Читать книгу The Bride's Baby - Liz Fielding - Страница 9

‘SHALL we get on?’ Tom McFarlane prompted as he returned to his desk.

Sylvie silently fumed.

Why on earth was he putting himself through this? Putting her through it?

It couldn’t be about the money. The amount involved, though admittedly large, had to be peanuts to a man of his wealth.

It was almost, she thought, as if with each tick approving payment he was underlining the lesson he’d just been handed—the one about never trusting the word of someone just because they said they loved you. Presumably Candy had told him that she loved him. Or maybe, like Candy, he thought of marriage as a business deal, a mutually satisfying partnership arrangement. That love was just a lot of sentimental nonsense.

Maybe it wasn’t his heart that was lying in shreds, but his pride. Or was it always pride that suffered most from this most public declaration that you weren’t quite good enough?

‘The singing waiters?’ he repeated, making sure they were on the same page.

‘I’m with you,’ she said, putting the glass down. There was a dangerously long pause and she looked up, anticipating some sarcastic comment. But he shook his head as if he’d thought better of it and placed a tick alongside the figure.

Her sigh of relief came a little too soon.

‘Doves? Are they in such demand too?’ he enquired a few moments later, but politely, as if making an effort. He couldn’t possibly be interested.

‘I’m afraid so. And corn is not cheap,’ she added, earning herself another of those long looks. She really needed to resist the snappy remarks. Especially as the gifts for the bridesmaids came next.

Candy had chosen bracelets for each of them from London’s premier jeweller. No expense spared.

The nib of his pen hovered beside the item for a moment, then he said, ‘Send them back.’

‘What? No, wait.’ He looked up. ‘I can’t do that!’

‘You can’t? Why not?’

Was he serious? Hadn’t he taken the slightest interest in his own wedding?

‘Because they’re engraved with your names and the date.’ This was cruel, she thought. One of his staff should be dealing with this. Pride was a killer… ‘They were supposed to be a keepsake,’ she added.

‘Is that a fact?’ Then, ‘So? Where are they? These keepsakes.’

Could it get any worse? Oh, yes.

‘Candy has them,’ she admitted. ‘She was having them gift-wrapped so that you could give them to the bridesmaids at the pre-wedding dinner.’ He frowned. ‘You did know about the pre-wedding dinner?’

‘It was in my diary. As was the wedding,’ he added. Caught by something in his voice, she looked up. For a moment she was trapped, held prisoner by his eyes, and it was all she could do to stop herself from reaching out to squeeze his hand. Tell him that it would get better.

As if he saw it coming, he gathered himself, putting himself mentally beyond reach.

She tried to speak and discovered that she had to clear her throat before she could continue.

‘There are cufflinks for the ushers too,’ she said, deciding it would be as well to get the whole jewellery thing over at once. ‘And for you.’

‘Were they engraved with our names too?’

‘Just the date,’ she replied.

‘Useful in case I ever manage to forget it,’ he said and, without warning, something happened to his mouth. She thought it might be a smile. Not much of one. Little more than a distortion of the lower lip, but Sylvie reached for the glass and took another sip of water.

It sizzled a little on her tongue, turning from ice-cold to lukewarm as it trickled down her throat. If he could do that with something so minimal, what on earth could he achieve when he was actually trying?

No. She didn’t want to know. It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I’m sure she’ll return them,’ she said in an effort to reassure him. Once she came back from wherever she was hiding out. She’d be eager to negotiate the sale of her story to whichever gossip magazine offered her the most to spill the beans on the break-up and the new man in her life before the story went cold.

Billionaireless, she would need the money.

‘How sure?’ he asked, holding the look for a full thirty seconds. ‘And, even if she did, what would I do with them? Sell them on eBay?’ She opened her mouth but, before she could speak, he said, ‘Forget it.’

And, placing a tick against the item, he moved swiftly on.

It was only when they reached the cake that the cracks began to show in his icy self-control.

Candy, to her surprise, hadn’t gone for some modern confection in white chocolate, or the witty little individual cakes that were suddenly all the fashion, but an honest-to-goodness traditional three-tier solid fruit cake, exquisitely iced by a master confectioner with the Harcourt coat of arms and Tom McFarlane’s company logo in full colour on each layer.

