The Purest of Diamonds(40)

                ‘That’s not your choice to make, Leila.’

                ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she begged him quietly. ‘I won’t stand here and take your contempt, Raffa. I might not be anything special, but I’m not a piece of dirt attached to your shoe either.’

                ‘How should I behave towards you, Leila?’ His head was still ringing with everything she’d told him. ‘Like the love of my life? Like a woman I’ve known for years and have planned to have a baby with? Or a woman I slept with once, who gets herself knocked up?’

                The slap came out of nowhere.

                Seizing her wrist an instant before her hand connected with his face, he held her motionless in front of him as a bolt of fury flashed between them.

                ‘I don’t expect either of those things,’ she assured him in a low, cold voice. ‘I expect you to treat me with the respect due to the mother of your child, and nothing more. I don’t expect anything from you in the material sense. I never have, and I never will.’

                ‘Really?’ He almost laughed.

                ‘Don’t mock me, Raffa. And don’t judge me by the standards of anyone else you might have known. Whatever you think of me, I won’t allow you to ride roughshod over me.’

                ‘So what do you want, Leila?’

                ‘Nothing. Not from you,’ she assured him with icy calm. ‘I’m going to keep this baby and be a single mother like so many other women, and I’ll get by.’

                ‘Without me in the picture?’ He laughed. ‘You are naïve.’

                ‘Naïve, Raffa? Or does the fact that I don’t need you hurt your pride?’

                He ground his jaw as a very real and primal fear rose up inside him. Reason had no part to play in that fear and it was centred around the birth of his child, and the safety of the woman in front of him. ‘I don’t remember you consulting me about any of this,’ he said as blood pounded in his head.

                ‘I don’t need to consult you, Raffa. I’m not your employee. This is my body and my baby.’

                ‘Our baby,’ he shot back. ‘There’s a very good reason for my not wanting children—’

                ‘Well, why don’t you tell me what it is?’ she exclaimed.

                No. He could never do that. The guilt haunted him. It disabled him. ‘All you need to know is that I don’t want children. I never have and I never will, and this little surprise of yours hasn’t changed anything.’

                ‘Can’t you explain why you feel so strongly?’ Leila begged him.

                As she reached out to touch him he pulled away. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done.’

                Shaking her head slowly, Leila raised her wounded gaze to his face. ‘So what are you suggesting, Raffa?’ she asked him quietly. ‘Are you asking me to get rid of this baby?’

                He reeled mentally at Leila’s mistaken interpretation of his words. ‘What type of man do you take me for?’

                ‘That’s just it, Raffa. I don’t know what kind of man you are. I thought I did, but I was wrong. I don’t understand why you’re so set against having children. Is it me?’