by Poppy Flynn
James wrenched forcefully out of her grasp, the forward momentum unbalancing her and bringing Lulu to her knees.
"James, please stay, I need you!" Lulu begged at his retreating back, oblivious to the many looks of sympathy, pity and just plain nosiness of the crowd that had gathered at the back entrance of the smoothie bar and the odd expressions of disgust that followed James' withdrawal.
"Please!" The scream trailed into a sob as her shoulders shook under the sudden weight of knowledge that she was alone, that her future was effectively wrecked, and that judgement would follow close behind.
"This is your problem, not mine, Lulu. Just leave me alone." James glared at the group bunched in the small doorway and veered off to make his escape down the side of the building, leaving her alone and pathetic on the cold ground, surrounded by the whispers and occasional sniggers of her peers.
Nine weeks had passed since that horrible day, and now, there was really no doubt. Lulu had buried her head in the sand and she'd almost been able to kid herself that everything was normal. She'd stopped feeling sick and had enjoyed the mid-term break with her friends last week. This morning, she sat on her bed and cried. No matter how much she pulled or squeezed or tugged, she simply couldn't zip up the skirt of her school uniform. She could no longer hide under loose tops and stretchy leggings. Her Catholic school uniform was unforgiving. Skirt, tailored shirt and blazer, there was nowhere to hide her growing tummy.
A light knock on the door heralded her mother's growing concern, her soft voice drifting through the wooden barrier. "Luanna, are you okay, sweetheart?"
Lulu curled up on the bed in a foetal position and let it all out. She couldn't hide it any longer. She was going to have to see the censure and disillusion in both her parents' faces.
Another five weeks. It was almost Christmas. The baby was due in March. There had been no shouting or recriminations in the Morgan household. Just quiet acceptance and a gut-wrenching disappointment, which was somehow even worse. The knowledge that she had let her wonderful parents down led to a silent depression that Lulu couldn't seem to shake off.
Despite everything, they had taken it all in their stride. There had been no questions regarding the circumstances of her pregnancy or even the identity of the father. Lulu imagined they had guessed. She and James had been an item for a long time, prior to her fall from grace. He had spent time in their home, eaten meals at their table. He'd arrived outside their house in a limo with the requisite corsage to escort her to that fateful junior Prom.
Neither had there been any comments about the fact that he no longer came around.
Sometimes, she wondered what her parents really thought about it all, but she wouldn't ever ask. They existed in a happy state of 'non-discussion'. Her mother had bought her a school pinafore which hung from the yoke and did an admirable job of covering her growing baby bump, and she had driven her to see their doctor and to the subsequent pre-natal check-ups.
If there were rumours beginning to circulate, then no one acknowledged them. Certainly, there was the usual bitchiness around school, but not even Cindy had dared to say anything to her face. If there was gossip in the community, then Lulu didn't know about it, but what flew around the school would undoubtedly spread to the rest of their relatively small and rural neighbourhood.
Sitting on her bed, absently twirling her pen and wondering if there was really any point in trying to finish her English essay, since it was obvious she wasn't going to be able to sit her end of year exams, Lulu was surprised to hear the front door slam and raised voices in the kitchen.
Slipping off the bed, she frowned as she ran quietly down the stairs but stopped short in the hallway, startled when she heard her usually placid father shouting. She started to back away, leaving her parents to the privacy of a rare argument, when she heard her name mentioned. Freezing in place, Lulu tried to make sense of the words then slumped against the wall and wished she hadn't heard.
"That bastard thinks his son can knock up my daughter and not only have no obligation, no accountability, but that he can just conveniently brush it all under the carpet, as well?"
"Calm down, William." Her mother's voice was still soft but held a heart-breaking tone of resignation. "We always knew there might be repercussions."
Her father's voice, on the other hand, held nothing but disbelief. "You expected something like this?"
"Getting upset won't change the facts, love. We need to work out how we move forward," her mother reasoned stoically.
"Hah!" her father spat. "We could always slap them with a paternity suit and make them take responsibility."
