Читать книгу Pregnant With His Royal Twins - Louisa Heaton, Louisa Heaton - Страница 12
ОглавлениеIT MUST HAVE fallen from her pocket. But when? And how?
And then she remembered crouching down to get the milk from the fridge. Something similar had happened before, due to the design of the pocket on her uniform. It was below the waist, low down. She’d lost her mobile phone once that way, hearing it clatter onto the floor. She’d not heard the test stick fall. Probably because she’d heard his voice instead. Felt his presence.
‘It is you. Isn’t it?’
His words had cut through everything.
Her mind had been on other things. Other concerns. She’d closed that fridge fast. Stood up quickly and made that tea, trying not to look at him, trying to get away as quickly as she could.
She was saved from going over to him and taking the test from his hands. The call light above Bed Two flashed and she went in to see how Lisa Chambers, her labouring mother there, was doing.
Lisa was pacing the room, her abdomen swollen before her, her hands pressed into her back.
‘I felt the need to push with that last one, Freya.’
She handed the mug of tea over to Lisa’s husband and then guided Lisa back to the bed. ‘I’ll need to check you before you can push.’
She didn’t need Lisa pushing too early. It might cause a swelling of the cervix and make delivery more difficult.
Regaining control of her own body, she checked her patient’s. ‘You’re right, Lisa. You’re ten centimetres. You can push with the next contraction.’
Lisa got up off the bed. ‘I can’t lie down, though.’
‘That’s fine. Let your body lead you and I’ll help. Just tell me when you’re ready.’
Lisa beckoned to her husband to stand on the other side of the bed and take her hands. Then she squatted on the other side.
‘When the contraction comes, take a big, deep breath, Lisa—chin to your chest and push, right into your bottom.’
Lisa nodded, waiting, then closed her eyes and sucked in that breath.
Freya quickly washed her hands, dried them and gloved up. Lisa might be five times a mother, but this was her first vaginal delivery. It might take some time and, with the best will in the world and not wanting to prolong her patient’s suffering, she hoped that it would.
Because she herself needed some time before she could leave this room. Needed to think of what she would say. What she would do. How she could escape this situation she’d found herself in.
Lisa was an excellent patient, though, and obviously keen to see her fifth child. Because within forty-five minutes of her first needing to push, her son slithered into Freya’s waiting hands.
She passed the baby to his sobbing mother, clamped and cut the cord, then helped Lisa into bed and wrapped a towel around her son to help keep him warm.
The baby cried—bursts of pure sound, a completely new person announcing his arrival. Freya smiled at the newly created family of seven and quietly gave Lisa the injection of syntocinon that would hasten delivery of the placenta, as per her patient’s request.
It seemed to take no time at all to deliver it, check it, assess the baby’s APGAR score, then Lisa’s, and realise that Lisa hadn’t torn at all. Her five-pound, twelve-ounce son had arrived perfectly.
There was no reason for Freya to stay at all. She prided herself on leaving her families to have some private time as soon as she could after the birth. So they could welcome and get to know their new baby on their own. But tonight she hesitated by the door.
‘Congratulations, you two.’
‘Thanks, Freya. I couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘Nonsense. You were a model patient.’ She smiled, trying to pluck up the courage to go out there and face him. That conversation.
She could only hope and pray that he was busy with a patient of his own.
But she had no such luck.
Jamie was just walking back to the hub desk, sliding his pen into his top pocket. His dark eyes instantly met hers. Challenged her. Demanded an explanation.
She almost faltered. But she had Lisa’s notes to finish writing up, and when that was done she needed to check on Andrea. She’d taken her off the trace a while ago and she’d been steadily contracting every five minutes the last time she’d seen her.
Jamie stood still as she walked past him, and she hoped he wouldn’t see that her nerves were making her hands tremble and shake as she sat down at the desk.
‘It’s not what you think.’ She glanced up at him, then away again. Dammit. He was just as handsome as she remembered. Even more so, this close. He was hauntingly beautiful.
