GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 19

'Not necessary,' Bella cut in briskly as if he were a five-year-old importuning a busy teacher.

His strong jawline clenched. 'I will decide what's necessary,' Edward delivered, losing patience.

From the upper deck, Edward watched the launch convey Bella back to the marina. He was ailed by a vague sense of something unfinished...of regret? His jaw was set hard as granite. He had almost asked her to stay with him until it was time for her to fly home. Why? She had spoken the truth, after all: it had been a disaster. Instead of an experienced woman and a***ual marathon he had landed a*** and then there had been the mishap with the***. His teeth gritted together. When he had registered that for some inexplicable reason he was in no hurry to see Bella leave, his blood had run cold on the suspicion that he was feeling more than he was willing to feel for any woman, and from that point on he had been keen to see her depart. Yet the sound of her sobbing his name still echoed in his ears and his body hardened as he remembered all too well the tight, hot feel of hers. From his point of view, although there had been too little of it,  had been stellar. In fact, there had been something oddly, dangerously addictive about Bella Donovan, and getting rid of her fast had been absolutely the right action to take!

* * *

Three weeks after that day, Bella did a pregnancy test in the bathroom of her aunt and uncle's home.

Her nerves were shot to hell and her mood had been on a steady downward slope for days when her menstrual cycle had failed to kick in on the expected date. Unfortunately, pregnancy tests were very expensive and Bella had forced herself to wait until there was little risk of the test providing her with a potentially false result that would require yet another test to be done. And now she was bracing herself for the moment of truth even while her training had already provided her with good reason to be afraid. The very last thing she had required earlier that week was a blatantly impatient text from Edward Zikos asking for news that she did not yet have, so she had simply ignored it.

Her breath hissed in her dry throat when she studied the result: positive. Hell roast the wretched man, she thought ridiculously, why couldn't he have been sterile? Instead, they were both young and healthy and the odds had not been in their favor. Pregnant! Fear and no small amount of horror made Bella break out in a cold sweat because nobody knew better than her how very hard, if not impossible, it would be for her to complete her medical studies with a child in tow and no supportive partner. Suddenly she was furious with herself for not having protected her own body better simply because she had failed to foresee the need. She had assumed that she would always be in total control and Edward Zikos with his stunning dark eyes had shown her differently. But at what cost?

Edward...stray thoughts and recollections of Edward had littered the past weeks while Bella had struggled to put the entire episode behind her and continue as normal. She had discovered that she had a softer, dreamier side to her character that she had never suspected. Well, so much for that, she thought cynically, stuffing the pregnancy-test paraphernalia back into the plastic bag to be discreetly dumped. Would she tell Edward? Undoubtedly she would tell him...eventually but not until she had decided what to do. Right at that minute, she had more to worry about than taking time out to contact a male who had nothing other than money to offer her in terms of support. She suspected that Edward would expect her to have a termination and when she refused to give him a 'tidy' conclusion to the development he would be furious and resentful of her decision.

Would he be the exact opposite of the father she had never met? Bella wrinkled her nose, not wanting to think along those lines. She was too intelligent not to be aware that her mother had fed her daughter a steady diet of her own martyred bitterness. Sadly, Bella had been too young to be told such things, too innocent to be anything other than deeply hurt by an absent father who had never felt the need to look for his eldest child. Her father had other children now; she knew after finding him on Facebook that she had half-siblings with the same red hair, the children of the woman he had married after deserting her mother. Yet her father had pleaded for Bella to be given the chance of life before she was even born and how could she do any less for her own baby?