by Lily Evans
Stunned to hear the almost fierce tenderness in his tone, I closed my eyes, allowing him to gather me close, feeling his fingers raking repeatedly through my hair, the sensation soothing yet arousing at the same time. And I don't know how long we were locked together like that, how long my head was pressed against his shoulder, how long I listened to the steady, reassuring thump of his heart, only that when he finally spoke I almost jumped out of my skin.
"I met her at a nightclub."
Drawing back to look at him, I shook my head as my gaze landed on his. "You don't have to tell me anything. It really isn't any of my business."
His blue eyes seemed darker than usual. "Oh yes it is. Well, I'd like it to be, anyway."
I stared at him in astonishment. Did that mean what I thought it meant? "Luke…"
"But let's get you back to bed first. You're getting cold, babe." Taking my hand he drew me towards the king-sized divan. "I promise you, if you don't want me to stay here with you afterwards, all you have to do is say the word and I'll sleep in the living room."
I had no reason to disbelieve him. And after he'd arranged my pillows so I could sit comfortably propped up against the headboard, I slid back beneath the duvet, watching as he crawled up the bed to perch cross-legged in front of me, his expression grave, his gaze remaining steady on mine.
"You already know what sort of guy I used to be," he began quietly. "Tim used to call me 'Love-'em-'n'-leave-'em Luke'." He winced slightly. "With good reason. I really couldn't tell you just how many women there were. I didn't sleep with them all but I slept with quite a few. Mostly just the once. I'm certainly not proud of it now, but if I'm honest, I guess I was at the time. It was like a game. To me, anyway. I doubt the women saw it that way."
"Some of them probably did."
He gave me a rueful smile. "Don't go trying to make this easy on me, babe. There's no question I was a self-centred, egotistical bastard."
"But you said you weren't a bastard," I said, suddenly finding I wanted to make light of his words, struggling to cope with the images that were already flashing into my head. Luke, in bed with girl after girl, making love to them the way he'd made love to me. "You said you were a tosser, not a bastard. You said that you knew who your parents—"
"Becks." His eyes softening, he reached forward and took my hands between his own, squeezing my fingers gently. "I'm sorry. I know you probably don't want to hear all this, but I think you need to know. I want to be honest with you because when I'm done, I need to know that whatever decision you make about me is made for the right reasons. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to sugar-coat anything, okay?"
Once again, I found myself intrigued by his choice of words. Was it possible Luke wanted something more to happen between us? "Okay," I agreed at last, squeezing his fingers in return. "Go on. I'm listening."
He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed them. "Tim blames my womanising on the fact I'm a short arse," he said, with another rather shame-faced smile. "Now he's a clinical psychologist so maybe I should accept that he knows better than me but I think it's a piss poor excuse. Yes, I got bullied a bit in primary school for being, shall we say, vertically challenged? But it wasn't like anything else was ever a problem. I was a smart kid but I wasn't a geek. I liked learning, it came easy to me. I still had time to be the class clown. And I guess when I hit my teens, flirting with the girls was kind of a natural progression."
"Tim's a clinical psychologist?" Somehow I found it hard to believe that the lanky guy I'd seen on the beach was also a doctor.
For the first time in a while, Luke grinned. "Yeah. I tell him that the only reason he specialised in that field was so he could figure out why he wasn't a hit with the girls."
"Well, it couldn't have been easy being your best friend."
"Probably not," he conceded, sobering quickly. "Poor sod. God only knows why he stuck around but he did. Actually, he probably became a psychologist because he spent half his life counselling all the women I never called again." He gave a mirthless laugh. "I can't believe that hasn't crossed my mind before."
"So why didn't you call any of them again?" I frowned. "Were you scared of commitment or something?"
Luke looked sheepish again. "In all honesty—God, this is going to sound shallow—I never thought about having any kind of long term relationship. I was having far too much fun. My first couple of years at Oxford were a blast. Partied hard, drank too much. Had to rein it in a bit when I started working on the wards but somehow I found time to have a damned good social life, right up until I qualified and got myself a job here.
