The Marriage Ultimatum (City of Dreams Series) (22 page)

She was through being a wimp. Vlad had the right to know the complete truth about her and Alex. He genuinely cared for Alex, and Sabrina really could not see him completely rejecting the little boy now. Would he?

The table was set for an intimate dinner much as it had been on their first night. Sabrina wore her hair down, although the mass of it was again quite long and unruly in the evening breeze. Her dress was long, navy and strapless—it was going to be the last time in a while she would wear something so casual and obviously vacationy.

They chatted about their day, and it was bittersweet for Sabrina because she knew their time here like this, in this beautiful place, was waning. She had to take her opportunity.

“It was difficult to thank you today, to say what I needed to say, in front of Alex. You saved his life.”

Vlad shook his head. His eyes looked black, and his face was more somber than she had ever seen it.

“No, I just did what needed to be done. Actually, if you look at it, I was responsible for instilling in him the idea that he could jump into that water, take that risk, and I would be held responsible, if, God forbid…” He paused.

“That’s nonsense!” Sabrina was having none of it. “You taught him. He now knows how to swim, but he’s a little boy, and impulsive. You saved his life. I need to talk to you, to tell you something about me, and about Alex,” she began.

“No, you don’t. That’s all in the past and means nothing to me.” He shook his head again and took a healthy pull on the champagne they had with every meal but breakfast.

“Nothing?”

Did he care so little for her, for them, that this revelation truly would mean nothing to him?

But if she thought about it, Sabrina knew she and Alex had been nothing but trouble for Vlad from the start. Since he actually believed she had plotted against him in some way, the minor detail that she was not Alex’s mom, would seem to be just that; trivial and not worth getting worked up about. The knowledge that Pieter was Alex’s dad would certainly have greater impact, but Sabrina had been hoping, in a totally weak way, that she would not have to say anything about Pieter. She just wanted to tell her own truth. But what would that really do for them all?

Vlad was a globetrotting tycoon with a serious charitable foundation who had to marry a single mom to keep his sterling reputation shiny. All to prove to the world that he hadn’t abandoned his supposed out-of-wedlock child and thereby harm his foundations. That was how he saw it. And he believed every bad thing that had happened to be her fault. Was there anything she could say that would give him back his life the way it used to be? If she told him everything, could they turn back the clock? Would he discreetly divorce her, get on with his life, and let her get on with hers? He wouldn’t if he thought there would be any negative repercussions on his foundations. So it changed nothing for him.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Sabrina. She had spent the better part of nearly three years hell bent on concealing from the world the fact that Alex was her brother. Now when she wanted to tell Vlad, her husband, who had every right to know, to clear the air and start fresh, he couldn’t care less.

Now she had to worry that if he did discover the truth, he would take Alex from her. Pieter was right. Both Vlad as Alex’s uncle and Pieter, Alex’s dad, were very much alive, while her mother was dead. They had unlimited funds. And she had nothing. Surely, their claim would surpass that of an impoverished sister.

So, rather than lose Alex to the faceless authorities at social services, she could lose him to his uncle. Either way, she would be left without her precious brother.

“Unless it has to do with who put you up to telling that lie to the media—tell me that or else don’t bother.”

Sabrina had geared herself up for a big confession. She had tried and succeeded in surmounting the fear that Vlad would take the information that she wasn’t Alex’s actual mother and use it against her. She had decided that his right to know surpassed her right to keep that information to herself, after she had spent virtually Alex’s entire life keeping her relationship as his sister a secret.

“Vlad.” She reached out to touch his arm, but he shifted away, effectively putting himself out of her grasp.

“Are you going to tell me anything about how I came to be featured as Alex’s father in that tabloid story?”

Silently, she shook her head. She still hadn’t been able to figure out the author of that lie.

“All right then. We have nothing more to say on that topic.”

Sabrina was floored. Of all of the possible responses he could have made, she was totally unprepared to have Vlad completely shut her down and refuse to hear her out. The bottom line was that he had no interest in her, in them as a couple. Everything he had done was all for show, for the PR machine that would keep his foundations running. And Sabrina respected that on some level. She really did.

