Surprise Baby for the Heir

by Ellie Darkins

  Great. Money wasn’t exactly known to uncomplicate situations—and what was he going to make of her less than glamorous lifestyle? The nineteen-fifties bungalow that she shared with her mother and her sister? Was his money a part of him that she would ever understand, or would it always be a gulf between them? A part of one another that would always be alien.

  It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. She didn’t want to date him. All she needed from him was to be a good father to their child.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Fraser asked, looking at her with concern.

  Elspeth waved away his worries and looked out at the view. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just need a breather for a moment.’

  She stood looking out over the city and realised how close Fraser was behind her. So close she could practically feel the heat radiating from his chest and his torso. Those tight abs that she’d explored, and then owned, the night of the wedding.

  It would be too easy to lean back into him, to let the chemistry that had led them astray that night be back in charge. But it would only lead to trouble, she reminded herself. She was taking on enough with this baby, the baby that was making its presence known by literally stealing the oxygen from her lungs, without trying to make space in her life for a relationship as well.

  No, it didn’t matter how attracted she was to Fraser. Falling for him meant devoting less of herself to her mother and her sister, and that wasn’t an option. Sarah needed her, and Elspeth’s feelings came a distant second to that.

  She let the breath go and started walking again, determined to reach the top of the hill before they had to turn around, looking for a change of subject. ‘Have you told your family about me? About the baby?’ she asked, not sure where she wanted this conversation to go, but aware that she needed a change of subject.

  ‘I told my mum,’ Fraser said, with a nod and a smile. ‘She was pretty shocked, but she’s excited about being a grandmother. And desperate to meet you.’

  Elspeth grimaced nervously. ‘Mine too. My mum, I mean. And my sister. Well, once the shock wore off and they regained the power of speech. What about your dad?’ she asked as an afterthought, remembering, as she did sometimes, that most people had more than one parent to consider.

  ‘I’ve not told my dad, actually,’ Fraser said. ‘We’re not in touch.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Elspeth said, slipping without thinking about it into her sympathetic doctor’s voice. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘No.’ Fraser’s tone made it clear that the topic was not up for discussion, and he turned back to the path, picking up his pace. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘You mentioned your mum and your sister. Is your dad around?’

  She shook her head. ‘He never has been.’

  Fraser’s expression told her exactly what he thought about a father who abandoned his children, and she wondered about his relationship with his dad. How long had it been since they had spoken? What had happened to drive them apart? Was he the reason Fraser bristled as much as she did every time that chemistry sparked between them?

  ‘Probably better that way,’ Fraser said.

  Well, that was one way to look at it, she thought, surprised at his reaction. But was it really better to have been abandoned by one of her parents? And did she really want to raise a child with someone who thought that way? If she had the choice, two parents seemed like a pretty good deal.

  ‘You know,’ Fraser said, his tone still brusque, ‘we haven’t spoken at all about how this is going to work. I mean, where I’m working now—it’s not quite the Highlands, but it’s more than an hour from the city. I don’t even know where you live. Do you live with your mother?’

  Elspeth bristled, wondering whether that was a criticism. ‘And my sister. It’s not like we have a choice. We all rely on each other.’

  ‘Right. So we’re both stuck where we are, and somehow we have to come up with how we give this baby the family that it deserves. And we’ve got six months—more or less—to figure this out. Shouldn’t we be concentrating on that?’

  He said it as if it hadn’t occupied just about every free moment that she’d had in the last three months. Her shoulders rose as she prepared to defend herself against his implied criticism.

  ‘Brilliant. If you’ve got this sussed, then I’m all ears.’

  ‘I didn’t say that I had the answers,’ Fraser snapped. ‘Just that we need to start thinking about it.’

  ‘Start thinking about it?’ Well, if he wasn’t going to hold his temper in check, she wasn’t either. ‘Fraser, I’ve thought about nothing else since I took that pregnancy test. The fact that I haven’t come up with an answer doesn’t reflect the amount of effort I’ve put in.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been thinking about it.’ Fraser said, stopping and grabbing her hand so she had no choice but to look him in the eye. ‘I have too. But we’ve not been talking about it. Thinking about this separately isn’t the same as thinking about this together.’

  He squeezed the hand he was still holding and a jolt of electricity went up her arm—a warning of the danger that still existed just from being close to him. A reminder that if she wanted to keep her head she couldn’t get too close.

  The sun was behind her. She could feel it warm on the back of her head as the gentle breeze caught at her hair. The sun gleamed off Fraser’s hair too, and fine lines appeared around his eyes as he squinted in the bright light. High above the city, in the quiet they had found up here, it was harder to ignore that insistent nagging feeling, the reminder of everything she had felt for him that night. Of how hot their chemistry had been. Of how easily the conversation and the laughs had come.

  ‘I’m not going to be an absent dad,’ Fraser said, and the like my own was so clear it didn’t need to be said out loud.

