Taming Eric (48 page)

The lurking sales assistant turned on her biggest smile when she realised which ring Samantha was staring at and Eric smirked to himself. Of course she’d be interested now when it was one of their most expensive rings they were looking at. He asked to have a closer look at it and when it was removed from the display case an armed guard stepped closer to
them.

Samantha slipped the ring onto her finger so Eric could see what it looked like on a finger and with a raised eyebrow at his accountant and her excited nod, he agreed that it was the one he was going to buy. It was an antique styled ring in white gold. The huge square cut diamond was slightly wider than Samantha’s fingers and it was flanked by four smaller diamonds either side of it which were mounted into the band. When the overhead lights hit it, it sparkled, sending shards of light around the
shop.

He wrote a cheque for the ring and once a check was made to make sure he was good for the money which made him smile, they were free to leave with the engagement ring. He slipped it into his pocket and they headed back to the o
ffice.

The whole outing had taken longer than Eric expected and once they were back at Rothman Enterprises Samantha hugged him and wished him good luck. Her hugging him took him by surprise and he hugged her back awkwardly before she got out and he headed for home. Damn, it was going to be touch and go as to whether he made it back in time without pissing Natasha off. Things had been so good between them, he didn’t want to fuck up now and set their relationship back a notch o
r two.

When the limo finally pulled into the driveway of his home and he climbed out letting himself into the house he was immediately confronted by the sound of Natasha’s voice as she talked to Alice. She sounded pissed off. Her words to Alice proved just how pissed off she was. He walked into the room just as he heard her say. “I’m going to kill Eric I s
wear.”

“Why am I about to die?” He asked and Natasha swung around at the sound of his
voice.

“Where the hell have you been? I almost left without you. If it hadn’t of been for Alice offering me a lift I’d be late. Of course if someone wasn’t such a bossy, overbearing pain in my butt most of the time, I’d have driven myself.” She snapped, anger flashing in her
eyes.

As she continued to rant and rave at him Eric felt himself growing more and more enraged with her. He’d been so happy ready to man up and tell her how he felt and here she was screaming at him like a fucking banshee. It hurt to have her talk to him the way she was and his stomach started to knot and ice formed around his heart or it felt like it as he went into his familiar self protection mode and shut himself down emotio
nally.

“Are you going to stand here for the rest of the day yelling at me or are we going to get going before we really are late for your appointment?” He asked, his voice hard and cold. At this point he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to shake her or strangl
e her.

“Well, I guess now you’re here, you might as well come with me.” She stormed past him and out the front
door.

“Sorry about that Alice.” He said quietly before following Natasha out to the
limo.

The drive to the doctor’s was done in silence. Natasha was obviously still very angry with him and he was frustrated and annoyed with her. This should have been a good day for them. They were going to see their babies for the first time but instead there was nothing but tension between them and all he could think about was the engagement ring sitting in his pocket which may very well have been an extremely premature purchase at this
point.

After a while he became aware of the fact that Natasha was looking at him accusingly and sniffing the air near him. What the fuck was she doing now? He’d had more than enough shit from her today and he wasn’t in the mood for more. When she continued to sniff and stare at him he knew he couldn’t endure the rest of the drive with her bizarre behaviour. “Dammit Natasha, enough with this crap now. I got held up and I was almost too late but that’s the key word, almost. If you think I’m going to sit through the rest of the drive and then the ultra sound looking at your scowling face, you can forget it.” He ground out through gritted
teeth.

“Where have you been? Why were you late? Why do you smell like perfume and don’t try and tell me that’s your aftershave because that’s women’s perfume I can smell.” She sniffed at him
again.

Fuck she must be able to smell Samantha’s perfume. Well the woman did smell like she’d bathed in the stuff. To have Natasha going about as close to accusing him of being with another woman hurt though. How she could even think that when he’d been as attentive to her as he possibly could, he made love to her almost every fucking day because he loved her and she aroused him like no other woman ever had and yet here she was treating him like he’d cheated on her? He thought their relationship had progressed to the point where they were as close as they’d ever been, hell he wanted to marry her and now with just a few angry words she was tearing at his heart and making him doubt they were going to be ok. He should have guessed of course. Any time anything went well for him something always happened to destroy it for him. He couldn’t live with a woman who didn’t trust him and she was acting like a woman who didn’t trust him despite the fact he’d never given her any reason to feel like
that.

“Are you serious Natasha? You’re going to act like a jealous housewife now? We’re on the way for your ultra sound.” He turned to her, forcing his expression to not show how much her lack of faith and trust in him was hurtin
g him.

“Why won’t you tell me where you’ve been? I can smell perfume on you. Just tell me where you were. Why were you so late? Dammit Eric, say something.” She yelled at him but he remained silent, watching her. He couldn’t answer her because he couldn’t tell her what he’d spent the morning doing and he wasn’t game to try and give her any kind of answer because her anger and lack of trust in him was tearing him a part inside and he didn’t trust that his voice wouldn’t show how much she was hurtin
g him.

Finally he said. “I’m not having this discussion in the car Natasha. If you can’t trust me, that’s your insecurities showing. I haven’t done anything wrong so stop trying to turn this into a pointless argu
ment.”

He was spared her answering him back by the limo pulling up outside the doctor’s clinic. As they walked into the clinic, he went to take her hand trying to improve the mood between them when they were going to be seeing their babies soon but she pulled away from him and his hand dropped back to his side. He shot her an angry look over her behaviour but kept his mouth
shut.

The doctor ushered them both in straight away and Eric sat on a chair by the examination table as Natasha was told to move her clothing to bare her stomach. He put some of the clear gel on her skin and as he watched the monitor he began to move the probe over her stomach until he found their b
abies.

