from the computer screen so that she wouldn’t have to look at the awful words.
She closed the computer and pushed it away, her eyes filling with tears as she lay back on her pillow. How could this have happened? How could her actions have caused so much damage?
I should never have gone back. I should never have tried to talk to him. I should have just let the whole thing go.
It was hard to imagine making such a choice, though. Once she had known where he was, didn’t she have a duty to tell him the truth? She owed it to her child. She owed it to Lucas. They had the right to be in each other’s lives.
She pressed her palms over her face and breathed deeply, trying to stem the tide of emotion. She didn’t want to lie here crying over Lucas. What was done was done. She couldn’t change it now.
When she had recovered herself slightly, she got up and went to the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror, gazing at her reflection. Was it her imagination, or was her face a little rounder than it had been before?
She took off her shirt, turned to the side, and examined her stomach. She tried not to allow herself to check the growth of her belly more than twice a week, aware that if she looked too often, she wouldn’t notice the change at all. Today, she thought, she did feel a bit bigger than she had the last time she’d looked.
She ran her hand over her torso, stopping briefly between her hipbones, pretending to herself that her baby somehow knew she was here, that she was expressing affection.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “We’ve got this. Just you and me. We’ll be okay.”
Because she knew for sure now that Lucas was never going to call her. Not after she had cost him his career. He was probably too angry with her to ever want to speak to her again. And even if he wasn’t angry, he certainly couldn’t risk getting in touch with her now that all these journalists were watching his every move. He would just make things worse for himself if he tried.
Maybe it’s for the best.
In all her fantasies, all her daydreams that had involved him, she had imagined being with the man she had met in Rome. That man would have been pleasant to co-parent with. It would have been an adventure.
But the man she had met at the Quadra-Well office had been cold, uptight, compassionless. Not at all the kind of person Elise could imagine raising a child with.
She was sorry about his professional problems. She felt responsible for what had happened there. She would apologize, she knew, if she ever got the chance.
But she would be all right, and so would her baby.
She returned to her room, opened the computer again, and closed all the browser tabs without giving herself time to look at them again. Then she turned on some quiet music and curled up with a book.
But she wasn’t able to focus on her reading. Even though she had accepted the fact that there was now no possibility that she would hear from Lucas, she found it impossible to put him out of her thoughts.
He was back in Boston now, she knew. Maybe he was speaking to the team at his Boston office, trying to negotiate a return to work. Maybe he had given up on going back to Quadra-Well and was trying to decide what he would do next with his life.
At that thought, she couldn’t suppress a little swell of hope.
If he was leaving Quadra-Well behind, that would mean he was free to involve himself in her life. That would mean that there would be no scandal about it.
She didn’t want to allow herself to get her hopes up. He hadn’t called, after all. There was no reason to think that anything would change. If he was still considering being a father to his child, he would have picked up the phone.
Unless he wants to resolve things with the company first.
Maybe he was waiting for the headlines to die down, and then he would get in touch with her.
Maybe.
Elise didn’t know what to think. She had no idea what to expect from him.
All she could do at this point was to prepare herself to embrace whatever happened.
Chapter 17
Lucas
Lucas awoke to the sound of someone pounding on the front door.
He groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. It