Jamie sat down in the chair next to her. ‘What do I think?’
She paused, her pen over Lisa’s notes. ‘It belongs to a patient.’
‘A patient?’
‘Yes. I must have put it in my pocket without realising and—’
‘We don’t do pregnancy testing here. Mona was quite clear when she showed me around that the fertility clinic is in a whole other ward next to this one.’
She tried her hardest not to look at him. Not to meet the searing gaze that she knew would instantly divine the truth. If her cheeks could have flamed red, then they would.
She looked at him, guilt filling her eyes.
He gazed at her for a moment, his face deadly serious. ‘Tell me the truth. It’s yours?’
Her eyes closed, almost as if the admission would cause her pain. ‘Yes...’ A whisper.
‘Am I...?’
The words choked in his throat and she opened her eyes again in anguish. She hardly knew this man. He was a temp. A locum. A drifter. How could she tell this stranger that the baby in her womb was most definitely his? Because she didn’t sleep around. She never met anyone—never gave herself the chance to.
She didn’t need to get that kind of close to any man, to develop feelings for any man, because look at what had happened to her when she did. She’d suffered more than she’d ever believed it was possible for one body to suffer after getting involved with Mike. The pain she’d gone through, both emotionally and physically, had almost destroyed her.
She never wanted that again. Never wanted to risk it. Having that one night with Jamie—a stranger—had been a moment in which she’d thrown caution to the wind, feeling herself so physically attracted to the pirate she’d met at the ball that she’d decided she would risk it. Keeping her anonymity, she would never have to deal with him afterwards.
Because why shouldn’t she have slept with him? It was allowed, and it had felt so good to let all that other stuff go.
But they’d both been stupid. Believing that one night wouldn’t have consequences. Believing that they could walk away.
They should have known the risks.
They’d been wrong! And no one could be angrier with her than she was with herself.
She’d once sat on a hospital bed, with a plastic compression mask over her burnt features, and promised her mother that she would never get involved with another man ever again. Would never cause her family anguish ever again. Because what Mike had done—throwing that acid at her face—hadn’t just affected her. The tragedy had affected her family and even Mike’s family, who were distraught that their son was in prison.
And all because she’d got involved with him.
And now she was pregnant. With Jamie’s baby.
‘Yes. You’re the father.’
She saw him look down at the ground. Could almost hear the cogs going around in his skull, almost sense his thoughts as he tried to distance himself from her. Maybe even planned to leave this place. Get a temporary post somewhere else less complicated.
‘Right.’ A pause. ‘It’s very early on. Four...maybe five weeks?’
She nodded.
‘You need to start taking folic acid.’
‘I know.’
‘You need to look after yourself.’
She knew he was just trying to say the sensible thing, trying to help and maybe trying to make sense of it in his own head. This had to be a huge shock to him too. But to Freya it sounded as if he was telling her what to do, and no man would ever tell her what to do again.
Her control was slipping. ‘You don’t need to tell me how to do anything. You don’t own me.’
‘I’m not. I’m just trying—’
‘You’re just trying to take over! So back off, Jamie, I don’t need this in my life!’
She tried her hardest not to shout, but it was difficult. All she wanted to do was run away, but it was as if the walls were closing in and she would soon be trapped with him. A man. A stranger. Tied to him for eternity when she knew nothing about him. He could be anybody.
He sat forward in his chair. ‘You’re pregnant with my child. I don’t think you realise what this means.’
She leaned forward too, anger and rage fuelling her bravado, matching his stance. ‘I’m a midwife. Of course I know what it means.’
She stood, grabbing her notes and pen, deciding she would check on Andrea. She would finish her notes in there—give Jamie a chance to think about what she’d said.
He was not going to tell what to do.
* * *
He was going to be a father.
Of course if nothing went wrong they would have to marry. If the people of Majidar ever found out that he’d got a woman pregnant and then abandoned her to have the child alone they’d be appalled. And so would he. He wasn’t just a prince, he was a man, and as such he had a responsibility to do the right thing. No child of his would grow up to be illegitimate—he just wouldn’t accept it. The baby was his and he would be its father.