  Elspeth shook her head, glad that he had brought her thoughts back to the baby, where they should be. Not on that night.

  ‘I’m not going to be some bit-part player in my child’s life.’

  ‘I don’t want that either,’ Elspeth admitted. It wasn’t going to be easy, having him in her life. Not when her body had its own very firm ideas of what it wanted from him, which were strictly off-limits. But they both owed it to their baby to work out how to be around each other.

  ‘I’ll look at my property portfolio,’ Fraser said at last. ‘See if there’s a place in the city that’s suitable for us. For me and a room for the baby, I mean. If not, I’ll see what’s on the market.’

  ‘What about your work?’ Elspeth asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t have to be there twenty-four-seven. I can work from the city some of the time if I have to. I’ll work it out. This is too important not to.’

  Elspeth nodded, and they walked on.

  ‘Are you going to carry on living with your mum?’ Fraser asked.

  ‘I don’t have a choice,’ Elspeth said. ‘My mum and I take care of my sister. My sister and I help Mum out. They both help me put in the hours at work that I need to do so that we can pay the mortgage. If I leave, the whole ecosystem stops working.’

  Her sister had mentioned once or twice that she would like to move out one day, but Elspeth had been trying to break it to her gently that there was no way it could happen. Elspeth needed to oversee all her care, and it just wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t under the same roof.

  She glanced across and saw Fraser nodding. ‘I understand that—sounds like a lot of pressure on you, though. And there’s enough room for you all, when the baby gets here?’

  ‘For now.’ She nodded, with more confidence than she felt. ‘The baby will sleep in my room. And when that’s not possible any more...’

  Well, I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, she thought.

  By the time the baby was born her training post would have finished and she should have been offered a permanent job. Janet was happy enough with her,
and the shortage of GPs across the country was in her favour. But... But what if she didn’t get the job? What if she couldn’t find anything else near her home, so that she would always be nearby if she was needed?

  She felt a twinge of anxiety. This was when she was meant to be making big commitments in her career—while her mum was still mobile, before her responsibilities grew even more. She had intended to spend her thirties working every unsociable hour, taking every extra shift, every on-call, covering for colleagues, all to build up a pot of money and goodwill that would be sorely needed when they all needed more help.

  She’d never made the conscious decision that she wouldn’t have children—she just hadn’t thought about where in her plan it might happen. But then Fraser had come along and all her carefully made plans had been worth less than nothing.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Fraser asked, and Elspeth realised they had been walking in silence for a good ten minutes.

  ‘Work,’ she replied, knowing that she was holding back.

  ‘Anything I can help with?’

  ‘Not really.’ She shook her head. There was no point. Fraser couldn’t fix this situation any more than she could. ‘Just thinking about what I’m going to do when my training post comes to an end if I don’t get this job.’

  ‘You’ll get it,’ he said, with a confidence she had never felt. ‘They must love you. You dragged yourself to that wedding...’

  She smiled, knowing that he was thinking about the first time they’d met.

  ‘I definitely earned some Brownie points with that.’

  Janet had written a touching note in the thank-you card she’d sent after the event, saying how pleased she was that she had been able to come. And no one seemed to have noticed that she’d sneaked out early, so she was winning all round.

  ‘I’ll need you to send me your address,’ Fraser said after they’d walked on a bit more. ‘I’ll start looking for somewhere nearby.’

  ‘Nearby?’

  So they might bump into each other in the supermarket, or out for a jog? She felt a shiver of apprehension at the realisation of how present Fraser was going to be in her life from here on in. How impossible it was going to be to ignore him. How much of a challenge it was going to be trying to ignore this chemistry between them. He never said his flat in the city would be close.

  ‘Doesn’t make sense for me to get a place if it takes me an hour to travel across from the other side of the city.’

  ‘I know. I just hadn’t thought...’

  ‘What? That I’d be a part of your life?’

  Ugh, she could do without him reading her mind right now.

  ‘I think this is how it works from now on. We have to get used to that.’

  Of course he was right. It was just that it had been easy to kid herself so far that nothing was going to change that much. Sure, she’d have a baby to care for, but her whole day was already spent caring for people.

  There would be maternity leave, and then, if everything went as she hoped, she would be back at work, just with extra drop-offs and pick-ups to work into her day. Appointments with health visitors and childminders and looking for a nursery. A whole new column to add to her calendar and her diary and her to-do list.

  That was the choice she had made. But at no point had she chosen Fraser. Well, she had, she supposed, in the half-light of the botanic gardens. But she’d chosen him for right then. For pleasure. For that night. Not for ever.

  ‘I’m not going to disappear on you or the bairn, Elspeth. Like your dad or mine. I’m here. I’m always going to be here.’

  Well, he didn’t have to make it sound like a threat... But she felt his words in the pit of her stomach, the commitment that he had just made to her child, and a tiny part of her fear melted away with it.

