The Wedding Bargain

As he pushed the Maserati the winding miles back to his home, Raif realized that, more than anything, he wanted a real, loving marriage—and he wanted it with Shanal. His foot eased a little on the accelerator as a new revelation filled him. He loved her, and probably had since he was a teenager. All those little barbs they’d flung at one another, on his side at least, had masked deeper feelings. Feelings he’d hidden after the embarrassment of her rejection all those years ago. But deep down, underneath it all, he loved her and, subconsciously at least, he hadn’t been able to settle for anyone else. He’d been prepared to wait.

Accepting the knowledge brought a strange sense of peace, easing the turmoil of his thoughts. It was right. Maybe the timing hadn’t been the best for them in the past, and by the looks of things, it certainly wasn’t now, but Raif wasn’t about to let her go. Initial failure had never discouraged him from striving to reach his goals before, and he wasn’t about to let it knock him back now. Whether she knew it or not, the waiting was over.

Shanal Peat was his. He had only to convince her of that, to gain her full trust. Then and only then would she let him know the true reason why she was thinking about marrying Burton. She hadn’t even been able to lie about her reason for marrying him. If she’d have said she loved him then maybe, just maybe, Raif might have stepped back.

He chewed the thought over in his mind and then barked a cynical laugh. Who was he kidding? There was no way on this earth he would accept that a woman as sensitive and vulnerable as Shanal could love a man like Burton Rogers. But could she love Raif? He certainly hoped so, because suddenly the idea of a life without her in it loomed very emptily ahead.

* * *

Shanal lifted her head in shock at the doctor’s words. “Pregnant?”

A roaring sound filled her ears. She couldn’t be pregnant. It just wasn’t possible. She knew the doctor continued to talk to her, and somehow she must have responded, but she failed to grasp his words. She’d come to the surgery, on her mother’s insistence, for a general checkup, because she’d been feeling off-color and overtired these past few weeks. While Shanal was ready to blame her general malaise on the stress she was feeling with her wedding in only two weeks’ time, not to mention her current workload, she was not prepared for this.

And then there were the daily calls from Burton, checking up on her even though she had a very strong suspicion he also had people watching her every movement. He’d dropped a bombshell last night, telling her he’d wrapped up his business early and would be home tomorrow. She’d hung up from the call and felt so ill with nerves at the prospect of seeing him again that she’d been forced to head straight for the bathroom as her stomach rejected its contents. She’d put it down to anxiety, but it seemed the cause was something far more alarming.

This morning, her mother had been insistent that she see her doctor, and Shanal had been lucky enough to fit into his schedule, thanks to a cancelation. Now this. Her hand automatically fluttered to her lower belly, to where a child was forming. Her baby—and Raif’s.

This was unarguably the worst thing that could happen to her right now. There had been only the one time without protection. She’d been off the pill for just three days. She’d believed the odds of her becoming pregnant to be so remote as to be unsustainable, and yet here she was. Her head swam as she tried to adjust to the news. She was going to be a mother.

Fear and exhilaration battled with equal strength inside her. What on earth was she to do? She certainly couldn’t marry one man while she was pregnant with another man’s child. How was she going to tell either of them?

By the time she was outside the doctor’s office and back in her car she was no clearer on what to do. She’d shoved the fistful of brochures the nurse had given her into her handbag without even looking at them. She couldn’t push more information into her brain just yet. She was still struggling to accept the fact that her life was on the cusp of massive change at a level she’d never imagined.

“Your fiancé will be excited, I’m sure,” the nurse had said with a cheerful smile and a knowing look at the ring Shanal had been forced to wear again.

Excited was not the word she would use, mainly because given the fact they’d barely done more than share several lukewarm kisses, Burton would know there was no chance the baby was his. He hadn’t pressured her into anything more, saying he was happy to wait until their wedding night. The wedding night that had never happened. Her stomach clenched on that thought. The nurse was looking at her brightly, expecting a reply. Shanal could only murmur an indistinct sound in response. She dreaded the thought of his actual reaction. The last thing she wanted was to give the manipulative man beneath the courteous veneer another reason to tighten the leash he already had her on.