Honour in this country was different from honour in his. He saw it on the television every day—men getting women pregnant and then leaving them to raise the child alone. There were single parents everywhere, and that was fine for them—but not for him. Not at all. He could never knowingly sire a child and then abandon it to God only knew what kind of future.
This was his child. And, whether Freya liked it or not, he had a duty to it.
And to her.
But what had happened to her? What was making her so frightened and on edge? Why couldn’t she look him directly in the eye? Was it her scars? Her face? Did her shame stem from that? Or was it the unexpected pregnancy?
Clearly she was in shock. All he’d tried to do was make this easier for her. Try and shoulder some of the responsibility.
Because it was his and his alone. And because of who he was it was imperative that he do the right thing.
He would need to speak to his advisor.
* * *
At just after six in the morning Andrea delivered a healthy baby girl.
Freya was reluctant to leave her patient’s room and go back out there and face Jamie again, but she knew that she had to.
She could only hope that as there was less than one hour until the end of her shift he might be busy elsewhere and she would be able to get through it without having to see him.
She’d had her fill of pushy men. To be fair, she’d only been with one, but that one—Mike—had been enough for two lifetimes.
It had started innocently enough. Mike had asked her not to go out with her friends from college one evening.
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t bear to imagine you out on the town like that. I’ve seen gaggles of girls dressed to impress and off their heads on tequila shots. I know what guys think of girls like that, and I don’t want them looking at you like you’re a piece of meat.’
She’d thought he was being sweet! That he cared so much about her.
He’d begged her not to go, and to make him feel better she’d cancelled. The next week, when the girls had wanted to go out again, rather than just accept the invitation straight away she’d said she needed to check with Mike first.
Slowly she had stopped having any contact with her friends. Then he’d started making comments about how her family looked down their noses at him and how family meet-ups made him uncomfortable—could they stay home?
Bit by bit he had isolated her, until her entire life had been his to control and manipulate. She’d felt as if she couldn’t breathe and she’d tried to break away. He’d found her, begged her to stay, promised he would change.
Only he hadn’t. If anything he had got worse—his insecurities, his paranoia.
She’d bolted one day when he was at work and run home to live with her mum again. She’d thought she was free, that her life was hers again, until that terrible day on the high street...
Freya was grateful to see that the hub looked clear and she headed over, her back aching slightly, and slumped into a chair to complete Andrea’s notes. The open tin of chocolates called her name and she unwrapped one and popped a caramel barrel into her mouth.
Mmm...just what I need.
The chocolate began to soften in her mouth, and as she chewed she realised just how hungry she was. She’d not really taken a proper break whilst Andrea laboured, and suddenly she was starving—craving a full English breakfast, washed down with a mug of strong tea.
A banana was placed right in front of her. She frowned and looked up to see who had given it to her.
‘Jamie...’
‘Eat this. You haven’t had anything all night.’
She moved the banana away from her. ‘Thank you, but I have other plans.’
‘So you say—but you’re not the only one who gets to make decisions about yourself any more. This is my baby too and you need to eat. Healthily, preferably.’
He grabbed hold of the tin of sweets and moved it away from her.
Angrily, Freya grabbed the tin back. ‘Keep your voice down. I don’t need the whole ward hearing about it.’
‘Are you going to eat the banana?’
She glanced at the fruit, lying harmlessly on the desk, and felt repulsed by it. The idea of taking a bite of it turned her stomach. She craved hot food. Preferably dripping in grease.
‘Not right now.’ She felt a little hypocritical. She’d often lectured pregnant women about eating well for a healthy pregnancy and here she was craving fat. And maybe another chocolate from that tin.
‘So when are you going to eat?’
‘When I get out of here. At home, where I can cook myself something.’
She didn’t want to tell him that she didn’t like to go out during the day. Didn’t like to sit by herself in cafés filled with staring people.
