The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

‘So...share?’ The request felt huge, he thought. It was only about a book, he reminded himself. Nothing else. ‘Is it proceeding?’ he asked.

‘It is.’ He could see her make a conscious effort to relax. ‘In your fictional life you’ve been drinking weird, smoky cocktails with three slutty sisters, squeezing them for information, and all of a sudden they’ve transformed themselves into dragons. Very gruesome it is, and rather hot, but you’re handling yourself nicely.’

‘A true hero?’

‘You’d better believe it.’

‘Will you try for publication?’

‘A million authors are striving for publication. What makes you think anyone would like my book?’

‘I like it.’

‘That’s ’cos you’re the hero. I’ll send you a copy when I’ve worked out my happy ever after.’

‘Happy ever after works in books?’

‘You have to believe in it somewhere.’

A cloud drifted over the sun. A shadow crossed Mary’s face and she shivered. Enough. He rose and put down a hand to help her up.

She stared at it for a moment as if she was considering whether to take it. Whether she should.

‘You need to let me help a little,’ he said gently. ‘I’d like to.’

‘I’d like to help, too,’ she said. ‘Where’s Jake?’

‘Still in New Zealand, winding up his movie.’

‘Would you like me to talk to him?’

‘No.’

‘That’s not very polite.’

‘Families are complicated.

‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ She ignored his hand and pushed herself to her feet, wincing a little as she did.

‘You’re hurt?’ The tiny flash of pain did something to him. She was pregnant. What did he know about pregnancy? Surely she shouldn’t have flown. What if there were complications? What if...?

‘Twenty-four hours squashed in a tin can is enough to make anyone achy,’ she said. ‘So let’s get that “Call the artillery and have me carted off to Emergency” look off your face.’

‘Am I that obvious?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you staying?’

She told him and he struggled to keep his face still. Not a salubrious district. Cheap.

This was the mother of his child.

No. This was Mary.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

‘I’ve just figured out the subway.’

‘Good for you but I’ll still take you home.’

‘You have a car?’

He hauled out his cellphone. ‘James will be here in two minutes.’

‘Wow,’ she whispered. ‘Wow, wow, wow. Bring on James.’

* * *

She sat in the back of a car that’d have everybody back home gathered round and staring. She sat beside Ben, and a chauffeur called James drove her back to her hotel.

It wasn’t in a salubrious part of town. It wasn’t a salubrious hotel.

The chauffeur pulled to a halt out the front of the less-than-five-star establishment and turned to Ben.

‘Is this the right address, sir?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not.’ He turned to Mary. ‘When did you arrive?’

‘The day before yesterday?’

‘You’ve stayed here for two nights?’ His tone was incredulous.

‘It’s clean,’ she said. ‘I checked it out on the internet before coming. It has everything I need and it’s near the subway.’

‘It doesn’t have everything I need. This is a dodgy neighbourhood at the best of times. I bet you’ve been walking around alone, too. It’s a miracle you weren’t mugged.’

‘I can look after myself.’

‘Not if you’re staying here you can’t.’ He sighed. ‘James, stay with the car. Do not under any circumstances leave it alone in this district. We’ll be as fast as possible.’

‘We?’ Mary pushed open the car door. ‘There’s no we. You’ve brought me home. Thank you very much. Goodbye.’

‘You’re not staying here.’

‘Says you and whose army?’

‘I am,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘a trained commando. I’ll take you by force if necessary.’

‘Oooooh,’ she said, pretending to cower. And then she sighed. ‘Quit it with the dramatics. Bye, Ben.’ She was out of the car and up the steps of the hotel—but he was right beside her.

‘I said goodbye,’ she hissed.

‘I heard. Let me see inside.’

‘No.’

‘It’s a public hotel.’

‘No!’

‘You’re the mother of my baby,’ he said, loudly, possessively, and she stopped and stared.

‘My baby?’

‘That’s why you came all the way to New York. To tell me I have a share in this. I might not be able to dictate where you stay but I will have a say in how safe our child is.’

She stared at him.

She hadn’t thought this through, she decided. Had she given him the right to dictate how she treated...his child?