The kind of cake where the top tier was traditionally put aside to be used as the christening cake for the first-born.

Until that point she’d almost felt as if Candy had been playing at weddings, more like a little girl let loose with the dressing-up box and her mother’s make-up—or in this case a billionaire’s bank account—than a woman embarking on the most important stage of her life. But that cake had suggested she’d been serious.

Maybe she’d just been trying to convince herself.

‘Where is this monstrous confection?’ Tom McFarlane asked.

‘The cake?’

‘Of course the damn cake!’ he said, finally snapping, proving that he was made of more than stone. ‘Did she take that with her too? Or has it already been foisted on some other unsuspecting male?’

‘That’s an outrageous thing to say, Mr McFarlane. The people I deal with are honest, hard-working businessmen and women.’ She should have stopped then. ‘Besides, no one wants a secondhand wedding cake.’ Particularly one with someone else’s coat of arms emblazoned on it.

‘They don’t? What a pity the same can’t be said about brides.’ For a moment she thought he was going to let it go. But not this time. ‘So?’ he demanded, glaring at her. ‘What will happen to it?’

Desperate to get this over with, she was once more tempted to ask him if it mattered.

The words were on the tip of her tongue but then, for a split second, she caught a glimpse of the man beneath. A man who’d worked himself up from labouring in the markets to the top floor of a prestigious office building but had never forgotten how hard it had been or where he’d come from and was just plain horrified by such profligate waste and realised that, yes, to him it did matter.

‘That’s for you to decide,’ she said.

‘Then call the baker. He can deliver it to my apartment this evening.’

This was her cue to suggest that he was joking.

Had he any idea how big it was?

She restrained herself, but when she hesitated he sat back in his chair and gestured for her to get on with it.

‘Do it now, Miss Smith.’

About to ask him what he’d do with ten pounds plus of the richest fruit cake—not including the almond paste and icing—she thought better of it. Maybe he liked fruit cake.

And when he got tired of it he could always feed the rest to the ducks.

It was all downhill from there with a mass of personalized stuff—all of it now just so much landfill. Menus, seating cards, table confetti in their entwined initials, candles, crackers with their names and the date on them, filled with little silver gifts for the guests—she’d managed to negotiate the return of the gifts. Every kind of personalized nonsense, each imprinted with their names and the date of the wedding that never was.

There wasn’t a single thing that Candy had overlooked in her quest for the most extravagant, the most talked-about wedding of the season.

The list went on and on but the only other invoice to provoke a reaction was the one for the bon-bonnière.

‘Well, here’s something different,’ he said, stretching for a touch of wry humour. ‘A French tradition for wasting money instead of a British one.’

Seeing light at the end of the tunnel, she was prepared to risk a smile of her own but instead she caught her breath as, his guard momentarily down, she caught a glimpse of the grey hollows beneath his eyes, at his temple.

Maybe he heard because he looked up, a slight frown puckering his brow.

‘What?’ he demanded.

She shook her head, managed some kind of meaningless response that appeared to satisfy him, but after that she kept her head down and finally it was all done but for the last invoice. The one for her own fee, which she’d reduced by twenty per cent, even though the cancellation had caused nearly as much work as the actual day would have done.

‘It’s as well you don’t offer a money back guarantee,’ he said.

‘My company’s services carry a guarantee,’ she assured him.

‘But not one that covers parts replacement.’

Which was almost a joke but this time she didn’t even think about smiling. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr McFarlane. The bride is entirely your responsibility.’

‘True,’ he said, surprising her. ‘But maybe you’re missing out on a business opportunity,’ he continued as, finally, he wrote the cheque. ‘It would be so much simpler if one could pick and choose from a list of required qualities and place an order for the perfect wife.’

‘Like a washing machine? Or a car?’ she asked, wondering what, exactly, had been his specification for a wife. And whether he’d adjust it in the light of recent events.

Go for something less glamorous, more hard-wearing.

