THEY DIDN’T SPEAK during the three-hour drive to Athens. His hands clenched on the wheel, Leo slid a covert, sideways glance towards Margo. She sat very still, one hand resting on the handle of the door, her face pale and composed.
She seemed a little better than she had yesterday, but she still looked tired and washed out. She wore a sweater dress of magenta wool that clung to her shape, making him realise just how much weight she’d lost—although he could still see the gentle swell of her small baby bump. His baby.
He was, of course, going to insist on the paternity test, and yet Leo felt in his gut that the baby was his. Margo wouldn’t have agreed to everything so readily if she’d had any doubt. Which made him wonder how she could be so certain.
He hadn’t given much thought to the other man in Margo’s life; he’d simply shut the door on the whole idea and tried not to think of her—or him—at all. Now, however, he wondered—and he realised they needed to address it.
‘This other man,’ he said abruptly. ‘Are you still with him?’
She turned to him, the ghost of a sad smile curving her lips. ‘Do you think I’d be here if I was?’
‘I have no idea.’
She let out a small sigh. ‘No, Leo. We’re not together.’
‘When did you break it off?’
She didn’t answer and his hands clenched harder on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white.
‘Well, Margo? It’s not that hard a question. I need to know if this guy is going to resurface in our lives, because I assure you—’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ she said, and closed her eyes. ‘Leo, there is no other man. There never was.’
He turned sharply to stare at her. Her eyes were still closed; she was leaning her head back against the seat. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Not really, but it’s the truth.’
‘Why did you lie to me before, then?’ he demanded.
Again she didn’t answer, and he wondered if she were scrambling for some plausible excuse.
‘Because,’ she finally said softly, her eyes still closed, ‘I knew it was the one thing that would send you away for good.’
Leo blinked, stung by this almost as much as he’d been by her alleged infidelity. ‘You mean my proposal of marriage was so abhorrent to you that you needed to lie to get rid of me?’
‘You’re putting it in the worst possible light, but, yes, I suppose that’s true.’
The sheer rejection of it, as brutal as his father’s had been, left him speechless.
He stared straight ahead, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. ‘And yet here we are, about to get married.’
She opened her eyes and gazed at him bleakly. ‘Yes. Here we are.’
‘I don’t understand you, Margo.’
‘I know.’
‘If, four months ago, the idea of marrying me was so disagreeable, why did you come back? Plenty of children live with single or divorced parents. You could have managed. I wouldn’t have forced you to marry me. We could have come to a custody arrangement.’ He hesitated, and then continued. ‘We still could.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, thoughts whirling through his mind like leaves in an autumn wind. Margo’s rejection of him hurt more than he wanted to admit. And yet...she’d come back. She’d chosen to be here. They could still find a way ahead, for the sake of their child.
And the truth is, you still want her.
Underneath his anger the old desire burned just as bright, just as fierce.
‘Leo...there’s no reason we can’t be amicable with each other, is there?’
She laid her hand on his arm, her fingers long and slender, the touch as light as a butterfly and yet still seeming to reach right inside him and clench a fist around his heart.
‘We can be friends,’ she continued. ‘A convenient marriage doesn’t have to be a cold one.’
Friends—when she’d either cheated on him or lied in the worst possible way in order to avoid marrying him? Friends—when she clearly viewed marriage to him as a sacrifice? The desire he’d felt was no more than that: desire. Lust.
He pulled his arm away. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered coolly. ‘I think it’s best if we keep this businesslike.’
She turned her head towards the window. ‘And will we be “businesslike” in bed?’
‘We’ve never had a problem with that aspect of our relationship,’ Leo answered. He’d keep his physical feelings for Margo separate from any potential emotional complications. ‘And we won’t once we’re married.’
They were on the outskirts of Athens now, with the raised mount of the Acropolis visible on the horizon. They didn’t speak until they’d reached Leo’s apartment in Kolonaki.