‘Where do you live?’
She looked at him incredulously. ‘Why would I tell you that?’
‘Because, like it or not, we’re involved now and I want to look after you.’
‘I don’t know you!’
‘You knew me enough to make a child with me.’
He stared hard at her, his eyes dark and dangerous, as if daring her to try and wriggle out of that one.
‘Well, I didn’t know I was doing that at the time.’
It was enough to make her remember their assignation—her back against the wall as he hoisted her legs around his waist and thrust into her, her hands frantically grasping at him. Both of them made courageous by darkness and anonymity.
No. She would not tell him her address. He might be anyone and her home was her safe space. Her haven. A place where she could relax and just be. It was her bolthole, and there was no way she was going to give him that information.
‘You’re not going to do this, you know.’
‘Do what?’
‘Go all alpha on me. Order me about.’ She could hear her own voice quaking as she stood up for herself.
‘I care about you.’
‘No, you don’t. You got me pregnant and now you think that you’ve got to be seen to be doing the right thing. Well, I’m giving you an out. You’re off the hook—you can walk away.’
It would be easier, wouldn’t it? To do it alone? Without a man? Because men were frightening. They didn’t know what it felt like to be a woman. To know that half the population was bigger and physically stronger than you. That they could overpower you if they cared to try. Not to be able to walk down a street without fearing the footsteps you could hear behind you. Always having to be aware of your surroundings. Of who might be looking at you strangely. Were they just curious, or were they about to pounce?
He leaned forward and stared at her. ‘I don’t know what experiences previous men have given you, but let me tell you something. I am not that kind of man. When I do something I take full responsibility for it. And that means taking care of you and taking care of that baby.’
‘But you don’t have to. I can do it alone.’
‘I do have to. It’s my child. It has to be honourable.’
‘Why does it have to be honourable?’
Even as she said the words she realised how childish she sounded. Why wouldn’t she want her baby to be honourable? Was she cheapening it already? By saying it didn’t matter if it was ‘honourable’?
But this was her baby! She had dreamt of this for years!
He recoiled as if she’d slapped him, as if he was appalled that she could think anything else.
‘Because it has to be. I won’t have it any other way.’
She moved the banana. She could smell it and it was beginning to turn her stomach.
‘If everything you do is “honourable”, then how come you had a quickie with a stranger in a closet? Surely being honourable would make you at least a hotel-room-with-satin-sheets kind of man?’
‘Maybe I am?’ he challenged, pushing the banana back towards her. ‘There is plenty that you don’t know about me, Freya MacFadden.’
The use of her name made her narrow her eyes as she looked at him. God, he was beautiful. Almond-shaped eyes, dark as ink, cheekbones a model would die for, and his lips...
Oh, goodness, I remember those...
Freya cleared her throat and tried to sound as if she was in control of this conversation. ‘Well, perhaps you’d care to enlighten me?’
Jamie checked around them, as if keen to make sure they were alone and no one was listening in.
‘I can’t tell you right now. You wouldn’t believe me. Perhaps if you agreed to meet me here?’
He pulled a card from his uniform pocket and slid it across to her. It was a glossy black card with the name of a hotel in silver.
Why did he want to meet her in a hotel? What kind of movie did Jamie think he was living in? He was deluded. This was normal life. People didn’t do that. There was no way she was going to meet a total stranger in a hotel!
‘Can’t you just tell me?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Please meet me there.’
It would be a public place. Safe. But it would be in daylight. When there were other people about. Not in his room. Nowhere they could be alone. But she would have to face other people’s stares.
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow? Before your shift? We do need to talk about this and we can’t do it here.’
She could maybe put on some sunglasses and wrap a thick scarf around her neck, then no one would stare at her. She could get there before everyone else was up and milling around for breakfast. She could listen to what he had to say, give him his five minutes, then slink out quietly.
‘Fine. About six? That gives us an hour before work.’
‘Thank you.’