‘Performance, style, finish…’ She had been dangerously close to sarcasm but he appeared to take her analogy seriously. ‘That sounds about right.’ Then, as he tore the cheque from the book, ‘But forget economy. Fast women and fast cars have that in common. They’re both expensive to run. And you take a hit on the trade-in.’ He didn’t hand her the cheque but continued to look at it. ‘Good business for you, though.’

‘I’m not that cynical, Mr McFarlane,’ she assured him as, refusing to sit there like a dummy while he made her wait for him to hand it over, she set about gathering her papers.

She tucked them back into the file and stowed them in her case, taking all the time in the world over it, just to prove that she was cool.

That nothing was further from her mind than a speedy exit from his office so that she could regain control over her breathing and her hormones, both of which had been doing their own thing ever since she’d been confronted at close quarters by whatever it was that Tom McFarlane had in such abundance. And she wasn’t thinking about his money.

When everything was done she looked up and said, ‘No one, no matter who they are, gets more than one SDS wedding.’

‘Speaking personally, that’s not going to be a problem.’

And he folded the cheque in two and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

No…

‘Once has been more than enough.’

He stood up and hooked his jacket from the back of the chair before heading for the door.

No… Wait…

‘Shall we go, Miss Smith?’ he prompted, opening it, waiting for her.

‘Go?’ She stood up very slowly. ‘Go where?’

‘To pick up all this expensive but completely useless junk that I’m about to pay for.’

Oh. No. Really. That was just pointless. Besides the fact that she was now, seriously, running out of time as well as breath. Her staff didn’t need her to hold their hands, but the pop diva was paying for that kind of service.

Sylvie was really annoyed with herself about that. Not the time—that was all down to Tom McFarlane. But the breath bit.

It wasn’t even as if he’d tried. Done a single thing to account for her raised pulse rate or the pitifully twisted state of her hormones.

Apart from looking at her.

It was, apparently, enough.

‘I’m qu-quite happy to dispose of it for you,’ she said quickly. She could at least spare him the indignity of having to haul it to the recycling centre. Then, when that offer wasn’t leapt on with grateful thanks, ‘Or I can arrange to have it delivered.’

It wasn’t as if he could be in a hurry for any of it.

‘If that’s more convenient for you,’ he said. Her relief was short-lived. ‘I assume you’re not planning to charge me for storage?’

‘Er, no…’

He nodded. ‘I’m leaving the country tonight—my diary has been cleared, the honeymoon villa paid for—but I can hold on to the cheque until I get back next month and we can finish this then.’

What?

‘I’ll give you a call when I get back, shall I?’

Give her a call…?

Everyone had their snapping point. His had been the wedding cake. This was hers.

‘You have got to be joking! I’ve already rearranged my afternoon for you and been kept waiting nearly an hour for my trouble. And I’ve got a party this evening.’

‘Your social life is not my problem.’

‘I don’t have a social life!’ she declared furiously.

‘Really?’ His glance was brief but all-encompassing, leaving her with the feeling that she’d been touched from head to foot in the most intimate way. And enjoying every moment of it.

Then he lifted one brow the merest fraction as if he knew…

‘Really,’ she snapped. Every waking moment of her life was spent making sure other people had a good time. ‘This is business. And my van, unlike me, can’t do two things at once.’

For some reason, that made him smile. And she’d been right about that too. Something about the way one corner of his mouth lifted, the skin crinkled around his eyes. The eyes heated…

‘No problem,’ he said, bringing her back to earth. ‘For a reasonable fee, I’ll hire your company one of mine.’

Beneath the riotous collage of balloons, streamers and showers of confetti with which Sylvie’s van—the one presently engaged elsewhere—was painted, you could just about make out that its original colour was, like her mood, black.

Tom McFarlane’s van was an identical model. Equally glossy and well cared for and equally black. In his case, however, the finish was unrelieved by anything more festive than his company’s gold logo—TMF enclosed in a cartouche—so familiar from that wretched cake.

They’d ridden in his private lift down to the parking basement in total silence. With no choice but to go along with him, she was too angry to trust herself to attempt small talk.

Her sympathy was history. Sylvie no longer cared what he was feeling.

