Sweet Surrender with the Millionaire

Willow stared at her sister’s concerned face through misty eyes and then leant against her for a moment as Beth’s arms tightened around her. Beth had spoken as their mother might have done. Then she jerked away, her gaze flashing to Beth’s stomach. ‘Wow, that was a kick if ever I felt one,’ she said in awe. ‘Does it often do that?’

‘All the time,’ Beth said ruefully. ‘Especially when I settle down to sleep. Peter’s convinced there’s a worldclass footballer in there. He’ll be so surprised if it’s a girl.’

They smiled at each other, and after a brief hug Willow left to drive back to work. Much as she loved her sister, she wasn’t sorry to leave. The inquisition had been a little rigorous.

Once seated at her desk, however, Willow found melancholy had her in its grip. Feeling the vigorous power of the new life in Beth’s stomach had brought home to her yet again all she was going to miss in never having a family of her own. The baby couldn’t have known, of course, but it was as though it had been determined to emphasise every word its mother had spoken.

Was she letting Piers influence her even now, subtly control her decisions and her plans for the future? She had never looked at it this way before, but perhaps Beth was right.

The thought panicked her, brought the blood pounding in her ears, and she gasped as though she were drowning.

No, she couldn’t risk getting it wrong again. She had thought Piers loved her, that they were going to grow old together with children and grandchildren, that he would protect and cherish her. Instead…She gulped, drawing in much-needed breaths as she willed herself to calm down. Instead she’d placed herself in a living nightmare, the culmination of which had threatened to break her. She couldn’t go through that again.

She shut her eyes tightly but she could still see Piers’ enraged face on the screen of her mind, hear his curses as he had sent his plate spinning to the floor with a flick of his hand. Such a small thing to signify the end of a marriage—potatoes that were slightly too hard in the centre—but if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. His control over her by that time had been obsessional and she had lived in fear of displeasing him in some way. Her confidence had gone; she’d been a shell of her former self. Piers had told her she was useless in bed and nothing to look at, stupid, dull and boring, and she had believed him. But that night something had snapped and she’d yelled back at him, telling him some home truths that had caught him on the raw.

It had been the first time he had resorted to physical abuse, and when he had hit her she had hit him back, fighting with all her might when he’d laid into her. Their neighbours had called the police and by the time they’d arrived she had been barely conscious, but lucid enough to realise that but for the police’s pounding at their door his intention had been to rape her. That knowledge had been the most horrific thing of all.

The divorce had been quick and final and he hadn’t even contested it, realising he had gone too far and his hold over her was finished. Her love had turned to hate and he’d known it.

She opened her eyes, staring down at the papers on her desk without seeing them, lost in her dark thoughts. How could something she had thought so good, so fine, have turned out to be so bad, a lie from start to finish? Some months after the divorce one of her friends had told her she’d heard Piers had married again. Someone from his office apparently and, her friend had murmured, the word was Piers had been seeing this girl when he was still married to Willow. She had looked her friend full in the face and told her the girl had her sympathy. And it was true. She had. No one deserved Piers.

Willow sat for a moment more and then her shoulders came back and she straightened. She had work to do. No more thinking. And anyway, Morgan hadn’t asked to see her again, she reminded herself, as though that sorted everything out. Which it did, certainly for the immediate future.

She was the last one to leave her particular office at six o’clock although there were still a couple of lights on in other parts of the building when she walked out to the car park after saying goodnight to the security man. The night was windy but dry and she drove home carefully, conscious she was tired, both emotionally and physically. Tomorrow morning she had the chimney sweep coming and she couldn’t wait to be able to light a fire in the sitting room again, and in the afternoon the plumber Morgan had recommended was coming to look round the cottage and give her a quote for central heating. Tonight, though, the cottage was cold and faintly damp, and it didn’t do anything for her mood as she fixed herself a sandwich and a hot drink in the kitchen. The last few nights she’d gone to bed with a jumper and bedsocks over her pyjamas, and three hotwater bottles positioned at strategic parts of her body.