The Baby Question

‘In a year?’

She sighed shortly. ‘Rob, you’ve been away—and when you’ve been home—’ All he’d done was try and get her pregnant. But she couldn’t say that, so she shrugged and shook her head and gave up. Not Rob, though. He didn’t give up.

He settled back and folded his arms and gave her a level look. ‘I’m not too busy now. You want to talk about it, tell me about it now. I’ve got nothing else to do.’

‘Yes, you have. You’re going,’ she told him, standing up and taking his half-full cup from his hand and tipping it into the sink.

That brow arched again. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tough.’

‘It is. Look out of the window. I’m going nowhere.’

She opened the curtain and pressed her face to the glass, but all she could see was swirling white. Snow, for heavens sake! That was all she needed.

‘It’s just a little flurry. It’ll pass,’ she said with more confidence than she felt. ‘You’ll easily get to the village. There’s a bed and breakfast there. You can stay there for the night and set off back to London tomorrow.’

She snapped on the outside light, yanked open the front door and a blast of snow and arctic wind drove her back into the house. She slammed the door with difficulty and turned to lean on it, frustration threatening to overwhelm her. There was no way he could drive in that. She couldn’t see anything except a wall of white. Even finding the car would be a nightmare.

Oh, damn, she thought. They had no choice—he could die out there, and whatever was wrong with their relationship, she didn’t hate him that much—if at all.

‘All right, you can stay,’ she said grudgingly, then added with as much firmness as she could muster, ‘but you’ll have to sleep in the sitting room, you aren’t sharing with me.’

He gave a soft snort. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he reasoned. ‘We’re married. We’ve slept together for five years. What difference can one more night make?’

Plenty to me, she thought, knowing her own weakness for his charm and knowing quite well that he’d turn it up full to get her back, if that was what he wanted. He’d seduce her—win her round, talk her into going back. No, it was too dangerous to let him that near.

‘Either you sleep in the sitting room, or you go,’ she said flatly, avoiding answering his question.

‘Fine,’ he said, and she did a mental double take. It wasn’t like him to back down so uncharacteristically fast—if at all! He settled back into the chair and folded his arms. ‘Any more tea?’

His eyes were wide and innocent, but she knew better. There was nothing innocent about Rob—never had been, never would be. She didn’t trust him not to use that charm ruthlessly just the moment it suited him, but she was stuck. There was nowhere to go, no escape. They were trapped together, and it was going to take a massive effort of will not to allow herself to succumb.

But she was going to do it. Come hell or high water, she was going to do it, and that was that.

End of conversation.

Somehow …!

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS bitterly cold. It took Rob five minutes to find the car, collect his case and mobile phone and get back into the cottage, after making a detour at Laurie’s request to shut down her computer and lock the garage and set the alarm.

She was going to do it herself, but he’d overruled her on that one. There was no way he was letting her go out there in the teeth of the blizzard that was raging all around them, and for one rather disturbing minute he himself hadn’t been able to find his way back to the cottage. He’d wondered in an oddly detached way if he was destined to perish out there on the barren Scottish hillside, but then the snow had eased and he’d seen the dull gleam of the outside light, and he’d realised he’d been going the wrong way.

So easily done in the confusing swirl of snow, but a mistake that could have proved fatal under other circumstances, he thought. He felt a dawning respect for the wild and tempestuous elements and the men that braved them on a daily basis. Quite where such a blizzard had come from he couldn’t imagine, but it had, apparently out of nowhere, and it was threatening to tear the roof off the house.

He turned the handle on the door, to have it almost snatched out of his hand by the wind. He shut it by throwing his weight against it, and as he stood inside it and listened to the raging storm outside, he wondered why on earth people chose to mount polar expeditions. Mad, the lot of them, he thought, brushing the snow off his shoulders and tousling his hair to shake the wet out of it.

‘Here, let me take that,’ Laurie said, peeling his coat off his back and flapping it firmly. ‘Come into the sitting room—the fire’s lit and I’ve revved it up a bit. I’ll make you a hot drink.’

He didn’t argue. It was rather nice being waited on by her, although not entirely necessary. It made him feel a bit like one of the old hunter-gatherers, being welcomed home by his mate at the end of a hunting expedition—except that he’d only gone fifty feet to the car and back, and his quarry had been a very cooperative suitcase.

The mate was a bit grudging, too. Ah, well.

He chuckled wearily under his breath. The jet lag must be getting to him, addling his brain. He sat down in front of the fire, stretched out his legs towards the warmth and sighed with contentment. So good. Warm. Comfortable. Peaceful.

Within seconds he was asleep.

