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

‘Your face is puffy.’

‘And there’s a truly romantic statement,’ she managed. ‘I bet you say that to all the women in your life.’

‘There are no women in my life.’ He picked up a facecloth, wet it and gently wiped her eyes. Then her whole face. ‘Just the mother of my child.’

What was it about that statement that took her breath away? That made her toes curl?

That made her drop her tissues into the neat designer trash slot and look up at him and smile.

‘Ben...’

It was all she had to say. All the longing in the world was in that word. It was a question and an answer all by itself.

She put her arms up and looped her hands around his neck. He stopped and lifted her yet again.

‘Your place or mine?’ he asked huskily, managing to smile.

‘I’ve only got a king-size bed,’ she managed back. ‘Puny. I bet yours is bigger.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ he said, and she did.

And that was practically the last thing she was capable of thinking for a very long time.

* * *

She woke and the morning sun was streaming over the luxurious white coverlet. She woke and the softness of the duvet enfolded her.

She woke and Ben was gone.

For a moment she refused to let herself think it. She lay and savoured the warmth, the feeling of sheer, unmitigated luxury, the knowledge that she’d been made love to with a passion that maybe she’d never feel again.

He’d made her feel alive. He’d made her feel a woman as she’d never believed she could feel.

He’d made her feel loved.

But he wasn’t here now.

She’d slept, at last, cocooned in the strength and heat of his body. She’d slept thinking everything was right in her world. What could possibly be wrong?

She’d slept thinking she was being held by Ben and he’d never let her go.

She stirred, tentatively, like a caterpillar nervous of emerging from the safety of its dreamlike cocoon.

The clock on her bedside table said twelve.

Twelve? She’d slept how long? No wonder Ben had left her.

He’d left her.

Hey, she was still in his bed. Possession’s nine tenths of the law, she decided, and stretched like a languorous cat.

Cat, caterpillar, whatever. She surely wasn’t herself.

There was a note on his pillow.

A Dear John letter? She almost smiled. She was playing make-believe in her head. Scenario after scenario. All of them included Ben.

The note, however, was straightforward. Not a lot of room for fantasy here.

I need to go into work. I left loose ends yesterday and they’re getting strident. Sleep as long as you want. It’s Saturday, no cleaners come near the place so you have the apartment to yourself. I’ll be home late but tomorrow is yours. Think of what you’d like to do with it.

Ben.

And then a postscript.

Last night was amazing. Please make yourself at home in my bed.

There was more stuff to think about.

She was interrupting his life, she thought. She really had pulled him out of his world yesterday. He’d need to pull it back together.

And then come back to her?

Just for tomorrow.

‘But if that’s all I can have, then that has to be enough,’ she told herself. ‘So think about it.’

Food first. What had happened to last night’s toast? Who could remember? But she’d seen juice in the fridge, and croissants. And then...the bath in Ben’s bathroom was big enough to hold a small whale.

‘Which is what I’ll be in six months...

‘Don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything but tomorrow,’ she said severely. ‘Or maybe not even tomorrow. Let’s just concentrate on right now.’

* * *

The office was chaos. One day out and the sky had fallen. Still, it had been worth it, he decided, making one apologetic phone call after another, trying to draw together the threads of the deal he’d abandoned the day before.

Mary was worth it.

She was with him all day, her image, the memory of her body against his, the warmth of her smile, the taste of her tears.

He was getting soft in his old age. He’d vowed never to feel this way about a woman.

About anyone.

He didn’t want to feel responsible for anyone but somehow it had happened. Ready or not, he was responsible for Mary. The mother of his child.

His woman?

He wanted to phone Jake.

Why? To tell him he’d met someone? Jake’s attitude to women was the same as his. His brother had made one foray into marriage and it’d turned into a disaster. The woman had needed far more than Jake would—or could—give.

The Logan boys weren’t the marrying kind.

But Mary...

No. He would not get emotionally involved.

Who was he kidding? He already was.

Which meant he had to help her, he thought as the long day wore on, as the deal finally reached its drawn-out conclusion, which meant the financial markets could relax for another week.