"You know that's not in the best interest of any of us," her mother soothed. "Luanna doesn't need all the attention that would bring; she's already down enough. Besides, nothing could be proven until after the baby is born in three months' time. In the meantime, he'll have followed through with his threat to fire you and ruin your employment reputation. You'll have no job, no income, and no prospects. We won't be able to pay the mortgage, and the last thing we need is to find ourselves homeless with a new baby to care for."
Lulu's legs gave way beneath her and she slid slowly down the wall, oblivious to the silent tears that streamed down her face and fell in fat drops on the hands that she clamped over her mouth. Her dad worked as an accountant for one of the Fulford businesses. She had never imagined that his job might be in jeopardy because of this. She flinched as she heard a thump and a crash, closely followed by the sound of shattering glass.
"We risk losing the house, regardless!" her father raged. "There's no way we'll be able to sell quickly in the current climate. Fulford wants this move to be immediate. How the hell are we going to make that work?"
Lulu had never heard her father curse so much in her entire life. Her mother remained the voice of reason. Thank goodness for her calm pragmatism. Right now, Theresa Morgan was the glue that was holding their family together while circumstance did its best to tear everything down around them. And it was all her fault.
"We'll rent the house and take Fulford up on the relocation package."
"Pfft! I don't want to take anything that bastard's offering. Not his so-called promotion and not his 'alternative' accommodation offer! It's all a bloody sham, anyway. Just a convenient way to ship us all out so he and his randy flaming son don't look bad," William argued.
"We'll take it and look at it as a blessing in disguise," Theresa said firmly. "Once we're settled, we can find somewhere else to live and you can start looking for a new job. We'll leave all of this behind, and we'll all be far away from any kind of retribution from that family."
Her mother sighed loudly. "We should be thankful for small mercies, William," she said seriously. "If the Fulfords decided they wanted this baby, they could just take it from us." Everything in the kitchen fell silent, and Lulu strained to listen with growing horror. "They're rich. It wouldn't be hard for them to claim that they have more to offer a child than a single teenage mother, and we wouldn't have any way to fight them."
Lulu wrapped her arms protectively around her waist. Until now, everything had seemed like a bad dream. A reality that she tried not to think about too often. Something that might be happening to someone else but not really to her. The fears her mother was voicing were more like a nightmare. Luanna braced herself as reality hit her in way that brought all her dormant maternal instincts surging to the surface with the force of a tsunami. This was her baby, and no one was ever going to take it away from her! She'd be the best damn mother she could be, regardless of her age, and she'd work just as hard as she had to, to make the best life she could for them both. There and then, she vowed never to give her parents any reason to regret their sacrifice.
In the kitchen, the lengthy silence was broken by another curse, followed by her father's voice, newly coloured with a menacing determination as he bit out, "Start packing!"
Chapter 1
Luanna sent silent thanks that Danny was staying with his grandparents
for the weekend. At fifteen, he was plenty old enough to have stayed home alone, but she still would have worried. This way, she didn't have her attention pulled away from the very posh, very traditional, and very media intensive wedding of her two bosses, Desi Harper and Joel Blackwood. Of course, Danny had been invited, too, but, with Luanna being a member of the wedding party, he would have been all alone amongst a boatload of strangers. Not the most enjoyable way for a teenage boy to spend one of the precious days of his weekend.
It also meant that she didn't have to explain to her all too knowledgeable son exactly why she had invited a man to stay at their house overnight.
Not that there was anything untoward going on with Logan Thornton. Quite the opposite, in fact. There had been the most dreadful scene at the hotel, where the manager had gotten some ridiculous notion that Desi's chief bridesmaid, Charlotte Chapman, was some kind of high class call girl. He'd called security and had the poor woman thrown, none too gently, out onto the street. Then he'd called the police, who had arrived to arrest her for soliciting.
The fiasco had led the best man, Jake Blackwood, to call for a boycott of the establishment, which was not only supposed to be hosting a private supper for the wedding party but was also providing the overnight accommodations for most of the out of town visitors.
