"And yet it did."
"Yes, it did."
"I shouldn't have trusted you. I shouldn't have touched you. God, what are we going to do?"
"Well, if the bleeding stops as it's supposed to and everything settles down okay, we're going to become parents together," she said softly, trying to infuse her voice with enthusiasm and encouragement in the vain hope it might sink past his shock.
He looked at her in horror.
"If everything settles down? What are you saying-are you going to be okay?" he asked, his face suddenly pale.
"The doctor wants to refer me to maternity services in Christchurch to be certain. I need to wait for an appointment."
"No, no waiting. I'll get you in to see someone privately."
"I can't afford that, Raoul," she protested. "I don't have full cover on my medical insurance."
"I'll pay for it. I need to know what's going on." He diverted from his pacing path, seeming to head to the door-most likely to make the necessary calls to doctors right away.
"Raoul, please, believe me when I say I didn't want this to happen," she whispered before he could leave.
He closed his eyes and shook his head and she saw his throat move as he swallowed.
"Neither did I, Alexis. Neither did I. Try to get some rest. I'll see to Ruby when she wakes."
He took the mobile monitor that Alexis kept at her bedside and clipped it to his belt.
"But what about the couriers? I thought you had a busy day ahead."
"I do, but I'll just have to work around it, won't I?"
Tears of frustration pricked at the back of her eyes but she refused to let them go.
"Raoul," she said as he moved once more to leave the room. "I'm so sorry."
"Me, too."
She stared at the door as he closed it behind him, her heart aching for what she was putting him through. She'd seen the abject terror in his eyes this morning, followed later by shock when he'd overheard the nurse talking to her at the clinic.
Alexis pressed a hand to her lower belly, hoping against hope that everything would be all right. For all of them. This wasn't the way she'd wanted him to find out. She'd wanted to tell him, in her own time, her own way. But nature had decided otherwise. And now it was Raoul's turn to decide how to respond.
* * *
Raoul paced back and forth in the family room, bound to stay at the house by his promise to take care of Ruby and to let Alexis rest, which meant staying within range of the baby monitor. He fought his instinct to flee, to head deep into the vineyard and walk and walk until he could walk no more.
Dark clouds scudded across the sky, heavy with rain that began to fall in steady droplets, battering against the glass stacking doors that looked out over the garden. He leaned his forehead against the glass, welcoming the cold, the numbness. Anything was better than the horror that played through his mind right now.
Alexis. Pregnant.
He braced his hands against a door frame and stared blindly out into the drenched garden as the two words echoed over and over in his head.
This couldn't be happening. Not again. Hadn't life dealt him a hard enough blow with Bree, now it had to throw this at him, too? This wasn't something he could come to terms with. And tied in with the fear he felt at her condition was a strong sense of betrayal-again. He'd trusted Alexis, believed she was telling the truth after that first time they'd been together. She'd never mentioned the slightest doubt that she was safely protected from pregnancy.
His eyes burned as the wind picked up, blasting cold rain directly at the surface of the glass doors. Still he didn't move. Couldn't. He was frozen to this spot as much as he was frozen inside. He'd begun to thaw, he'd felt it, noticed it bit by bit as Alexis had worked her way under his skin and into his heart. Had stopped fighting against it, had even begun to trust that maybe, just maybe, the time was right to live again.
He was a damn fool. Hadn't he learned his lesson the hard way? People who professed to love you were also prepared to lie to you, as well. Bree had. He hadn't thought that Alexis ever would. She was so honest, so open and giving. He'd heard Alexis say she loved him one night as he'd fallen asleep. He knew how she felt. It was there in her every word, her every touch. When they made love he could feel her giving him a piece of her every single time. Making him feel again, making him want more, even making him begin to dream.
But she'd lied, too. And now worse, she, too, was at risk. The baby possibly already threatening her life as well as its own.
He'd always wanted a big family. That wish continued to come back to haunt him. He fought back the scream that struggled to be released from deep inside of him, too afraid to let it go in case he couldn't stop howling once it started.
He couldn't do this again. He simply couldn't. He'd already lost one woman he'd loved-a woman he'd pledged to spend the rest of his life with. The pain of that loss had been crushing. Discovering she'd kept her life-threatening condition from him even more so.
He wasn't prepared to lose another.
Oh, my God, he thought, I love her. I love Alexis.
Hard on the realization came fear. With love came loss, he knew that to his cost. Already Alexis's pregnancy was putting her at risk. If the worst should happen and Bree's experience be repeated, he knew he wouldn't survive that again. He had to put away those feelings for good. He thought he had achieved that already but Alexis's steady and constant undermining of his stance with Ruby had undone that.
Her gentle ways, her care and support, all of it had left him wide-open to hurt all over again. He hadn't wanted to love her-hadn't even wanted to want her the way he did. Even now he felt the urge to race back to her room, to make sure she was okay, but he couldn't trust himself around her. Couldn't trust her.
He needed to pull himself together, to shore up his defenses all over again. Only this time he needed to make them impenetrable. Nothing and no one would get past them ever again.
Feeling stronger, more in control, Raoul dragged his cell phone from his pocket and thumbed through his contacts list. There it was, the number for Bree's obstetrician. He hit Dial before he could change his mind. For all that had happened to Bree, the guy was one of the best in the country and Alexis deserved that. And he himself needed to know exactly what they were dealing with.
A few minutes later, an appointment made-thanks to a cancellation-for in a couple of days' time, he shoved his phone back in his pocket. Until then he had to keep his mind busy and his heart firmly locked down back where it belonged, where nothing and no one could reach it.
* * *
"I don't see why you weren't prepared to let me wait until my appointment came through from the hospital," Alexis grumbled as he drove her to Christchurch two days later. "I've stopped bleeding anyway."
"Don't you want to know why you started bleeding in the first place?"
"Raoul, sometimes these things happen. There might not be a why, sometimes things simply are."
He shook his head, dissatisfied with her answer. "No, there's always a reason and always a solution. There has to be."
He heard Alexis sigh and out the corner of his eye he saw her turn her head and look out the side window.
"Are you feeling okay?" he asked, the same question he asked of her several times each day.
"I'm fine, a bit queasy but that's normal. Unless I'm driving I often get a bit of motion sickness."
"Do you want to drive?" he offered.
"No, it's okay, I'll be all right."
"Let me know if you need me to stop."
"Sure." She sighed again. "Do you think Ruby will be okay with Catherine? She was pretty upset when we left."
"She'll settle. Call Catherine if you're worried."
"No, I'm sure she'll settle, like you say."
They traveled the rest of the hour-and-a-quarter journey in silence. When they reached the specialist's rooms, Raoul parked the Range Rover, assailed again by the awful reminder that he'd been through this before. Maybe coming to the appointment with her wasn't such a great idea after all, he thought, his stomach tying in knots as they got out the car and he guided Alexis toward the building and through to reception.
Alexis gave her name to the receptionist and joined Raoul in the waiting room. He could feel her nervousness wash over him in waves. If theirs had been a normal relationship, he'd be holding her hand right now, infusing her with his strength and lending her his support. Instead, she perched on the chair next to him, as tightly wound as a bale of grapevine trellis wire.