Free A Tangled Affair by Fiona Brand Page A

always made her feel attractive and energized. It probably wasn’t the best idea for dealing with Lucas, but she hadn’t worn it for him. She had a job interview at five with Alex Panopoulos, and she needed to look confident and professional. His upmarket Pan department stores were branching into jewelry manufacture and he had been chasing her all week to come in for an interview.
    She hated the idea of leaving Ambrosi Pearls, but she had to be pragmatic about her position. When Constantine had offered the company back to Sienna on her wedding day they had held a family meeting. In essence, they had agreed to honour their debts, so the transfer of the company to The Atraeus Group had gone through as planned. With Sienna’s marriage to Constantine binding both families together, combined with Constantine’s assurance that he would keep the company intact, it had seemed the most sensible solution.
    As a consequence, Carla now owned a block of voting shares. They would assure her of an income for the rest of her life, but they gave her no effective power. Her current personal contract as Ambrosi Pearls’s public relations executive was up for renewal directly after Ambrosi’s new product launch in a week’s time. She didn’t anticipate that Lucas would renew it. Her tenure as “The Face of Ambrosi” was just as shaky, but as she provided that service for free to help the company save money, it was no skin off her nose if Lucas no longer wanted her face on the posters.
    Annoyance flickered in Lucas’s gaze when she didn’t immediately sit. He replaced the phone on its base. “I didn’t expect you back in so soon.”
    She lifted a brow. “I felt okay, so there was no point in staying at home.”
    “I’ve been trying to reach you all week. Why didn’t you return my calls?”
    She shrugged. “I was staying with friends and didn’t take my phone.” She had left the phone at her apartment on purpose. The last thing she had needed was to have a desperately low moment and make the fatal mistake of trying to call or text Lucas.
    There was a small charged silence. “How are you?”
    “Fine. A couple of days in bed and the symptoms disappeared.” She smiled brightly. “If that’s all…”
    “Not exactly.” His gaze rested on her waist, where the jacket cinched in tight. “Are you pregnant?”
    Despite her effort at control, heat flooded her cheeks. “I don’t know yet. I have a test kit, but it’s early to get an accurate reading.”
    “When will you know?”
    She frowned, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the subject and the way he was regarding her, as if she was a concubine who had somehow escaped the harem and he had ownership rights. “I should know in another couple of days. But whether I’m pregnant or not, it needn’t concern you.”
    Actually, she could find out right that minute if she wanted. The test kit had said a result could be obtained in as early as seven days. She had studied the instructions then chucked the box in the back of one of her drawers. She still felt too raw and hurt to face using the kit and discovering that not only had she lost Lucas, her life was about to take a huge, unplanned turn. In a few days, when she felt ready, she would do the test.
    Anger flickered in his gaze. “You would abort the child?”
    “No.” She felt shocked that he had even jumped to that conclusion. If there was a child, there was no way she would do anything other than keep the baby and smother it with love for the rest of its life. “What I meant is that if there is a child, I’ve decided that you don’t have to worry, because you don’t need to be involved, or even acknowledge—”
    “Any child of mine would be acknowledged.”
    The whiplash flatness of his voice, as if she had scraped a raw nerve, was even more shocking. Carla sucked in a breath and forced herself to loosen off the soaring tension. She was clearly missing something here. “This is crazy. I don’t know why we’re