Baby on Board: Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret

‘Actually, I’m just about to feed Posie. If you really want to make yourself useful, you could put on a pot of coffee.’

Posie, growing impatient, began to whimper.

‘Poor little angel,’ Toby said, touching a finger lightly to her cheek before taking himself off to fill the coffee-maker. ‘But at least she’s still got her real mummy to take care of her.’

Grace sighed. There really was no point in explaining the finer points of surrogacy. She supposed most people would think that. She’d thought it herself until Josh had put her straight. She glanced at her watch. It had been more than an hour since they’d gone their separate ways.

What on earth could be taking so long?

Nothing good, she was sure. But there was nothing she could do about it now and she crossed to the sofa, settled herself in the corner against the arm and offered Posie the bottle. She sucked for a moment, then pulled away.

‘What’s up, sweetpea? I thought you were hungry.’ She offered her the bottle again and this time she seemed to settle.

‘Do these need posting?’ Toby said, distracting her.

‘Sorry?’

‘These packages,’ he said, nodding towards the pile of padded envelopes on her desk as he spooned coffee in the filter. ‘I’m going that way at lunch time. I’ll drop them in at the post office if you like.’

‘Oh, right. Yes. That would be a huge help,’ she said, seizing on his offer. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.’

‘You’re a brick. Pass me my bag and I’ll give you some money.’ Then, ‘They all need to be sent “signed for”,’ she apologised as she handed over the notes.

‘No problem,’ he said, tucking the money into his back pocket before sitting beside her. ‘It’ll mean all the more time to chat up that dark-haired girl behind the counter.’

‘Sarah?’ She smiled. ‘Good choice. She’s absolutely lovely. So how long has that been going on?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve been taking my post to her about twice a week since she started there.’

‘And that would be what—five, six months?’

‘I thought I’d take it slowly.’

‘Er… No. That’s not slow, Toby. That’s pathetic. Why don’t you just ask her out?’

‘Because, if she said no, sheer embarrassment would mean I’d have to go all the way into town to the main post office whenever I wanted a stamp.’

Grace clucked like a chicken and he laughed. ‘I know, it’s pathetic. But the main post office is a mile away.’ Then, as Posie spat out the bottle again and began to grizzle, he said, ‘What’s the matter with her?’

‘It’s my fault. I usually wear something of Phoebe’s when I feed her,’ Grace replied. ‘For the scent,’ she explained. ‘But I didn’t think to bring anything with me.’ She slipped a couple of buttons on her shirt. ‘Maybe this will help. Phoebe used to hold her next to her skin.’

‘As if she were breastfeeding?’

‘What do you know about it?’ she asked, laughing.

‘I’ve got sisters,’ he said. ‘And sisters-in-law. Half a dozen of them. I’ve lost count of the number of nieces and nephews I have.’

‘Right. Well, if I need any advice I’ll know where to come,’ she said, pushing aside her shirt a little and holding the baby close so that her cheek was against her skin. Drawn by the warmth, Posie immediately turned towards her and, after a moment or two, took the rubber teat of the feeder.

‘That’s so beautiful,’ he said.

‘Oh, Toby…’

And when, without warning, her eyes stung with tears that she could do nothing about, he put his arm around her, pulling her against his shoulder so that her tears soaked into his sleeve.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is stupid.’ She didn’t even know what she was crying about. Phoebe and Michael. Posie. Josh…

Maybe all of them.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Go ahead. Let it out. It’ll do you good.’

He still had his arm around her when the door opened and Josh walked in, coming to an abrupt halt at the sight of the three of them.

For a moment no one said anything, then Toby murmured, just loud enough for him to hear, ‘I’m sorry, Grace, I thought I’d locked the door.’

The shock on Josh’s face at finding her with Toby’s arm around her was very nearly as ridiculous as her own sense of guilt.

She had nothing to feel guilty about.

Toby was a friend—he’d been there when Josh had been communing with his guilt up a mountain.

But Josh was clearly reading something a lot more significant into the situation. And why wouldn’t he, when she’d gone to such lengths to convince him that she was involved with the man?

But enough was enough and she pulled free of his arm, rubbing her palm across her wet cheek. ‘Haven’t you got an urgent date with the post office, Toby?’ she reminded him before he completely forgot himself.

‘You’re going to throw me out before I have a cup of that fabulous coffee I’ve made for you?’ he said, apparently determined to give Josh a reprise of his ‘lovelorn swain’ act.

‘Abby will be here when you get back with the receipts,’ she said, cutting him off before he could get going. ‘Buy her a cake and I’m sure she’ll take the hint. My treat.’ Then, ‘Buy two,’ she said meaningfully.

