Baby's On The Way!: Bound by a Baby Bump / Expecting the Prince's Baby / The Pregnant Witness

‘Can’t we drink and talk?’

‘Sure, we can drink and talk. But that’s not what you’re suggesting. You want to drink and work.’

He was beyond tense now, and heading directly for angry. His body language was defensive, closed, and she could see from the lines of fear on his face that she’d stumbled into deeper waters than she’d thought. He wasn’t just angry at her for doing this without him. Her temper had lit in response to his, but she forced it down, trying to keep neutral. Trying to understand what had him so wary. If she blew up, too, they’d never talk this through.

‘We don’t have to do this all today. But I’d like to make a start, if we can. We’ve got quite a lot to get through—’

‘Get through?’ He slammed his mug onto the table, and hot coffee spilled onto the wood, creeping towards her papers. She pulled them back, eyeing Leo, suddenly realising she’d completely underestimated how badly she’d read him, how much distance there was between them. How impossible it was going to be to create a family out of this mess. ‘I’m not a project, Rachel. I’m not a client or a boss or someone you’re giving a presentation to. This isn’t going to be solved over a working lunch and a follow-up email.’

‘But—’

‘No!’

Rachel set her cup down slowly, willing herself to remain calm in the face of his raw emotion, wishing she could understand what was making him react this way. She hadn’t expected this to be easy, but she hadn’t expected such vehement opposition, either. She shut her eyes and counted to ten, hoping that when she opened them again Leo would’ve lost the frightened, cornered, angry look that twisted his features—usually so effortlessly sexy—into something ugly.

She looked up. He had calmed a little, the redness draining from his face, but there were still deep creases between his brows, and his mouth was set in a harsh line.

‘I’m sorry, but I cannot have your plan dictated to me and just go along with it.’ The clipped consonants and snappy vowels gave away the effort that near-civility was costing him. ‘I know you need this. I know you want everything decided, booked, settled. But it’s not just you now. Can’t you see that?’ He could see it, and he didn’t know how to get away from it. ‘If we decide something, we have to do it together. I will not let you plan and schedule and itemise my life just because I happened to get you pregnant. That doesn’t give you the right to come in here and tell me how it’s going to be.’

‘I’ve given you choices...options.’ Finally she couldn’t keep the anger from her own voice. With the venom contained in his, it didn’t seem optional—it was a necessity. A way to fend off his biting accusations.

‘You don’t get to give me anything. That’s not how together works.’

‘What’s made you so scared?’ she asked. ‘Tell me why my having a plan freaks you out. Because as far as I can see, with us barely knowing each other, and living hours apart, and having an actual baby together, some idea of how we’re going to cope seems like a good idea. So why is it you blanch, pretty much start shaking and bite my head off?’

He scraped his chair backwards, leaving a good couple of feet between him and the table, the space acting like a force field around him. ‘I can’t do it like this, Rachel. I won’t. I can’t sit here, backed into a corner with no way out of what you’ve decided for us. I won’t be trapped.’

And with that he headed straight out of the door, leaving her sitting at the kitchen table wondering what the hell had just happened. Her heart was hammering in her chest, tears pricked at her eyes, and her fingers shook slightly when she reached for a cloth to mop up the spilled coffee.

How had they got here? They’d gone from almost kissing when she’d arrived to the point where they couldn’t be in the same room together.

And now she was scared—because nothing he had said or done made her believe that he was in any way glad about the fact they were having a baby. In the days since she’d found out she was expecting, she’d started to look forward to being a parent. Feel joy at the prospect of meeting the new life they had created. Of course there was an enormous dose of full-body-paralysis fear, not least when she tried to think about how she could possibly spend the next eighteen—or eighty—years trying to maintain some sort of contact with Leo.