He thought of what the lawyer back in New Zealand had told him. ‘She really is alone.’

If she was alone and in trouble...with his baby... There had to be a solution.

Finally at nine o’clock he signed the last document, left it on his secretary’s desk and prepared to leave. But first one phone call.

Mathew Arden. Literary agent for some of the biggest names in the world.

‘Well,’ he said, as Mathew answered the phone. ‘Am I right?’

* * *

She walked her legs off. She strolled down Fifth Avenue, she checked out Tiffany & Co., was awed by the jewellery and chuckled as the salespeople were lovely to her, even though they must know she could hardly afford to look at their wares.

She took the subway to Soho, just so she could say she’d been there, and spent time in its jumble of eclectic shops. She bought a pair of porcelain parrots for her next-door neighbour who was looking after Heinz.

She bought a truly awesome diamanté collar for Heinz. He’d show up every dog in the North Island.

She took the Staten Island ferry and checked out the Statue of Liberty from close quarters.

‘You’re just as beautiful as the pictures,’ she told her ladyship, and felt immeasurably pleased.

She ended up on Broadway and got a cheap ticket to see the last half of a musical she’d only ever seen on film.

She bought herself a hamburger, headed back on the subway to Ben’s apartment—and was weirdly disappointed when he wasn’t home.

She’d sort of wanted him to be impressed that she hadn’t hung around all day waiting for him, but maybe she’d done too much trying to prove it. Her feet hurt.

She ran a bath and soaked, all the time waiting for his key in the lock.

‘Just like I’m the little woman,’ she told herself. ‘Waiting for my man to come home.’

She let herself imagine it, just for a moment. If she and Ben were to take this further...

This’d be her life.

‘Um, no,’ she said, reaching out for a gorgeous-looking bottle of bath salts. Sprinkling it in. Lying back to soak some more. ‘You know you never want to commit to some guy who’ll turn out to be just like Dad. This is fantasy and nothing more.’

* * *

It was after ten when Ben reached home and he was feeling guilty.

This was what it’d be like if he ever tried marriage, he told himself. This was why Jake’s marriage had foundered. The Logan boys’ lives didn’t centre round women. But still, the thoughts of the night before were with him. The memory of Mary in his bed was enough to make him turn the key with eagerness.

‘Mary?’

No answer.

Her purse was on the counter. Her jacket was hanging on the chair. It felt good to see them. He liked it that Mary was in his apartment.

He checked his bedroom, half-hopeful that she’d be lying there as she’d lain last night.

‘In your dreams,’ he muttered. ‘To have a woman wait for you...’

He checked her bedroom. She was curled in the centre of her bed, cocooned in pillows. She looked exhausted. She looked small and vulnerable and alone.

She looked...like Mary.

This woman was planning on returning to New Zealand to bear his child. With no support.

He didn’t wake her. He headed to his study to think, and think he did. The idea that had been idling in the back of his mind all day was starting to coalesce into a plan.

It made sense—and Mary was a sensible woman.

He wasn’t entirely sure how Heinz would fit in with the pedigree pooches who strutted round Central Park but he was pretty sure Heinz could hold his own.

Could Mary hold her own?

He was sure she could. In her own way she was as independent as he was.

He flicked open his laptop. There was work to be done, though not business. The financial world could manage without him tonight. Tonight Ben Logan was plotting a future for his child.

And his woman?

Be sensible, he told himself. There are levels of responsibility. You can take the practical route; just don’t let the emotional side interfere.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE WOKE AND FELT...lonely. This was crazy. How many mornings had she woken by herself in her life? Practically all of them, so what was different?

For a start, she was in Ben’s apartment.

Yes, and tomorrow she was going home. Leaving.

Ben had inferred he wanted some input into their child’s life. Did that mean he might visit? Or did it mean he might send for Ermintrude or whoever to visit him?

Worry about it when the time comes, she told herself.

He could have come to her when he got home last night.

He’d have been being kind. Letting her sleep.

‘A pox on kindness,’ she muttered.