It was just so humiliating to realize that all of their time together, their physical intimacy hadn’t meant anything to him. She knew it to be true on an intellectual level but with every day that passed, and with every time they made love, she must have, somewhere deep in her subconscious, started to believe his feelings were changing. That he might be rethinking his conclusion that she had been responsible for the tabloid story, that he had warmer feelings for her, and for Alex. But sex was just sex to Vlad and no matter how much she tried to forget that, the fact reared its head over and over. When would she ever get that?

Hurt warred with anger inside her. Okay, Vlad, she thought. I tried to tell you. You don’t care enough to want to know, so be it.

****

Vlad surprised himself with his response to Sabrina’s overture. When she had oh-so-seriously started leading up to tell him her big secret he balked.
Hell no, I don’t want to know who Alex’s father is.
Vlad didn’t care who the fool was. If he ever met the jerk, he would likely throttle him.

He was starting to really care for the little guy. Vlad saw something of himself in the bravado Alex displayed when he had been pulled from the water. At least the self he might have been if he had two loving parents. On some level, it hurt—a lot—that she had so summarily decided against him adopting Alex.

All he knew was that when he’d heard, somehow from his office below deck, Sabrina’s thin shriek, it had been an arrow piercing his heart. He had felt her pain and he had run to where she was in seconds, prepared for God knows what. He doubted he would ever forget the sound of sheer terror in her voice. And then to see her poised on the rail, panic in every line of her body but yet ready as a non-swimmer, to jump into the water after Alex. He didn’t believe he would ever see such an exhibition of maternal protection if he lived to be a hundred, and he never wanted to again. He died a thousand deaths thinking of what might have happened if she had jumped into the water. If he hadn’t been there.

Out of a surfeit of gratitude that Vlad had rescued Alex from a dangerous situation, Sabrina was going to spill her guts, and he found he just didn’t want to know. It wouldn’t change anything. It was the first time in his life he had ever preferred ignorance to knowledge.

When Vlad entered the stateroom, Sabrina was already asleep. He had spent the better part of the past two hours with a bottle of vodka, staring out at the endless black of the sea and telling himself all the reasons to keep away from her. But she had drawn him in and tied him up so tight, he felt like he’d be strangled if he attempted to untangle himself right now. He just couldn’t pull away. Whatever hold she had on him, it was as strong as it had been from the first night, stronger really.

He would just lie down next to her and maybe he would be able to sleep. He pulled off his clothes and got under the sheet. Sabrina was wearing a pale yellow camisole and matching bikini panties, and his mouth watered at the sight of her breasts spilling out of the satin cups as she lay on her side.

In a moment she stirred, her body sinking into the crease of the bed as he lay on it. She opened her eyes to sexy slits, and then she smiled, a sweet parting of the lips that had his cock hardening in anticipation.

“Shhh, go back to sleep,” he murmured.

She smiled again. “I know you don’t want to sleep.” She arched her brow and reached for him, finding his huge erection unerringly, her small hand warm as she cupped him. “You most definitely do not want to sleep.”

She offered him her mouth, pressing her lush lips against his once, before her tongue snaked out, and she licked his lips until he opened them. She was completely in charge, slinking over his body till she straddled him, leaning over and brushing her full breasts against his mouth. She teased him, withdrawing as she sat back and then reaching behind her to grab his cock and stroke it till he groaned.

“Sabrina, stop it, you witch; I’m losing control.”

His body arched up with the stroke of her hand, but she was unrelenting and her hand moved over him until he was painfully ready. She even took charge of rolling on his condom and then leaned forward, letting her ample breasts with their beaded nipples brush against him once more. Sabrina guided him inside of her, inch by precious inch until he was there completely—deep, pulsing, and ready.

“Now,” she whispered and Vlad needed no further invitation.