For all Charlotte's resigned and stoic arguments against disrupting the wedding arrangements, Desi and the rest of the guests had been suitably horrified and so disgusted that they all wholeheartedly agreed to be relocated, despite the late hour, utilising whatever alternatives were available from a hastily sourced bridal suite in a newly established boutique hotel to Desi's empty apartment and any spare rooms that the local guests were able to offer.
And, for her own part, Luanna had been more than happy to offer up her guest room to Logan, the Blackwood lawyer and the groomsman with whom she'd been paired for the day.
There was nothing she detested more in life than the discrimination and prejudice of small-minded, pig-headed bigots. She'd endured enough of it in her thirty-two years to know exactly what it felt like to be on the receiving end, and she was glad that Desi had supported her friend and not taken the easy option of downplaying the incident. Despite Luanna's reputation as always being calm, serene and composed, there were some things that she would never, ever tolerate. If Desi had decided to continue with the hotel dinner and accommodation, Luanna might have been forced to vote with her feet and leave the celebrations, which would have placed her in an awkward position both personally and professionally.
The fact that Desi had chosen to disrupt her own wedding plans, in deference to Charlotte's feelings, just proved that her relatively new friend and boss, was exactly the kind of person that Luanna believed her to be and one she was privileged to know.
As she showed her unexpected visitor to the bathroom, she excused herself to get out of her wedding outfit so she could progress to making up the guest bedroom. Well, that was a bit of a stretch. It was actually her son's room that Logan would be slumming it in. As she changed her clothes, it occurred to Luanna that her son's modest single bed was probably very much too small for a man the size of Logan Thornton. It was getting too small for her son, but Luanna had been waiting until she was more established in her job before she started splurging her fairly healthy salary on luxuries. Plus, she'd been socking every spare penny into a college fund for Danny before she ran out of time. Maybe she should have thought this invitation through a little better.
Donning a pair of comfy pyjama bottoms and a stretchy vest top, without giving so much as a thought to allure or artifice, Luanna brushed out her thick, dark red hair and decided she should offer her own bed to Logan. She could sleep in Danny's bed, herself.
Padding out of the room in her bare feet, Luanna stopped briefly, looked down at herself, and wondered if she should pull on a robe. Shrugging, she shook her head. It was too warm for that, and one look at her in her cosy pjs should be pretty convincing that she wasn't planning any kind of enticement. She laughed inwardly at the thought. For the past sixteen years, ever since she had first gotten pregnant with Danny, she had thought of herself as pretty nonsexual. There hadn't been time for relationships or even the odd dalliance. She had been too busy trying to restore a small amount of her parents' pride, by being the best mother she possibly could be, struggling to get herself some worthwhile qualifications while bringing up her son and learning to gracefully shrug off the taunts and the prejudices that inevitably came with being a single, young teen parent.
Neither had there been the opportunity. As supportive as her mum and dad had been, finishing school had been out of the question. They had given up a huge amount for her and Danny, though, to this day, they had never, ever mentioned it. All they had expected in return was for her to handle Danny's day to day care and apply her free time to correspondence courses to further her education, so that she would, one day, be in a position to be independent. In the meantime, they had both gone out to work to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. They had never been able to sell the old house, and although it was rented much of the time, Luanna knew there were periods when it had been empty and her parents had struggled to cover that mortgage as well as the rent on their new home.
If she'd felt lonely when she was younger, well, that was her own stupid fault. She'd made her bed and she had to lie in it. No one to blame but herself. Of course, she hadn't felt she'd deserved a lot of what had been thrown at her. The taunts from both other teenagers and adults branding her as a whore. The subtle and not so subtle rebukes from parents determined to keep both their sons and their daughters away from her, since she must undoubtedly be some kind of dreadful influence.