The thought of having to live with the disorder and randomness that Leo so clearly needed threated to bring on another panic attack. But when he had headed for the door just now, her stomach had dropped and her heart had felt as if it had stopped. She had been filled with an overwhelming dread that he might not come back. That he was leaving her to have this baby alone. She knew that she could do it if she had to. But in the second that she thought that Leo might be walking away, she wanted him by her side. Chaos and all. They had made this new life together, and she wanted to find a way for them to be a family.

She cleared away a few pieces from the table—for no reason other than that she didn’t want to be just sitting waiting for him when he got back. So when she heard his footsteps at the door, she had her back to him, running something under the tap and holding her breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, in a shaky voice redolent of raw emotion.

She stared into the sink a little longer, gathering her thoughts, and fighting down the swell of tears that seemed to be climbing her throat. She couldn’t account for them, couldn’t reason why the croak of his voice made hers swell with sympathy.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned off the tap and slumped back against the sink, relief washing through her. ‘I shouldn’t have made those plans without you.’

‘And I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m genuinely sorry. But there are some things we need to talk about if we’re going to make this work. I know you like to have everything all worked out, but I can’t do that.’

‘So what am I meant to do? Just wait and see if you turn up at my office again?’ She tried to laugh, to pretend she could live like that, but it sounded hollow even to her.

‘Would that be so bad? I’d make sure I was there when you—when the baby—needed me. Does everything need to be planned months in advance?’

Her spine straightened again; Leo’s presence was seemingly anathema to serenity. ‘And is that what I should tell my doctor? Oh, I’ll definitely come along at some point. An appointment? No. I’ll just arrive when I’m ready.’

‘And what about the baby—is he allowed to arrive when he’s ready, or are you going to hold him to whatever due date the doctors pull out of the air? I hope for his sake he isn’t late.’

She was about to snap back, when her train of thought faltered and her voice failed. ‘Wait, he?’ she asked, with the beginnings of a smile tweaking her lips. ‘Who says it’s a boy?’

His face softened, and for the first time she saw the hard expression around his eyes ease, and his usual humorous glint return. She found she was relieved to see it, had been worried for a few moments that she and the baby had caused its disappearance to become permanent. It had been his determination to make her laugh that had drawn them together that first night, and she was worried that without that humour between them the very foundations they were working on were unsteady.

‘I don’t know. In my head, when I think about how things will be, I just always see a boy.’

‘You’ve thought about it?’

His eyes bugged.

‘Have I thought about it? What else am I meant to think about? Have you thought about anything else?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘So what do you?’

He raised an eyebrow by way of a question. ‘What do I...?’

‘What do you think, when you think about it?’

He crossed to the table and dropped into a seat, reaching for his abandoned cup of coffee. A smile was creeping across her face at the sight of the hint of a grin on his. He thought about their baby. The knowledge glowed inside her. ‘I don’t know. Just flashes of things, I suppose.’

‘Good things?’

‘Mostly.’ They shared a long look, mutual happiness turning both their mouths up like a mirror. But they couldn’t leave it there. If they wanted this to work, they had to dig deeper than that. Learn to trust one another.

‘And the bad?’ she asked.

‘This.’ He motioned towards her colour-coded papers. ‘This is pretty much every bad thing I’ve imagined since Wednesday afternoon. I want you to know, Rachel, that I’m here for you and for the baby. But I will not do this entirely on your terms. We’re both going to have to compromise.’

‘And the first thing that’s got to go is any attempt at a plan?’ She couldn’t help her defensiveness—he was threatening the only thing that was keeping her in any way connected to sanity.

‘This plan? Yes. We didn’t discuss a single thing before you made it. Of course it has to go.’

She felt a wave of nausea as she realised what he was saying. Every plan she had made in the past few days. All the words and the numbers and the tidy tick-boxes that had soothed her mind—were going to be thrown out. Already panic was making the edges of her thoughts fuzzy, and that wave of nausea was starting to feel more like a tsunami. With a shock, she realised it was more than just nausea. She must have looked pretty green, because as her hand flew to her mouth Leo was already by her side, grabbing her free hand and pulling her to the stairs.