* * *
Margo had never been to Leo’s city home before. Now she walked around the elegant rooms that took up the top floor of a nineteenth-century townhouse. The living room and dining room had been knocked together to create a large open space scattered with black and white leather sofas and tables of chrome and glass.
A huge canvas of wavy green lines and white splotches was the only colour in the whole room. She stood in front of it, wondering if this was the kind of modern art Leo liked. It had probably cost a fortune, and it looked as if it had been painted by a five-year-old.
‘A masterpiece made by my nephew Timon,’ he said as he came to stand beside her.
‘I didn’t know you had a nephew.’
There was, she realised, so much she didn’t know about him. She knew what he liked in bed, and what kind of food he liked to order in, and that he preferred classical music to jazz. She knew he shaved with an old-fashioned straight razor and that the only cologne he wore was a splash of citrus-scented aftershave. She knew what a woman would know of a lover, but not of someone she loved. Not of a husband.
‘Yes, my sister’s son.’
‘Is he an aspiring artist, then?’ she asked, with a nod to the canvas.
‘I suppose you could say that. He’s three.’
Margo let out a surprised laugh. ‘And I was just thinking this painting looked like it was done by a five-year-old and had probably cost a fortune.’
‘Luckily for me, it cost nothing. My interior designer wanted me to spend a hundred thousand euros on some modern atrocity and I said my nephew could do something better. He did.’ He glanced briefly at the huge canvas. ‘I quite like it, actually. It’s meant to be the olive groves, when the trees blossom in spring.’
‘I like it too,’ Margo answered. ‘Especially now that I know it’s done by your nephew.’
For a moment, no more, it felt like the way things had used to be, or even better. Easy, relaxed... A faint smile curved Leo’s mouth as he stared at the painting, and Margo felt her wilting spirits lift as hope that they might in fact be able to have an amicable marriage after all unfurled inside her.
Then Leo turned away.
‘I’ve put your things in the guest bedroom. You can refresh yourself and then we’ll go to the doctor.’
The guest bedroom was as sumptuous as the rest of the apartment, with a huge king-sized bed covered in a cream silk duvet and an en-suite bathroom with a sunken marble tub. Margo was tempted to run a bath and have a soak, but she knew Leo would be waiting, watching her every move, and the thought made her too uptight to relax, even in a bubble bath.
She washed her face and hands instead, and put on a little make-up, no more than concealer to cover the dark shadows under her eyes, and a little blusher and lipstick to give her face some colour.
‘Have you eaten today?’ Leo called through the closed door. ‘Maria told me you didn’t have supper last night, nor breakfast this morning.’
So Maria was her keeper and his spy? Margo tried not to let it rankle. ‘I can’t manage much food,’ she answered. She took a quick breath and opened the door.
Leo stood there, scowling.
‘You need to keep up your strength.’
‘I would if I could, Leo, but I can’t keep anything down.’
‘I thought the medication you were prescribed helps?’
‘It does,’ Margo answered. ‘But I still have to be careful.’ She tried for a smile. ‘I’ve eaten a lot of melba toast. It’s the one thing my stomach can stand.’
‘Melba toast?’ he repeated.
Margo shrugged. ‘My doctor said I should start to feel better soon.’
‘I don’t even know how far along you are.’
‘Seventeen weeks. The baby is due in the end of April.’
He looked startled by that news, and Margo wondered if the actuality of a baby—a living person coming into their lives—had just become more real to him.
But all he said was, ‘We should go.’
‘I’ll just get my coat.’
Leo insisted on driving to the doctor’s, even though it was only a few blocks away.
‘You look as if a breath of wind could knock you over,’ he informed her, and Margo told herself he was actually being considerate, even if it came across, as did everything else, as both a command and a criticism.
The doctor’s office was plush and well-appointed, and they were seen immediately. Margo perched on top of the examination table, feeling shy and rather exposed with Leo in the room, standing in the corner, practically glowering.
The doctor, a neat-looking woman with a coil of dark hair and a brisk, efficient manner, took them both in with a single glance. ‘Would you prefer to be seen alone?’ she asked Margo in clipped English.