She nodded, then picked up the banana, gave it back to him and said, ‘Now, take that away, please, before I throw up all over this desk.’
His mouth curled slightly at the corners. ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring you grapes.’
* * *
The Franklin Hotel sat atop a hill, so that as Freya drove towards it she had a sense of awe and magnificence as she approached the beautiful Georgian manor. Looking at it from a distance, she wondered how Jamie could afford to stay in such an opulent place.
I don’t have to go in. I don’t have to hear what he has to say.
But she knew she would. Because, no matter how terrified she felt, she knew that she owed her baby the chance to know something about its father. So she could look her child in the eye and tell him, or her, that she’d tried everything.
It looked welcoming and warm, with yellow lights gleaming out in the darkness of the early morning, the sky above a blue which was fading from inky navy to palest azure.
Parking her little hatchback next to rows of expensive cars with chauffeurs sitting in them made her feel a little uneasy. Why had Jamie asked her to meet him here? What was it that she was about to learn from him?
He was a midwife. A damned sexy one, if she was honest, with an accent to die for and eyes that looked right into her soul and grasped her by the heart. She’d never met anyone like him. The mystery was what could he tell her here that she would never have believed if he’d just told her at work?
Whether she liked it or not, whilst this baby nestled in her womb they would be tied to one another—and Jamie seemed determined to be in her life.
Adjusting her scarf and lowering her sunglasses, she strolled across the gravel driveway, her nerves jittery, her legs weak. In the hotel, gentle music playing from a piano met her ears. To her right was a reception desk, where exquisite and perfectly presented staff waited to attend to every guest’s needs.
‘May I help you, madam?’ asked a young man in a navy suit with enough gel in his hair to sink a ship.
No, it’s fine. I’m just leaving.
‘I’m supposed to be meeting a Mr Jamie Baker?’
‘Miss MacFadden? We’ve been expecting you.’ He smiled, revealing perfectly white teeth. ‘Please take the lift to my right and go up to the third floor.’
Take the lift? Go to the third floor? That wasn’t meeting in a public space. That meant going to his room. Where there was a bed.
‘Oh...um... What room number?’
‘Mr Baker has the entire third floor.’
Freya blinked. What? Who went to a hotel and took up an entire floor? That was the sort of thing celebrities did with their entourages, or royalty, or...
‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
What was going on? It was all so confusing. He was just a guy, right? A normal guy.
Was he rich?
The night they’d met at the gala she’d known there was a member of royalty there. She’d heard the rumour but she’d never been introduced to anyone. There’d been no announcement. Everyone had hidden behind their masks and it had been exciting. You could talk to anyone and not know it!
Including royalty.
Have sex in a closet with them, if you so chose...
Freya swallowed hard, trying to control her rapidly weakening legs as she hesitantly went over to the lifts and pressed the button.
I could still go. I could run. Just get the hell out of here!
She stood there, fidgeting with the tassels on her scarf, as she waited for the lift to come down to the ground floor.
I owe it to our baby.
Was Jamie a member of some royal family? How could that be?
She thought about turning tail and running—changing her mind and hiding somewhere. Her parents’ beach house on Hayling Island, perhaps. It was the place she went when she needed to hide and think. She’d gone there when she’d first been released from hospital, months after the acid attack, and she’d had to wear that damned orthotic burns mask every day, marking her out as different.
She’d felt like a leper. As if there was a bright neon arrow over her head screaming that here was someone not normal.
The house on Hayling Island would soon be filling up with summer rentals, but hopefully no one was there right now. Jamie wouldn’t know where to find her. It would be good for her to take a break while the morning sickness was in full swing.
The lift pinged, signalling its arrival, and the doors slid open. On the back wall of the lift was an ornate mirror and she gazed at her reflection, wondering what the woman in the mirror should do. Run like hell? It was like staring into a prison.
All ye who enter here...
But Freya had seen more than enough women arrive on her ward to give birth alone, without a father involved, and she had felt sorry for all those children who would grow up without an interested father.
