A REASON FOR MARRIAGE

Sara’s smile was completely lacking in humor. “We didn’t get far enough in our friendship for me to broach such a sensitive subject as IVF with him.”

Simon gave a disgusted shake of his head. “Why didn’t you just forget the whole idea of IVF and instead just go to bed with him and hope for the desired result? He would certainly have been willing!”

Her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed before speaking. “After my engagement to Bruce ended, I didn’t want the trauma of being intimately involved again. Nor did I want the complication of having my child’s life ripped apart by estranged parents, and so I thought-I thought a legal contract with a sperm donor, followed by IVF-”

“It seems to me, with all your talk of “I didn’t want” and “nor did I want”, that you weren’t thinking of anything or anyone but yourself, Sara,” Simon cut in coldly.

No, she hadn’t, Sara acknowledged numbly. The woman she had been-cool and businesslike, and determined not to become physically involved with any man-had made her decision to have a baby without emotion, without any real thought for the emotional consequences of those actions.

The woman she had been… Sara knew she was no longer that hurt and disillusioned woman. She had ceased being that woman for a while now. She had become another woman completely when she’d fallen in love with him… It was a love which she knew, just from looking at the disgust now on Simon’s face when he looked at her, was even more doomed than her relationship with Bruce had been.

“Did you seriously think that Mark Forbes -that any man,” Simon continued disgustedly, “would just calmly agree to cold-bloodedly, cold-heartedly donate his sperm for you to be impregnated with?”

She moved agitatedly. “As you’ve just pointed out, I don’t believe I had been thinking straight for some time.”

She didn’t particularly care for the way Simon was now looking at her from between narrowed lids, as if she were a specimen under a microscope-a hitherto unknown species he was trying, and not succeeding, to understand. And what little he did understand he didn’t particularly like.

“You could be pregnant now, Sara.”

“What…?”

His mouth was a thin straight line. “All this time we’ve been seeing each other, have you been taking any steps yourself to prevent a pregnancy?”

Sara stared at him uncomprehendingly. Of course she wasn’t pregnant. She wasn’t on birth control, but she always took a morning after pill on her unsafe days. They’d been seeing each other for months now and she’d not gotten pregnant, so why should she be now?

“Are you pregnant, Sara?” Simon repeated harshly.

Sara desperately tried to recall when she had last had her period and failed utterly, her mind having gone a complete blank. Okay, maybe she couldn’t remember the date, but Of course she wasn’t pregnant! Was she…?

___________

Simon didn’t feel in the least encouraged by the way Sara’s face had turned a sickly gray color. As if she were fighting down nausea.

Nausea possibly caused by early pregnancy… The irony of this situation wasn’t lost on Simon. Ambitious women would, he knew, quite happily become pregnant as a way of entrapping a wealthy man into marriage. Typically Sara-contrarily so!- she had decided to become pregnant by totally eliminating any physical intimacy or personal knowledge of the man who had made her so!

Unfortunately for Sara that was never going to happen if it turned out she was now carrying his child.

“Well?” he prompted tersely.

Sara determinedly gathered her scattered thoughts together, knowing this was neither the time nor the place for her to dwell on the chaos of her own thoughts.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“I can’t believe you’re so full of yourself, Simon, that you actually believe yourself to be so virile a woman would become pregnant so damn fast!” she added mockingly, knowing that she wasn’t even making much sense.

The coldness in those deep emerald eyes deepened. “Sara, we indulged in several occasions of unprotected sex,” he corrected harshly.

She gave an unconcerned shrug. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Simon, but I guess you really aren’t as potent as you thought you were.”

Was that disappointment he was feeling? Simon wondered scowlingly. Or did he feel disappointment because he had realized, with the flatness of Sara’s denial of pregnancy, that their relationship-friendship-whatever this was-had now come to an end?

There had been too much said for the two of them to carry on as if nothing had happened.

“Damn it!” Simon cursed. “Why do you have to be so damned complicated?”

She gave a wistful smile. “Just unlucky for you, I guess.”

Simon thought back to the first time he had seen Sara at Senator Ashcroft’s drinks party, to his instant awareness of her, his instant attraction to the voluptuously beautiful woman in the red gown who’d drawn him towards her like a magnet. Then the situation had been uncomplicated. Then she had just been a lushly beautiful woman in a red gown that he had wanted to make love to.

Simon had never done complicated. A woman either was or was not interested in a brief and meaningless affair. He had never had the time or the inclination for anything more than that.

“I think you should leave now,” she said.

“You’re throwing me out of your house?”

She didn’t meet his eyes, “There’s nothing left for us to discuss, and we have obviously come to the end of…. Whatever this is…. So please leave,”

“Fine,” Simon’s mouth tightened and he looked up to find himself the focus of beautiful brown eyes that danced with bittersweet laughter.

“I’m glad one of us finds this situation amusing!” he said,

Sara wasn’t in the least amused at the idea of never seeing Simon again, but it was better than crying. She had already broken down emotionally enough in Simon’s company. She certainly didn’t intend to let him see her doing it now because she knew, despite everything, that she was in love with him. That would just be too humiliating.

She drew in a deep breath. “Can I take it that you would now be happier if another interior designer took over refurbishing the last room in your apartment?”

A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. “You can.”