“No caviar!” she had said in horror with a look that looked like a knife had just been plunged through her heart desperately trying to get him to change his mind with one of her sexiest pouts. Nine times out of ten he gave in to her, but this time he had not. For all her other talents, she had never learned that having a mountain of caviar as a centerpiece while a magazine was in the house was inviting a public relations nightmare!
Review finished, Louise left the room leaving them alone together. Assuming that Nara would follow he went back to his paperwork on his desk.
“Thomas,” Nara asked.
“Yes,” He said, looking up to find a slightly worried look on her face biting her bottom lip. A look that usually meant she needed something outside her usual spending patterns.
“I…h-a-v-e something to tell you,” she nervously stuttered.
She had only found out this morning when her doctor rang her to confirm the news. Immediately she had been awash with emotions, she hadn’t told him that she had stopped taking her birth control pills because she wanted to make sure that she secured her place in his life by giving him a son and eventually marry her. If she did she feared he might forbid her and quickly decide she was surplus to his life in the future.
Over the years as he had never expressed any interest, in adding to their family or marriage she had wrongly assumed it was because, like the majority of her girlfriend husbands or partners, he had other women that he enjoyed. So accepting that he never threw it her face, ever the survivor, she had parked it in the back of mind just as her friends did with their men.
She truly loved Thomas more than life itself over what he done for her and her mother, but because of her early life she automatically assumed the day would come when he would move on from her.
Taking her early life experiences as a base she threw herself fully into making a baby with him. Much to her surprise though to her delight Thomas had responded with just as passion and was if anything even more passionate with her now than when she first entered his life at nineteen or their weekend in Venice all those years ago when they made their love child.
The result was the last couple of months had been to her the most incredible of her life with him despite missing her little girl terribly whom he had made her send away to school.
“Would he act like that again?” she had thought, thinking back to the last time he was angry with her and beat her all of those years before. Although it had never happened since it was never far from her thoughts.
By the look on his face, she knew he was under a great deal of stress at the moment with the job he had been given by the President of the Motherland.
Dispatching her worries momentarily as she found the courage to tell, Nara said, “I am pregnant, my Thomas.” She bit her lip.
As she said it, Thomas felt a thunderbolt sear through him, but it wasn’t destructive or unpleasant in nature rather an intense, powerful feeling of emotion, something he had only ever experienced in his life once before.
“Bloody hell!” he thought as looked back stunned at his beautiful but terrified lover seated in front of him.
Getting up, Thomas quickly walked around the desk, fell on a knee, took her hands, looked into her eyes and said with sparkling eyes.
“That is wonderful, my darling girl!” he said, his emotions bubbling over.
“You’re happy? My Thomas,” she said with a nervous smile.
“YES…yes… and yes! My lovely lady!” he replied excitedly as her news began to take hold over him.
At that moment having seen that in fact Thomas was completely over the moon and not upset in any way over her news she tore her hands away from him, grabbed him, passionately drawing him into her, and then peppered him with a kiss after kiss, dropping her papers out of her lap in the process.
“I love you my darling Nara!” he said, making her happiness complete.
On the morning of the main event with the guests now arriving, Mikhail, who was still nursing a seriously bad hangover from the amount of champagne, wine and fatally, the whiskey he had drunk after the both of them had told him and Hanna their news, wandered in to join Thomas and Saul the CFO of the group, to let him know that Rebecca and her companion had arrived at the hotel.
Immediately as he entered, Thomas laughed.
“You look like how I feel!” he said something that was true because the pair of them had drunk for England and Israel so much so that Nara had undressed him and put him to bed.
“Don’t!” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m all farmisht,” using the Yiddish phrase “for mixed up” as he sat down beside Saul before continuing.
“Anyway, Boss! Miss Leiris has checked in under Miss Field with her companion,” Mikhail said somewhat gingerly changing the subject back to his reason for popping in, ever the professional to the core.
“Companion or spook?” Thomas asked intrigued, unaware of the room arrangements.
“Spook!”
“He would never pull something as Shayn as her; he must be her boss!” answered Mikhail using the Yiddish word for “beautiful.”
“Don’t let Hanna hear you say that, she’ll cut your balls off,” retorted Thomas to his old friend in reference to his wife who before they married and had their three children, was an operative in the Shin Bet and had more than once had killed in the service of Israel, causing Saul to laugh at his friend and colleague’s expense.
“Tell me about it!” replied Mikhail joining the laughter in the room everybody knowing that although Mikhail may still look, he would never betray one woman who had tamed him. “I asked Angus to pop in and say hello like you asked,” he said, changing the subject back to business. “I also asked Saul here to make sure she gets twenty minutes with you this afternoon as well, Godfather,” pointing with his thumb towards to Saul making sure he wasn’t the only one in the room to bear the brunt of jokes. Thus earning a further chuckle from the CFO at his use of the Godfather reference of Thomas, half in joke and half in truth, knowing his habit of having him line up every thirty minutes, “a private meeting” slots outside the study door in the evening before the main events during the weekend.
“Alright! Alright! I get the message!” Thomas said, putting his hands up in mock surrender with a smile to hold his aching head.
When the offer arrived to attend his private garden party in response to Rebecca’s request to discuss further the situation in Adwalland, Michael, who was sitting beside her as they drove down to Litchfield’s estate together, had no idea it was to do with her personal crusade with regard to Christopher’s killer.
Instead, her immediate superior believed it was linked to the additional information request they had received from across the water with respect to Thomas Litchfield.
At first Michael thought about having one of Rebecca’s colleagues attend the event but thought better of it when he reviewed the guest list.
The opportunity to gain intelligence overrode his plans for the weekend! Not to mention if he were honest with himself he was guilty of suffering from a touch of voyeurism in that he desired to see how the other half lived. Something he wisely kept to himself when telling his wife.
Checking into the hotel on the estate once inside the room, Michael actually thought his wife would have really enjoyed this place not to mention the Spa, so much so he mentally decided not to tell her about it, as they could never visit it because he had used a cover name instead of his own.
Although they had been happily married over twenty years and she knew what he did for a living; he hated lying to her. It was bad enough all their friends thought he was a middle ranking civil servant instead of a senior officer in the SIS.