That was where Laurie found him, two minutes later, when she came back in with two cups of tea and some cake on a tray.

She set it down silently, then curled up in the chair by the side of the fire with her tea and watched him sleep. He looked exhausted, she realised. Exhausted and thinner, run to a frazzle. He was doing too much. He’d been doing too much for more than a year, but he wouldn’t even discuss it.

He did what was necessary, that was all, he said. Nothing more, nothing less. End of discussion.

It was funny, they used to discuss things a lot, but just recently she felt he’d been stonewalling her. Maybe it was just her imagination. Maybe he was just too busy to talk, and too tired to bother.

Too tired to do anything—except a hasty flurry of activity every few weeks, in a vain attempt to get her pregnant.

She felt the hot sting of tears behind her eyes, and blinked them away. They’d lost so much. They’d been so happy at first, happy and full of life and enthusiasm. Nothing had been too much trouble, too much effort, too much of a challenge.

They’d talked and argued and made up, laughed and cried together, shared everything.

And now—now they had nothing except the spectre of failure in their most personal lives, and jet lag. She rested her head on the back of the chair and gave a quiet sigh. She’d needed this time out so much. She hadn’t realised how much until she’d agreed to take the cottage, and she’d felt a huge weight off her shoulders.

Freedom, she’d thought. Freedom from unspoken criticism, from failure, from Rob’s expectations of her as a hostess, from her friends’ expectations of her as a shopping companion and marriage counsellor—that was the funny one, she thought.

Andy asking her for advice on her marriage, when her own marriage was in such disarray.

Something splashed on her hand—a tear, she realised in surprise. She blinked and sniffed, but another one fell to join the first, and another, so she just lay there with her head against the back of the chair and let them fall.

She cried silently. She’d grown used to doing it while Rob slept, it was nothing new to her, but she didn’t usually do it with the lights on so he could see her if he woke.

Still, there was no danger he’d wake now. He was exhausted, and even he didn’t catch up with his sleep that quickly. She closed her eyes, rested her hand on the dog’s shaggy head at her knee and waited for the tears to stop. They would in the end. They always did.

She’d been crying.

He lay there, sprawled out on the sofa, and watched her without moving. There were tears drying on her cheeks, long salty tracks down the pale, smooth skin, and he felt his heart contract.

Oh, Laurie. He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but he didn’t know how, or even if he could. What could he say that would make any difference?

Nothing. It was probably him she was crying about—or them, at least. He felt sick. How long had she felt like this, so sad inside that she could sit and cry silently while he slept?

Had she done it before, maybe in their big, high bed in the lovely house he’d thought was their home? Had he slept beside her, oblivious to her misery?

And yet he still didn’t know what he’d done, or what was wrong. Until today he would have said she was crying because she couldn’t conceive, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Was she having an affair? It was possible. Maybe her failure to conceive was deliberate. Perhaps she was on the Pill, or maybe her reluctance to have any tests was because she was happy as things were and didn’t want a child.

She’d said something about that in the kitchen. He hadn’t really taken it in at the time. He’d thought she was just trying to console herself, but maybe she really meant it. Maybe she didn’t want a child—or at least, not his.

It was a sobering thought. He lay there and let it sink in, slowly absorbing the implications. It seemed there was far more to her unscheduled disappearance than a simple flounce or a cry for attention. She really seemed to have deep, fundamental doubts about their relationship, and he realised he was going to have to listen to her, to talk it through rather than simply cajole her into returning home. For the first time he felt a seed of doubt that he would win her back, and something deep inside him clenched with fear.

He watched her sleep, the tears slowly drying on her cheeks, her hand hanging over the edge of the chair above the dog’s head. He was lying against the front of the chair, his nose on his paws, as if he’d just sunk down there from sitting under her hand. His eyes were closed, but Rob knew he was alert. One move from her and he’d be up.

He was her devoted slave, and Rob felt an irrational pang of jealousy. Not that he’d want to be her devoted slave, far from it, but he wouldn’t mind going back to the lively and productive partnership they’d had before.

She’d been so vital and alive, so funny, so sharp and quick-witted. He supposed she still was, but the vital spark seemed to have gone, extinguished by something he didn’t really understand.

He remembered the first time he’d met her, at Julia and Charlie’s wedding. He’d been Charlie’s best man, and she’d been the chief bridesmaid. He’d felt his heart kick then, seeing her behind Julia, and then during the reception he’d talked to her and got to know her a little, and discovered that not only was she very beautiful, she was also clever.

She had a mind, a sharp and incisive mind and the verbal ability to go with it, and they’d wrangled about everything from fashion to the state of the stock market.