What had she done?

‘It’s fine,’ she said through gritted teeth, and he took her arm and smiled down at her, and she knew that smile. It was his I’m in charge and you’d better come along quietly or I’ll turn into a Logan smile.

‘Let’s just see, shall we?’

* * *

Which explained why twenty minutes later she was standing on the doorstep of what must be one of the most awesome apartments in Manhattan, staring around with shocked amazement.

‘I can’t stay here!’

He hadn’t quite picked her up and carried her but he might as well have. One look at her dreary hotel room, with its window that looked at a brick wall, with the smell of the downstairs hamburger joint drifting through the window and a bathroom with mould, and the father of her child had simply gathered her possessions and led her out. All the way to his place.

‘I have plenty of room,’ he said, dumping her decidedly downmarket duffel on the floor of his breathtaking apartment. She could see her face in the marble floor tiles. Her duffel was travel-stained and old. It looked ridiculous sitting against such opulence.

‘My father bought this as his alternative to home when Rita’s histrionics got too much,’ he said briefly. ‘Five bedrooms. My father never did things small.’

‘N-no.’ She crossed to the wall of French windows leading to the balcony. Leading to Central Park.

She needn’t have bothered asking to have her picnic there. She could see the Lennon garden from here.

‘It’s convenient,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be able to sightsee until you go home.’

‘I should go home now.’

‘But your flight isn’t until Monday.’

‘I... Yes.’ Her last-minute decision to come here and tell him had meant last-minute tickets. Which meant not the weekend. Today was Friday. She’d have two days living in this...this...place.

‘It’s scary,’ she said, staring around at the cool, grey and white marble, the kitchen that boasted four ovens, the massive leather lounge suites, the tinkling waterfall behind the living room wall. ‘It scares me to death.’

‘It beats the cave on Hideaway.’

‘On Hideaway we had cushions and Barbara’s quilt. Comfy. How do you get comfy here?’

‘I’m not here much.’

‘Social life?’

‘I work.’ He crossed to the kitchen, opened the massive fridge and stared into its interior as if he didn’t know what the contents were but knew he’d find something.

‘Soda? Cheese and crackers? Cold chicken?’

‘I’ve just had lunch. Who fills your refrigerator?’

‘A housekeeping service.’

‘A housekeeper?’

‘It’s a service. More convenient than just the one employee. I don’t need to worry about holidays.’

‘So you don’t even need to know your housekeeper.’

‘They come and go when I’m not here.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘What’s awful about it?’

‘You really are alone.’

‘I don’t need anyone,’ he told her. ‘I like my life.’

‘You need Jake.’

A shadow crossed his face then. How had this woman guessed what was hurting him?

He didn’t want to talk about it but then...this was Mary. Maybe he did.

‘We fight to be independent,’ he told her. ‘But the twin thing makes it harder. When he was hurt in Afghanistan I damned near died myself. And when I didn’t know whether that chopper had made it...it’s not a sensation I’d like to repeat.’

‘So you don’t want to get close to anyone else?’

‘I don’t want the responsibility of loving like that—but I will do the right thing by your baby.’

‘You just said it was our baby.’

‘It is,’ he said, and he sounded strained. ‘So I will do what I can.’

‘I hope he’s grateful.’ She gazed around with distaste. ‘I can tell you one thing, though. If he’s any child of mine, he won’t want to inherit this place.’

Inherit. The word was a biggie. Why had she said it? It took things to a whole new level.

She watched Ben’s face change again.

‘I didn’t mean...’ She spoke too fast, trying to take things back. ‘Ben, I’m not expecting anything, I told you. This baby...if you want, he can be brought up not even knowing he’s your son. Or daughter for that matter. Inheritance is nonsense. We won’t interfere with your life.’

‘You already have interfered.’

‘I shouldn’t have told you?’

‘Of course you should.’ He raked his hair in that gesture she was starting to know. It softened him, she thought. It took away the image of businessman Ben and gave her back the image of Ben in a cave. The Ben she needed to care for.

