by Annie O'Neil
‘Yes. And the reason they don’t tell anyone is because the chances of losing the baby are higher.’
She pressed her lips together, their dusty rose colour whitening from the pressure.
He didn’t blame her for being angry. One doctor informing another how the body worked was ultra-patronising. Especially when that doctor was the father of your child.
Lia stared at him. Hard. ‘Oliver. You brought me to an amusement park. We were riding on rollercoasters yesterday!’
‘Yes—and I made sure you didn’t go on anything that would harm the baby.’
Lia’s blue eyes blazed with indignation. ‘Oh, you did, did you? You kept a special eye out for me because you’ve decided I don’t have the maternal instinct to do so myself? I’m not your ex, Oliver. I want this baby every bit as much as you do. I guess the real question I should be asking myself is, do I want you as much as I want the child?’
Oliver felt the impact of her words as if they were a physical blow. What a moment to realise he’d let his past darken his future. He loved her. He did. He wanted to build on the foundation of what they’d been sharing over these last few weeks. But something caught the words in his throat and stemmed them.
Lia swept away angry tears. ‘It’s pretty clear your priority is our child and not me. Which is a step up from my father’s parenting skills, anyway. It’s a good trick, though, Oliver. Playing the doting fiancé right up until you get your heir. Well done for keeping me wrapped up in a little princess cocoon. Bewitching me into thinking it was me you cared about.’
He wanted to pound his head against the wall. Turn back time. Anything to fix this.
Tell her you love her.
‘Lia, you know I’m not like that.’
‘Do I?’ she asked, obviously unsatisfied with his response. ‘Do I really know anything about you? Up until a few minutes ago I was pretty sure I knew you, and how you felt about me, but now... Now, I’m not so sure.’
Oliver tried to force his brain and his heart to work in tandem. Words clogged up his throat. None of them were the right ones to express how he felt. And his silence fed her anger.
‘If you’ll remember, I’m the one who told you about this child, Oliver. I didn’t have to. I’m also the one who told the palace, knowing that they’d force me into this.’
He bridled. ‘Force you into marrying me? No one’s forcing anyone to do anything. I thought we were having fun. That we—’
She cut him off. ‘I don’t want to marry someone to be a bit of fun.’
He could practically see Lia’s emotions withdraw like the tide, and in their place came the ice. So why wasn’t he throwing a pickaxe into the wall between them and breaking through the ice to that warm, beautiful heart of hers?
She fixed him with her pale blue eyes. ‘I didn’t want this. Any of this.’
The words hung between them like daggers.
Everything they hadn’t discussed about the future hovered above them like an enormous wave, about to drown them with the sheer weight of it all. A wave comprised of one question: did they love one another?
He rattled through a checklist of their lives. The positives? Life on St Victoria was amazing. The past month had been wonderful. They each did their jobs without the impediment of their pasts. The negatives? Lia’s life wasn’t picture-perfect. Until they’d met she’d been isolated. Lonely. And, when you put a magnifying glass to it, Oliver’s life wasn’t perfect either. He was caring for everyone but himself. Salving other people’s wounds whilst his own remained untended.
Beyond the window he caught a glimpse of the fairy castle. The very turret he’d said he’d climb to tell one and all how he felt about Lia.
But he hadn’t.
This conversation, he realised, was what they had to survive before either of them got their happy ending. Their darkest fears had to be confronted.
‘What do you want, Lia? What do you really want?’ Oliver asked.
‘I want to marry someone who wants to marry me. Not the palace. Not the baby. Not anything else but me.’
He knew what she was saying. She wanted to marry someone who was in love with her. And of all the people in the world, she deserved nothing less.
He felt the bone-deep ache of knowing he’d approached this from the wrong angle. From the moment he’d found out she was pregnant his focus had been on the baby. He’d been so intent on ensuring he became a father that he hadn’t allowed his feelings for Lia the space they deserved.
She’d trusted him.
And, stupidly, he’d broken that precious link.
She spoke before he could. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you to do something so cruel. But lucky me! Now I know exactly who it is I’ve agreed to marry, I’m not so certain I think it’s a very good idea.’
Washes of hot and cold swept through him so fast he didn’t have time to react to either one.
Splitting up when they’d only just begun their journey together was the last thing he wanted, but he wasn’t going to insist upon pursuing a marriage she saw as a trap. A cage.
There was only one option.
‘All right then.’ Oliver looked Lia straight in the eye. ‘The wedding’s off.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OLIVER’S VOICE WAS barely penetrating the roar of blood pounding through her head.
He didn’t want to marry her.
She stared at his mouth, trying to parse the words as he spoke.
‘Your happiness and the baby’s wellbeing are what’s important here,’ he said.
A complete understanding of the situation cracked open her chest and laid her heart bare. She’d never felt more humiliated. More blind to what had been happening all along. Oliver genuinely didn’t want her. He wanted the baby. An heir. A child to replace the one he’d been denied.
Her heart ached for the pain he’d endured, but that was no reason to play such a cruel game with her emotions.