CHAPTER FIVE

LEO LEANED AGAINST the landing wall, trying not to hear the noises emanating from the bathroom, and wondering whether he was relieved or annoyed that Rachel had so easily brushed away his offer of help and slammed the bathroom door shut with him on the outside. Not that it sounded a particularly appealing place to be right now, but the knowledge that she was perfectly happy doing this alone—was happier doing it alone—made his chest uncomfortable. Because at the moment, it felt as if any involvement in his child’s life depended entirely on this woman’s opinion of him, and was entirely on her terms. He’d been terrified, was still terrified, when she’d told him that she was pregnant; but the thought of his child out there in the world not even knowing him was more frightening still.

He’d have to apologise for snapping at her like that. Losing his cool definitely didn’t help him get what he needed—but he had to get her to see his point, and to agree with it. Of course there were parts of this situation that he couldn’t avoid planning in advance—he was perfectly prepared to understand that a doctor’s appointment had to be made for a particular time. And though the thought of those appointments stretching out for years in the future didn’t do brilliant things to him, it didn’t fill him with the same queasy dread he’d felt when he’d glimpsed the plan she’d drawn up. Just the headings told him he was in trouble. Timing. Finance. Schooling. Schooling? He didn’t even know when the baby was due, and they were talking schooling already? Did she even know yet when it was due? Had she been to the doctor? Probably things he would know already if he hadn’t walked out on her. The bathroom had gone quiet, and he leaned back against the door.

‘Rachel?’ he shouted through the wood. ‘All okay in there?’

‘Fine,’ she replied and he could hear tears in her voice. Was that the sickness or something else?

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘No, I’m fine. I just need to catch my breath.’

He heard her lean back against the door, and he followed her down, until the old oak was supporting them both.

‘Then can I ask you a question?’

He took the mumble he could hear as a yes.

‘Tell me about the plans. Why do you need them? Help me understand.’

He held his breath, hoping that she would trust him. See that he was reaching out to her, and wanting her to reach back. He needed to understand her. To try and find out how they were going to manage to get along, now that they were tied together.

‘I don’t need them. I just like to have an idea of what’s going on. What’s wrong with that?’

‘There’d be nothing wrong with that. But that’s not how you felt downstairs just now, was it?’

He listened through the door, wishing he could see her face, wishing he could at least see her expression. Just as he was giving up hope that she would ever speak...

‘It makes me feel safe.’

He was almost tempted to laugh at that, the quirk of fate that had brought him together with a woman who could only feel safe if he felt bone-chillingly terrified. Instead he heard the trepidation in her voice, the hint of tears. He wanted to break down the door, wrap his arms around her and tell her that they would be okay. Or, failing that, tease and kiss her until the tension left her shoulders, until her limbs were heavy and languid, wrapped around him. Instead, he asked another question, hoping that the pain now would be worth it eventually.

‘Why?’

He pressed his head back against the solid wood of the door, wondering if she could feel how close he was. Whether she wanted him closer, the way he wanted her.

The memories of the night they had spent together had often played on his mind in the weeks after. Flashbacks, scents, snatches of songs all reminded him of the hours they’d spent wrapped around each other. And he couldn’t deny that these memories had something to do with why he’d been so keen to meet with Will and discuss the idea he’d had—to create a sculpture for the Julia House charity. They could keep it in the grounds, or auction it for money. Whatever they thought would benefit their patients most. He’d floated a couple of ideas to Will the night of the fundraiser—always with half an eye for whether Will’s assistant would take an interest in the conversation.

Then after he’d left Rachel at the station, the momentary relief he’d felt as his train had pulled away had faded quickly, leaving him dissatisfied, feeling as if he’d missed an opportunity. Maybe he’d been too hasty running from her then, he’d thought as he’d made the phone call to Will. Maybe they could have had a few more nights like the previous one before they inevitably went their separate ways. As he’d taken the train up to London, he’d let himself imagine how she’d react to seeing him again. And then a little longer thinking of everything they could get up to if she was of the same mind.