‘Ben, you like your isolation,’ she said softly. ‘We’re not threatening that. I’ll return to New Zealand and ask nothing of you. If you want, you can set up a trust for this child’s education, but I’ll not raise him expecting anything from you. You can walk away.’

‘I can’t walk away.’

‘But I can,’ she said. ‘And I will. Come Monday. Meanwhile, which of these doors leads to a bedroom I can use?’

‘The bedroom at the end of the hall’s mine. Choose any other. They all have en suites.’

‘Of course.’

‘Mary?

‘Yes?’

‘Have a nap,’ he told her. ‘Then I’ll take you out to dinner.’

‘I’m having a sleep, not a nap,’ she told him. ‘A really long one. I’m jet-lagged like you wouldn’t believe and this pregnancy makes me want to sleep all the time. You can go back to whatever you were doing. You need to be independent and I’m not messing with that. Thank you, Ben, and goodnight.’

* * *

She slept. He headed for his study and stared out over the park.

He needed time to work out all that was inside him.

Maybe it wasn’t possible for him to work it out.

Mary was carrying his child. He was going to be a father.

Coming, ready or not.

The old chant, sung by children for ages past in the game of hide and seek, was suddenly echoing around in his head, almost as a taunt.

A father.

Abortion? The word drifted through his consciousness but when he tried to work out some way he could say it to her, something like a wall rose up.

He couldn’t say it.

He didn’t want to say it.

This would be Mary’s baby and he didn’t want her not to have a child. It was a convoluted thought but it was there as a certainty. And somehow... The time in the cave with her had been time out, like a watershed, where fear had laid all bare. That a child should come of it... It seemed okay.

Was that sentiment? Was it hope?

He couldn’t get his head around it.

He didn’t have to, he told himself. For some reason Mary had come halfway around the world to tell him, yet she was proposing leaving again on Monday. He never needed to see her again. He could pay into a trust account once a month. He could stop thinking about it.

How could he stop thinking about it? He slammed his fist down on the desk so hard it hurt, and suddenly he wished he could talk to Jake. Ring him. ‘Jake, I’ve screwed up...’

In his present mood Jake could well say he should tell someone who cared.

In this position Jake might do better, he conceded. Jake would be able to play the caring dad. He was great at acting.

If he himself was better at acting, maybe he could pull this off.

Pull what off? Being a caring dad?

He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know how. He thought back to the rages and the coldness that had been his childhood. He tried to think how he could possibly relate to a child.

He could try, but he couldn’t act, and if he felt nothing...

His father had felt nothing. His mother...she’d told them she’d loved them but in different ways all the time. Like she was playing different roles.

‘I won’t act,’ he told himself. ‘I can only do what I can do, and I won’t put myself in a position of power.’

So what could he do? Send money? That felt so much like what his father would do. Send money and get rid of the problem.

On impulse he hit the internet, heading for the site where Smash ’em Mary flew round the track, dodging and weaving, leading her team to victory.

It was a rough game, and that was putting it mildly.

Surely she wouldn’t be able to play now she was pregnant.

The words of the lawyer he’d sent to help her echoed in his ears as well.

‘We’ve won her monetary compensation, and she’s been reinstated in her position as district nurse, but there is local antagonism,’ he’d told him. ‘Her father and stepmother are wealthy. They control much of the commerce in the town and people are afraid to upset them. Her stepmother is vindictive, more so now that we’ve forced this resolution. Life’s not going to be easy for your Mary.’

Your Mary. The words had swept over him then, but they came back to haunt him now.

She wasn’t His Mary. She was a woman he scarcely knew. He’d been stranded with her for two days. Two days was tiny.

She was a woman who’d come half a world to tell him she was pregnant because it was the right thing to do.

His fist slammed on the desk again. Lucky the walls were solid. Lucky Mary was sleeping three bedrooms away.

He needed to get away. Think. Go back to the office? Do something to stop him going mad.

He headed back to the living room. He’d carried Mary’s duffel into her bedroom for her but her capacious purse was still on the bench. It looked shabby, worn, and it pricked his conscience as nothing else could.

A folder was edging out the top.