She emerged and Ben was drinking coffee at the dining table. He had newspapers spread out before him but he wasn’t reading. He was staring out over the park.

He turned and smiled and her heart did this crazy back flip with pike that she should be getting used to now. She wasn’t.

‘I didn’t hear you come home. You should have woken me.’ She sounded cross, she thought, and she tried to reel it in. She needed to be practical. She didn’t need to admit that she wanted this man.

‘You looked exhausted.’

She flushed, knowing she didn’t look fantastic now either. Maybe she should have brought some hot lingerie for this trip. Maybe she should have at least brushed her hair before she’d emerged.

‘You look great,’ he said, and she thought again, This man had some sort of telepathy going.

‘Says the man who didn’t come to my bed last night. You could have, you know. You’re hardly likely to get me pregnant.’

‘Would you have wanted me to?’

And there was only one answer to that. Honesty. ‘Yes,’ she said. She managed a smile. ‘Not...not that that’s a come-on.’

‘It’s not taken as such,’ he said, which flattened her because if he picked her up and carried her into his bedroom right now, she wouldn’t object at all.

But he had no such intention. He looked...businesslike, she thought. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up but he still managed to look sleek and clever. A man in control of his world.

A man not to be distracted by a woman in jogging pants.

‘I promised you today,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

‘No, thanks, I’ve gone off it. A gallon of juice would be good. You don’t need to do anything for me today.’

‘What did you do yesterday?’

‘Saw New York.’

‘What, all of it?’

‘As much as I could fit in. Statue of Liberty, Tiffany’s, Fifth Avenue, Soho, Broadway, pastrami and rye sandwiches, bagels, New York cops being nice, wind coming up from under the pavements, markets, people, stuff.’

‘Wow,’ he said faintly. ‘No wonder you slept.’

‘My feet went to sleep first. Your pavements are hard.’

‘Poor feet. So you don’t want to walk today?’

‘I might. With only one day left I won’t waste it. But, Ben, you don’t need to share.’

‘I’m sharing,’ he said brusquely. ‘Four days to see America is ridiculous.’

‘New York is enough.’

‘It’s not. What would you like to do?’

Go back to bed, she thought. With you.

She couldn’t say it.

‘I thought I might sit on a ferry,’ she said. ‘Just sit. I could see a heap and not walk at all.’

‘So we’re ruling out anywhere with pavements.’

‘It’s fine. Ben, you don’t need to play travel escort.’

‘No more city stuff?’ he said, ignoring her.

‘Ben...’

‘Would you like to see my favourite place?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere I go to chill. When I have a business deal I need to clear my head from? Where I go to turn off?’

‘That sounds like a bar.’

‘It’s not a bar,’ he told her. ‘Have you heard of the Adirondacks?’

‘I... Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean...I guess I know it’s a park of some kind.’

‘A park,’ he said, and snorted. He glanced out the window. ‘Central Park’s a park. I’ll show you a park!’

‘Isn’t it...miles away?’

‘You won’t have to walk an inch, I promise. It’s an amazing spring day, one out of the box. Let’s take advantage of it. Okay, Mary Hammond, drink some juice and eat some toast while I do some phoning. Adirondacks, here we come.’

* * *

And two hours later, courtesy of a helicopter whose pilot greeted Ben like an old friend, Mary saw the Adirondacks.

First they flew over them.

‘How can there be such a place so close to New York?’ she breathed, looking down at what seemed endless mountains, rivers, lakes.

‘It’s our best-kept secret,’ Ben told her through the headphones. ‘It’s bigger than almost all the country’s national parks combined, enshrined in the constitution as a wilderness.’

At their landing place there were kayaks and a couple of burly men to help launch their craft. One kayak. One set of paddles.

‘Because you’re not paddling today,’ Ben told her. ‘This is your day of rest.’

‘I can kayak.’

‘It’s pretty much floating. Give it a rest, Mary. Let me take charge.’

By which time she was flabbergasted. This was so far out of her league she was speechless.

‘Just shut up and enjoy it,’ he told her, so she did. This was another world. Ben’s world. She wore one of Ben’s big, warm jackets that smelled of him. She sat in the front of the kayak while Ben paddled behind and there was nothing to do but soak it in.