The shock of a baby in the works had seemingly done nothing to quell his fierce imagination.

He jumped up at the turning of the lock and was brushing off his jeans when the door opened and Rachel appeared, looking a little pale. ‘Morning sickness, I guess,’ she said as she walked out. He nodded as if he understood, but beyond the fact that he knew pregnant women were sick sometimes he was pretty much clueless. For a start, shouldn’t it happen in the morning? He didn’t know the exact time—he hadn’t worn a watch since he was a kid. It was probably past eleven when he left his workshop. And he’d laid floorboards and half carried a pregnant woman up a flight of stairs since then. It was definitely well past morning.

‘Sorry, it took me by surprise. It’s not happened before,’ she continued, as clipped and professional as if he’d called by her office. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her face up to him.

‘I borrowed your toothbrush,’ she blurted, and he guessed from the rosy blush of her cheeks she’d not meant to confess. He laughed, the re-emergence of her human side relaxing him.

‘No worries.’ He smiled at her. ‘I think we’re a little past worrying about a shared toothbrush.’ He was gratified by her small smile, but a little uneasy at how his own insides relaxed at the sight of it.

‘So what now?’ she asked as they hovered on the landing. She looked lost, smaller somehow, as if she was losing a grip on what it was that allowed her to present her usual polished, professional, vibrant face to the world. He knew what she was missing—her plan—but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it yet. Not even for her. But he could offer her a distraction, a plan for the next hour or so. He hoped it would be enough.

‘What about a walk on the beach? An ice cream and fish and chips—if you’re hungry.’

She nodded and he remembered the night they met, when he’d heard the clear chime of her laugh and seen it as a challenge to get her to make that sound as many times as he could. The prospect seemed a distant one right now. But he’d made a connection with her before. Felt her relax in his arms. If they could do that again, find the connection that had strung between them that night and held strong until the next morning.

‘A walk and an ice cream,’ she repeated. ‘I think I can manage that. I just need to change. Where...?’ She glanced around the landing and he felt a stirring heat inside him. He wanted to curse the gentlemanly instinct that had made him tell her that he had a spare room, and had him working through the night for the past couple of days to get it ready for her. Even if it meant that he was sleeping on a mattress on bare floorboards.

He shook away the tempting image of sharing a room with her, and concentrated on their maintaining civility for the time being. That they couldn’t even make it through a cup of coffee without fighting had shown him all too clearly how fragile this relationship was—how easily it could fall apart around them. He’d had no ulterior motive in inviting Rachel to come and stay. He really did want to get to know her better. Now he was starting to realise that he’d been hoping to get her to do things his way. To show her his way of life and hope that she would want it. This had shown him how precarious their situation was.

He pushed open the door to the guest room and stood back to let her past him. ‘This is yours,’ he said, even as he was turning away. He tried to brush past her—suddenly unable to think of being alone in a bedroom with her, and cursed the narrow doorway as he found himself pressed against her. He dropped his hands to her hips as he attempted to get by, but kept his eyes on their feet—determined not to be drawn in, not yet.

But the press of her body was electric against his, and her hair beneath his face smelt fresh and fruity. On impulse he lifted a lock of it, twisting it around his fingers. Rachel’s eyes snapped up to his, and for a long moment their gazes held. All sensible considerations threatened to fall away in the onslaught of her body on his senses. But he couldn’t give in to it. Couldn’t lose sight of all the reasons getting any more involved with her was an impossibility. Dropping her hair, and pulling his eyes away, he jogged down the stairs and leaned back against the wall as he reached the kitchen. It was starting to look as if his bright idea had been a huge mistake.

He returned upstairs with her suitcase and a glass of water. Reaching out to knock on the open door, he caught sight of Rachel, silhouetted by the window, looking out over the water. The light was catching her hair, highlighting every shade of chocolate and chestnut, and a subtle smile turned the corners of her lips. She looked almost dreamy, and at that moment he would have given just about anything to know what she was thinking. But his foot hit a creaky floorboard, and she turned around, her relaxed expression replaced by something more guarded.

