by Kim Lawrence
‘I will be putting on weight because that’s what people do when they’re pregnant, which I am…pregnant, that is.’
There, it was out! She ought to be feeling a sense of release, but what she was actually feeling was sick…very sick. She pressed a hand to her mouth and waited, her eyes half closed, for the waves of nausea to pass.
When the imminent danger of throwing up had passed, she swallowed and opened her anxious eyes. Luc hadn’t moved a muscle since she had blurted out her news. She gave a frustrated sigh. Whatever he was feeling, she wasn’t going to see it here—a granite rock face would have been easier to read than those strong symmetrical contours. It was actually his total lack of response, his eerie stillness, that revealed he had even heard what she had said.
‘With your baby…obviously.’ She coloured. Maybe it wasn’t obvious at all to him?
It was possible that he thought she acted with equal wanton abandon with every man that took her fancy…
On the brink of making a disastrous confession, Megan bit her tongue. Luc didn’t need to hear how special he was, and the fact that she had never felt that way with any other man was something that ought to be kept on a need-to-know basis, and he definitely didn’t need to know!
‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to make a scene,’ she told him, gruffly earnest. ‘I just thought that you had the right to know. And,’ she added, ‘it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to say in a letter. Actually it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to say full stop,’ she added in a dry undertone. Belatedly she realised this comment might have come over as a little light on empathy. ‘Or hear,’ she tacked on generously.
Luc’s vibrant complexion had acquired a grey tinge as he lost the last shred of his habitual cool. She’d been prepared for shaken, but Megan got seriously alarmed when he suddenly buried his face in his hands. His classical profile was hidden from her view, but she could hear the laboured sound of his breathing from where she was sitting.
After a few moments his head lifted and she was relieved to see his colour was improved. ‘A baby…?’
She nodded, sympathetic to his traumatised condition.
He shook his head from side to side in the hope the action might kick-start his numb brain.
‘So you weren’t taking the pill…?’ He saw the pain flare in her eyes and thought, Good move Luc, let her think you’re blaming her, you insensitive bastard.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t think…I should…’
‘Neither of us thought, Megan.’ His expressionless voice cut into her disjointed stream of self-recriminations.
Megan lapsed into unhappy silence. Through the mesh of her lashes she watched his chest lift as he sucked in a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry, you must be—’
‘I’m not asking for anything from you,’ she interrupted quickly. She saw some emotion, indefinable but strong, flare briefly in his eyes before she ploughed heavily on. ‘I appreciate this is my responsibility. Of course, if you want to have some input, that is fine.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘INPUT…’ Luc repeated, looking at Megan as though she had run mad.
She exhaled a small gusty sigh of relief as she managed to wrench her fascinated eyes from the muscle in his lean cheek that was clenching and unclenching. ‘And if you don’t that’s equally fine,’ she told him with an upbeat smile. ‘There’s no pressure.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘I’m trying to be positive,’ she rebutted. Considering she was attempting to make this easy for him, he didn’t seem wildly appreciative.
His narrowed eyes scanned her face. ‘So you’ve decided to have this baby.’
‘You sound surprised?’
His brows lifted. ‘Well, what about your career?’
‘What about my career?’ Angrily, she pretended not to see where he was going with this.
‘I thought that was the most important thing in your life. The thing you’re prepared to sacrifice a personal life for.’
‘It is part of my life, and it is important, but my priorities have changed…’ Her expression grew defensive. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind.’
‘It could change again…?’
Megan’s heart gave a sickening thud. This was what she had been dreading him suggesting. She shook her head and ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘No, I’ve thought this thing through quite carefully,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling the prickle of hot tears behind her eyelids. ‘I can see how you’d like this to go away, but I want this baby.’
An expression of revulsion crossed his face. ‘Are you suggesting I would pressure you into having a termination?’
As this was exactly what she had assumed he was talking about, she just stared back at him mutely. His white-lipped fury gave lie to her assumption that he was taking this reasonably calmly under the circumstances.
Luc wasn’t calm, unless you considered volcanoes about to erupt calm!
‘I misunderstood,’ she admitted with a shrug. Misunderstanding or not, there was a point that needed making here. ‘Accidental or not, you’re the baby’s father…I can’t prove it, of course—’
‘For God’s sake, woman, of course it’s my baby. Do you think I imagine you make a habit of having unprotected sex any more than I do?’ he demanded impatiently. The furrow between his brows deepened as their eyes locked. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You did think that, didn’t you?’
Megan shook her head, then nodded, then grabbed two handfuls of hair and grimaced as she rocked forward and back again. ‘I don’t know what I thought,’ she admitted huskily.
The anger faded from Luc’s face as he looked at the dejected, dispirited set of her hunched shoulders. ‘It must have been a confusing few weeks for you. It might make things a little easier to have someone to talk this out with…?’
The soft suggestion brought her head up with a snap. ‘Get any idea I came here to ask your advice right out of your head. I already know what I’m going to do,’ she ground out.
‘So basically what you’re saying is you’re going to do exactly what you want to, no matter what I say.’ His eyes, like molten silver, locked onto hers.
