A contraction?
Well, duh. Of course that was what was happening, but, come on! She nearly pounded her fist against the wall in frustration.
What had she thought, though? That she would still go into that meeting, bare as a Scotsman under her skirt while she looked her baby’s father in the eye and admitted…
She hung her head in her hands and bit back a whimper.
The main door opened. She lifted her head, relief washing over her. As she started to call out, however, she realized the person she could see through the crack in the door didn’t have Kiara’s voluptuous figure or curly black hair.
Oh, dear Lord. That slender woman in a bone-colored skirt suit was Paloma Rodriguez, Javiero’s mother.
Scarlett never swore, but she tilted her head back and mouthed a number of really filthy words at the ceiling. She texted Kiara again, suspecting Kiara had silenced her phone for the meeting.
Javiero’s mother was smoothing her hair, checking her makeup, unconsciously betraying how important it was that she appear flawless to the rest of the people in that boardroom, most particularly her rival for a dead man’s affections.
Scarlett had to make a split-second decision. No matter how this day played out, Javiero would finally learn she was having his baby. She wanted him to hear it from her.
As his mother started to leave, Scarlett forced herself to speak though she could hear the quaver in her voice. “Señora Rodriguez? It’s me, Scarlett.”
Paloma’s footsteps paused, and she said with guarded surprise, “Yes?”
“Is Javiero waiting for you in the corridor?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to speak with him. In private. In…um…here.”
Global warming ended and the modern ice age arrived in one glacial word. “Why?”
Shifting to open the door was awkward, given her full-term belly. Scarlett wrestled herself around it and watched Paloma’s gaze drop to her middle. Her eyes nearly fell out of her head.
“I need to speak to him,” Scarlett said as another contraction looped around her abdomen and squeezed a fresh gasp from her lungs.
* * *
Javiero Rodriguez was unfit to be in public, not physically and not mentally.
He’d showered, but he was unshaven and should have gone to his barber before leaving Madrid. He had blown off the nicety, which wasn’t like him. For most of his thirty-three years, he had passionately adhered to tradition and expectation. He’d had a family dynasty to restore, his mother’s reputation to repair and his own superiority to assert.
He had achieved all those things and more, becoming a dominant force in global financial markets and one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. He was known to be charming and intelligent, and an excellent dancer who dressed impeccably well.
Despite all that, a sense of satisfaction had always eluded him.
Javiero had come to accept this vague discontent as just life. Happily-ever-after was, as anyone with a brain in his head could deduce, a fairy tale. He had experienced the bleakness of financial anxiety and the bitterness of powerlessness. He’d had a father who belittled him and abused his trust, one who didn’t so much as offer a shovel to help him dig himself out of the hole he’d been shoved into. He had tasted grief when the grandfather he’d revered had passed away. All of that had taught him ennui was the best one could hope for.
World-weariness was a luxury he no longer enjoyed, however. Three weeks ago, he had nearly died. He had lost an eye and was left with scars that would be with him forever. He looked like and felt like a monster.
As he ran a frustrated hand through his hair, his fingertips reflexively lifted in repulsion from the tender line where his scalp had been sewn back on. He shouldn’t be inflicting his gruesome self on helpless receptionists and unsuspecting coffee-fetchers. It was a cruelty.
His mother needed reinforcement, though. She had stood by him when nearly everyone else was giving him a wide berth. His uncles and cousins, people he financially supported, were taking one look and keeping their children away. His ex-fiancée, whose idiotic idea of being interesting was to keep an exotic pet menagerie, had dropped him like a hot potato once she’d seen the damage.
Not that he was stung other than in his ego by her rejection. Their proposed marriage had been an effort to rescue his pride. He saw that now and it only made his foul, obdurate mood worse. What a pathetic fool he was.
Grim malevolence was his companion now. It had become as entrenched in him as the deep grooves carved into his face and body. It clouded around him like a cologne gone off. It had sunk into his bones with the insidiousness of a virus or a spell, making his joints stiff and his heart a lump of concrete.
Staring with one eye down at the streets of Athens, a city and country he had sworn never to set foot in again, he dreamed only of burning this whole place down.
Your family stands to inherit a significant portion of the estate, his father’s lawyer had said. All parties must be present at the reading of the will for dispersal to move forward.
Javiero didn’t want any of his father’s money. He didn’t want to be here in his father’s office tower and couldn’t stand the idea of listening to yet another version of his father’s idea of what was fair.
For his mother’s sake, and what she stood to gain, he had relented. She had been treated horribly by Nikolai Mylonas and deserved compensation. If Javiero’s presence could help her finally gain what should have rightfully been hers, so be it. Here he was.
He didn’t have it in him to muster pretty manners, though. His already thin patience was tested by the prospect of listening to his mother chase principles his father had never possessed. She would argue one more time that her son was Niko’s legitimate heir and