And suddenly he was back at the cave, waiting for Mary to come back from her interminable search of the island, hating himself that he couldn’t be with her. Distracting himself by reading Mary’s make-believe. He’d been the hero.

‘I wonder what I’ve done now?’ he said aloud, and looked at the purse again.

She knew he’d read the beginning. It was sitting on the bench, an open invitation. She’d said he was facing dragons.

He could just...read.

But not here. The proximity to Mary—to a woman he hardly knew, he reminded himself—was doing his head in.

He lifted the folder from her purse and put it in his briefcase.

He’d just go...somewhere and disappear into Mary’s fictional world.

Maybe Jake was right. Maybe reality had too much to answer for.

CHAPTER TEN

SHE WOKE AT MIDNIGHT, thirsty beyond measure, and also hungry. She woke regretting those nibbled lunchtime sandwiches.

She headed out to the kitchen. The apartment was in darkness—or maybe not. Back in New Zealand the darkness at night was absolute. Here, the lights of the city glimmered through the drapes. Glamorous footlights were placed strategically around the skirting boards so no one could lose their way at night. There was a light on in the sitting room.

She was in New York. More, she was in Ben’s fabulous apartment. Marble, glass, discreet lighting, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park...

Money plus.

Her inheritance gaffe was still smarting. ‘I never should have come,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Of course he’ll think I’m after his money.’

But it had seemed wrong not to. She’d needed to tell him and for some reason she’d felt she had to do it soon. Before the time had come where she could terminate?

Not that she’d considered terminating. She wasn’t sure why this little life was so precious, why she’d discovered she was pregnant and felt joy rather than dismay, but she had.

‘And maybe I sort of wanted Ben to feel that way, too,’ she muttered.

‘Feel what way?’

He was on a window seat in the sitting room, working on his laptop. Wearing a bathrobe. Silk. She was in a T-shirt and jogging pants.

She felt like a poor relation.

He looked...hot.

Put it aside, she told herself, and somehow she stopped looking at him. It took an effort.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said, heading for the kitchen. She hauled open the massive refrigerator doors and thought, Whoa... ‘How many people live here?’

‘My housekeeper caters for every eventuality.’

Yep, money.

Get over it, she told herself. ‘I just need toast.’

‘I’ll make it for you.’

‘I can do it. Go back to bed.’

‘I don’t sleep much,’ he said.

‘It’s a biggie.’ She was staring into the refrigerator, thinking all sorts of things—like how hot he looked with his silk bathrobe open and...and forcing herself to think of condiments. Three types of jam. No, make that four. The raspberry looked good, but then there was quince...

‘What’s a biggie?’

Deep breath. The conversation couldn’t all be about jam, and it surely couldn’t be about silk bathrobes. ‘Learning you’re about to be a dad.’

He walked over and set about making toast while she went back to deciding on condiments. Tricky.

She was so aware of his body.

The island bench—approximately a mile long—gave her a couple of yards’ clearance from Ben. She hauled herself up on the bench to watch toast-making.

‘Most people sit on the stools,’ Ben said mildly.

She peered behind the bench to see a row of fancy designer stools. Chrome and leather. Four different colours. Or make that shades. Designers did shades.

‘How could I choose which one to sit on?’ she demanded. ‘I had enough trouble with jam.’

‘You want tea?’

‘No, thanks.’ Actually, she would like tea but it’d mean she had to stay out here for longer. With this body.

Um...Ben. His name was Ben.

Maybe she should start calling him Mr Logan.

‘I’ve been thinking I’m glad you don’t want a termination,’ he said.

She stilled. He was watching the toast. She was watching the breadth of his back. To all intents and purposes they were a couple talking cosy domestic things—like termination.

‘Why?’ she managed, and he abandoned the toast and turned to face her.

‘It’s been a shock,’ he said softly. ‘All afternoon...all tonight. Heaven knows how you slept but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have wished for it but now it’s happened...I do want this child.’

And he said it so fiercely that it was lucky she’d put the jam down.

There was a lot to think about in that statement. A lot to make her heart falter.