"After that, it got tougher to fit everything in. Working eighty hours a week as a house officer kind of takes it out of you, especially when you're studying for exams but I still managed some play time. Bloody stupid. It was obvious that sooner or later the shit was going to hit the fan."
He grimaced. "I failed an exam. A major one. And you'd think that would've been the wake-up call I needed but instead of dealing with it I just acted as though nothing had happened. The day I got the results I took myself off to a nightclub and got well and truly hammered. The next morning, I woke up in yet another strange bed lying next to a girl called Chloe."
"Ah." Even though I'd known it had to be coming, I still experienced an odd jolt in the pit of my stomach at the name. "So that's when it happened?"
"Apparently." Luke's expression was curiously unreadable. "Though to this day, I don't remember anything about that night. I'd seen Chloe at the club a few times, that's how I knew who she was. She'd always made it quite obvious she was interested in me but to be honest, she wasn't my type and I'd never made a move on her before. I don't remember leaving with her, I don't remember going back to her place and I certainly don't remember sleeping with her."
He shrugged. "I do remember having the hangover from hell and true to form, I didn't hang around too long that morning. And this may sound terrible but it's true. I didn't give her another thought until she turned up on my doorstep a few weeks later and told me she was having my baby."
I stared at him, puzzled. "But Chloe always said that he—I mean you—were her boyfriend. She said that you'd been out on quite a few dates."
"Nope. It was just that one night. Though," he hesitated, his eyes narrowing, "it makes sense, in a weird sort of way, that she'd managed to convince herself it was more than that. The things she said, the way she behaved."
"What?" I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it was all a bit surreal, actually. As I said, she just turned up one evening. I've no idea how she found out where I lived. But from the moment I opened the door she seemed, well, away with the fairies, to be honest. As if she was high on drugs. Maybe she was." He shook his head. "Calling me 'sweetheart' and 'lovey', making big eyes at me. Very bizarre."
"Very." It was my turn to hesitate, aware we were getting to the part I already knew and steeling myself to hear the worst. "So what happened next?"
Luke rolled his eyes. "Well, I invited her in. Like you do when a girl turns up at your door and tells you she's having your baby."
"Happened a lot, huh?" I couldn't resist the jibe even though I was quaking inwardly.
"Ouch." But there was a hint of a smile playing at the corners of Luke's mouth. "No, she was the first. And the last." He sighed, the smile vanishing. "She was kind of hysterical. Manic, even. Didn't let me get a word in edgeways, gabbling on about how wonderful it was that she was having my baby, that we were going to be a lovely little family, that she knew—she just knew it was going to be a girl and we could call her Daisy—"
"Daisy?"
"—and when were we going to get married? Because it would have to be soon otherwise she'd never be able to find a dress big enough."
"What?" I gave an astonished choke of laughter. "She just assumed you'd get married?"
"Oh, she'd gone beyond assuming." He looked grim. "Way beyond. As far as she was concerned, it was a done deal. She told me she'd already found th
e engagement ring and the wedding ring she wanted, that she'd phoned the Registry Office and that there was an available slot for us to get hitched two weeks on Saturday if that was okay with me. Oh and did I have any preference for a photographer?"
I gazed at him in disbelief, rendered speechless for a moment. "She's always been a bit over the top, a bit melodramatic," I faltered at last, shaking my head a little. "But you're making her sound psychotic."
He closed his eyes briefly. "I've discussed this with Tim a thousand times, asked him what I should've done, what I should've said. Because there's no question I handled it all wrong. But it'd been one hell of a day, I was tired, I'd been in theatre all day and most of the night before. And she wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't listen to reason, wouldn't let me say a word, just went on and on and on." He grimaced. "I know I shouldn't have done what I did. It was just a knee-jerk reaction, I lost my rag."
I bit my lower lip, unable to meet his eyes any longer even though I finally understood. "And you hit her."
There was a silence—a silence that soon developed into an uncomfortably lengthy pause. All at once I could feel the blazing heat of Luke's intense gaze. "She said I hit her?" he said slowly. "She actually said I hit her?"