Leo looked taken aback. Clearly he’d expected the doctor he’d chosen to leap to do his bidding, just as everyone else did.
‘No,’ Margo answered, ‘but maybe you could sit down?’ She raised her eyebrows at Leo, who took a seat without a word.
‘Now, let’s see.’ The woman, who had introduced herself as Dr Tallos, flipped through the forms Margo had filled out in the waiting room. ‘You believe you’re seventeen weeks along? Have you had an ultrasound?’
‘Not yet. I was scheduled for one at twenty weeks.’
‘Well, we can do one now, just to make sure everything’s all right,’ Dr Tallos said briskly. ‘If you’d like?’
A tremor of both fear and excitement rippled through Margo. ‘Yes, all right.’
‘Let’s get that done first, then, shall we?’
‘What about the paternity test?’ Leo asked, and the doctor shot him a narrowed look while Margo flushed at the obvious implication.
‘We can establish paternity by a simple blood test. I’ll draw blood from both of you after we’ve established the baby is healthy.’ She raised her eyebrows at him, her expression and voice both decidedly cool. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
A blush touched Leo’s cheeks and Margo almost felt sorry for him. The doctor didn’t know their convoluted history.
‘That’s fine,’ he said, and sat back in his chair.
A nurse wheeled in a machine with a screen and wires, and Margo lay back on the examination table.
‘Do you mind?’ Dr Tallos asked, and lifted her dress all the way up to right underneath her breasts, pulling her tights down to reveal the soft white swell of her belly.
Now she felt really exposed, lying there like a beached whale with her belly on view. She couldn’t so much as sneak a glance at Leo, but she felt his presence, his tension.
‘This will be a little cold,’ Dr Tallos murmured, and squirted a clear gel onto Margo’s bare stomach.
It wasn’t just cold, it was icy, and she shivered.
‘Here we go.’ She started pressing a wand into Margo’s belly, hard enough to make her wince.
‘That’s hurting her,’ Leo said sharply, and both Margo and Dr Tallos turned to him in surprise.
‘It’s a bit uncomfortable,’ the doctor said, ‘but I promise you it’s not hurting anyone.’
Leo didn’t look convinced, and Margo said quietly, ‘I’m all right, Leo.’
‘There we are,’ Dr Tallos announced, and they all turned to look at the fuzzy shape on the screen.
Margo blinked, trying to connect what looked like nothing more than a few blobby circles into a shape that resembled a baby.
Then Dr Tallos started pointing things out on the screen. ‘There’s the head, and the stomach, and you can see fingers and toes—look.’
And almost as if by magic Margo could see it: the curled up bud of her baby unfurling as he—or she—stretched out arms, kicked tiny legs.
‘Kicking up a storm,’ Dr Tallos said cheerfully. ‘Do you feel anything?’
Margo shook her head. ‘Not yet.’
‘Well, don’t worry, you’re sure to in the next few weeks. And there’s the heart, beating away.’ She pointed to the flickering image on the screen, pulsing with life. ‘Let me turn up the volume and you can hear it.’
She twirled a knob on the ultrasound machine and all at once the room was filled with a sound like the galloping of a horse, an insistent swoosh that had both Leo and Margo’s jaws dropping in amazement.
‘I’ve never heard such a sound,’ Leo said softly.
He looked gobsmacked, as if someone had hit him on the head, and Margo knew how he felt. That rushing sound had knocked her for six too. It was so real.
‘Baby is measuring seventeen weeks, just as you said,’ Dr Tallos continued as she pressed some keys to take measurements. ‘Everything looks well. It’s a bit early to tell the sex, but we’ll schedule a more comprehensive ultrasound for twenty weeks. Now...’ She flicked off the machine and removed the wand from Margo’s stomach before handing her a paper towel to wipe off the gel. ‘I’ll give you a moment to clean yourself and we’ll do the blood test.’ She turned to Leo with raised eyebrows. ‘I’m assuming that’s still required?’
