Rejection seared deep. ‘No. I should’ve been informed the moment you found out you were carrying my child.’

‘Why? So we could discuss it like a loving married couple? Or so you could treat it as another business transaction, like our arranged marriage? I’m sure you’ll forgive me for choosing neither option, since the former was a farce and the latter was unpalatable.’

The accusation scored a direct hit, making my neck heat with another trace of guilt. Over the last year I’d gone over everything that had happened in those twenty-four hours. Accepted that perhaps I could’ve handled things differently. But was this the price I had to pay for it?

‘I had a right to know, Calypso.’ My voice emerged much gruffer than I’d intended. And deep inside me something like sorrow turned over.

Her lashes swept down, but not before I spotted the sea of turmoil swelling in the blue depths. My nape tightened and my instincts blared with the notion that she was hiding something.

‘What if I told you that I didn’t know what I wanted?’ she asked.

A white-hot knife sliced through me at the thought that it would have decimated me had she taken a different route than bearing my son.

‘Calypso...’

Her name sounded thick on my tongue. I waited until she raised her gaze to mine.

‘Yes?’

‘Regardless of this...disagreement between us, you will have my gratitude for choosing to carry our son for ever.’

Her eyes widened in stunned surprise. ‘Um...you’re welcome,’ she murmured.

Once again her gaze swept away from mine—a small gesture that disturbed and confounded me. And then that defiant bolt of blue clashed with mine and absurd anticipation simmered in my gut.

‘He’s here now. Can we not put what has gone on in the past behind us and move on?’

‘Certainly we can. As soon as you tell me what I want to know I’ll take great strides to put it all behind me.’

Again that mutinous look took her over, sparking my own need to tangle with it. To stoke her fire until we both burned.

‘Are you prepared to do that, Calypso?’

For several moments she held my gaze. Breath stalled, I awaited an answer...one answer...to quell the questions teeming inside me. But then that unnerving serenity settled on her face again.

‘It’s not important—’

‘Not important? You leave my home under cover of a blatant falsehood, then you disappear for a year, during which time you bear my son, and you think your absence isn’t important?’

‘Careful, Axios, or I’ll be inclined to wonder whether you actually missed the wife you bothered with for less than a day before walking away.’

I sucked in a stunned breath. A year ago she’d warned me that she wouldn’t be biddable. Discovering she was innocent had clouded that warning. But this kitten had well and truly developed claws. Sharp ones. I was tempted to test them. Intellectually and...yes...physically.

Unbidden, heat throbbed deep in my groin, stirring desires I’d believed were long dead until one glimpse of my wayward wife from a jetty in Bora Bora had fiercely reawakened them.