A Shameful Consequence - By Carol Marinelli Page 0,27

disappointment he had felt, the regret of waking in an empty bed, or that he had offered her more than he had any other woman.

Instead he waited for her.

‘They didn’t take it well.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I know what families are like on the islands.’

And for a moment she conceded.

‘My mother …’ He hesitated after using that word, but he did not change it. ‘She said at first you had moved to Athens …’

Wearily she nodded. She had been too busy to stop and think of that terrible time, and it was exhausting even now to remember it. ‘I found a job, but it turned out that Dimitri knew the owner, or rather he made it his business to find out who he was and discredit me …’ Connie’s voice was flat. ‘Everything I touched turned to nothing, every door that opened slammed closed as soon as people knew my name. I was told when I left that Dimitri would do his best to destroy me …’ She gave a defeated shrug. ‘I guess they were right.’

‘They are cruel and fight nasty when they believe they have been slighted,’ Nico said, because his parents had once attempted the same with him, doing their best to halt any opportunity that presented itself, doing everything they could to get him to return. ‘What did you do?’

‘I had enough money to get to London. I thought I would have more chance here given that no one knew me, but my parents cut me off completely, the money I had soon ran out …’ She gave a tense swallow. ‘My pregnancy was starting to show …’ And she did not even attempt to explain it, for this he could not understand—no man could understand the fear of being pregnant with nothing and no one to fall back on. A fear not for yourself but for the life growing inside you.

He fought down the instinct to pounce, to ask the inevitable, because a deeper instinct told him now was not the time. He could feel her exhaustion, knew the terse, heated debate that it surely would be, and it was not fair to her to have it now.

She was in not fit state and it could wait, Nico told himself, for facts were facts, and, whoever the father, that would not change.

Still the question burnt within him and she could not know that he sat and wrestled with himself.

It must wait, Nico told himself, because, despite his ruthlessness at times, he only ever fought with equals, and at the moment she was weak.

‘This was the only job I could get,’ Connie continued as the unvoiced question remained unanswered. ‘I needed something that came with accommodation.’ She closed her eyes in shame, because this was never how she wanted to be seen. ‘And it was somewhere to come home to after the birth …’ She faltered for a moment because, of all the terrible times, that had been the worst. Giving birth in a busy hospital, feeling so alone and frightened, and it had been a complicated, difficult delivery. All she could hear at the end had been Nico’s name, for she had been screaming for him.

That he did not need to know.

All she had to show him was that she would be okay. ‘I am getting things sorted,’ she said. ‘Soon, in a few weeks, I will start applying for better jobs, once I have sorted out a creche and a flat.’ Her voice quivered at the enormity of all she faced. With no references, no money, how on earth could she support her child?

‘You don’t have to worry about money. I will—’

‘Oh, please …’ Far from comforting her, his words actually terrified her. She didn’t want him to have a hold on her, didn’t want to be tied to a man who, by his own admission, wanted neither a wife nor children. Her one brief foray into marriage had been a clear disaster. As for her relationship with Stavros, while in it, she had thought it bearable, had assumed that was how people lived, but looking back it had been hell. Her self-esteem was shot from the constant rejections and less than veiled criticisms. She wanted her child to have an independent, strong mother, and she would work her way towards being that, and certainly she could not imagine him, so sleek and elegant, sharing access to her son. ‘I want to make my own way. I want to support him myself.’

‘It’s not