Semua Bab Billionaire Boss? Nah, Just A Possessive Husband!: Bab 321 - Bab 330

‘She called in this morning,’ Kai said over the phone. ‘Said she wasn’t feeling well. Timothy’s covering her meetings.’I looked out the window at London’s grey midmorning sky. ‘If she’s still not in tomorrow, go to the flat. Make sure she’s alright.’‘Of course.’ A pause. ‘Though I think, if I’m being honest, she’d rather it was you than me.’‘I’ll go and see her,’ I said. ‘After.’I didn’t say after what. Kai didn’t ask, which was one of the reasons I valued him.I ended the call and sat with the phone in my hand for a moment, thinking about Hyacinth calling in sick, which she almost never did.A knock at the door.I put the phone down and went to answer it.She looked different from the photographs. Smaller, somehow. Dyed dark hair cut short, wearing a coat that had been expensive once.She walked past me into the room without being invited and looked around like someone pricing things up.‘Why a hotel?’ She tsk-tsked. ‘I’d have preferred a restaurant. I’m starving.’‘I have no inte

Portia waved a hand in front of my face. ‘Yeah, it’s me. Not a mugger.’‘How did you—’‘I followed you from the hospital.’I stared at her. ‘What?’‘Kai called me. Said you’d been sick, asked me to check in on you.’ She gave me a look. ‘Which made me think, hold on, why don’t I know my best friend is sick? Why hasn’t she called me? Smelling a rat, I went round to yours this morning. You walked right past me outside your building, by the way. Didn’t even clock me.’‘I didn’t notice.’‘Obviously. You’ve been in a complete daze since you left the flat. I watched you nearly step in front of a bus on Marylebone Road.’‘Oh.’‘Are you going to hand me those papers or do I have to take them from you by force?’I looked down. I was still holding the doctor’s report. I’d been clutching it since I left the clinic, apparently.Slowly, I held it out.Portia read it.‘Fuck,’ she said.‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘That’s about where I am.’‘What are you going to do?’I turned to look at her. ‘Does my face look

‘So.’ Mum clasped her hands – her professorial signal for me to start talking.I looked at her.She was about the same age as Helen, but if you put them side by side, you’d think they were a well-preserved middle-aged woman and her very elderly aunt.She didn’t have the haggard, sallow skin pockmarked with spots that Helen did – the inevitable toll of decades spent in a chemical haze. The crow’s feet around her eyes made her look wise instead of weary.We had different eye colours and different face shapes. She enjoyed the company of others; I preferred keeping the world at arm’s length.Neither she nor Dad had ever exhibited the same compulsive streak that’s haunted me since I was old enough to understand the concept of addiction.Yet I was her son, in every sense that mattered.‘I met a woman called Helen yesterday,’ I said. ‘She’s the one who shoved you into the pond at the masked ball.’‘I assume you didn’t pull me out of an international conference just to tell me the culprit’s be

‘The baby I’m carrying!’I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen.Was I carrying a crack baby? Would I even be able to carry it to full term?And here I was, still wobbling on the fence about whether to have it or not, when the decision might well have been taken out of my hands entirely.I should have taken the doctor’s advice, should have gone for the full check-up straight away, then I’d have known about it sooner. Maybe then I’d have—‘Hyacinth.’ Lochlan plucked the phone from my hand and set it down. With both hands on my shoulders, he pressed me gently back into the armchair. ‘Tell me.’‘Tell you what?’‘The baby. You’re… you’re pregnant.’I ran a hand over my face. ‘Yeah.’I told him about the clinic visits, showed him the report in triplicate.He read it. Then he read it again.I didn’t wait for him to finish the second read. ‘How long were they using? Your biological parents. What were they on – was it heroin, cocaine, both? What state were they in when you were born, do

The impact didn’t come.Instead there was a sound – an almighty crack from somewhere behind and to the left of me, followed by the shriek of tyres on tarmac and a second impact that I felt rather than heard, the shudder of metal meeting metal at speed, and then my car was spinning, not off the road but on it, the fields wheeling past the windscreen in a smear of grey-green until I got my foot on the brake and brought it to a shuddering stop half on the verge.I opened my eyes – hadn’t even realised I’d shut them. My hands were still on the wheel.Outside, something was still moving – engines, voices, the sound of a door.I couldn’t quite make sense of it. My head felt like it was full of cotton wool and my left arm was burning somewhere between my elbow and my shoulder where it had connected with the door panel, and there was something warm on my temple that I was fairly sure was blood.I tried the door. It opened, which surprised me. I got one leg out and then the world tilted conside