‘In a nutshell.’
Luc took a deep sustaining breath and told himself he didn’t have the right to be angry. What else could she have said? He’d backed her into a corner.
He even agreed with her, in the abstract, her body…her baby…her decision, but this wasn’t an abstract baby. This wasn’t just any baby. It was his baby…A few minutes ago he’d been aghast to hear what she had come to tell him, with bewildering speed his attitude had undergone a dramatic change. It amazed Luc how the idea of having a child could grow on a man.
‘So if you’ve thought this out, tell me, how are you going to cope with a baby and a demanding job?’
‘As luck would have it the firm I work for is relocating to a site nine miles from home so I’m going back,’ she explained. ‘It’s a good place to bring up a child. I should know; I was brought up there.’
‘And you’re expecting your mother to bring up your child for you…Have you considered that having a young baby foisted on her at her age might not be what she wants? What’s so funny?’ he wanted to know when her lips twitched.
Megan shook her head, she judged that he had had enough shocks for one day. Besides, this wasn’t her news to share. ‘Actually,’ she explained, ‘Mum is moving to Paris.’
The quiver of laughter in her voice made his strong features clench in disapproval. ‘Planning to give birth at your desk and be back at it the next day?’
‘I’m planning on taking maternity leave,’ she contradicted, ‘and afterwards…’ her shoulders lifted ‘…the firm has no problem with job-sharing.’ She’d been thinking on the way down that this might be the way to go. The balance between work and home was going to be hard to get right, but she was determined to strike a balance that she could live with.
Luc gave a thin smil
e, he didn’t bother to hide his scepticism as he snorted, ‘Job-sharing! Is the real Megan in there—?’ He stretched his hand out, intending to touch the side of her head.
Megan, who knew exactly what the casual contact would do to her, flinched away before he made contact. She saw his jaw tighten and repressed a groan. Well, she told herself, if he thought she couldn’t bear to have him touch her, so much the better. If he knew how much she craved his touch it would only complicate things even more—it wouldn’t do her pride much good either.
‘What do you mean?’ As if she didn’t know.
‘Well, you have to admit job-sharing doesn’t sound like you.’
‘You don’t know me.’ Neither do I, these days. ‘And why do you assume that I’m going to be a disaster as a mother?’ she asked sharply. She might not have felt this angry if his dig hadn’t magnified her own fear that she would be inadequate for the daunting task of parenting.
‘Why do you assume that I’d be relieved to offload my responsibilities to this baby?’ he countered.
Protesting that it wasn’t the same thing at all would have laid her open to a legitimate accusation of sexism. Instead Megan shook her head and insisted, ‘I didn’t.’ Then added weakly, ‘Not exactly.’
‘I just don’t believe you sometimes. You think I’d let my child grow up not knowing who the hell I was!’
He shook his dark head and she thought, God, he’s furious.
‘As for all that rubbish about you being responsible, like they say it takes two…and I was most definitely there. Or had you forgotten?’
His response was the first indication she had had so far that he wanted anything to do with the baby and Megan wasn’t sure how she felt about it. What was he talking about anyway? Gifts and cards on birthdays and Christmas? Every other weekend and alternate summer holidays?
The image of a future where Luc turned up with his latest girlfriend in tow to take their child to the zoo filled her with horror.
‘I wish I could forget!’
A raw silence fell between them.
A cautious light entered her eyes as she looked across at him from under the protective shade of her lashes. She was almost sure he didn’t even know that he was grinding one clenched fist into the other open palm. It was very much the action of someone who was struggling to suppress strong emotions. She could see every sinew, every taut muscle of his lean body screaming with tension.
‘I’m going to be a father.’ He said it as it had just begun to sink in.
There was a blank look of incomprehension on his lean, devastatingly handsome features in the moment before he leapt to his feet in one lithe motion.
‘Luc…?’ He appeared not to hear her tentative voice as, with one fist clenched to his forehead in an attitude of deep thought, the other thrust in the pocket of his snug-fitting trousers, he began to pace from one end of the room to the other.
It was impossible, even in her present distraught frame of mind, not to look at him and experience a shivery frisson of sensation in the pit of her stomach while hearing the words lithe and luscious in her head.
‘If you need time to think about this, I understand…’ Coming here had been a mistake, a major mistake.
‘Shut up, I’m thinking.’
Megan’s eyes narrowed at his tone. ‘I’m being understanding,’ she told him wrathfully.
He looked over his shoulder and for a moment the intensity of his expression melted into a delicious grin. ‘Be understanding quietly, chérie,’ he instructed, pressing a finger to his lips.
Even without the grin the endearment would have got to her; with it she melted like butter on a hot knife.
He continued to pace for a few more minutes before moving back to the sofa. He sat on the edge, his body curving towards her so that their knees were almost touching. His body language created an illusion of intimacy that made it difficult for Megan to think straight. She had a horrible notion that her feelings were written in letters a mile high across her forehead as she gazed back at him, but she couldn’t do a thing about it.