Smug self-satisfaction, no doubt, at putting her to the maximum possible inconvenience just because he could.

He led the way past an equally black and gleaming Aston Martin that was, no doubt, his personal transport. Fast and classy with voluptuous cream leather upholstery, it fitted his specification perfectly.

For a car or a wife.

Shame on Candy for dumping him; he deserved her!

They reached the van. He unlocked it, slid open the driver’s door and held out the keys.

She stared at them.

She’d been tempted to insist on driving the van herself, if only to reclaim a little of the control which he’d wrested from her the moment she’d arrived at his office. If he was really serious about charging her for using it—and nothing about him so far suggested he had a sense of humour; his smile, when he’d finally let it go, had been pure wolf—it seemed eminently reasonable.

She’d had Tom McFarlane up to the eyebrows; he’d used up every particle of goodwill and she didn’t want to spend one more minute with him than was absolutely necessary.

But she also wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible and had been counting on the fact that macho man wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch her load and unload the thing by herself.

She might, of course, be fooling herself about that. It was quite possible he’d enjoy watching her work up a sweat as she earned every penny of her—reduced—fee. She was already regretting that twenty per cent. She’d earned every penny of it this afternoon.

Too late now. She’d just have to think of the eighty per cent she would be paid. The money for all those suppliers who’d put their heart and soul into making Candy’s dream come true. And her reputation for being the kind of solid, dependable businesswoman whose word, in a business that was not short on flakes, meant something. Trust that had taken time to garner when her centuries-old name had, overnight, become a liability…

‘I’d come and give you a hand but I have to take delivery of a cake.’ Then, ‘Do you need a hand up?’

‘No, thanks,’ she snapped back, snatching the keys from him and tossing her bag on to the passenger seat. ‘I’ve got one of these and I frequently drive it myself.’

‘Not in that skirt or those heels, I’ll bet.’

Oh, terrific!

That was where anger and speaking before your brain was engaged got you. But it was too late to change her mind because he didn’t give her the chance to do so and back down gracefully. Instead he gave one of those I’m-sure-you-know-best shrugs—the ones that implied it was the last thing he thought—and stood back, leaving her to get on with it.

Unfortunately, getting on with it involved hoisting her narrow skirt up far enough to enable her to step up into the cab. Which was far enough for Tom McFarlane to get the full stocking tops and lace underwear experience.

The up side—there had to be an up side—was that it would be his breathing under attack for a change.

‘Not that I’m complaining,’ he assured her, apparently perfectly in control of his breathing.

And a good thing too, she decided. One of them ought to be in control of their bodily functions. Not that she bothered to dignify his remark with an answer, but let her skirt drop, smoothing it primly beneath her as she sat down, before placing the key in the ignition.

‘What kept you?’

She’d had to buzz him so that he could let her through into the basement parking garage and by the time she’d pulled into the bay by the private lift that would take her directly to the penthouse loft apartment he was there, waiting for her.

His impatience touched a chord deep within her. Despite her very real, her justifiable anger with Tom McFarlane, her own impatience with every interruption, every traffic delay had been driven not by her need to be with an important client in Chelsea but by some blind, completely insane desire to get back to him. To renew the edgy, heat-filled connection.

He might make her angry but for the first time in years she felt like a woman and it was addictive…

‘I can manage,’ she assured him as he opened the door, offered her a helping hand. The default reaction of the modern woman. When did that happen?

It didn’t matter; he took no notice. ‘I’ve seen you manage once today. Since I’ve already seen your underwear, this time we’ll do it my way.’

‘A gentleman wouldn’t have looked,’ she gasped, outraged. Outraged by the fact that he obviously thought her legs not worth a second look.

‘Is that a fact? I guess that just proves that I’m not a gentleman.’ His eyes gleamed in the dim light of the underground garage. ‘Didn’t your old school chum tell you that it was one of the things she liked most about me? After my money. The risk. The realisation that for once in her life she wasn’t in control.’ He leaned close enough for her to feel his breath upon her cheek. For every cell to quiver with heightened awareness. Her skin to get goose-bumps. ‘That she was playing with fire.’

