Scandalously Expecting His Child(39)

                But it never failed. She always left first thing in the morning, never once waking him up to say goodbye. He’d hoped today would be different, since he’d told her he wouldn’t go to work before noon today. He’d hoped she’d take this as what he’d meant it to be, an invitation to sleep in with him and have a late breakfast together.

                But then why should he feel so disappointed that she hadn’t heeded his implication? Beyond the relentless demands he made on her sexually, in anything else he maintained a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. She probably didn’t even realize there’d been an invitation hidden in his words.

                But his attitude was just a front. In reality, every second he spent in her company, the bad memories of the past faded, as if they’d happened to someone else. He could no longer see her through their tainted prism. He believed he now saw through to her core self, the real woman. He believed he felt what she felt. Though she was vocal only in passion, he could swear he sensed that this was no longer purely sexual to her. If it had ever been.

                And he wasn’t deluding himself about this. He’d been feeling this even before learning the truth about her current work made him radically change his opinion of her character.

                When he’d first investigated her activities in Japan, he’d thought her humanitarian work with UNICEF was just an ingenious way of wheedling herself into major businessmen’s pockets, like Hiro, for donations she’d pocket herself. Then she’d asked for the hundred million, stating it would all be used in her work. He hadn’t been in a condition at the time to care why she’d asked for it, had vaguely thought she’d had to at least be exaggerating about the money’s intended use. But after he’d given her the money, and she continued working harder than ever, he had to revise his suspicions, since he’d given her more than ten years’ worth of donation drives could raise.

                Further investigations had revealed the incredible results she’d been consistently getting for the past three years, fifteen months of those in Japan. Everything fell into place in the light of his new time with her. And that was before he’d discovered her most ambitious project was being funded by her own money. The money she’d taken from him.

                He’d then realized she’d asked him for it only so it would free her from dependence on donations and other sources of official funding. Those had been limiting the scope of what she could achieve, and she was always threatened by being forced to stop her projects altogether if she ran out of money. He’d even traced parts of the previous sum he’d given her to more of her humanitarian efforts. He now had no doubt the rest of it had been put to very good use, as she’d told him that first night. He’d thought she was being provocative, but she’d only been telling him the truth. And expecting him to believe the worst.

                But even doing so, with the way he’d been feeling, he would have given her a billion dollars had she asked. The way he was feeling now, if she asked, he’d sign over all his assets.

                Now he watched her from slit eyes as she paused at the door of his expansive bedroom and looked back. In her utilitarian clothes and ponytail, she looked so practical, so young. So fragile. She’d lost a lot of weight in the past six weeks, and he could sometimes swear she was reverting to what she’d been before.

                She hadn’t realized he’d woken up. And the expression that came over her, the emotions that gripped her features when she thought she was safe from his scrutiny, speared through him.

                Such wistfulness, such pervasive dejection.

                Long after she’d closed the door and he heard her leave his penthouse, he lay there on his back in the bed in which they’d shared indescribable intimacies, staring at the ceiling.

                Why was she feeling that way? Did she feel that way?