LITMIR.BIZ

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eyes narrowed into spitting shards and Rebecca thought that there was more to her rage than an employer’s justifiable anger. Hadn’t Xandros himself hinted that Vanessa had once made a pass at him? And hadn’t he said it in the tone of a man for whom such behaviour was an occupational hazard? Rebecca flinched, wondering just who might be coming on to him now.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

      ‘What the hell did you think was going to happen?’ Vanessa cut off Rebecca’s apology with a slicing movement of her perfectly manicured hand. ‘Didn’t you realise that people would notice you making cow’s eyes at him, even though you were trying to hide it? Were you stupid enough to think there was some kind of future in it? Did you really think that a man like Alexandros Pavlidis was going to offer you anything other than a quick, convenient screw?’

      ‘I … I don’t have to listen to this, Vanessa.’

      ‘Oh, but you do, Rebecca, you most certainly do. You’ve not just lost me one of my most prestigious customers—but all the possible associates he might have brought with him! The least you can do is hear me out!’

      ‘But there’s nothing left to say, is there?’ asked Rebecca, her heart beating fast, intuition telling her that Vanessa still hadn’t worked out the worst part of the whole situation.

      ‘There’s plenty to say!’ stormed Vanessa. ‘You’ve made my organisation look unprofessional and you’ve only helped to further ruin the reputation of cabin crew everywhere!’

      ‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ said Rebecca again. ‘Really I am—but Xandros was so persistent…and I…I …’

      But Vanessa’s face went red with rage. ‘Oh, was he? Well, in my experience men are never persistent unless they get the green light from a woman.’ She slammed her pen down on the desk. ‘And let me tell you something else—and that is that you’ll never work in this industry again. I’ll make sure of that. Now get out.’

      There was one hazy segment of her mind which made Rebecca wonder if you could be kicked out on the street in this day and age. Until she reminded herself that what she had done would rightly be defined as gross misconduct, which was a sacking offence. And what would she prefer: to walk out of here now and never see anyone from Evolo again—or to work out her notice and really give them something to talk about?

      ‘I’ll have my uniform sent back,’ she whispered.

      ‘Dry-cleaned, if you please,’ said Vanessa sharply.

      All the way home, Rebecca felt like an alien who had just landed from outer space and was masquerading as a human. As if she didn’t belong—not anywhere. She needed someone to turn to, but who could you turn to at a time like this?

      Her widowed mother had remarried and gone to live in Australia. How could she ring her up and say: Mum, I’m going to have a baby with a man I never expect to see again?

      She couldn’t possibly tell any of the friends she’d made through work, could she? Vanessa would probably accuse them of fraternising with the enemy and it might put their own jobs on the line. And although her two best girlfriends were always there for her, both were busy with their careers and neither of them lived in London. If they had done, then maybe her terrible news would have all come tumbling out over a cup of coffee—but the truth of it was that she felt oddly ill at ease about telling anyone.

       Especially when you haven’t even told the father!

      Rebecca shivered. The hot August sun was beating down on her head, but inside she felt as if someone had replaced her blood with ice cubes as the undeniable words rattled round and round in her head.

      I’m going to have a baby. That was the reality.

      With no man, no job and no prospects. That was reality, too.

      Rebecca stood stock-still as a red London bus swept by, the faces on it all blurred as one question kept going round and round in her head. What the hell was she going to do?

      There weren’t really a lot of options open to her.

      Surreptitiously, her hand crept to her belly. It was bigger, definitely bigger—but no one else had noticed. Not yet. Because Vanessa would surely have leapt on that if she’d thought that Rebecca was carrying Xandros’s baby.

      Xandros’s baby. She shivered. Her Greek ex-lover was going to be a father and he didn’t know. No one knew, but soon it would become all too apparent—and then what?

      Then what?

      She went home and carefully removed her uniform before putting on a summer dress—turning to look at herself from every angle in the mirror which stood in one corner of her tiny bedroom. The dress was filmy—it hinted at the body beneath instead of hugging it. To the uninformed eye, she looked just like a healthy and curvy young woman—with no clue to the new life which was growing within.

      Among a clutter of bangles in a half-open drawer she caught a glimpse of something shiny. A stab of pain catching her unawares, she saw the silver and amber earrings which Xandros had given her that last, fateful night.

      Had they been intended as a farewell gift? She thought so. In the end it had worked out differently from the way she suspected he must have planned it. Their relationship had ended dramatically—but the fact that it had finished hadn’t come as a complete shock to her, had it?

      But now there was a huge and lasting consequence to their liaison and she needed to be as grown-up about it as she had ever been in her life. Because Xandros might not have chosen to create a new life in those circumstances —she certainly wouldn’t have done—but it was a done deal now. This baby existed and didn’t he, as the father, have the right to know about it?

      Of course he had a right. Rebecca had adored her own father—how terrible if she had been denied a relationship with him simply because he and her mother had not been together.

      Yet deciding to tell him was one thing, actually doing it was another matter—especially after she had her twelve-week scan, when she knew that she really could not delay it for a second longer. A letter seemed so impersonal—and this was most definitely about a person. Several times she picked up the telephone and put it down again. How could you tell a man like Xandros something as momentous as this over the phone?

      But it was more than that. A long-distance call could conceal so much, no matter how good the connection. And what if he refused to take her call—what then? Something was driving her on and she wasn’t sure what it was, knowing that she wanted—no, needed—to see his face when she told him. Was it a perverse desire to see the truth in his eyes, no matter how hurtful—would that help free her from her feelings for him once and for all? Or just some need to take some control back in a life which seemed to have run off the rails in so many ways?

      Once she’d made her mind up, Rebecca set things in motion very quickly—and somehow it was comforting to have things to occupy her. As if, by concentrating on the logistics of going to see him, it took her mind off the future. She booked her flight to New York, found a hotel and rang her mother.

      ‘You might as well take a half-empty suitcase,’ her mother said, on a very crackly line from New South Wales. ‘The shopping in New York’s supposed to be terrific value.’

      ‘Yes, it is,’ said Rebecca, trying to sound ‘normal’. Yet shopping was the last thing she felt like doing—even though she supposed a sensible person might scour the stores for pregnancy clothes. But, inevitably, money was tight. She had signed on with a temp agency, and although they had been providing as many office jobs as she cared to do it didn’t exactly pay her a fortune and she needed to hang onto every penny she could until she was no longer able to work.

      Rebecca hadn’t been to America for years—when she’d worked for Evolo she’d done mainly short-haul. But she loved flying and would normally have savoured the experience—had not the significance of her trip made her unable to sleep or to concentrate

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