Eric watched the doctor for signs that everything was ok and he studied the monitor but he couldn’t make out anything
on it.

“Would you like to know the sex of your babies?” The doctor looked between the two of
them.

“I didn’t want to know at first but I think I would like to now.” She turned to Eric. “What about
you?”

His eyes met hers and he nodded. He could feel the doctor looking at them both which didn’t surprise him much given how much tension there was radiating off the two of them righ
t now.

“Well, your babies are growing nicely, everything looks fine and I can tell you that you are having one of each, a boy and a girl.” The doctor told
them.

“Seriously? Did you hear that Eric? A boy and a girl.” Natasha’s face filled with wonder and when he met her eyes, a little of his anger towards her melted away at her expre
ssion.

“Yes I did.” He turned his gaze back to the mo
nitor.

The rest of the examination passed fairly quickly with them getting to hear the two heart beats and another lecture about looking after herself and maintaining a healthy balanced diet plus to make sure she got some gentle exercise. Eric’s dark mood lifted slightly when he wondered to himself if making love daily would be considered gentle exercise. Although he wasn’t sure there would be any more love making if neither of them could move past their kind of Mexican standoff over him being late and her not trustin
g him.

When the doctor was finished he told Natasha she could go to the bathroom since she had to have a full bladder for the ultra sound and Eric waited in the doctor’s office fo
r her.

The drive back to the house was in silence as he was still frustrated over her lack of faith in him and she was busy studying the little black and white photo of their babies. He watched her press her hand against the curve of her stomach and his heart contracted. They both should have been so excited right now but instead everything was fucked up with the tension that radiated off both of
them.

When they walked into the house Alice came to greet them, took one look at their faces and hers fell. “Oh dear.” Eric greeted her then walked through to the staircase and headed upstairs to the bedroom. He just couldn’t face Alice righ
t now.

He strode into the walk in closet and removed his suit before continuing through to the bathroom naked to have a shower. The warm water beating down on him did little to improve his mood, in fact he’d gradually moved from anger to an overwhelming sadness. It cut deep that Natasha didn’t trust him. Ok, smelling of another woman’s perfume probably wasn’t the ideal situation to find himself in but their relationship had been almost perfect for several weeks now. He spent all his free time with her and did everything he could to prove how much she meant to him without actually telling her he loved her and yet she’d been so quick to assume he must be seeing someone
else.

When he finally stepped out of the shower and dried off, he wrapped a towel around his waist and left the bathroom to go and get dressed. Natasha was sitting on one of the lounge chairs in the bedroom and he hesitated briefly when he saw her before continuing on into the closet to find clothes to wear. He pulled on faded blue jeans and a black t-shirt before joining her in the be
droom.

One look at her face and he knew she wasn’t going to leave him alone until he explained himself but he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her the real reason he’d been late. The idea of telling her how he felt had scared the crap out of him before their fight but there was no way in hell he was baring his soul to her now while she was shooting daggers at him with her eyes. She’d throw his love for her back in his face the way she wa
s now.

“You’re not going to let this go and simply trust me are you Natasha?” He asked we
arily.

“How can I trust you Eric when you won’t answer my questions? You demanded to know what I was doing and where I was the day I bought that damned vibrator but I’m not allowed to ask the same questions of you? At least I didn’t come home reeking of another man’s aftershave.” She
cried.

He walked over to where she was sitting and bent down placing his hands on the arm rests of her chair. “I am not having an affair, I am not fucking any other woman besides you and if you can’t accept that then what the hell are we d
oing?”

“I can accept you being late because of work, I can accept you almost missing our doctor’s appointment but I can’t accept you smelling of another woman’s perfume Eric. Just how do you explain that one? Obviously a woman has been close enough to you for you to end up smelling of cheap per
fume.”

He curled his fingers around the armrests of the chair so he couldn’t do what he wanted to do and wrap them around her neck. “Even if I told you Natasha, would you believe me? It seems to me that you’ve already made up your mind that I’m a cheater and if that’s the case, nothing I say is going to change your mind. Don’t punish me because of your jealous insecuri
ties.”

Still she wouldn’t let it go. “Why won’t you just tell me Eric? Why can’t you explain to me why you smelt of perfume? Is that too much to ex
pect?”

Fuck this, they were just going around in circles. He pushed away from her chair and straightened up running his hands through his hair. His anger evaporated and depression started to envelop him. He began to pace the room all his fears, all his insecurities started to rise in him again and all the hopes he’d had for them, that he’d be able to finally move past all the doubts he had about himself and his ability to be enough for Natasha and their babies started to crumble aroun
d him.

Natasha’s presence, everything around him faded until it was just him and his pain, his fear, his old insecurities. He began to pace the room, his mind in turmoil as the words tumbled from his lips. “Dammit, why did I fool myself that things could be diffe
rent?”

“What did you think would be different?” She asked as her eyes followed his restless p
acing.

“You want to know why I smelt of perfume? I’ll tell you, but if you can’t damned well believe me Natasha, then I have to wonder what the hell we’re doing. I can’t be in a relationship where you’re going to question every move I make, every time I’m late home because you know the nature of my work, I often finish late. You’ve been there, you can’t have forgotten already.” He continued pacing up and down the room, his heart thumping heavily in his chest as fear at revealing himself to her settled like a hard ball in his stomach. “I needed help with something out of the office. I got Samantha from Accounting to come with me. You remember her. She’s young and she’s married so I thought she could help me, give her honest opinion on something. When she helped me, we hugged. She was happy and I was fucking happy ok? I’m not having an affair with her. She’s a pleasant enough woman but I’m not even remotely attracted to her. Fuck, I thought by choosing a male PA to replace you that I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this kind of shit.” He raked his fingers through his hair as his tension mo
unted.