I experienced a rush of shock at the dismay in his tone. "You didn't?"
"Becks!" He sounded as distraught as I felt. "Do you honestly believe I would've done that? You really think I'd…?" He released my fingers abruptly, dropping his head into his hands. "Fuck!"
"But…" I gazed at him in consternation. "She said that was why. She said that you shoved her. That she fell and that that was why she—"
"Lost the baby?" he finished, raising his head to shoot me another startled look. "That's what she told you? That's what she told everybody?"
I found myself cowering beneath the ferocity of that stare, my heart beginning to thud violently against my ribs. "Look, I didn't know her back then. I didn't meet Daniel until a couple of years afterwards."
"Fuck." But Luke's expression had already softened considerably. "Well that explains a lot." He drew in an unsteady breath. "My God, that explains a lot."
"You didn't know?"
"I knew they blamed me. Hell, I blamed me. I didn't have a problem with that. But Becks, I swear to you. I swear to God. I didn't touch her."
I looked at him, not knowing what to say, wanting to believe him so much it actually hurt. "Then what…?"
He winced. "I lost my temper. You have to understand, she just wouldn't stop, going on and on about how happy we'd be, how great it'd be to be married, to raise our baby together. And though I tried to talk to her, she wouldn't listen, wouldn't let me speak. So in the end, I yelled. Roared, in fact. Swore at her. Told her she was crazy, out of her mind. A fucking lunatic." Luke looked ashamed. "I've never felt as out of control as I was that day and I hope to God I never do again. It was unforgivable."
"You yelled at her?" It was my turn to send him an incredulous glance. "That's all?"
But he didn't seem to have heard. "The next thing I know, she's grabbing her tummy, doubled up in pain and there's blood soaking through her jeans. Just like that, no warning. And I didn't know what to do, how to help." He shook his head, no longer looking at me. "Well that's not quite true, of course I knew. I knew it was too fucking late to do anything. I knew there wasn't a chance in hell she could lose that much blood and not lose the baby. I took her to the hospital, of course, but…" He gave a helpless shrug.
"You yelled at her?" I repeated, moved by his obvious distress. "Luke, I'm no doctor but even I know that shouting at a pregnant woman wouldn't cause her to have a miscarriage."
"I know. Don't get me wrong, I do know that. I know that it almost certainly would've happened anyway."
"Then—"
He held up a hand. "And I know that something like one in three pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion in the first twelve weeks, okay? But I made it about ten times worse for her."
"You made it worse?" I was aware I was echoing everything he said but to be truthful, I was finding it difficult to understand why he still felt responsible. "Luke, she was the one who turned up at your door, babbling on like a mad woman about you two getting married. Did she really think—?" And then I stopped, his words suddenly sinking into my consciousness. "Wait a minute. Chloe was more than twelve weeks pregnant. She's always said she was four months pregnant. That'd be what, more like sixteen, seventeen weeks?"
"Nope." Once again, Luke's face was hard to read. "The guy on call in Obs and Gynae that night was a friend of mine. He showed me the ultrasound pictures. She was around ten or eleven weeks along at the very most."
"What?" I shot him a bewildered look. "I don't understand. Why would she say she was four months gone when she was only ten or eleven weeks? Surely she wouldn't have got that wrong? Why would she think—why would she say that she…?" And then the penny dropped, my eyes widening. "Oh."
He didn't respond, his solemn gaze continuing to hold mine as I regarded him with mounting horror, the last piece of the puzzle finally falling into place. She'd lied. Oh, she'd wanted him to be the father. Of course she'd wanted him to be the father. Luke was a doctor, a surgeon, someone who could provide for her, give her the standard of living she'd always wanted, that she'd craved since the death of her father in her early teens and had continued to crave, if her most recent relationship with the married merchant banker was anything to go by.
"It wasn't your baby."
Luke gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. "No."
I stared at him, almost at a loss for words. "But you let everyone believe it was!"
