His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Cathy Williams

  He’d guessed. At least, that was what he had said, but if he’d meant it, then why on earth did he look as though the bottom had suddenly decided to drop out of his world? His jaw had sagged. His expression was the expression of a man who had just been sucker punched. His face had gone a deathly shade of grey.

  ‘You didn’t think that was what I was going to say, did you?’ Violet managed into the ever-lengthening silence.

  Matt managed to shake his head, but his vocal cords were still missing in action.

  Violet wondered why she had been stupid enough to leap to all the wrong conclusions when he’d said that he knew why she’d turned up at his office from halfway across the world. ‘You thought that I’d come all the way to London because I wanted to carry on what we had in Melbourne. Is that it? Was that why you looked so nervous when I walked in?’

  She felt anger surge through her. She thought back to that expression on his face when she had walked in. Wary, cautious. She thought back to his demeanour. Ultrapolite and just the right side of amicable. ‘You were braced to gently let me down, weren’t you?’ That dark flush said it all. ‘Of all the egotistic...arrogant...!’

  She shook her head and banked down the fury waiting to blow like a volcano. ‘Don’t you think I know better than to ever go there, Matt? We were two ships that passed in the night! Did you think that I would be stupid enough to imagine that there could ever be more to it than that?’ She clenched her fists and tried not to succumb to the hurt of knowing that he’d walked away and had truly been alarmed at the suspicion that she might have wanted to tug him back, that she might have put him in the uncomfortable position of having to gently dislodge her like a stubborn thorn that refused to be pulled out.

  ‘Pregnant?’ Matt finally managed to croak.

  ‘Yes, Matt. Pregnant.’ His obvious horror had the effect of making her suddenly very calm. ‘I’m afraid the pill isn’t one hundred percent accurate. I had that stomach upset, if you remember, and as luck would have it I fell pregnant in that window when it stopped working. It wasn’t your fault, but neither was it mine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ His voice was cracked and barely audible.

  ‘Yes.’ One word. There was no point letting him think that there might be some mistake.

  He looked as though the sky had fallen down, right on top of his sexy, unsuspecting head. He was clearly horrified, and she bit down the temptation to cry. Her hormones had been all over the place, but she wasn’t going to break down here in his office because she felt sorry for herself. Because the dreams she’d had of having a baby had never involved the father of the baby looking at her as though she’d single-handedly made all his worst nightmares take shape.

  He stood up and began to prowl the office, his movements jerky. Violet twisted in the chair and followed him. He was raking his fingers through his hair, staring down at the ground, then moving to peer unseeingly through the floor-to-ceiling window that offered such splendid views of the streets of London and all the stick-insect figures scurrying below.

  He spun round and his eyes arrowed down to her stomach, which was almost as flat as it always had been.

  Violet instinctively and defensively placed her hand on her stomach and cleared her throat.

  ‘I have stuff to do over here, Matt.’ She gathered her wayward emotions. ‘I just came to break the news, and now it might be a good idea to leave so that you can process the information.’

  ‘Leave? You want to drop a bombshell and then leave?’ His voice was incredulous but she held his stare without flinching.

  ‘I haven’t come here looking for anything,’ she told him, voice glacial, because she was still reeling from the humiliation of knowing just how badly he wanted to escape what was unfolding in front of his horrified eyes. ‘In fact, I debated whether I should come at all. I know this is the last thing you would ask for but, in the end, I felt that it was only right that you should know.’ Her voice tapered off into silence. If he had looked ashen-faced and shocked before, he was now beginning to look thunderously angry.

  ‘Well, Violet,’ he said in a restrained voice. ‘How very magnanimous of you.’

  ‘There’s no need for sarcasm.’

  ‘No? When you sit there telling me that you’re pregnant with my baby and yet you’re only here breaking the news because of a sense of duty, having manfully fought the temptation to just say nothing at all and...what? Bring the baby up on your own on the other side of the world? Spin a few lies when he or she got older and started asking questions? Maybe consign me to a premature grave so that the questions didn’t start getting too uncomfortable? Is that how it would have played out, Violet?’

  He was going to be a father.

  Not for a second did he not believe her. He was going to be a father. And all of a sudden, the thought of any child of his looking back on his past the way he looked back on his horrified him. Yet she sat there, calmly informing him that she’d actually considered keeping this to herself.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You didn’t want me here when you thought I might have come to try to seduce you back into bed, so please don’t sit there and start lecturing me about my decision-making process.’ Her voice was strained, close to tears.

  ‘No, Violet.’ Matt purposefully walked towards her and then leant over her, caging her in, hands on either side of the chair. ‘Ridiculous is the thought that you actually entertained the idea of keeping this from me, and whatever I might have thought when I saw you has nothing to do with anything.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ She tilted her chin at a defensive angle and stared right back at him. He was so good at making people cower, so good at using the sheer force of his personality and his physicality to intimidate. Didn’t he know that she was clued up on all those tactics and had long since learned how to deal with them? Although, this wasn’t exactly a work-related situation, was it?

