Elspeth pulled a face, feigning ignorance. ‘I’m fine. How was college today?’
Sarah gave her an insightful look. ‘We already talked about that. Don’t change the subject. You look terrible.’
‘Gee, with a sister like you...’
‘I know—who needs friends? But I’m not letting you off that easy. Come on. Tell me what’s up.’
Elspeth considered her options. It wasn’t as if she could keep it a secret for ever. And she could do with talking about what was on her mind. Maybe if she said the words out loud they would start to feel more real.
‘I—’ Her voice broke, stuck behind a lump in her throat. She coughed, took a deep breath and tried again. ‘I’m pregnant.’
She heard the words for the first time, but it still didn’t help. It felt as if she was talking about someone else. Except for the look on Sarah’s face. That made it a little more real.
‘Okay. Whose is it?’ she asked after a long pause. ‘Not Alex’s?’ she added, looking aghast.
‘No,’ Elspeth said, unable to help smiling at her sister’s horror at the prospect that she was back with her ex. ‘It’s someone...new,’ she said eventually, not sure she wanted her sister to know she’d been picking up strange men at weddings. ‘We’re not really in touch at the moment.’
They weren’t meant to be in touch at all. Not if it meant trying to cram a relationship into a life that she’d already proved had no space for one.
‘Guess that’s going to have to change,’ Sarah said.
Elspeth threw her a look only an older sister could give. ‘You’re very insightful tonight,’ she said.
Sarah turned her chair so that she was looking directly at Elspeth. ‘You’re the one throwing bombshells. I’m just trying to keep up. How long have you known?’
‘I’ve just found out,’ Elspeth said. ‘Don’t tell Mum. Not till I’ve had a chance to speak to her first.’
‘Of course,’ Sarah said, watching her more closely than Elspeth was comfortable with.
Elspeth picked up a book from Sarah’s bed, fiddling with it in her hands, running scenarios through her head, none of which were helping.
‘Can you grab my pyjamas?’ Sarah asked, with a glance at her restless fingers. ‘I’m not getting anywhere with this essay. I think I need to sleep on it.’
‘Of course,’ Elspeth replied, pleased to have the distraction. As she went through the nightly routine—helping Sarah in the bathroom, dressing her, administering her meds and going through her physio regime—her thoughts kept drifting back to Fraser, as hard as she tried to keep them in the present moment.
‘Are you going to tell me about him?’ Sarah asked, and Elspeth realised she had been looking out of the window for the past few minutes, Sarah’s toothbrush in her hand, completely forgotten about.
‘I’m not sure there’s much to tell. I haven’t known him long. I don’t even know if he’s going to want to be involved. I mean, we’ve done okay, haven’t we?’
Sarah gave her a look that wasn’t at all difficult to interpret.
‘I know, I know... I’ll tell him. I know that I have to. It’s just... Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t stick around, you know?’
Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t judge them all by Alex’s standards.’
‘He wasn’t—’ Elspeth started to defend her ex. It hadn’t been his fault that she hadn’t been able to commit to their relationship. She had been asking too much from him—way too much—and she hadn’t been surprised when he had taken the escape route she had offered him.
But Sarah interrupted her before she could explain. ‘Save it, Els. You know he wasn’t the one for you. I’ve got higher hopes for this new one.’
‘You don’t know a thing about him.’
‘Exactly. I don’t know a thing about him other than the look he’s put on your face and I already like him more than the last guy.’
CHAPTER THREE
FRASER STARED INTO his coffee and could tell without having to glance at the mirror opposite him that his eyebrows were pulling together in a way that was giving him a line between them.
He was pretty certain that this was a bad idea.
His usual practice when he had unexpected text messages from one-night stands he’d thought he’d never hear from again was to say a polite but firm no, and he should have stuck to that today.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with women—he liked to have fun. But he’d seen first-hand what happened when you let yourself be swept away by emotions. Lust and passion were all well and good for a night or two. But when you gave in to them for longer than that they clouded your judgement and led to the people around you getting hurt.
He got hurt.
That was what he had learned as a teenager, when he’d seen his father throw away twenty years of marriage and move in a woman who hadn’t lasted more than a couple of years. But when Fraser had given him an ultimatum—‘Either she goes or I do!’—in the early, heady days of that relationship, his father had chosen his new partner instead of his son.
So Fraser had packed up his things, helped his mother into the car—with her white face and her shocked silence—and left his home, the ancient seat of his ancestors and his title. The estate he had been preparing to inherit from the day he was born.
And he didn’t know if he would ever get them back. All because his dad hadn’t been able to say no to a pretty face and walk away. Seeing what that had done to his mother had made the decision for him. Nothing and no one, no relationship, could be worth the sort of pain that she had gone through.
Meeting with Elspeth now went against every rule he had made for himself and stuck to so rigidly for the past fifteen years. But she had found his phone number somehow and invited him for coffee.