Ben paddled with the ease of a man who’d done this all his life. That made her feel...like she didn’t know how to feel.

He took her along the Sacandaga River, into wilderness. There seemed to be no soul for miles, except for loons and ducks, and deer standing still and watchful on the river bank. When she saw a great bald eagle soaring in the thermals, even Ben seemed stunned.

‘The eagles disappeared from here by the early sixties, but there’s work to reintroduce them,’ he told her. ‘At last count we had twelve nesting pairs. It’s a privilege to see them.’

She heard his awe and knew that for Ben this was indeed special.

‘How often do you come here?’

‘Often. Whenever I need to be alone.

You’re almost always alone, she thought. Surrounded by people, you’re still alone.

But she said nothing. This was not her business.

‘I’m betting you help fund these wildlife projects,’ she guessed.

‘The company does fund wildlife projects,’ he admitted, but he sounded brusque and she wondered why. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to admit to being passionate about something.

But the more they paddled in this amazing place, the more the feeling of him as a loner intensified. What he’d told her of his family left her cold. Poor little rich boy.

He was a man in control. He was a financier, a commando, a billionaire.

Whatever, he seemed more alone than she was.

He paddled for miles, with strong, sweeping strokes that sped them along the calm surface of lakes and the streams that joined them. He must know where he was going. All she could do was trust him. All she could do was sit back and soak in the majestic mountains rising on either side of the banks, and the utter stillness, broken only by bird calls, the honking of geese and the weird calls of the stunningly marked loons.

The smell of the pine filled her senses. The sun was on her face and Ben was paddling with ease.

He did this often. Always alone? She guessed yes, and wondered if this was his only escape from the financial pressure he lived under.

Why did she keep coming back to his loneliness? Wasn’t she the single mum? She should be worried about herself but, instead, the more she knew of this man the more her heart twisted for the isolation she sensed inside him.

She thought suddenly she’d vowed never to depend on a man. What if a man could be persuaded to depend on her?

It was a crazy thought but it shifted something inside. Something was changing. The defences she’d built up over so many years seemed to be cracking and she wasn’t sure how to seal them again.

Ben was just...Ben. The man she’d held in her arms. A man she could hold in her heart?

It was a crazy thought, unthinkable, but against all reason the thought was there. What if...?

But the what-if stayed unspoken. Indeed, there seemed little need to speak at all. It was as if the wilderness itself was ordering them to be still.

Stop overthinking this, she told herself. Ben’s a loner and he always will be. He’s chosen his own course. Stop thinking and soak this in, because reality started tomorrow.

Alone for both of them.

* * *

This was make-believe. Time out.

Jake would approve, he thought. He was drifting through the most beautiful scenery in the world, with a beautiful woman...

Yep, it was playing make-believe, only it wasn’t. She was a restful woman, his Mary. He could tell already that she loved this place. When he came here he could bring her...

Yeah, well, that was fantasy as well. His? She was a loner like himself. She wouldn’t be his and he wouldn’t be hers.

But they drifted on and the farther they went the more his plans came together.

This could work. He just needed Mary to think about it dispassionately, without emotion. There were two types of responsibility, he thought. One was tangible, the responsibility for keeping someone secure and protected. He could do that.

The other responsibility was emotional. His mother had demanded her children make her happy. He’d never ask that of anyone, neither would he expect the demand himself. Emotion needed to be set aside.

The problem was that for some reason, right now, emotion was everywhere.

The sun was on their faces. There was a rug stowed with a picnic hamper in the stowage area of the kayak. They could pull into shore, find a bed of pine needles and...

And not.

Today he had to be dispassionate. Today he needed to map out a sensible future for both of them.

Including a baby?

For all of them.

* * *

They ate lunch on the banks of the river, and the magnificence of the surroundings took her breath away.