Sylvie’s mouth dried.

It worked for her.

‘But then again,’ he said, straightening, ‘you’re no lady, Miss Smith, or you’d have accepted my offer of assistance. So shall we try it again? Need a hand?’

‘The only help I need is with the boxes,’ she declared angrily. She certainly didn’t need to hitch up her skirt to get down. All she had to do was swing her legs over the side and drop to the floor but, then again, Tom McFarlane was going out of his way to rile her, so why make it easy for him?

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to organise this wedding in the first place—especially not once she’d met the groom—but Candy had begged and when she wanted something, no one could deny her anything.

Except, it seemed, Tom McFarlane.

And maybe the house in Belgravia and the country estate were, after all, non-negotiable if you weren’t marrying for love…

In retrospect, Sylvie thought, it was easy to see why she’d left so much of the detail to Quentin, but it really was too bad that, when all her instincts had been proved right, she was being punished by this man, not just for her bad judgement but for his too.

And her body seemed intent on joining in.

Maybe that was why, instead of jumping down, she put her hands flat against the seams of her skirt in a deliberately provocative manner, as a prelude to sliding it back up her legs.

To punish him—punish them both—right back.

Tom McFarlane couldn’t believe the way he was behaving. He was already calling himself every kind of a fool. He’d cleared his desk in preparation for a month away and all he’d had to do was get on a plane. Instead, he’d demanded Sylvie Smith’s presence in his office to explain her invoice. And then, as if that hadn’t been sufficient misery for both of them, he’d made a complete fool himself by demanding she deliver a pile of useless junk to his apartment.

He’d already put himself through an afternoon of torment, looking at her long legs as she’d crossed and re-crossed them, her sexy high-heeled shoes highlighting the beauty of slender ankles.

They were the kind of legs that could give a man ideas—always assuming he hadn’t got them the minute he’d set eyes on her. Hadn’t had the best part of two hours, while she’d kept him waiting, to think about them.

But enough was enough and, before she could repeat the move with the skirt, he snatched back control, seizing her around the waist to lift her down.

Taken by surprise, she gasped as she grabbed for his shoulders, bunching his shirt in her hands as she clung to him. She was not the only one short of breath. Close up, by the armful, Sylvie Smith’s figure more than lived up to the promise glimpsed when she’d unbuttoned that sexy little jacket. All soft curves, it was the kind of figure that would look perfect in something soft and clinging. Would look even better out of it.

For a moment they were poised, locked together, just two people, holding each other, heat sizzling between them with only one thing on their minds—and it sure as hell wasn’t wedding stationery.

A wisp of her streaky blonde hair brushed against his cheek and, as naturally as breathing, his hand slipped beneath the chocolate silk to cradle her ribcage, his thumb teasing the edge of a lace bra that he knew would exactly match the trim on what could only be French knickers.

There was no exclamation of outrage. Instead, as his thumb swept up over the aroused peak of her nipple, Sylvie Smith’s lips parted, her breathing grew ragged and the look in her eyes was pure invitation as she seemed to melt against him, clinging to his shoulders as if they were the only thing keeping her on her feet.

It would be impossible to say whether it was the shudder that ran through her, her tongue moistening her hot, full lower lip or the tiny moan low in her throat that precipitated what happened next.

Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe this had been in his mind from the very beginning, from the minute he’d first set eyes on her six months ago when he’d walked into her office and had instantly wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

Why he’d provoked today’s meeting.

Because this raw, atavistic connection between two strangers, rather than a wedding that had lain like lead in his gut for weeks, was what today had been all about and the connection between them was as inevitable as it was explosive.

Control? Who did he think he was kidding…?

As his lips touched hers it was like oxygen to a fire that had been smouldering, unseen for months. One minute there was nothing. The next it was wildfire. Unstoppable…

Somehow they made it to the lift and he groped back for the key that closed the doors, sending it silently upward as they tore at the fastenings on each other’s clothes, desperate for skin against skin. Just desperate.