She pulled the ring off her finger, pressed it into Oliver’s hand, and fled the room before he could see a single tear fall. She didn’t need to listen to the rest of whatever he was going to say before she put his name on the growing list of people who didn’t want her.
First her mother, then her father, then a string of so-called friends and boyfriends. They hadn’t wanted her. Just something from her. Status. Prestige. Their picture in a glossy magazine. Those were the reasons a handful of girls back at school had been friendly towards her. They certainly hadn’t actually wanted to be friends.
But wanting her for a baby?
That was a new level of low she couldn’t wrap her head around. Nor did it match the man she’d connected with so perfectly that first, undeniably wonderful night. The night they had conceived their child.
She blindly got into the lift, not caring which floor it landed on. What did matter? The one thing she’d thought was a certainty in her life had just been shattered into a million unfixable pieces.
She’d thought the protective shield she’d built around herself was strong enough to endure another assault. A safe haven. But she’d let that shield fall for Oliver. The one man she’d ever let herself truly love. And he only wanted her for the child she was going to bear.
Icy-cold tendrils of darkness swept through her bloodstream and tightened their hold on her heart. She’d thought she’d known loneliness before, but she’d been wrong. This was what real loneliness felt like. Bone-crushing loss.
‘Lia?’
Lia looked around her. Somehow she’d ended up in front of the hotel.
‘What are you doing out here?’
Grace reached out and touched her hand, her eyes dropping to the bare ring finger that was effectively telling the story Lia couldn’t yet put a voice to.
Grace’s expression sobered—a direct contrast to her theme park tiara and jolly pink and white polka-dott
ed carry-all. ‘You okay?’
No. She was about as far from okay as it got. Not that she could say as much. Especially not to someone she worked with.
Up until a handful of weeks ago, crossing the line between her work and personal lives had been something she’d avoided as if her life depended upon it. Work was the one sanctuary that had never let her down, and merely thinking about letting Grace or anyone else into her private life more than she had terrified her.
‘Come, darlin’,’ Grace said after a moment, her soft island lilt as soothing as her touch. ‘Come with me.’
‘But...aren’t you off to the airport?’
‘You can come with us if you want.’
Lia started rummaging round in the tote bag she’d blindly grabbed as she’d left the suite. ‘I don’t think I have my passport...’
What little self-possession she had began to crumble. There was no way she could go back up there, tail between her legs, and get her passport. Stomping in and out wasn’t her style either. Hiding out and reading books and going to work was her style. A desperate longing for her little cottage on St Victoria took hold.
She stiffened when she felt someone else by her side.
‘Lia!’
Élodie. Yet another reminder of Oliver.
As Lia did her best to dredge up a smile, the young girl looked up into her face and, with the unerring eye of a child who had known more tragedy than she should have, instantly read the situation.
‘Here.’ She handed Lia the magic wand Oliver had bought her yesterday. ‘I think you might need this more than me.’
Lia made a weird laughing, snuffling, hiccuping noise, then dropped down so that she was at eye level with Élodie. ‘Thank you, love, but I don’t think even a magic wand can fix things today.’
Élodie looked at her with such disbelief it disarmed her. ‘But...’ the little girl protested. ‘But believing in something hard enough, strong enough, is supposed to make almost every wish come true.’
Lia wanted to refute that. Tell her, no, that wasn’t the way the world worked. And then it dawned on her that of all the people in the world Élodie was one of those who knew that every dream didn’t come true. No matter how hard she prayed, wished or waved her magic wand, her parents would never come back. Nor would she ever get back one solitary minute of the weeks and weeks of her childhood she’d spent in hospital. She understood what reality was in the deepest possible way, and still she faced the future with hope.
Lia shifted her hand to her belly and forced herself to take a deep breath in and out.
Okay. Things with Oliver might not have gone the way she wanted. In fact, they’d gone completely the opposite way to what she wanted. But she was still pregnant with a little boy or girl who had their entire life in front of them. And she wanted more than anything to make sure that future was a good one.
‘I think it’s fate we ran into each other,’ Grace said gently. ‘Please, join us.’
‘But...passport...?’
Grace gave her arm a squeeze, then waved her hand. ‘I can run up and get that. Not a problem.’ She turned to go, then stopped and turned back. ‘You know, I’m going to take Élodie to see my daughter and her family when we land. Would you like to come?’
‘You have a daughter?’
Grace tried and failed to mask her surprise that Lia didn’t know, ‘Yes—and a son.’
Lia felt yet another tectonic shift. Not because Grace had children—more because in all of the three years they’d worked together, Lia had never asked her.
Was the cocoon she’d accused Oliver of putting her in actually one she’d made herself? Was the protective shield she’d held up between herself and loneliness actually the reason for it?
‘How old is she? Your daughter?’
‘Just gone thirty. Given me two lovely grandbabies, she has.’
Lia frowned. How had she not known this?
‘My boy is twenty-eight and set to be married next spring... I’m sorry I could go on and on about them,’ Grace tacked on in an apologetic tone, ‘so I’ll stop.’
‘No, please. I’m interested.’