  ‘I’ll stop lecturing,’ he said tersely, ‘when you start explaining how you could have thought that this was something you could keep from me!’

  ‘You’re towering over me and it’s making me nervous.’

  ‘God, woman! You could try the patience of a saint!’

  ‘Which is one thing you’re not,’ Violet returned swiftly.

  He made an inarticulate sound under his breath and drew back, then he dragged his chair around his desk and positioned it right next to hers. He was no longer towering over her, but neither was he a safe distance away.

  ‘Have you ever thought about having a family, Matt?’

  He frowned and glowered. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘You asked me how I could have the temerity to even consider, for five seconds, not telling you that I was pregnant. Here’s how. You don’t do commitment. You don’t really do relationships, at least not significant relationships. And you certainly don’t do having kids and playing happy families. What you do are three-month flings that all end in bouquets of flowers from a flower shop in Knightsbridge.’

  And, she wanted to tack on, let’s not forget that you are the guy who made it patently clear that there would be no follow-up to our fling because what you were after was a passing liaison. Don’t you go forgetting that!

  He flushed darkly and sat back, his long legs sprawled apart. He folded his arms and glared.

  Violet summoned all her willpower and returned his glower with cool, calm eyes. The power of his looks was always enough to make her heart skip a beat, and it was no different now, but she had to focus.

  She had to erase memories of that blissful bubble they had occupied in Melbourne when they had been lovers, holding hands and doing all the stuff that loved-up couples do. For a while back then, she had managed to forget that they weren’t a normal loved-up couple. For a while, she had managed to forget that Matt Falconer hadn’t been with her because he loved her, but because he had been intrigued at the new and very
different side to her he had seen for the first time in his life. He had been with her because of her novelty value and that novelty value had kicked in the minute he had sussed that she was actually a three-dimensional woman and not the cardboard cut-out who had spent two-and-a-half years at his beck and call.

  ‘Well, this isn’t going to be one of those, is it?’ he muttered darkly.

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t come here for anything, and I’m not expecting anything. I came because I felt you had to know that you were going to be a father. I’m not about to pressure you into doing anything.’

  ‘This isn’t the place to discuss the situation. I can’t have this conversation in my office. It’s not a business transaction.’

  Violet wanted to tell him that it pretty much was, considering emotions weren’t involved, at least not on his part.

  On her part...

  All sorts of emotions were involved. On her part, emotions had been involved for some time when it came to her charismatic boss and three weeks spent in his company, three weeks of making love and pretending that reality was something that could be put on hold for ever, had deepened the swirl of feelings inside her that she had always had for him.

  She was in a dangerous place and she was brave enough to acknowledge that that was part of the reason why she had actually considered keeping the pregnancy to herself.

  She thought back now, not for the first time, to that very moment when it had dawned on her that her period hadn’t come. She’d been merrily continuing with her contraception but, when something should have happened, nothing had. Even so, she had bought that pregnancy-testing kit without thinking that it would actually deliver that positive line.

  Of course, it was something that had had to be ruled out, but as she’d waited those few minutes for a result she hadn’t really been nervous at all.

  And then everything had changed. In a heartbeat, her whole life had been turned on its head. Her blood had run hot, then cold, and in her fancy en-suite bathroom she had suddenly felt as though someone had taken a bat and swiped her behind her knees. She’d wanted to collapse. The unexpected had happened and nothing in her life had prepared her for it, even though she had lived a life full of the unexpected.

  But she’d had time to take stock. He hadn’t. No wonder he could barely compute what she’d dropped in his lap.

  She’d never witnessed him grappling with anything. He was always so dynamic, so in control, whatever happened to be dished up.

  Before she could say anything, he was heading for his door and pulling it open, leaving her no option but to follow him.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘My place.’

  ‘I don’t want to go there.’

  ‘Tough, Violet. I didn’t wake up this morning wanting to discover that I’m going to be a daddy.’

  Tears threatened. Of course, he was only speaking his mind, but still it hurt.

  She’d never been to his house. Never. The thought of seeing him in his personal space was disturbing even though she had quickly grown accustomed to him seeing her in her personal space in Melbourne.

  He summoned his driver, who appeared outside to meet them in a black, low-slung BMW, and she allowed him the silence of his thoughts as the car manoeuvred through the crowded roads, heading out of the city towards the calmer suburbs of west London.

  She’d expected a house. Something substantial. But he lived in an apartment. It was a massive apartment and very minimalist. Lots of white and a feeling of something begun but not quite completed. There was minimalist and then there were walls in search of paintings.

  It was completely open plan, and as he headed for the kitchen, where he briefly seemed to contemplate the restorative qualities of alcohol before settling on coffee, she took time to look around her. He offered her coffee but she went for water.

  As befitting an IT guru, there were lots of gadgets. She spotted a couple of computers, an elaborate games console and a mound of games. The television on the wall was ridiculously large. There were papers randomly strewn on a glass table and on the silk rug by the white leather sofa, as though he had lain down to read through some work, got bored and decided to shove everything on the ground next to him. The place was so essentially him that she felt her heart constrict.