A ping announced the arrival of an email from his office. Tom McFarlane bypassed the trip to Mustique, driven by a woman’s tears to take the first long haul flight out with a vacant seat, and he’d hit the ground running the moment he’d touched down in the Far East. Work. Work had always been the answer.

He opened it. Read the note from his secretary and swore. Then he picked up the picture postcard of Sydney Opera House lying beside the laptop. Read the brief message—‘Wish you were here’—not a question but a statement, before tearing it in two.

‘I’ll be fine…’

Famous last words, Sylvie thought as she regarded the pregnancy test. But then, when she’d said them, she hadn’t been talking about the fact that she’d just had unprotected sex with a man with whom, despite the fact that he’d taken up residence in her brain, she’d never made it to first name terms.

She’d hoped, expected, that he’d call from Mustique, if only to make sure that there had been no consequences to their moment of madness. Maybe, even better, just to say hello. Best of all to say, I’d like to do that again…

Apparently he wouldn’t. No doubt he thought that she’d have dealt with the possibility of any unforeseen consequences without a second thought. It was true; she had momentarily thought about emergency contraception while she’d been walking past a pharmacy the day after Tom McFarlane had made love to her. Then, just like some teenage kid buying his first packet of condoms, she’d come out with a new toothbrush.

Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had given it a second thought.

She was nearly thirty and a baby would not be bad news. She smiled as she lay her hand over her still perfectly flat abdomen. Far from it. It was wonderful news. Totally right. For her, anyway.

Quite what her baby’s father would make of it was another matter altogether. She’d given up hoping for any kind of a call from him when she’d received a freshly drawn cheque in the post, clipped to a compliment slip with ‘settlement in full’ typed on it, followed by someone’s indecipherable initials. Not his. Well, no, he was taking time out in the fabulous villa that Candy had chosen for their honeymoon.

He’d reinstated the twenty per cent she’d deducted and couldn’t have made his point more succinctly. He’d known exactly what he was doing. Had regained control…

She returned the twenty per cent with a brief note, reminding him that she had deducted it from her bill. Stupid, no doubt, but pride had its price and it had been essential to make the point that she did not.

A secretary replied to thank her for pointing out the error, assuring her that Mr McFarlane had been informed.

She wasn’t going to risk that this time. Or a formal letter from a lawyer demanding a paternity test. He had a right to know he was about to become a father, but she was going to make it plain that this was something he’d have to deal with himself and steeled herself to call his office.

She doubted that holidays came easily to him and fully expected that he would have returned early, but was informed that he was still away and did she want to leave a message?

She declined. A letter would be easier. That way she could keep it cool. She pulled a sheet of her personal notepaper from the rack, uncapped her pen.

An hour later she was still sitting there.

How did you tell a man you scarcely knew that he was about to become a father? Especially since Candy had shared her joy that ruining her figure to provide him with an heir had not been part of the deal.

How could she tell a man who apparently had no desire for children of his own that this was the most magical thing that had ever happened to her? Share just how amazing she felt, how happy she was? How life suddenly had real meaning?

She knew he’d hate that and, since she didn’t want him angry, she’d keep it businesslike. Strictly to the point. Give him room to look past a moment of sizzling passion and see what they’d created together so that he could, maybe, find it in his heart to reach out to his child without any burden of liability to get in the way.

Finally, she began.

Dear Tom,

No. That wouldn’t do. She blotted out the memory of crying his name out as he’d brought her body humming to life and scratched out Tom and, clinging instead to the memory of that twenty per cent, she wrote:

Dear Mr McFarlane—that was businesslike.

I’m writing to let you know that as a result of our recent…

She stopped again.

What? How could she put into words what had happened. His unexpected tenderness. The soaring joy that had brought the tears pouring down her face…

He hadn’t understood the tears, how could he? She just kept saying, ‘I’m all right…’ Blissfully, brilliantly, wonderfully more than ‘all right’. And she would have told him, but then Josie had rung in a panic because Delores was out of her head on an illegal substance half an hour before everyone was due to arrive and the baker had turned up with the cake and there had been no time. And all she’d said was, ‘I have to go.’