‘This is beautiful,’ she said, glancing round the room as she took in the furniture he’d found, sanded, painted and waxed. The light he’d sculpted from a block of driftwood, and the seascapes painted by a local artist friend, mounted in frames he’d made in his workshop. But her eyes hovered on the evidence of his labour only briefly. Because they were drawn inexorably to the window, and out over the water. The window itself was an exercise in love and commitment. The product of arguments with planning authorities, and then wrestling with metres-long expanses of timber and glass, all to create this huge, unbroken picture of the sea. It was calm today, just a few white-crested waves breaking up the expanse of ever-shifting blue-green.

If he’d known beforehand, though, what it would have taken to get the thing finished—the hearings and the plans, and the revised plans and rescheduled hearings—he wasn’t sure that he could have started.

He handed Rachel the glass of water, and his gaze rested on her face rather than being drawn out to sea. Her eyelashes were long and soft, and brushed the skin beneath her eyes when she blinked. There were faint shadows there, he realised. He wondered whether they were new, or whether he’d just not seen them before. But he was struck by a protective instinct, the desire to look after her, ensure she was sleeping. Her hair had been pulled back into a loose tail—a style that owed more to her morning sickness than anything else, he guessed. The navy dress she wore wouldn’t have been out of place among the stiff suits at her office. His eyes finally dropped to her belly—still as flat as he remembered it, but where her child, their child, was growing. It seemed almost impossible that a whole life could be growing with no outward sign.

She turned, and must have caught the direction of his gaze, because her hands dropped to her tummy. She spread her fingers and palms, stretching the fabric flat against her, and then looked up and caught his eye.

‘Nothing to see yet,’ she said with a small, cautious smile. ‘It’ll be a couple more months before I start to show.’ He nodded again, as if he had the faintest clue about any of this. As if at the sight of her hands on her belly he wasn’t remembering the last time he’d seen her fingers spread across her skin like that. He held her gaze, wondering if she remembered, too. But she gave a little start, pulling back her shoulders and straightening her posture—leaving him in no way uncertain that if she was remembering, she wasn’t too happy about it.

‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ he said, giving her the space her expression told him she needed.

CHAPTER SIX

AS THEY STROLLED along the beach, Rachel felt the tension of the past few hours draining from her limbs, being replaced by the gentle warm glow of summer sunshine. They’d walked down the coastal path from the cottage, barely exchanging a word, but somehow the silence felt companionable, rather than awkward. She was taken aback, as she had been at the window upstairs, by the beauty of Leo’s home. It perched on a cliff above the beach, and even with the tarpaulin for a roof, and the building materials dumped in the yard, the way it nestled into the rock and sand, shutters on the outside of the window, even the way the front door reflected the colour of the sea all helped it look as if it were a natural part of the landscape, as if it had emerged from the Jurassic rocks fully formed and—almost—habitable.

With the sun warming her hair, and the gentle exercise distracting her from the slight queasiness still troubling her stomach, she reached a decision. They were never going to be able to be friends if they didn’t understand each other. Leo had asked her a question, one she’d avoided answering up till now, but he wanted to know why she needed a plan so badly, and if she was to stand any chance of him cooperating with it, then she at least had to expect to tell him why.

‘You asked me why I need a plan,’ she said, as they stopped momentarily to step over a pool of spray that had gathered on the rocks.

‘To feel safe, you said.’

She nodded, wondering how she could explain, where to start.

‘When I was fourteen, my parents left me home alone while they went out. It wasn’t anything special, just cinema and dinner, I think. I’d gone to bed, but woke up when I heard a noise from my dad’s study. I went downstairs and disturbed a burglar.’

Leo had stopped on the sand, and turned to face her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, his face lined with genuine concern. ‘That must have been awful for you.’

‘I got a nasty bump to the head—he lashed out as he tried to get away—but I recovered pretty quickly. Not that you would have believed that if you’d listened to my parents.’