Page 14 of Pregnancy Clause in Their Paper Marriage

‘I didn’t say it was simple.’

‘You implied it. I can say I’ll love my baby. I can even mean it... But will I? When I don’t even know what a mother’s love looks like?’

He frowned. ‘Was your mother that bad?’

Lana thought of her mother’s angry rants, the sudden smacks and slaps, the constant, simmering fury and bitterness. ‘Well, she wasn’t great,’ she said carefully. ‘She was tired and strung out, and she resented me for being alive and made sure I always knew it. So, it’s made me a little wary of loving people, I suppose.’

She was being more honest than she’d ever been with him before and hating it even as she recognised it was necessary, because sheknewthis about herself. She didn’tlikeloving people—the utter weakness of it, the endless opening to humiliation and hurt. Would she feel that way with her own child? She didn’t want to, she was hoping she’d be different with her baby, but...what if she wasn’t?

‘I suppose,’ Christos replied after a moment, his tone thoughtful, ‘that’s a risk every mother—every parent—has to take.’

‘It’s more of a risk for some than others.’

‘And you think it’s more of a risk for you?’ He sounded more curious than alarmed.

‘I—I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I’m afraid it might be.’ She glanced down at her hands, now folded on the table. ‘The truth is, I don’t—I don’t like loving people.’

Christos was silent for a moment. ‘And yet you were worried that you might fall in love with me.’

A blaze of shock—as well as an unexpected fury—went through her. ‘I never said that!’

He shrugged, unfazed by her ire. ‘You implied it, don’t you think, when you said sex complicates things? Presumably, that was what you meant.’

Yes, it had been, but she still didn’t like him saying it as bluntly as that. She didn’t like the way it made her feel, all exposed and raw. ‘I’mnotgoing to fall in love with you,’ she stated fiercely, and he gave her a faint smile.

‘Good, because I’m not going to fall in love with you.’ Amazing how he could say that as if it was a compliment. He leaned across the table. ‘But I think we’ll both love our baby, don’t you?’

Christos watched as emotions chased across his wife’s face—surprise, uncertainty, fear, and then, finally, thankfully, hope.

He sat back as he waited for her to process what he’d said. Admittedly, he was a little shaken, not so much by what she’d said, which he’d sort of guessed the gist of anyway, but with thewayshe’d said it. The vulnerability she’d shown, because he didn’t know what to do with it. Just as it always had before, it made something in him start to shut down, a door starting to close, and there was nothing he could do about it but try to act as though it weren’t happening.

Briefly, painfully, he let himself think of his mother, Marina Diakos, lying in bed, one scrawny hand outstretched towards him in desperate supplication.‘Christos... Please. I love you.’

And then his sister, years later.‘Christos, please. Come home. I need you.’

And he’d walked away from them both.

He forced the memories away. He’d failed his family, he knew he had, because they’d shown him their weaknesses, their need, and he hadn’t been able to cope with any of it. He’d rejected them utterly, in a way he could never forgive. But he wasn’t going to be that way with Lana, because she wasn’t going to need him the way his family had.

So really, he realised uncomfortably, the question she should be asking him wasn’t whether she’d make a good mother, but whether he’d make a good father.

He hadn’t wanted children before, because he’d been unsure of whether he could be a good father or not. So what made him so confident now, that this could work?

‘I certainly hope we’d love our child,’ Lana replied, drawing him back to the present. ‘Since we want to have one in the first place.’

‘There you are, then.’ He shrugged away the discomfort of his own thoughts. Itwassimple. At least it could be. They could make it so.

She let out a little sigh. ‘Maybe I’m overthinking this, but a baby is a big thing. I don’t want to mess it—him or her—up.’

‘On that we’re agreed.’

She eyed him thoughtfully, her head tilted to one side, a strand of strawberry-blonde hair brushing her cheek. ‘You seem so sure about this. So...relaxed.’

He shrugged, wishing he felt as relaxed as he was acting. Those old memories, those desperate ghosts, had a habit of rising up and reminding him of just how badly he’d let people down. The people who loved him.

But Lana wouldn’t love him.

And as for their child...he’d move heaven and earth to be there for his own little boy or girl. He had to hold onto those truths. ‘I try to be. I don’t know that there’s much point in going over all the things that could go wrong.’