  And then another, larger part, doubled in size. She knew she was never going to be rid of him, and she was going to have to spend her whole lifetime resisting him. It was going to be exhausting, and she had no idea where she was going to find the energy to do it.

  ‘Your dad...’ Elspeth started, not really sure where she wanted the conversation to go, just knowing that she wanted it to move away from her, and the changes to her life. He could sit under the spotlight for a while. ‘You said that he left. What happened?’

  Fraser made a casual gesture, but she could see from the hard-set lines of his face that he felt anything but relaxed about the subject.

  ‘He met someone else. I was fifteen. He and Mum broke up and I told him that if he married the new woman I wouldn’t see him again. He chose her.’

  Elspeth stopped in her tracks. ‘You gave him an ultimatum?’

  ‘And he chose her.’

  She stood and looked at him for a moment, shocked by the strength of mind that he’d had at fifteen. The stubbornness that she knew he still had now. ‘I’m sorry, Fraser, that must have been hard. And you’ve had no contact since?’

  ‘He contacts my mum occasionally. But other than that... Nothing.’

  She really didn’t want to be on the wrong side of an argument with him. This was brutal, she thought, on both sides. Though she couldn’t help but consider that his father had been put in an impossible position. There were rarely any winners when people started dishing out ultimatums. But Fraser had only been a kid himself at the time.

  ‘How did your mum feel about this?’ Elspeth asked, still trying to imagine the shockwaves that something like this would send through a family.

  ‘She was devastated when he told her he wanted a divorce. It took her years to be happy again. I couldn’t see him after watching her go through that. And I couldn’t go back to... I couldn’t go home. To see someone else in our home. He destroyed our family.’

  ‘But surely...?’

  Elspeth hesitated. She knew that she didn’t have all the information, but to cut off any contact like that seemed so...drastic. It was heartbreaking when a family broke up, but plenty of people managed to keep relationships going in worse circumstances. People less stubborn than Fraser and his father, clearly.

  ‘You don’t think that was a little...?’

  The look on Fraser’s face told her that her opinion was not welcome on this subject. Well, fine. Not today. But she had a feeling that they would be revisiting this one.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to see him now, though,’ Fraser said eventually, and Elspeth whipped her head round to look at him.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I’m all for it, if my opinion counts for anything,’ she clarified.

  The last thing she wanted was her baby to be born in the middle of a family feud, but this was such an about-turn. After what—fifteen years of silence?—he was suddenly going to change his mind?

  ‘Because my father still lives in our family home. It’s a part of me, and I want my child to know it. That’s more important than how I feel about my father.’

  She gave him a sidelong look, aware that there was something she wasn’t understanding here, that Fraser was choosing to hold back.

  She felt a shot of something cold. A protective instinct that she recognised as maternal. The first stirrings of her inner mama bear. ‘The baby’s home will be with us,’ she said.

  ‘Of course with us. But it’s also...there. Where I grew up.’

  Elspeth bit her tongue. It was as clear as anything that Fraser was still carrying a lot of emotional baggage about his father. But it wasn’t her place to interfere. She wasn’t his wife, or even his girlfriend. She was the mother of his child, and that was it. No opinions about his personal life were allowed. Or necessary, she remembered. This wasn’t her fight, however sad she might be for that poor teenaged Fraser, feeling abandoned by his dad.

  ‘Well, I can be there with you. If you want,’ Elspeth said.

  Fraser caught at her hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Thanks.’

  Sh
e snatched her fingers back, surprised at the heat she had felt zipping from his hand to hers. The last thing she needed was to be reminded of that.

  Fraser looked at her, his eyes narrowed as he took in her reaction. ‘I was just saying thanks,’ he said, raising his hands in a show of innocence. ‘It didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘I know that. But it’s just... I don’t want things to get confusing.’

  Fraser narrowed his eyes. ‘Confusing how?’

  She took a step back, needing to put some space between them. ‘Confusing like thinking that it would be a good idea for something to happen between us.’

  ‘All I did was hold your hand.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I know that. But it reminded me...’

  It had reminded her of every skin-on-skin second they had shared before, and it had made her body crave more. And that couldn’t happen. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that. To want that. It was too dangerous. She fought to keep her body neutral. To quieten her pulse, to fight the rush of blood to her face. She was an adult, and she was in control of her body. Her decisions. Her desires.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what it reminded me of,’ she told Fraser eventually, her voice admirably calm. ‘I just want to be clear about what’s on offer here and what’s...not.’

  ‘I think you’re making that very clear,’ Fraser said.

  She searched his face and his voice for any hint of annoyance but couldn’t find one. He seemed irritatingly nonchalant about the whole thing, if she was honest. Was she pleased about that? Was this easy for him? Did he not think about it at all?

  She needed to make sure that he completely understood, though. Given how they had met, and all the changes in their lives since then, she had to make sure that they were on the same page when it came to their relationship. Had to make sure that he understood that they could only ever be friends. Anything else was too complicated.