And now this.
Zoey swallowed as tears burned behind her eyes. She’d only had four weeks of managing any semblance of a responsible grown-up life on her own. How could she possibly manage a newborn too?
She shook her head. There was no point whining about it. She’d made a vow to own her mistakes and take responsibility for her choices.
And she knew one thing for certain. No child was a mistake.
This was her baby. So she’d take responsibility for it. She’d love it and care for it and...and she should probably stop calling him or her it too, even in her head. She might give it—them?—a complex.
‘We’re going to be all right,’ she whispered in the vague direction of her navel. ‘I’m...well, I have no idea how yet, but we are. I’ve screwed up enough times that I have to start getting things right eventually, yeah?’
Okay. So she knew nothing about babies. Or pregnancy. But she could find out. The Internet held all the secrets and one of the things she had managed to do in the last four weeks was find a flat with actual functioning Wi-Fi. And nightmare roommates, admittedly, but she could stay in her bedroom and Internet search.
There would be websites and lists that she could read and take notes from. She could figure out everything she needed to do, then break it down into manageable chunks and just do it. One small baby step at a time, so it didn’t overwhelm her completely.
Easy.
Except...except the first thing on any list had to be telling the father, right?
Ash.
It could only be his. She and David hadn’t had sex for over six weeks before the wedding—and even then she’d still been on the Pill. This baby could only be the result of her one unplanned, irresponsible night of passion with Ash.
She’d been avoiding him ever since they’d got back. No, not avoiding him. Just not going out of her way to see him. He was probably off jetting around the world as usual, anyway. He hadn’t used to travel so much for work, that she remembered. But, ever since Grace died, he’d seemed to enjoy the excuse to get away. He’d even sold the house they’d bought when they’d married, buying a soulless flat somewhere fancy along the river, where he hardly ever spent any time. More often he’d been in her flat instead, especially when David was out.
But not since their return from paradise. She hadn’t even told him her new address.
But she’d promised him she’d tell him if there were any...side-effects from their night together. And of course she would. Just not yet.
She wasn’t ready. She needed more time to figure things out.
Like how she was going to cope with a baby on her own.
Zoey sank back down onto the toilet seat and tried to imagine telling him. Finding the actual words to let Ash know he was going to be a father, after all.
Oh, God, it would break him, she realised suddenly.
He’d had his true love, his chance at a family—and it had been cruelly taken from him. To offer him this now would be some poor substitute.
But this was his baby too. One thing she couldn’t do alone, because she didn’t have the right to. She couldn’t cut him out of his own child’s life that way.
She knew Ash, knew the way he thought, the codes he lived by. He’d do everything he could to support her and love their child, she had no doubt about that. And she wanted their baby to have him actively involved in his or her life. She’d never deny her child or her friend those things.
But she had to protect herself too.
If she was going to do this—have a baby with Ash Carmichael—she had to be very clear on what that meant and what it didn’t mean.
But first she had to tell him.
Taking a deep breath, Zoey grabbed her phone and tapped out a text.
* * *
Are you in town? It would be good to catch up...
Ash smiled at the screen in front of him. Finally Zoey had got in touch. The message was just like the ones she normally sent when she fancied a night out, away from David usually. Obviously she’d meant what she’d said when she’d told him she wanted to pretend their time on the island had never happened.
She’d probably been waiting, he realised, until she was sure there were no consequences to their night together. If there had been, she’d have been in touch before now. He’d had an anxious couple of nights a few weeks ago, after some date-counting on the calendar. He couldn’t know exactly when Zoey would be able to test if she was pregnant or not, but he’d done enough research on the subject to narrow it down. So he’d sat in his office, staring blankly at the computer screen, waiting to hear from her—but there had been nothing. Nothing except a strange sense of loss as the weeks passed—which Ash had tried to bury in work and ignore.