She’d expected him to ring her. Kept hoping he would. But when she’d rung his office using the excuse of reminding him about the cheque—they’d somehow forgotten all about that—she’d been told he was away. He had, apparently, taken her at her word and caught his plane…

Come on, Sylvie. Get a grip. Keep it simple.

…as a result of our recent encounter, I am expecting a baby in July.

Businesslike. To the point. Cool. Except there was nothing cold about having a baby. When she’d seen the result of the pregnancy test there had been a rush of an emotion so powerful that she could hardly breathe…

Please believe me when I say that I do not hold you in any way responsible. It was my decision alone to go ahead with the pregnancy and I’m perfectly capable of supporting both myself and my son or daughter. My purpose in writing is not to make any demands on you, but obviously you have a right to know that you are about to become a father. Should you wish to be a part of his or her life, I would welcome your involvement without any expectation of commitment to me.

She crossed out without any expectation of commitment to me. You could be too businesslike. Too cool…

You have my assurance that I won’t contact you again, or ever raise the subject in the unlikely event that our paths should cross. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume that you have no wish to be involved.

Yours

Sylvie Smith

What else could she say? That she would never forget him? That he had broken down the protective wall that had been in place ever since Jeremy had decided that he wasn’t up for the ‘worse’ or the unexpectedly ‘poorer’—at least not with her—leaving her with everything in place for a wedding except the groom.

That she would always be grateful to him for that. And for the precious gift of a baby.

A new family. The chance to begin again…

No. That would be laying an emotional burden on him. Any involvement must not be out of guilt, but because he wanted to be a father. If he didn’t, well, at least that way, her child would be spared the bitter disillusionment she’d suffered at the hands of her own father.

Something dropped on to the paper, puddling the ink. Stupid. There was no reason for tears, absolutely none, and she palmed them away, took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out her letter minus the crossings out. Then she drove across to the other side of the river and placed her letter in Tom McFarlane’s letter box so that she wasn’t tempted to write again if he didn’t reply, just in case it had been lost in the post. Could be sure that no one else would open it, read it…

Then, since there was nothing else to be done, she went home and started making plans for the changes that were about to happen in her life.

Tom managed to get the last seat on the flight back to London. Four months. He hadn’t stopped travelling for four months. Like a man on the run, he’d been in flight from the memory, burned into his brain, of Sylvie Smith, silent tears pouring down her face.

For a moment, in that still, totally calm space, when he’d spilled his seed into her, he’d felt as if the entire world had suddenly been made over for him, that he was the hunter who’d come home with the biggest prize in the world.

Then he’d seen her tears and realised just what he’d done. That while she kept saying ‘I’ll be fine…’ she was anything but. ‘I have to go…’ when all he wanted was to keep her close.

And work, he’d discovered, was not the answer, which was why he was going back to face her. To beg her to forgive him, beg her for more…

About to go through passport control, he paused at a book shop—with a twelve hour flight ahead of him, he’d need something to read—and found himself confronted by the face that haunted his dreams, both waking and sleeping. Not crying now, but smiling serenely out at him from the latest copy of Celebrity.

Saw the story flash—‘Sylvie’s Happy Event!’

He didn’t need an interpreter to decipher ‘happy event’ and for a moment he felt a surge of something so powerful that he felt like a man with the world at his feet. She was wearing something soft and flowing and there was nothing to show that she was pregnant. Only the special glow of a woman who had just told the world that she was having a baby and was totally thrilled about it.

His baby…

He picked up the magazine. Opened it and came crashing back to earth as he saw that the cover photograph had been cropped. Inside, the same photograph showed that she was posed with a tall, fair-haired man and the caption read:

‘Our favourite events organiser Sylvie Smith, who has just announced that she’s expecting a baby later this summer, is pictured here with her childhood sweetheart, the recently divorced Earl of Melchester. Their marriage plans were put on hold when Sylvie’s grandfather died and, as Jeremy put it, “life got in the way”. It’s wonderful to see them looking so happy to be together again and we confidently predict wedding bells very shortly.’

He read it twice, just to be sure, then he tossed the magazine in the nearest bin and went back to the desk to change his ticket.

‘Where do you want to go, Mr McFarlane?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’