if I could drink, I could tolerate you.”
“This is nonalcoholic.”
“What are we celebrating? You forcing me into captivity?”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “We created a baby together that night at my apartment. I thought it was time we acknowledged the fact.”
The husky edge to his voice caught him off guard. He kept his eyes on hers, his words hanging on the air between them like a challenge—a statement he dared her to refute. She stared at him for a long moment as if deciding which way to go. Finally, she inclined her head. “It is...something to celebrate.”
He handed her a glass of the bubbly. “I’m glad we agree on that.”
She touched her glass to his and took a sip. He took a mouthful of his own and pointed his glass at her. “Have you come to a decision?”
“Yes.” A closed, impenetrable expression passed across her face. “I agree it would be better for us to bring this child up together. If we can remain civil with each other. I agree we need to learn to understand each other better in order to do that. But I have ground rules.”
His gaze narrowed. “What kind of ground rules?”
“The only way I will agree to do this is if we do it on a strictly contractual basis. We will be together for the sole reason of raising this child. We will behave amicably toward each other, but there will be no sex.”
A wave of incredulity swept through him. “You expect us to remain married but not have sex?”
“Exactly like that.” Her mouth curved as she echoed his favorite expression.
It took him a moment to find a response to that, it was so...ludicrous. “I think,” he replied slowly, “that you are forgetting it was you as much as me initiating our sexual encounters.”
“Not anymore.” She lifted her delicate, stubborn chin. “I refuse to engage in emotional warfare with you, Coburn. I’ve had a lifetime of it already. If we’re going to raise this child together without creating a war zone, we need neutral ground.”
“So in other words you’re being a coward.”
“No, I’m being smart. A self-preservationist. We both know how you can rip me apart with the easiest of efforts. You did it that night at your apartment. That’s what started all this. So now we take it out of the equation.”
“Let’s just be clear here,” he countered, his tone edged with a warning note. “You started it that night. Not me.”
“Funny how you learn from your mistakes.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the railing. “So I’m supposed to be in a marriage with no physical gratification. How do you think that’s going to work?”
“You were the one giving the lectures on self-sacrifice. Or was that just you talking and me listening?”