‘Two?’

‘A red velvet cupcake is supposed to be irresistible,’ she said.

‘Got it,’ he murmured, finally getting to his feet. Then, as he made a move, she put her hand on his arm, detaining him. ‘Thanks for the shoulder.’

‘Any time,’ he said, covering her hand with his own, kissing her cheek, going for an Oscar. ‘Anything.’ Then, touching his finger to Posie’s cheek. ‘Bye, baby. Be good for Grace.’

Then, gathering the packages from her desk, he headed for the door, where Josh was blocking his way.

‘Makepeace,’ Josh said, his acknowledgement curt to the point of rudeness.

‘Kingsley,’ he responded mildly. ‘I was sorry to hear about your brother. I liked him a lot.’ The mildness was deceptive. If he’d actually said, ‘Unlike you…’he couldn’t have made himself plainer. ‘We missed you at his funeral.’

Josh said nothing, merely stepped aside to let him out, then closed the door after him and slipped the catch.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I’M EXPECTING someone,’ Grace protested.

‘Whoever it is will knock,’ Josh replied, crossing to the coffee pot. He turned over a couple of cups, opened the fridge. ‘There’s no milk. Shall I call back your gallant and ask him to bring you a carton?’

Gallant.

It was marginally better than ‘lovelorn swain’, she supposed. But only marginally.

‘Don’t bother for me,’ she said, and he poured two cups of black coffee and placed them on the low table set in front of the sofa.

‘You were a lot longer than I expected,’ she said, glancing up at him as Posie spit out the teat, with a finality that suggested that any further attempt to persuade her to take any more would be a waste of time. ‘What took you so long?’

‘There was a lot to go through, but clearly I needn’t have worried that you’d be lonely.’

Feeling trapped on the sofa, Grace got up, lifted the baby to her shoulder and, gently rubbing her back, began to pace.

‘I didn’t realise you and Toby Makepeace were still a hot item.’

Hot?

Hardly…

‘When Toby saw the light, he came over to see if there was anything he could do, Josh. It’s what friends do.’

‘Yes, I got the “any time, anything” message. Including the shoulder to cry on,’ he said, as she turned and came face to face with him. ‘You’ll forgive my surprise. I had assumed you were, momentarily, unattached.’

He invested ‘momentarily’ with more than its usual weight, bringing a flush to her wet cheeks, drawing quite unnecessary attention to them.

Josh produced a clean handkerchief and, taking her chin in his hand, he gently blotted first her eyes, then her cheeks, before unbuttoning one of the pockets on her thin silk shirt and tucking it against her breast.

She opened her mouth but no words came and she closed it again. Then jumped as he carefully refastened the buttons she had slipped open for Posie, her entire body trembling as the warmth of his fingers shot like an electric charge to her heart.

‘Don’t…’ was all she could manage. ‘Please.’

It was too painful. Too sweet…

He let his hands drop, stepping away from her, and it took all she had not to scream out a desperate, No…, because that felt wrong, too.

‘In view of the fact that you were carrying a baby for Phoebe,’ he continued calmly, as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just touched her, switching her on as easily as if he’d flipped a light switch, undoing, in a moment, ten years of keeping all her feelings battened down.

She stared at him, uncomprehending, having entirely lost the thread of what he was saying.

‘I don’t imagine there are many men who could handle that. Not even Toby Makepeace.’

Toby. The surrogacy…

Got it.

‘Actually, you might be surprised. There are surrogates who, having completed their own families, want to help childless couples achieve their own dreams. They’re fully supported by their partners.’

She’d done her homework, knew the answers without having to think.

‘And is that what your friend Makepeace did? Support you?’

‘Friend’ was loaded, too.

Okay. Hands up. She was the one who’d gone out of her way to give Josh the impression, over the years, that she had a continuous string of boyfriends. Not that he’d taken much interest on his flying visits.

It was as if, after their one night together, he’d totally wiped her from his mind. As if the minute their relationship had changed from friendship to intimacy she’d become just like any other girl he’d ever dated.

Just like the girls she’d once almost pitied because she’d always known he was going to leave the minute he had his degree in his pocket.

Dispensable.

Which made it doubly surprising that he’d remembered Toby’s name. They’d only met once as far as she was aware.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘on the plus side, he didn’t arrive in the middle of the night like some avenging angel, demanding that I stop being such a fool. Does that answer your question?’ Then, tired of playing games, ‘I have no idea how Toby felt about Posie, Josh. I didn’t discuss what I was doing with him. It was none of his business.’

‘That’s pretty much what you said to me a year ago.’