Jamie wanted to be involved. He’d said he would not shirk his responsibility. All she’d ever wanted was to be loved and to have a baby—something she’d thought would never happen after her acid attack—and here she was, pregnant and with a guy who said he wanted to be involved. She owed him a chance, the opportunity to show her what he could provide for their child.
With hesitation Freya stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the third floor, eyeing the reception area with longing as the lift doors closed her in.
As the lift ascended she gripped the strap of her bag as if it was a lifeline. An anchor to real life. The sensation that her world was about to change for ever was drowning her in anticipation, and she wished she’d eaten more of those ginger biscuits before coming, because her stomach felt as if it was about to explode.
The lift stopped rising. Ping! The doors slid open to reveal two men in dark suits.
Her stomach flipped and she looked from one to the other.
Guards? Why does Jamie need guards?
They were wearing those earpieces that secret service men had on television. They asked her to put her bag through a scanner, and then she had to walk through a metal detector shaped like a doorway before they escorted her down the corridor towards a pair of ornate doors.
What on earth have I got myself into?
Silently she followed, feeling like a little girl between giants. Were they wearing guns beneath their jackets? Her mouth went dry at the thought of it and she gripped her bag tighter, as if that small item would somehow protect her from what was to come.
At ornate double doors the men stopped and grabbed a handle each, stepping back to open the doors wide.
Freya sucked in a steadying breath as her eyes hungrily took in the details of the room. A four-poster bed set with golden drapes in an opulent room adorned with fine art and floor-to-ceiling windows. Gilt-edged tables, fresh flowers in vases that were almost as tall as she was. And standing in the middle, in a long white tunic and trousers, was Jamie. As if he’d been waiting for her.
She stared at him, not sure what to do. Or say.
Now she could understand why he hadn’t just told her all this.
‘You’re right,’ she said, clearing her throat and looking straight at him. ‘I would never have believed you.’
* * *
Jamie poured her some tea, adding two cubes of sugar to the drink. He frowned slightly when he saw how her hands were shaking when she went to take it from him, then set it down on the table instead and took her hands in his to calm them.
‘It’s all right, Freya.’
‘Is it?’ She looked at him askance. ‘Who are you, Jamie?’
‘My name is Jameel Al Bakhari and I am heir to the throne of Majidar. My older brother Ilias is King, ruling with his wife Queen Jasmeen, but they have been unable to sire any children so I am next in line. I also have a younger sister, Zahra, who has just married.’
It all sounded as if it was from a film. ‘Heir to the throne...?’
‘Yes.’
‘Royalty?’
‘Yes.’
It was a struggle to process. ‘But...but you work as a midwife.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Why do that, when you’re a...a prince?’
He smiled. ‘I did not ask to be born a prince. Ruling a kingdom and waving at crowds from a distance is not what I felt I was meant to do. I want to know people. Help them personally. When my father sat upon the throne he took us with him to a hospital, where he was opening a new neonatal unit. I was very young—maybe eight or nine. We toured the labour ward, saw the new state-of-the-art theatre and the incubators that held tiny newborns. I was fascinated by the babies, and when we returned to the palace an idea took hold. The more I thought about it, the more I realised I wanted to deliver babies. To hold the miracle of life in my own two hands and experience the joy of bringing a new life into the world.’
Freya nodded. ‘But why be a midwife? You could have been a doctor. An obstetrician. A surgeon!’
‘I could. But those paths didn’t interest me. I wanted to deliver the babies. An obstetrician gets called in only if there’s a problem. A surgeon just takes care of Caesareans. I wanted to be there through the whole labour—to monitor progress, develop that close relationship a midwife creates with each patient. My mother spoke fondly of all her midwives. I would beg her to tell me, over and over again, the stories of our births—mine, my brother’s and my sister’s. Even after all those years she could remember every detail, and it was the midwives of whom she spoke the most highly. I wanted to be that person. To have that impact on people’s lives. To be remembered in such a way. Selfish, perhaps, but true.’