She was clearly keen. Keener than most. And that meant he had to be even firmer than usual. He had to tell her, face to face and in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t interested. He didn’t do relationships. He’d assumed that she’d known that when she’d taken him home halfway through a wedding and then barely woken him for a goodbye kiss the following morning. Had assumed that she wasn’t after anything serious.
So why had she tracked him down? The time for swapping numbers had come and gone without either of them suggesting it, and he had assumed that meant that she felt the same way he did.
Whatever. The whys of the situation didn’t matter. All that mattered was shutting this thing down. And it seemed more effective to do that in person than by text. He could show her that he really meant it.
And show himself.
Because he’d been thinking about Elspeth far more than was reasonable or desirable over the past few weeks. Perhaps it was the way that she had sneaked out in the half-light of dawn. The colours in the room faded in the early morning, the silhouette of her face the only clear thing.
But that was no excuse. He’d shared plenty of dawn kisses goodbye before and hadn’t had any problems forgetting them.
The door of the hotel lounge where he’d suggested they meet opened and he glanced up. Even though he was expecting her, he still felt his stomach dip at the sight of her.
He’d forgotten how petite she was. Her shoulders were half the width of his, and her head barely reached his collarbone. Her ankles and wrists were so tiny he could wrap them with his thumb and little finger. And so sensitive that she’d moaned every time he’d done so. And those freckles over her nose and her cheekbones...like a constellation of stars. He’d stared at them so intensely that night he had been able to see them even when he’d closed his eyes—like the negative image left by a bright light.
And wrapped up in that delicate exterior was a desire and a strength and a passion that had given his six feet and two hundred pounds a run for their money for a whole, blissful night.
But he wasn’t meant to be thinking ab
out that, he reminded himself as he schooled his face back into something neutral. He had to remember that this meeting was about breaking things off, not about picking up where she’d left him, naked in bed, wanting more.
‘Hi,’ Elspeth said as she approached his table.
Her smile was wary and it made his forehead crease again. She was the one who had asked to meet him, so why was she looking so guarded? So very much as if she didn’t think being here was a good idea any more than he did?
He stood to kiss her on the cheek—a polite habit, he told himself, rather than anything meaningful. The hand that he dropped to her shoulder met firm, tense muscle, and he realised that she was really nervous.
‘Have a seat,’ he said. ‘What do you want to drink?’
‘I’ll have tea. Thanks.’
He could see her looking around the richly decorated interior of the hotel lounge as he summoned the waiter with a glance and wondered whether he’d made a mistake, choosing somewhere so intimate. But he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation in a crowded restaurant or bustling coffee bar. Though that would have had its advantages... He’d have loved a reason to step away from her right now and catch his breath.
The sight of her had brought memories flooding back, and he wanted some space to remind himself that it didn’t matter that she was beautiful. It didn’t matter that she was funny. It didn’t even matter that they had killer chemistry together. What mattered was that he couldn’t trust himself around her, and he had to make sure that she knew this wasn’t going to go anywhere.
He ordered her tea, and a fresh drink for himself. Something to do with his hands. To keep them distracted. To try and forget the memory of the delicate bones of her wrists trapped between his fingers.
‘Thanks for meeting me,’ Elspeth said eventually, gazing at a point somewhere past his left shoulder.
Alarm bells started ringing. There was definitely more to this meeting than he understood, and he didn’t like it.
‘What’s going on, Elspeth?’ he asked, his voice brusquer than he had intended. But he couldn’t regret it. He had to know what she wanted from him because his body was growing increasingly tense, and the suspicion that this conversation was going somewhere he wasn’t going to like was becoming impossible to ignore.
Elspeth took a deep breath, and—finally—looked him straight in the eye. Her face was set defiantly, as if she were expecting a fight, and a shiver travelled the length of Fraser’s spine. A flash-forward—a presentiment, perhaps. An acknowledgement that, whatever it was that had put that expression on her face, he wasn’t going to like it.
‘I’m pregnant.’
The words hit Fraser like a bus, rendering him mute and paralysed. He sat in silence for long, still moments, letting the words reverberate through his ears, his brain. The full meaning of them fell upon him slowly, gradually. Like being crushed to death under a pile of small rocks. Each one was so insignificant that you didn’t feel the difference, but collectively they stole his breath and would break his body.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
He didn’t know why. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t sure. The look on her face told him that she was sure. And he wasn’t going to insult her by asking if he was the father—she wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.
‘I’m sorry. Of course you’re sure.’
But this couldn’t be happening. He didn’t want this. He’d seen the danger of giving in to romantic feelings. His mother had married the man she loved and then found herself turfed out and having to start her life again more than a decade and a half later. His father had given in to those feelings a second time, destroyed his family in the process—and with what to show for it? Two ex-wives and a son who hated him.