He raised his eyebrows. "You think anyone would've believed me if I'd said it wasn't?" Reaching across to the bedside cabinet, he picked up both cups of hot chocolate and handed one to me. "Try this. Should be just right to drink now."
"Luke!"
He took a sip from his own mug before smiling at me over the rim. "Go on."
Obediently, I tipped a little into my mouth, swallowing quickly. "But you should have told them," I protested, still struggling with the idea he'd taken the blame. "It would've been easy enough to prove that you—oh." I stared at him in wonder as I finally tasted the warm, velvety liquid, Luke's smile broadening as he monitored my reaction. "Oh, wow."
"Like it?"
He watched me with obvious pleasure as I readily took another mouthful, my assaulted taste buds reeling at the flavours. The creamy sweetness, a hint of spice—was that cinnamon? Nutmeg? And there was something else, something that gave the syrupy concoction one hell of a kick. "Chilli?" I ventured in astonishment.
Taking another swig from his own mug, he nodded. "Just a little. My Granny usually puts a fair bit more in but it's a stimulant and you need to get some sleep at some point tonight."
I regarded him with suspicion, now detecting a faint but distinct alcoholic note. "What else is in this?"
Luke grinned. "I can't tell you that. Family secret. My grandparents went off travelling around the world when my father left home. They ended up spending quite a while in Mexico. My Granny picked up the recipe there. When Julie and I were kids we used to beg her to make it for us."
"Cornish Granny?"
"Yep. She's almost ninety now, but she swears by the stuff." He grinned again, motioning to me to carry on drinking. "She looks pretty well on it, too."
I took another sip, delighting in the way the chocolate coated my tongue, closing my eyes as it slid easily down my rather dry throat. But even as I drank, my mind was turning cartwheels, frantically trying to digest what he'd told me and attempting to match his version of events against the fragments I'd heard from Daniel. And suddenly I let out a gasp, my eyes shooting open, the mug jerking in my hand. "They beat you up."
Luke was still watching me, his eyes soft. "I know," he said, gently catching my fingers and righting the mug.
"Luke!" I gazed at him in dismay. "Daniel and his mates—they went round to your place and—"
"—kicke
d the shit out of me." He gave a small smile. "Yes, I know. I was there."
"But you hadn't done anything! You didn't hit her. You didn't make her lose the baby. It wasn't even your baby!" The full horror of what my former fiancé and his friends had done washed over me like a huge icy wave. "They could've killed you!"
"Hey, they did me a favour," he said lightly, gesturing towards his face. "I never liked my nose that much before anyway."
"They broke your nose?"
"Amongst other things."
"Oh God, Luke." My voice cracked on the words.
"And I deserved it."
"What?"
Hearing my outraged tone, he shot me that rueful smile again. "I deserved it. No, hear me out," he added as I began to splutter. "Maybe not because of Chloe, I'll admit, but babe, I was an utter bastard." He sighed. "All those girls, all those one night stands. Someone needed to teach me a lesson. Someone needed to show me I couldn't carry on like that, treating women like objects. Don't get me wrong, I was always bloody careful, I always made sure I used a condom, but accidents happen. Sooner or later I really would've got one of them pregnant, screwed up her life and for what? For ten minutes of hedonistic pleasure?"
I stared at him, unable to think of a single thing to say, my mouth opening and closing uselessly. "Luke," I faltered at last, shaking my head slightly. "I—you didn't…"
"It's okay." He reached forward, cupping my cheek in his hand. "I'm grateful they did what they did. It was the boot up the rear I needed. It made me completely rethink my life. What I was doing, where I was headed, why I was doing what I was doing. I was training to be a surgeon, for heaven's sake. To save lives, not stuff them up."
Nudging the hot chocolate back up to my lips, he waited while I drained the mug then gently prised it from my fingers, setting it back down on the cabinet with his own. "When the bones and bruises healed, I took myself off to the gym and got fit." He grimaced "Boy, was I out of shape. I stopped going out every night, stopped drinking, started studying, passed that exam I failed and started getting on with what was really important. My father once said it was the making of me. He's probably right."