A life which would soon become apparent; pregnancy was not a condition that could be kept secret. Within a month or two, she would be the talk of the town, and of course Bridget would know. How could she fail to?
Which pretty much concluded her agonising. Leo would find out and she would have to be the one to tell him before he heard it second-hand.
It seemed the sort of conversation to be held in the evening and, before the bustle of the pub could begin, sweeping her off her feet, she got on the phone and dialled his mobile.
Around her, the pub lacked its usual shine and polish. She would have to start thinking about getting someone in to cover for her on a fairly permanent basis. There was no way she and Shannon could cope but there was also no way she could afford to close the pub, far less find a buyer for it.
Money, she foresaw, was going to be a headache and she gritted her teeth together because she knew what Leo’s solution would be: fling money at the problem. Which would leave her continually indebted to him and that was not a situation that filled her with joy.
But then, she would never, ever be able to break contact with him from here on in, would she?
Even if he just paid the occasional visit in between running those companies of his, he would still be a permanent cloud on her horizon. She would have to look forward to seeing him moving on, finding other women, other women to whom he hadn’t fabricated a convoluted story about himself. Eventually, she would have to witness his happiness as he found his soul mate, married her, had children with her. It didn’t bear thinking about.
His disembodied voice, deep, dark and lazy, jolted her out of her daydreaming and fired up every nerve in her body. All at once, she could picture him in every vivid, unsettling detail: the way he used to look at her, half-brooding, full of sexy promise; the way he used to laugh whenever she teased him; the way the muscles of his amazing body rippled and flexed when he moved...
‘It’s me,’ she said a little breathlessly, before clearing her throat and telling herself to get a grip.
‘I know who it is, Brianna,’ Leo drawled. He rose to shut his office door. She had caught him as he had been about to leave. Ever since his mother had arrived on the scene and was recuperating happily at his apartment, he had been leaving work earlier than normal. It was a change of pattern he could not have foreseen in a million years, but he was strangely energised by getting to know his mother a little better. She could never replace the couple who had adopted him, but she was a person in her own right, and one he found he wanted to get to know. It seemed that a genetic link was far more powerful a bond than he could ever have conceived possible.
He thought back to that moment when he had sat next to her at her hospital bed and taken her hand in his. An awkward moment and one he had never envisaged but as she had lain there, frail and bewildered at her expensive private room, it had seemed right.
And he had told her—haltingly at first, trying to find the words to span over thirty years. He had watched her eyes fill up and had felt the way her hand had trembled. He had never expected his journey to take him there and he had been shocked at how much it had changed his way of thinking, had made him see the shades of grey between the black and white. No one could ever replace the wonderful parents he had had, but a new road had opened up—not better, but different—and he had felt a soaring sense of fulfilment at what lay ahead. He had known that they both did.
For a man who had always known the way ahead, he had discovered the wonder of finding himself on a path with no signposts, just his feelings to guide him, and as he had opened up to his mother, asked her questions, replied to the hundreds she had asked him in return, he had turned a corner. The unknown had become something to be embraced.
‘How’s Bridget?’
‘I thought you spoke and emailed daily?’ He sat back down at his desk and swivelled his chair so that it was facing the broad floor-to-ceiling glass panes that overlooked the city.
‘Why are you calling?’ It had been more of a struggle putting her behind him than he could ever have believed possible. Was it because Bridget was staying with him? Because her presence kept alive memories he wanted to bury? He didn’t know. Whilst his head did all the right things and told him that she no longer had a place in his life—that what they’d had had been good but it had never been destined to last—some irrational part of him insisted on singing a different tune.
He had found his concentration inexplicably flagging in the middle of meetings. On more than one occasion, he had awoken from a dream-filled sleep to find himself with an erection. Cold showers were becoming the rule rather than the exception. All told, he felt as though he was in unchartered territory. He was taking new steps with his mother and discovering that old ways of dealing with exes did not apply to Brianna.