Not enough, however, for her not to notice the lunch the guys at the landing place had handed them as they’d launched the kayak. Everything was in elegant, boxed containers, carefully labelled. Tiny bread rolls. Curls of golden butter. Crayfish, broken into bite-sized pieces. Tiny tomatoes, slivers of lettuce, radish, carrot, celery and a mouthwatering mayonnaise. Quiche in a container that had kept it warm.

Éclairs filled with chocolate and creamy custard. Strawberries, watermelon, grapes.

Wine if she wanted, which she didn’t. Two types of soda. Beer for Ben.

It should have been cold. They’d been drifting on fast-moving water from the spring thaw, but today...today it was summer.

Today was a day she’d remember for the rest of her life.

She ate the last éclair she could possibly fit in, stretched back on cushions—cushions!—and gazed up through the massive branches of a pine to the sun glinting through.

‘This has been magic,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me.’

‘I could bring you once a month,’ he said. ‘Every time I come.’

It was said matter-of-factly, like a neighbour offering to share a shopping run. Once a month, take it or leave it.

‘So you’d pop an airline ticket in the post for me once a month,’ she managed when she got her breath back. This was fantasy. Maybe it was time they got out of here.

‘I want you to stay.’ He hesitated and then he said it. ‘Mary, I want you to marry me.’

* * *

As a breathtaker it was right up there with the feeling she’d had when she’d looked at the blue line on her pregnancy-testing kit.

Maybe it was higher. She’d suspected she was pregnant. This had come from nowhere.

She’d been almost asleep, sated with the beauty of the morning, the food, the feeling of being with a man she felt instinctively would dive to her protection if a loon suddenly swooped to steal her éclair.

She wasn’t asleep now.

I want you to marry me.

She glanced sharply at Ben, expecting to see him just as dreamlike, making an idle joke that could be laughed off. Instead, she saw a man so tense there might be an army of loons lined up for attack.

‘Wh-what?’ She could barely get the word out. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve spent twenty-four hours thinking about it,’ he said. ‘It’s the only logical thing to do.’

She nodded, forcing herself to sound practical. Nurse humouring lunatic. ‘Logical. I can see that.’

‘Can you?’

‘Um...no.’

‘You won’t be permitted to stay here unless we’re married,’ he told her. ‘American immigration isn’t welcoming to single mothers with no visible means of support.’

‘Right.’ She should sit up, she thought, but that’d mean taking his proposal seriously.

It didn’t deserve it.

‘I wasn’t aware,’ she said at last, ‘that I wanted to live in America.’ She glanced around and felt bound to add a rider. ‘It’s very nice,’ she conceded. ‘But it’s not home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘In Taikohe, of course,’ she said, astounded.

‘Are you happy there?

‘I have a job. I have neighbours. I have Heinz.’

‘I’ve enquired about Heinz. We can get him over almost straight away.’

‘To, what, live in your flash apartment?’ This was the craziest conversation she’d ever had. ‘Ben, what are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about us,’ he said, and his voice said he wasn’t crazy at all. His voice said this was a serious proposal. He’d put all the pieces of some weird jigsaw together and come up with a fully formulated plan. ‘Mary, I’ve spent most of yesterday thinking this through. I would like to help you raise this child.’

Raise this child... That sounded mechanical, she thought. It sounded like following a recipe for making bread, or shifting a wreck off the ocean floor. Raise this child...

‘How?’ she managed, and apparently he really had thought about it.

‘We’re loners,’ he told her. ‘Both of us. We need our own space. That’s a problem in that we need to raise this child together, but it’s also good in that you have few ties to New Zealand. I’ve been trying to figure out how you could move to New York. I’ve run through the options, and the only one that’ll work is marriage.’

‘I...see,’ she managed, but she didn’t.

‘You won’t get a green card unless we do.’

‘Why would I want a green card?’

‘So you can stay here,’ he said patiently. ‘So I can have a say in raising this baby.’

‘Will you stop saying “raising,”’ she snapped, shock suddenly finding an expression. ‘It’s like building with Lego blocks. Producing something. A technical procedure. This is a baby we’re talking about. A little person. You don’t have to stand above and pull.’

‘But it’ll be work,’ he said, refusing to be deflected. ‘You can’t want to bring it up by yourself.’