Fraser had decided a long time ago that that sort of commitment—the family and marriage sort—wasn’t something he was interested in. It couldn’t possibly be worth the heartache for everyone involved. Okay, so when he looked ahead maybe he did see a couple of kids in his life, in between the dogs and the lambs and the horses. But that didn’t mean they were a realistic part of the picture, because they didn’t come on their own. The thought of committing to any woman was completely off the cards. And to this woman—someone who had already caused him too many sleepless nights—it was impossible.
The commitment of raising a child was an unimaginable complication—how could it not be? He was happy with his life the way it was. With a string of casual attachments and the distant thought that one day, when his father was dead, he would return to his family estate and finally do the job he had spent his whole life waiting and working for. Put into practice all the preparations he had been making in the meantime, developing property and managing estates all over Scotland and being responsible for the lives of the people who lived and worked on them.
His father had always impressed upon him as a child that his money and his title came with responsibilities, and he was determined to be worthy of that privilege. In the years since he had left Ballanross he had been training to take up that position. Learning how to make land profitable; investing the small trust he had inherited from his grandfather and turning it into a fortune. Watching this fall and rise of the property market and ensuring that he was on the right side of it, amassing the cash and the property that had gone some way to filling the hole in his life that the loss of the estate had left.
He’d not been able to return home for fifteen years. His father had made it clear that he wasn’t welcome in his home or in his life. Even after his dad’s second marriage had broken down, when it had turned out that leaving his wife and the mother of his child wasn’t the cure for a midlife crisis that he had expected it to be, Fraser had not gone back. How could he when his father had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want him in his life?
So he had taken the heartbreaking decision to wait until the land was his before he returned.
But if he had a child... That would change everything. Because that child had every right to know its inheritance. Its place in the world. On their land. How could he deny him or her that?
‘Are you going to say anything?’ Elspeth asked, breaking into his thoughts at last.
He met her gaze and saw that it had hardened even further—he hadn’t thought that was possible. But he could understand why. He’d barely said a word since she’d dropped her bombshell. He needed time to take this in. Surely she could understand that.
‘I’m sorry. I’m in shock,’ he said. Following that up with the first thing that had popped into his head. ‘We were careful...’
‘Not careful enough, it seems.’
Her voice was like ice, cutting into him, and he knew that it had been the wrong thing to say. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know.
Fraser shook his head. He’d never expected to be so unlucky. Nor had Elspeth, from the look on her face.
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked, his voice tentative, aware that they had options. Equally aware that discussing them could be a minefield if they weren’t on the same page.
‘I want to have the baby,’ Elspeth said, using the same firmness and lack of equivocation with which she had told him she was pregnant. How someone so slight could sound so immovably solid was beyond him—and it was a huge part of her appeal, he realised. Something he should be wary of, then.
He nodded, though, his chest a little lighter, and realised that he was relieved that was what she wanted. Selfishly glad that she had spared him having to come to a conclusion himself. That picture of his future with children—it was what he wanted, he realised. He couldn’t imagine growing old on his land with no one to pass it on to. It wasn’t the child that wasn’t wanted—it was the relationship, and the woman, and the commitment, and everything that came with it that was completely terrifying him.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
Elspeth shrugged. ‘Tired, hungry
. Everything that you’d expect, really. I’m only about eight weeks along. It’s still early days, but I called in a favour and got a scan. Everything looks good so far. We’ve no reason to think that anything will go wrong.’
‘That’s good,’ Fraser said.
His lips involuntarily turned up into a smile. He wasn’t even sure why. He couldn’t even think about what he was meant to be feeling at this news.
‘So, what do we do now?’
* * *
What did they do now?
How on earth was she meant to know? She’d only been able to see as far as this. As far as telling the father of her child that the child existed. From here on in it was up to both of them to figure it out.
It would help if she had a clue where to start.
She didn’t even know the basics about Fraser. Where he lived. Where he was from. His surname...
They’d come back to this very hotel the night of the wedding, so she didn’t have many clues there, apart from the fact that it was one of the most discreetly expensive hotels in the city. She’d gone along with it, surprised, when he’d suggested meeting here.
If she was honest with herself, she was more surprised that he’d agreed to meet her at all. He had money, she gathered, wondering what he would make of her usual coffee shop and feeling suddenly uncomfortable.
‘I guess we try and figure out the practicalities,’ she said. ‘If you want to be involved.’
She’d decided that this was the best tactic. She didn’t want to force him to be in their lives if he didn’t want to be. This child had every right to know its father, but it also deserved a father who wanted to be there. Not someone who was only doing it because they thought that they should.
A harsh look crossed Fraser’s face, and Elspeth realised that somehow she’d touched a nerve.
‘Of course I want to be involved. What kind of person do you think I am?’
She raised her palms. ‘I don’t know what kind of person you are, Fraser. All I know so far is that you get bored at weddings and what you like to do in bed. How am I meant to know what you think about kids? So far, this conversation isn’t filling me with confidence.’
Surprise Baby for the Heir Page 3