The Unexpected Baby

For a time she allowed herself the luxury of being held, waiting for her heartbeats to slow down to normal, for her aching head to stop whirling with stupid regrets. They’d discussed starting a family and decided there was no reason to wait. They both wanted children. Which was going to make what she had to tell him so much worse.

When she finally placed her hands against the powerful muscles of his chest and eased herself away from the haven of his embrace, she felt calm. Empty. She was about to tell him something he probably wouldn’t want to live with, to kill his love, which was the most precious thing she had. She had to do it quickly and cleanly. The agony was too great to be prolonged.

‘It’s true, Jed. I did the test this morning.’ She saw the look of disbelief on his face and knew he was about to tell her she’d got it wrong, misread the instructions. She forestalled him quickly, her voice thin because of the effort it took to control it. ‘By my calculations, almost three months.’

And then she watched as his eyes froze over. ‘Three months ago I hadn’t met you, and the first time we had sex was on our wedding night,’ he stated grimly, his lips thin and bloodless. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me, my dear wife, who it was who fathered the child you’re carrying?’

His cold sarcasm hurt her more than anything that had ever happened to her in her entire life. She could have handled anger, insults, even physical violence—anything that sprang from powerful emotional trauma. This icy sarcasm, almost amounting to cynical indifference, was worse than if he’d stabbed a rusty blade into her heart.

What she had feared had happened. He had already gone away from her emotionally, relegating the magic of their lovemaking to mere having sex.

And he was waiting for her answer, his eyes dark and bleak, his mouth tight against his teeth. She gathered up the last vestiges of her strength, exhaled a shuddering sigh.

‘Sam.’

CHAPTER TWO

HE STRODE away, his shoulders hard and high and rigid. Elena couldn’t move. Her feet felt as if they’d been welded to the cool marble floor tiles, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her quivering body.

Only when she heard the sound of the car he’d hired to bring them from the airport was she shocked into movement. Her flying feet scattered rugs as she ran to the front of the house, tugging open the sturdy front door, racing through the courtyard and out onto the stony track.

He couldn’t leave her like this, run out on her, with nothing said, nothing explained—never mind resolved! But the cloud of dust, the noise of the rapidly receding engine told her that he could. And had.

Her first instinct was to get her own car out of the barn and follow him. But he would hate that. Even if she caught up with him nothing would be achieved. He had taken what he obviously felt he needed; time alone to sort his head out.

If only he had given her enough time to explain, to tell him the whole truth. He would still be hurting... But not this much.

Pushing her fist against her teeth, to stop herself throwing her head back and howling her pain to the burning bowl of the sky, she ran to a rocky outcrop, uncaring of the sharp edges cutting into the soles of her bare feet, and watched until the cloud of dust disappeared on the valley floor. Then walked slowly back to the house, defeated, wretched.

Jed would come back in his own good time, and all she could do was wait. But for the first time ever she could find no comfort in her beautiful home, the symbol of her fabulous success. Lovingly recreated from what had been little more than a near derelict shell, her home, her gardens, her slice of Andalucian mountainside, had previously reinforced her belief in herself, in the financial and emotional independence she’d made for herself.

As she’d confided in Sam, on what had turned out to be his last night in Spain, ‘When I left my husband ten years ago and came out to Cadiz, I had nothing—not even my self-respect, because Liam had taken that away. I worked in bars and lived in a miserable oneroom flat and took to writing in what spare time I had as a way of forgetting. Luckily, it paid off, and what had begun as therapy became my whole existence.’

The wine had been flowing freely on that dark February evening, and she’d lighted a fire in the great stone-hooded hearth, because the evenings were chilly in the hills. Sam’s mood had been strangely reflective, almost sombre, the atmosphere—that of long-standing easy friendship—conducive to soul-baring.

‘And now, because my books took off in a big way, I have everything. A successful career and pride in my work, a beautiful home in a lovely part of the world, a wonderful circle of friends—more financial security than I ever dreamed of having. Everything except a child, and sometimes that hurts. I guess I hear my biological clock chiming out yet another passing hour. But as I have no intention of ever marrying again...’

She shrugged wryly, sipping her wine to deaden the ache of her empty womb, her empty arms. Liam had adamantly refused to contemplate fatherhood. He’d wanted a glamorous wife on his arm, not a worn-out rag of a woman, stuck at home tied to a bunch of grizzling kids.

‘We have a lot in common, you and L’ Sam levered himself out of the comfy leather-upholstered armchair on the opposite side of the crackling log fire and opened the last of the three bottles of wine he’d brought when he’d invited himself for supper earlier. ‘You want a child, but you can’t stomach the idea of a husband to go with it—once badly bitten and all that.’ He withdrew the cork with a satisfying plop, and although Elena knew she’d already had more than was wise, she allowed him to refill her glass.

Over the two years he’d been coming to this corner of Spain, to snatch a few days’ relaxation between assignments for one of the more erudite broadsheets, he had become her dear friend. There was something driven about him that she could relate to, and nothing remotely sexual so she was doubly comfortable with him.

She smiled at him with affection. Too right, she didn’t want or need a husband. Never again—the one she’d had had turned out to be a disaster.

Sam kicked a log back into place with a booted foot and stood staring into the flames, his glass loosely held in his hands. ‘I’m dead against marriage, too, but for different reasons. With my dodgy lifestyle, it’s not on. Besides—and I wouldn’t admit this to just anyone—I’ve a fairly low sex drive. Unlike my brother.’

Jed. Sam often talked about him. He lived in the family home, somewhere old and impressive in the shires, and headed the family business—gobbling up any opposition, sitting on a fat portfolio. And now, it appeared, he was a womaniser too.

But Sam was telling her, ‘Since his late teens he’s always had women making a play for him—nubile, dewy-eyed daughters of the landed gentry, women who lunch, tough career cookies, the lot. But, to give him his due, he’s picky and very discreet. Mind you, he’ll marry some day, to get an heir. He wouldn’t want the family business to die out with him. But not me. All my emotional, mental and physical energies go into my job. I only feel properly alive when facing danger, grabbing photographs and copy from volatile situations.’

Elena hated it when he talked like that; it made her feel edgy. She watched him drain his glass, heard him say, ‘Like you, the only regret I have is knowing how unlikely I am to ever have a child of my own. To my way of thinking, passing on one’s genes is the only type of immortality any of us can ever hope for.’ He turned to watch her then, his lean, wiry frame tense. ‘There is

an answer, though, for both of us. I’d be more than happy to offer myself as a donor. I can think of no other woman better to carry my child. I’d make no demands, other than the right to visit with you both when possible. Never interfere. Think about it.’

He put his empty glass on a side table and bent to kiss her lightly on the forehead. ‘You would never have to lose your freedom and independence to a husband; you wouldn’t have to go through the messy business of sleeping around to get the child you’re beginning to crave. No risk of nasty diseases! And I’d get my single claim to immortality.’ He smiled into her. shell-shocked eyes. ‘Sleep on it, why don’t you? I’ll call you in the morning. If you want to go for it, we can get straight back to London and start things moving. There’s a private clinic headed by a professor of gynaecology who owes me a favour—it’s useful, sometimes, to have friends in high places! Night, Elena—I’ll let myself out.’

At first she’d dismissed his idea as utterly preposterous, but the longer she’d sat over the dying embers the more deeply she’d thought about it, and the less outlandish it had become.