****

Sabrina lay in the aftermath feeling something strangely close to victory. Vlad was asleep beside her—a first. In those hours he spent in the lounge nursing his vodka, she’d come to certain conclusions. Vlad found comfort in their physical relationship. It assuaged something in him that he could not or would not name for her. He didn’t want to know about Alex or her, because he lived very much in the present. He didn’t want the emotional connection such information would provide. So Sabrina had decided she would be for him what he wanted her to be: a sexual partner, someone with whom he could find release and oblivion. He didn’t want to tell her about his baggage and apparently, he didn’t want to know about hers.

She, too, could learn to be content in the present.

Chapter 16

Is This Love That I’m Feeling

Mrs. Egan arrived that afternoon to help with Alex so Sabrina could interview for a graphic design position. She would officially receive her college degree in a couple of months, but her grades were in, and she had passed her final year with a very respectable GPA. Although she was being interviewed for a very junior level position, Sabrina shrugged her mental shoulders; everybody had to start somewhere.

They had only been back in New York for a week, and Sabrina’s fears were all but realized. Vlad dove back into work with a string of eighteen-hour days as had always been his norm. She knew that it was to be expected after an absence of almost two weeks for him to attend to business.

So there was already no time left over for her, and Sabrina knew she needed to work and she needed to take care of herself because, pathetically, she was still pining for him. Every day that Vlad failed to come back home for dinner or worse, stayed completely away from them until the wee hours, she withered a little more.

Mrs. Egan knocked, and then poked her head inside the small room off her bedroom Sabrina used as an office.

“Just letting you know I’m here, love. So you can go to that interview whenever you’re ready to.”

Sabrina looked up from where she sat cross-legged on the sofa. She shook her head trying to articulate to Mrs. Egan what she herself had only just begun to process.

“Good, I…thanks. I’m just a little…I don’t know whether…I just found out…I’m pregnant.”

There was a pause in which Mrs. Egan’s shrewd brown eyes took in Sabrina’s pale face and red-rimmed eyes.

“Now that’s grand news, m’dear, isn’t it? But you’re tired, it’s true, I can see that. You rest up and you’ll feel a bit more like yourself soon, I promise.”

Mrs. Egan wasted no time in crossing the room to place a motherly arm around Sabrina’s shoulders to give her a hug. Of course, Mrs. Egan couldn’t help but be thrilled. But Sabrina was still in a daze of disbelief.

In the week since they had returned from Italy, Sabrina had noticed a few things. There was no change in her low energy level, quite the opposite; she felt like napping at all times of day. Her appetite was ravenous and for odd things like baked potatoes and peanut butter ice cream. So she finally worked up the nerve to buy a pregnancy kit and had done the test this morning.

Her lack of energy, her weird food cravings, her super-abundant, sensitive breasts all had a cause. She was expecting a baby.

Sabrina asked Mrs. Egan to come back for a few afternoons when she could during the rest of the week to help her cope with her active three year old when all she wanted to do was sleep.

The thought of telling Vlad was enough to bring on a fresh bout of nausea. She didn’t even know how they had slipped up. Vlad had been scrupulous in using protection.

Though of late, contraceptives would never have been an issue. Most often, she was asleep by the time Vlad came in, well after dinner. Since he was out most mornings before she appeared for breakfast, they hadn’t had more than one stilted conversation since they had returned from their honeymoon.

Every fear Sabrina harbored about life with Vlad post-honeymoon had come to fruition and then some. Could anything be worse than the prospect of telling Vlad about a baby? Her body was changing. Her breasts were literally pouring out of her bra, and that was just the beginning. How would Vlad feel when her waist ballooned and she waddled? Every emotion she experienced was magnified by the hormones coursing through her body. She was scared, she was angry; she was teary—all in rapid succession. Most of all, she was so very tired.

Vlad had shut her down when she tried to confess the truth about Alex’s parentage. He didn’t want any emotional connection, and he didn’t need any more information about them than he already had. He had obviously made up his mind to jump right back into his twenty-four-seven, workaholic lifestyle, not allowing his unwanted roommates to hamper his routine.