‘One part of me’s pleased to hear you say that,’ she admitted at last. ‘I was never going to terminate, not for a moment, but in a way I think that’s why I came here so early in the pregnancy. I needed to know your reaction. I wanted my choice to be your choice.’

‘But the other part?’

Say it like it is, she decided. Just say it. ‘Another part of me almost had a heart attack, just this minute,’ she admitted. ‘Do you want this child like you want another Logan? And how much do you want it? Enough to sue me for custody? I hadn’t even thought about that.’

‘I would never do that to you. And she’s your baby.’

‘She?’

‘I thought tonight...’ He looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, but when he spoke, it was all tenderness. ‘I thought, what if she’s a girl, just like her mother?’

What was there in that statement to take her breath away? What was there in that statement to make her forget toast and jam, to forget where she was, to forget everything except those words?

What if she’s a girl, just like her mother?

She’d been terrific when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d decided. She’d surprised herself by how calm she’d been. She’d set about making plans, figuring how she could manage.

She’d decided to tell Ben, rationally and coolly. She’d prided herself on her efficiency, getting a passport, deciding on flights, choosing the hotel Ben had so rudely rejected.

She’d told him calmly. Everything was going as planned.

But one little statement...

What if she’s a girl, just like her mother?

She sat on the bench and stared, and suddenly the cool control she’d kept herself under for the last couple of months snapped.

She couldn’t help it. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She couldn’t speak. She just sat there and cried like a baby.

Ben looked like he didn’t have a clue how to handle it. That made two of them.

‘Mary, I didn’t mean...’ He sounded appalled. ‘Mary, stop.’

That’d be like asking the tide to turn. She gave her tears an angry swipe but nothing could stop these suckers.

She didn’t have a tissue. She didn’t have thirty tissues. Where were tissues in this über-rich mausoleum of a marble apartment?

* * *

One minute he was standing by the kitchen bench, talking to a woman he’d decided he hardly knew. The next moment the woman had turned into Mary. His Mary.

He knew this woman like he knew himself.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was making no effort to check them. It was as if she didn’t know what to do with them.

This was a woman who seldom cried. He knew that. What was happening now was shocking her—as well as shocking him.

She needed tissues, but his shoulder was closer. He stepped forward, gathered a sodden Mary into his arms and held her.

He should wear a towelling robe, he thought ruefully. Silk didn’t cut it with tears.

Silk didn’t cut it when the feel of her body was soaking through. But he held her and held her, until the shuddering eased, until she’d cried herself out, until he felt the imperceptible stiffening that told him she’d realised what she’d done, where she was.

He still held. He was cradling her like a child but this was no child. She’d slumped against him but the slump had turned to something more. Her face was buried in his shoulder but the rest of her... She was moulded to him. Her breasts were pressed to his chest. His face was in her hair.

‘I can’t...’ It was a ragged whisper.

‘I have it in hand,’ he told her, and before she could make any objections he swung her into his arms and strode with her into his bedroom.

The woman needed tissues. There were tissues in his bedroom and that’s where he was headed.

* * *

One minute she was cradled against Ben Logan, sobbing her heart out, releasing months of pent-up emotion and who knew what else besides. The next she was in his arms, being carried into his bedroom.

She should make some sort of protest, but who was protesting? She was making no protest at all.

They’d made love before as complete strangers. They weren’t strangers now. Or maybe they were, she thought, dazed. How did she know this man?

She did.

He lived in a different world from her, a world he pretty much owned.

She felt she knew him inside out.

To the world this man was a hero, a rich, smart, controlling wheeler and dealer in the world’s finances. But she’d seen what lay beneath. She’d seen the core that was pure need.

Who was she kidding? The need was entirely hers and she couldn’t resist it for a minute.

She was catching her breath, finding control of a sort. The dumb weeping had stopped so when Ben set her on the bathroom bench and handed her a wad of tissues she could do something about it.

She blew her nose, hard, and Ben blinked.

‘There’s my romantic girl.’

She choked on something between a chuckle and a sob, but it was erring more towards the chuckle.

Something was happening inside her. She was in this man’s bathroom. He was looking at her with such concern...