‘So what do you do for a living?’ he’d asked, and she’d laughed wryly.

‘At the moment I’m temping in an office, but my secretarial skills are slight and that’s a bit of problem in the job I’m covering, so it won’t last long, but I have to eat and run my car and pay off my uni debts, so I can’t afford to be picky. I’m looking around, though, waiting for the right thing to come up. I’d like a job with a bit of responsibility—something to get my teeth into. I’m just bored to death at the moment.’

Without pausing to analyse his motives, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, then handed her one of his cards. ‘Here. Ring me. There might be something—I don’t know what, but we’ve always got room for good people. I’ll have a chat with my Human Resources team. Come in and see us.’

She looked at the card, plucked at the sides of her pretty, floaty bridesmaid’s dress with a smile and then tucked the card down the low front of her bodice, into her bra. He caught sight of a peep of pale ivory lace against pale ivory breast, and hot blood surged in his veins.

‘I knew having boobs would come in useful one day,’ she said with a throaty chuckle, and he had to shut his eyes and count to ten. He could think of all sorts of uses for her soft, full, ripe breasts, and tucking business cards into them was way down the list.

Unless he was doing the tucking …

The next time he saw her was a week later, and she was dressed in a demure business suit with a high-necked blouse, but he could still see the firm, ripe swell of her breasts in his mind and he had to force himself to concentrate on interviewing her.

Within moments he’d forgotten about her body and was fascinated by her mind, instead. They talked about the business, about investment analysis and the stock market and maintaining the right sort of client base, and he was amazed. Most of the women he knew of her age would have been totally out of their depth, or bored to death.

Not Laurie Taylor. She had views and opinions, and she wasn’t frightened to express them. They argued, they tore holes in each other’s arguments, and in the end they agreed to differ.

For a moment, then, her confidence had seemed to falter, as if by disagreeing with him she thought she’d blown the interview, but then he’d smiled and held out his hand.

‘Welcome to the team—if you’ll come?’

‘You mean you want me, after all that?’ she’d said, surprise in her voice and her eyes, and he’d smiled back.

Oh, yes, he thought, I want you. Do I want you!

‘You’re too good to pass up,’ he said. ‘I like the way you think.’

‘But you don’t agree with me.’

He smiled again. ‘But I can argue with you, and you don’t take offence. That’s very useful—helps me maintain a wider perspective. I think we need a new post. I’ll have an assistant—it’s probably about time. How much do you want?’

She laughed softly. ‘How much do you think I’m worth?’

He thought of a figure and doubled it, and she blinked.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Absolutely.’ She gulped and nodded, and he just hoped she was worth it.

She was. By the end of the first week he wondered how he’d coped without her. By the end of the first month, their relationship had become more personal. Their wrangling over business issues had taken on the quality of a challenge—almost a game—and the stakes were rising.

One day, after a particularly long-running argument proved her right and him wrong, she crowed with delight and danced round the office, and he was suddenly, shockingly aroused.

‘OK,’ he said, retreating behind his desk for the sake of modesty. ‘I’ll concede—’

‘Concede? You’re mad! I’ve won—’

‘I’ll concede,’ he repeated with a slow smile, ‘on condition you have dinner with me. A sort of forfeit.’

She cocked her head on one side, hands on hips, sassy and luscious. ‘I thought you paid the forfeit if you lost.’

‘You do,’ he said, thinking quickly. ‘I lost. I have to pay.’

Her head tilted the other way. ‘I’ll want a good dinner—not just any old place.’

He gave a rueful laugh. ‘I never doubted it for a moment,’ he murmured. ‘So—are we on?’

She pretended to think for a moment, one luminous pink fingertip pressed against her pursed lips, then she sparkled and laughed. ‘We’re on,’ she said, and perched on the edge of the desk unconsciously revealing a great length of thigh. ‘So—where are we going?’

‘Don’t know yet. Dress up.’

‘Long? Short?’

‘Long,’ he said, knowing he wouldn’t get through the evening if he had to look at her legs, but his clever ruse didn’t work, because her gown was slit to the thigh and her sparkly, slinky tights were nearly the death of him.

‘Just do me one favour,’ he said as the waiter left them contemplating the menu. ‘Let’s not talk about work. I really, really don’t want to fight.’

She grinned. ‘OK. We’ll talk about you. How did you get to know Charlie?’ she asked, and so he told her about his childhood at boarding school, and then asked her about her childhood and was rewarded by tales of scrapes and close shaves, all the naughty little things that children did, but recounted with such mischief in her eyes at the memory that he just knew it was all still bubbling up inside her.

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