‘I didn’t know…’

Her mouth dried and, suddenly afraid, she held Posie a little more tightly because it had everything to do with him. Maybe, then, if she hadn’t responded with outraged anger, but had taken the time to sit down, listen, he might, despite his sworn promise to Michael, have told her the truth.

‘You should have told me.’

‘What would that have achieved? You were already pregnant.’ Then, ‘You’re quite sure that Posie is mine?’

‘What?’ That was so far from what she’d been thinking that Grace took an involuntary step back, stumbling against one of the chairs at the work table.

As Posie let out a startled cry, Josh reached out for her and steadied her, then laid his palm against Posie’s head, calming her, giving Grace a chance to catch her breath.

‘Is she?’ he repeated, so intently that she knew without doubt that he wanted it to be so. That, despite his opposition, despite everything, he desperately wanted this little girl to be his child. For a moment it felt as if the world had truly been made over. But the joy swiftly faded into something closer to fear.

Her mother had warned her. “He seems attached.”

For ten years she’d been living in a fantasy world in which Josh Kingsley was her hero, the boy she’d fallen in love with. But what did she know about the man he’d become? At home he was just Josh, but in the real world he was a power to be reckoned with. A man who’d built an empire from nothing. Who’d broken her heart when he’d brought home a laughing bride, then on his next visit announced, without apparent emotion, that the marriage had been a mistake. A man who other men treated with respect and, maybe, fear. A man who saw only the prize…

She’d wanted him to bond with Posie and, against all the odds, it seemed that he had. Now, too late, she realised that it was not his mother, or hers, who she’d have to fight to keep her baby. It was him.

‘I’ve only your word for that, Josh,’ she said, crossing to the buggy and tucking Posie in, fastening her safely, freeing herself for the fight before turning to face him. ‘It never occurred to me to doubt you, but maybe we’d both be easier in our minds if we had a DNA test.’

‘What? No…’

Not the answer he’d expected, she noted with a glimmer of satisfaction as he took a step towards her.

Her feet wanted to take another step back, keep a safe distance between them, but her head demanded she hold her ground. One step could be put down to shock. Two looked like retreat and this was a moment for standing her ground.

‘Just in case Michael came to his senses,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘That would let you off the hook, wouldn’t it?’

She knew that wasn’t what he’d meant, but the alternative was too shocking to deserve acknowledgement.

‘You made it very clear that you were simply going through the motions to keep him happy,’ she said. ‘That an actual baby was the last thing you’d anticipated or wanted, and I can understand why you wanted to put a stop to it…’

She faltered, stopped, hearing what she was saying and realising that it wasn’t true. She didn’t understand. Worse, she was still pretending, still hiding, protecting herself from hurt. But this was more important than her feelings. More important than his.

Overwhelmed by a heart-pounding rush of anger at his selfishness, she said, ‘Actually, no, I can’t imagine why you’d be that cruel, but then I do have a heart.’

The raw slash of colour that darkened Josh’s cheekbones was a warning that she’d gone too far, but she discovered that she didn’t give a damn. He’d just insulted her beyond reason and she wasn’t going to stand there and take it.

‘Unless,’ she continued with a reckless disregard for the consequences, ‘you really think that I’d cheat my sister, foist a child conceived out of careless passion rather than a clinical donation on a couple so desperate that they would have done anything, even lied to the person they loved most in the world—’

If she’d hit him the effect couldn’t have been more dramatic.

‘No!’ he said, and it was too late to step back as he surged forward, seized her, his fingers biting into her arms. ‘No!’

‘No what?’ she demanded, meeting his fury head-on and refusing to be intimidated, refusing to back down. She owed it to Posie, owed it to herself, to stand up to him.

‘No what?’ she repeated, when he just stood there, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. Well, he hadn’t. Not like this. Empowered by motherhood and ready to take on the world.

He took a shuddering breath that seemed to come from deep within his soul and then, never taking his eyes off her, said, ‘No. I don’t need a DNA test. No. I don’t want to be let off the hook. No. I don’t believe you’d lie to me…’ He broke away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘I’m sorry, but when I saw you with Makepeace, his arm around you, you looked like a family and it just all seemed to make perfect sense…’

He looked so utterly wretched and where a moment before she’d been angry, now she didn’t know what to think. She only knew what she felt. Grief. Confusion. Fear at the enormous responsibility for a precious life.

And maybe part of her anger was because she suspected he’d been right when he’d accused her of being too scared to risk a relationship, move on, make a life away from the safety of Phoebe and Michael’s home.

Had pining after him been the safe option?

‘Josh?’

The muscles in his jaw were working as he clamped down to hold back the tears and in a heartbeat the tables were turned. She could weep, but he was a man. Faced with loss, all he could do was get angry, lash out.

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