  ‘Of course, it’s pointless telling me that you didn’t show up to ask for anything. You realise that, don’t you?’ This as he moved towards the leather sofa and sat down, pushing a couple of files to one side and then tugging what looked like a priceless, one-off glass-and-beaten-metal table towards him with his foot. ‘And please, Violet, sit down. We have to talk, so there’s no point standing there like a sergeant major about to break ranks.’

  Violet shuffled over to a chair and uncomfortably sat down facing him. ‘You didn’t ask for this situation.’ She could feel a wave of nausea roll over her. Morning sickness, but hers lasted most of the day, and dealing with it was a daily challenge.

  ‘You’re right. I didn’t. But here we are. Fait accompli, so to speak, so what do you think we should do about it? I know. You tell me what you think should happen next in this scenario and we’ll see whether your prediction coincides with mine.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Matt.’

  ‘Trust me. I’m being deadly serious. So? You came here, fuelled with a sense of obligation, and you must have had thoughts as to what would happen once you’d dropped the grenade.’

  Violet bit down on an explosive response to that statement because every single word of it got on her nerves. But exploding wasn’t going to solve anything, so she inhaled deeply and kept her voice well modulated.

  ‘I suppose I thought you might be relieved to be released from having to engage...if that’s the right word. Naturally, if you wanted, say, to contribute financially, then that would be up to you, but it wouldn’t be necessary at all as I’m quite solvent. I don’t think a baby would exactly fit snugly into your lifestyle, but of course, you would be more than welcome to arrange...er...to visit whenever you wanted. I thought the discussion might go a bit like that.’

  Why was he looking at her as though she’d just insulted him?

  ‘Interesting... You basically tell me that I can walk away, throw me a couple of options—just in case, on the off-chance I don’t go for the abandonment option—and I thank you and see you to the door so that I can have a few weeks to think things over...?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Because that’s how it’s sounding to me. I’m a commitment-phobe who wouldn’t want anything to do with a baby I hadn’t planned on having. Ergo, I would abnegate all responsibility. God, Violet, I thought you might know me a little better than that.’

  He sat forward so suddenly that she started back and stared at him. There was simmering outrage on his face. Gone was the lazy, teasing guy and gone was the urbane, clever raconteur. Gone was the sexy man who could enthral her with his conversation and his wit. This man with the harsh, flat eyes was deadly serious, and she returned his flinty stare uneasily.

  ‘I won’t be stuffing some money into an account now and again to ease a guilty conscience. Nor will I be haggling over when I get to see my child. No, Violet, that’s not how it’s going to work at all. Here’s the thing—I may not have bargained on being a father but, now that it’s staring me in the face, then I intend to accept responsibility fully and without compromise. Full-time fatherhood. One hundred percent involvement. I won’t be conveniently disappearing, leaving you to carry on and do your own thing. I happen to place a great deal of worth on the importance of being an engaged parent!’

  Violet knew that her mouth was hanging open. She’d never heard him talk like this before, not in this tone, not with this urgency or searing honesty. His eyes were blazing and angry. Although, she really had no idea what, exactly, he was trying to say. Did he want to sort out visiting rights here and now? Maybe get her
to sign something? Or worse...

  ‘I’m not going to hand my baby over to you, Matt...’ She blanched, sick at the thought that this might end up as a fight through the courts with an innocent baby as the end prize.

  ‘Did you hear me ask you to?’

  ‘Then I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘Marriage, Violet. A ring on your finger and a walk up the aisle. That’s where I’m going with this.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Her head was swimming. He’d asked her how she’d thought this conversation would go. The answer was...not like this. In what world had she ever seen him as the sort of guy who might want a hands-on relationship with a child he hadn’t asked for? There was commitment, and then there was commitment, and this definitely belonged to category number two. The sort of bone-deep commitment you took on board for life—no goodbye flowers, no divorce, no it’s been nice knowing you. How the hell was she supposed to have assumed that he would want to dive head first into waters he had never been called upon to sample?

  ‘And sooner rather than later. In fact, as soon as possible would work for me. Where does your father stand on this? Have you told him that you’re pregnant?’

  ‘Yes, just before I left, but...’

  ‘He’ll have to move over here. At least, if he wants to be with you.’

  ‘Matt, you’re not listening to what I’m trying to say!’

  ‘Oh, I know exactly what you’re trying to say, Violet. I’m just choosing to ignore it because we’re both in the same position. Neither of us asked for this, but it’s happened, and both of us are going to step up to the plate and accept responsibility—because to let a child pay the price of starting life in a tug of war between two parents would be unconscionable.’

  ‘I have no intention of marrying someone for the sake of a baby! That’s not how it’s done these days, Matt!’ Of course, in an ideal world, two parents were always going to be better than one—but two loving parents, voluntarily sharing the responsibility for the child they had created. She’d benefitted from having two parents, if only for a brief moment in time. Her dad had adored her mother. She assumed, although she didn’t know for sure, that Matt likewise was the product of a happily married couple as volatile, charismatic and energised as he was. Which was why he would place so much store on them staying together for the sake of the baby she was carrying.