He hesitated, and Margo jumped in. ‘Yes, it’s required,’ she said. She would not have Leo casting any more aspersions or doubt.
Fifteen minutes later they’d left the doctor’s office, with their promise to call with the results of the paternity test tomorrow.
It was strange, walking along the city street together, crossing the wide boulevard lined with cafés and upscale boutiques.
‘Wait just a moment,’ Leo said, and ducked into a gourmet deli.
Margo waited on the pavement, the brisk December wind buffeting her.
He came out a few minutes later, a paper bag in hand. ‘Melba toast,’ he said, and Margo, quite suddenly, felt near to tears. ‘Margo, what is it?’ he asked.
She sniffed and shook her head. ‘Nothing. I’m just emotional because I’m pregnant. And being at the doctor’s office...hearing the heartbeat...’
Leo frowned. ‘That was a good thing, was it not?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course it was.’
And yet hearing that heartbeat had also terrified her—because what if it stopped? What if the next time she had an ultrasound she heard nothing but yawning, endless silence? She was used to expecting, and experiencing, the worst. She couldn’t bear for it to happen again, and yet she still braced herself for it.
‘Here.’ Leo opened the bag of melba toast and handed her a piece. ‘Eat something. You’ll feel better.’
But his kindness only made her feel worse; it opened her up so she felt broken and jagged inside. She’d told him she’d wanted an amicable marriage, but now she wondered if Leo’s coldness, even his snideness, would have been easier to handle. These little kindnesses hurt her, made her realise how much they’d both given up—and all because she hadn’t felt strong or brave enough to risk the real thing.
But it was too late for regrets, she reminded herself as she took a piece of toast and munched obediently. And it was better this way. If she kept telling herself that perhaps she’d start to believe it.
* * *
Leo watched as Margo ate a piece of toast, her shoulders hunched against the winter wind, her face pale and composed now, although he could still see the sheen of tears in her dark eyes, turning them luminous and twisting his gut.
He didn’t want her to cry. He had been angry and alarmed when he’d thought the doctor had hurt her during the ultrasound. He felt worse now, seeing her near tears. He still had feelings for Margo—feelings he had neither expected nor wanted to have. Feelings which had led him to agreeing to this marriage.
For the last four months he’d refused even to think of her. She’d been as good as dead to him. And since she’d come back into his life twenty-four hours ago he’d made sure to keep both his distance and his composure. But he hadn’t been keeping either. He saw that now. He’d been fooling himself—punishing her with snide or sarcastic comments because it was easier than grabbing her by the shoulders and demanding to know why she’d left him. Or maybe just kissing her senseless.
Who cared what her reasons had been? She was here now.
And she rejected you once. Why shouldn’t she again?
But he didn’t need to punish her any more. Perhaps he never should have, if she really was telling the truth when she said there hadn’t been anyone else. He could at least be amicable. Amicable and no more.
‘We should get back,’ he said. ‘You look like you need a rest. And I need to arrange the wedding details.’
Margo’s step faltered. ‘The wedding? Already?’
‘We’ll marry tomorrow afternoon in a civil service here in Athens. Pending the paternity results, of course.’ Margo looked dazed by that news, but he continued, an edge to his voice. ‘Surely, considering our circumstances, you don’t expect the whole church and white dress affair?’
Fire flashed in her eyes. ‘Are you really so old-fashioned and chauvinistic?’
‘How is that either of those things?’ Leo demanded. ‘We’re getting married for the sake of this child, Margo—not because we love each other or even want to be with each other.’
He was saying it for his own sake as well as hers, and somehow that just made him even more furious. ‘A church wedding would be a mockery.’
‘And a white dress would too, I suppose?’
‘This isn’t some criticism of you,’ Leo answered. ‘It’s simply a statement of fact and what our marriage really is. What it will be.’
‘Fine,’ Margo answered, her eyes still flashing. ‘Fine,’ she said again and, dropping the remnants of her toast in the bin, she walked past him towards the car.