‘I want…’ he studied her face for a moment before his sensual lips slowly curled upwards into a self-derisive smile while she tensed her body, almost quivering with anticipation ‘…Input.’
Colour flooded Megan’s pale face; the embarrassment and anticlimax was intense.
‘Megan…?’
Megan blinked before arranging her features into something approaching composure. Just what made you think he was going to say I want you? That was the last time she went into fantasy mode. The fact was if Luc had wanted her, he could have had her.
‘Fine.’
His eyes narrowed warily. ‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘Are you going to dissect every inflection in my voice?’ she demanded spikily.
He shrugged, and almost grinned. ‘Point taken.’ He leaned back into the squashy cushions of the sofa and, hands linked behind his head, looked at the ceiling.
What’s he thinking? she wondered. No more wild guesses for her. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
‘Do you actually think it is such a good idea?’
He rubbed his scalp vigorously with his long fingers, causing his dark hair to stick up in sexy tufts on the crown. Megan, her expression abstracted, was watching as he smoothed down the dark strands of glossy hair. She remembered sinking her fingers into that silky dark thatch and drawing his head down to hers.
‘Do I think what is a good idea?’
‘You moving back home…’
This casual comment focused her attention.
She smiled narrowly and sucked in her breath. ‘Naturally your opinion means just so much to me…’ Luc grimaced, rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, before folding his arms across his chest in an attitude of long-suffering patience. The action incensed her further. ‘But I find myself thinking just what the hell has it got to do with you? I’m having a baby—that doesn’t mean I’m going to have anyone treating me like one!’
‘Finished?’
Megan sniffed and refused to let him see how close to tears she was.
‘I have absolutely no desire to pull your strings…’ Just pick you up and carry you to my bed. ‘Besides, I’d have to be mad to even try—you’re about as malleable as a steel bar.’ But very much softer to hold.
Not the most flattering comparison she had ever heard, but she was glad he realised she wasn’t a pushover.
‘Can I finish saying something without you jumping down my throat?’
Megan gave a curt nod of her head. ‘I’ll listen.’
‘I can see why you might want to move back home at the moment, familiar surroundings…people willing to wait on you hand and foot…’
‘I’ll forget the people-willing-to-wait stuff.’ He obviously had no idea about the staffing levels on the estate. ‘But what’s wrong about wanting to be in familiar surroundings?’ she challenged.
‘They’re not your surroundings.’
She frowned and he looked exasperated. ‘I know it will be yours one day, but right now it’s your mother’s home, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to vacate the position of lady of the manor any time soon to me. You can’t run back to Mummy every time the going gets tough, Megan.’
‘She won’t be there.’
‘You know what I mean. You need your own home, Megan. You need to start as you mean to go on.’
‘The estate is my home.’
‘It’s your mother’s home.
She shook her head. ‘Underwood doesn’t belong to my mum.’
Luc looked puzzled. ‘Then who does it belong to?’
‘It’s mine. I thought you knew.’
She saw the shock register on his face. ‘You own the estate?’
Megan nodded.
She watched him as the information sank in. ‘Does that mean you’re filthy rich?’
‘Why, Luc? Wishing you hadn’t chucked me out of your bed?’ she taunted.
Luc inhaled
sharply. ‘I didn’t do that, Megan, and you know it. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to,’ he commented with a self-derisive grimace. ‘For the simple reason I don’t have that sort of will power, Megan, not where you’re concerned.’
‘You don’t?’ she whispered in blank amazement.
‘You can ask that?’ His incredulous glance moved across her face.
Ask it? She was tempted to ask for it in writing.
‘Considering,’ he continued heavily, ‘that your condition is due to the fact I don’t think with my brain around you, I’d have thought you’d have realised that.’
Megan tried to temper the hot thrill she got from his blunt admission by reminding herself that he was talking sex, not love. The wild, raw sex he was discussing was a temporary condition. She was pretty certain he would consider it a temporary insanity.
‘Well, anyway, I’m not filthy rich…not in the way you mean.’
His brows arched sardonically. ‘There’s more than one way?’
She flashed him an unamused grin. ‘Dad left Mum well provided for, but the bulk of his estate went to me,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t take any money out of the estate,’ she went on to assure him. ‘I went over things with John, and he explained that Dad ploughed the money back into the estate. He managed to do a lot over the years but when he bought the place it was really run down; there’s still a lot of work to be done.’
‘I thought your family had lived in the place since for ever?’
‘They have, but Dad’s grandfather had to sell the place to pay off death duties. Dad bought it back years later when he’d made his money. I suppose he wanted to make sure that history didn’t repeat itself—that’s why he handed the place over to me years before he died. Up until now it hasn’t really been feasible for me to live there on a permanent basis. John will be pleased that I’m moving back,’ she reflected thoughtfully.
That name again. ‘Just who the hell is John?’ he demanded.
A perplexed frown pleated Megan’s brow. ‘John…?’ The overt hostility Luc was radiating bewildered her. ‘John is the estate manager. To be honest I don’t know how we’d cope without him,’ she confided. ‘He’s been totally marvellous—a tower of strength.’