Lia felt ashamed. Just because she didn’t like people to know about her own life didn’t mean she couldn’t show an interest in other people’s. Grace had been nothing but kind to her through three years, and she hadn’t even known she had grown children, let alone grandchildren.
A niggle of discomfort that Oliver might have been right to treat her with kid gloves needled into her conscience. There were a thousand questions she should’ve been asking him over these past few weeks. About his past, his hopes, his dreams. The same thousand questions he should’ve been asking her...
‘Here’s your taxi, ma’am.’ A bellhop carrying a couple of wheelie bags splashed with bright tropical flowers bearing The Island Clinic luggage tags gestured to a car a few metres away.
Grace leant in and in a low voice said, ‘Élodie’s aunt and uncle are still off working on that yacht job, so I thought I’d take her for a playdate and maybe an overnight stay with my daughter’s girls, before she heads back to an empty house.’
‘Don’t the aunt and uncle have children?’
Grace pulled a face. ‘They’re all teenagers, fresh out of school, and they’re working as well,’ she explained with a shake of her head. ‘I hate thinking of that poor girl spending so much time on her own... Melody won’t mind if I bring one more.’
‘Melody?’ Lia repeated.
‘My daughter,’ Grace said, as if Lia should know this. She pushed her lips forward, then shifted her weight to her other hip and stared at Lia—hard. She blinked once, her expression unreadable, then said, ‘Joining us doesn’t obligate you to anything.’
Lia wished she could pull their entire interchange from the air and incinerate it. What was it with her? She had to stop pushing people away if she was ever going to get that so-called normal life she wanted.
‘No!’ she insisted. ‘Really. That’s not it. Not it at all. I just want to—I want—’
She wanted to be with Oliver. Wanted it to be yesterday, when everything had seemed perfect—like a fairy tale. But life wasn’t a fairy tale. It was real. Oliver had just called their wedding off. And she had to take some responsibility for that.
Her new life would have to begin with the smallest of steps. Or, in this case, a plane ride. ‘Yes, please, Grace. I’d love to come.’
Grace’s face brightened into a broad smile and Élodie jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Yippee!’
Grace nodded to the taxi and said to Lia, ‘You go on ahead and help Élodie get buckled up. I’ll go get your passport.’
* * *
When Grace reappeared, she wasn’t alone.
Oliver was with her, his expression taut with a determination Lia had never seen before. He was as handsome as ever, and his blue eyes glittered with an inner strength that made him appear both powerful and kind. He’d opened his heart to her, told her of his darkest moment, his biggest fear, and she’d made it about herself. Had unleashed her fears on him like weapons.
The fact that he was here made her respect for him soar up a few more notches. He was a man who faced his problems head-on. She needed to prove she could do the same. If it turned out he didn’t love her, they’d find some way to deal with it...to move on. To ensure that Oliver was in her child’s life.
Would it break her heart? Absolutely. Would she do it for her child. Without reservation.
She stepped towards him. The air around them was electric with the myriad emotions both of them were feeling.
Her list was pretty long: hope, fear, hurt and, yes, love. Still love.
He wasn’t saying anything. It was up to her to break the silence.
‘Hey...’
She cringed. There was definitely room for improvement in her truce-making skills.
/> Eyes glued to hers, Oliver said, ‘I understand there’s cake on offer at Melody’s.’
Lia glanced at Grace, who was looking entirely too innocent for someone who had clearly told Oliver his fiancée was trying to run away.
Ex-fiancée.
Her gut churned. She didn’t want to be his ex. She wanted to be his someone. For him to be hers. The one person in the world who knew everything about her. The good, the bad, and everything else in between.
A tiny little bloom of hope rose in her chest.
The fact that he was here meant something, right?
Maybe they’d got it all wrong when they’d fought.
Maybe Oliver was as nervous as she was. Just as full of concerns and anxieties about their future.
They should have started talking about more than their favourite colours and dog breeds the day they’d found out she was pregnant. They should still be talking now.
If only he wasn’t so utterly kissable!
Not a good enough excuse.
This wasn’t the time to think about how much he loved it when she traced her fingers along his collarbone, or kissed him just under the ridge of his jaw, or slid alongside him, spooning their naked bodies together as if they’d been designed for one another.
She looked up and saw that Oliver was examining her, presumably trying to figure out what she was smiling about when he’d just called off their wedding.
A blush crept into her cheeks.
Jumping on him and ripping his clothes off wasn’t the solution. Talking was.
Sensing that things weren’t going to turn into sunshine and roses and, more to the point, that there wasn’t going to be another proposal here in the taxi rank, Grace bustled everyone into the car, where she and Élodie kept up a flow of conversation about the theme park, and how the Room Service fries were curly, not straight, and how they loved the scent of the lotion in the bathroom at the hotel, but how nice it would be to get back home.
Élodie gravely informed them that she’d reached a few conclusions, including the fact that going to theme parks was extra-fun. Especially with adults, because they laughed more than they did in real life. Also, she was going to join the swim team when she was old enough, because mermaids seemed very special indeed, and finally, living like a princess every day did seem to have some plus points, but maybe not every day—because princesses probably couldn’t have chocolate cake.