It had been character building if nothing else. And things hadn't been so bad since Danny had started high school a few years ago and she no longer had to loiter on the periphery of the school gates, shunned and gossiped about by the older parents. Although there had been that one occasion, a few months ago, when she had been mortified to hear one of Danny's school friends comment on how hot his 'older sister' was. Surprised, too. She had worked so hard when she was younger to exude an aura of calm maturity, in order to somehow compensate for her actual age, that it was second nature now. She didn't think she came across as young anymore. She certainly didn't have the willowy figure of Danny's female friends. In fact, Luanna was decidedly curvy. She had never been stick thin to start with, but she'd carried extra weight ever since she fell pregnant and sported an hourglass figure that was heavy on the bust and pretty similar on the hips. Much more of an old fashioned 1950s pinup girl than the twig thin models that were endorsed by today's society.
Dated! In fact, despite her history, sometimes she felt like she had never been young at all.
Luanna sighed. She couldn't complain. She'd been lucky. Her parents had been amazing, supportive, loving and non-judgemental.
They still were. Danny had never lacked for a strong father figure in his life, because they had lived at home with her parents until Luanna was twenty-five. By then, Danny had already had his eighth birthday and it wasn't as if they had moved far away. Just enough to establish some independence and to give her parents a much-needed break from the responsibility of Luanna and their grandson. Now, Danny was a credit to them and to her, as well. He was responsible and mature, and she considered him to be her friend as much as her son. If she found it odd that he kidded with her about finding a boyfriend, then she just laughed about it. If he'd been here to see Logan, he would have teased her unmercifully and ribbed her about jumping his bones and remembering to use protection. It was almost as if, as he grew older, he had subconsciously taken on the role of a brother or something. Maybe he was establishing himself as the man of the house.
Whatever; she knew that she would find the situation far more embarrassing than Danny would.
As she pottered around the kitchen, she heard the shower shut off and busied herself making a pot of tea for a nightcap. She was just pouring it ou
t when Logan finished in the bathroom and came to find her.
Luanna's gaze locked onto his bare, washboard abs and naked, muscled chest adorned only with a somewhat surprising tribal tattoo which feathered elegantly from the crest of his left pec, entwined his shoulder and looped gracefully down his bicep. For a moment, she was so startled, she forgot to breathe.
A moment later, she recovered herself and hastily looked away, cursing her red hair and the fair skin that came with it, knowing that the flush that started on her chest and crawled up her face would be evident. The only thing she wasn't sure about was whether that flush was caused by being caught staring at her guest's undeniably sexy body or from the wave of unexpected desire that took her by surprise. She hadn't had that sort of reaction to a man since…ever!
Luanna swallowed and kept her eyes lowered while she pushed a mug of hot tea towards him over the kitchen counter and fumbled the milk and sugar as she placed them in front of him, not daring to reach for her own cup in case the sudden tremor that shook her fingers gave her away.
Logan Thornton smiled at the reaction from the woman in front of him, quite charmed by the blush that warmed her cheeks.
After being involved with the BDSM Club Risqué for almost fifteen years, he thought nothing of walking around shirtless, and he'd almost forgotten that there were still women in the world who didn't look at him with a certain speculation and calculation in their eyes rather than honest appreciation. It was quite refreshing if he was honest.
Things had been interesting in recent months, what with the Blackwood Corporation's threatened takeover of Universal Holdings, which had led, instead, to a merger or two. Firstly, that of the two companies and then the marriage of Joel, the CEO, and Desi, the CFO, of their respective companies. That, in turn, had led to him and his friends—Jake, Joel and Connor—buying the local club, Perversions, which was currently undergoing refurbishment to turn it into the second Club Risqué, here on the east coast. The original Club Risqué was a thousand miles away on the south coast and, though the four of them had been members there since their late teens, they had gotten together to buy it out four years ago. Now, this new club was being modelled on that one. Not identical. The first club was sumptuous and lavish, whereas the new club had a much younger, industrial vibe going on and also incorporated a dance club—albeit with some rather 'exotic' entertainment—but the ethos remained the same. Providing an exclusive and strictly monitored venue for members to enjoy the BDSM lifestyle under their mission statement of 'safe, sane and consensual'.