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Her Nine Month Confession
KIM LAWRENCE
One night…The merest glimpse of handsome, sophisticated Benedict Warrender was enough to make wallflower Lily Gray blush. But since a twist of fate allowed her to enter his orbit, it's been the memories of their life-altering night together that make her cheeks burn.One secret that will change everything…When one night…leads to pregnancy!



Lily found her eyes drifting to his mouth, felt the vibration of that memory—the carnal craving, the need that had been as instinctual and primal as taking a breath.
She had felt sure she would die if he stopped.
She lifted a mental screen and pushed the memories behind it before they overwhelmed her.
‘People try for years to get pregnant,’ she said, thinking of her twin. ‘I didn’t think anything would happen the first time—which was stupid.’
Benedict’s dark brows lifted. ‘You think?’ There was a hard, ironic gleam in his eyes. ‘A child…’ He dragged a hand through his hair, a dazed expression on his face as he turned his scrutiny on her. ‘So I have a child and you didn’t think to mention it to me? I wasn’t a stranger …’
‘You didn’t owe me anything. It was my decision to have Emily—my responsibility.’
‘So you made a unilateral decision?’ He struggled to keep a lid on his anger.
She lifted her chin. ‘Yes, and I’d do the same again.’

One Night With Consequences (#ulink_3139d228-5c17-523a-b034-f8bc33155e60)
When one night…leads to pregnancy!
When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire it’s impossible to think past the morning after!
But, with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test and it doesn’t take long to realise that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!
Only one question remains:
How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?
Find out in:
Nine Months to Redeem Him by Jennie Lucas January 2015
Prince Nadir’s Secret Heir by Michelle Conder March 2015
Carrying the Greek’s Heir by Sharon Kendrick April 2015
Married for Amari’s Heir by Maisey Yates July 2015
From One Night to Wife by Rachael Thomas September 2015
More stories in the One Night With Consequences series can be found at millsandboon.co.uk
Her Nine Month
Confession
Kim Lawrence


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!
For Shirley.
She was the best mum—a brave and lovely lady.
Contents
Cover (#u81f10868-188a-5ff1-8e94-3d09bb952cf2)
Introduction (#ua0762f5b-cd96-5f40-9fe6-34cf8be7e6ac)
One Night With Consequences (#u63359bc1-9733-5719-ae97-b4f87dff5af8)
Title Page (#u72d13528-dc09-58bf-8ab5-0516c65ebf4b)
About the Author (#ue6b0f5fa-6393-520f-91b4-901486469ef1)
Dedication (#u20ddf1c9-58c5-5ae6-b305-6dd06eaf94ad)
PROLOGUE (#uece5e50f-0826-5e5e-9e71-e44929263599)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5043fa15-20d7-5f49-b69e-612aabf09e6d)
CHAPTER TWO (#u2b9e16a6-0a57-57b4-84ce-704758a6c076)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_334dfda1-a8be-5efc-b18d-c2f615ca66ef)
London. Three years earlier.
IT WAS SIX A.M. when Lily woke, thanks to her internal alarm clock—an inconvenient genetic quirk that always woke her at this hour. She knew she wouldn’t be able to snuggle down and have another half-hour under the duvet, but for a few moments she resisted pushing her way through the thin layer that separated sleep from full wakefulness.
On the plus side she was never late and it was amazing what you could achieve in that quiet hour or so before the rest of the world, or at least her loud neighbour in the adjoining flat, woke.
She silenced the tedious inner voice that insisted on seeing the bright side of everything with a scowl and pushed the heavy swathe of tangled curls from her face. Lying there with one arm curved above her head, she focused on her justified resentment of people who could roll over and fall back to sleep. Normal people who overslept, even her own twin, Lara, who, it was no exaggeration to say, could sleep through an earthquake. But no, not her, every morning it was the same old...same old...
Only it wasn’t.
A fresh furrow appeared between her delicately delineated brows as a remaining sleepy corner of her mind told her actually something was different, but what?
Had she actually overslept?
Eyes closed, she reached out for her phone on the bedside table. Patting her hand flat, she hit a couple of unfamiliar objects before she found it. Opening one eye, she glanced at the screen and read the predictable and unsociable hour. She clutched the phone to her chest—naked chest! Was that relevant? she wondered as she hitched the sheet up over her shoulders. No, the something different was not the time or her naked state.
So what was it?
She looked around. This was not her room.
The belated recognition hit her as she struggled to focus. Her entire body felt as though she’d just run a marathon—not that she ever had or in all probability ever would. But last night...last night!
Her green eyes snapped wide open as the memory of the night before hit her like a bolt of lightning. At least that explained the aches in places she hadn’t known she had.
She pressed a hand to her left breast where her heart was trying to batter its way through her ribcage. The rush of blood in her ears was a deafening roar as she turned her head slowly...very, very slowly. What if she’d been dreaming? She gritted her teeth, prepared for an anticlimax that never came.
A fractured sigh left her parted lips... It was real, not a dream; he wasn’t a dream.
She blinked, bringing the face on the pillow next to hers into focus. A stab of sizzling longing lanced through Lily’s body as she greedily absorbed the details of his symmetrical features, committing each plane and angle to memory. Not that she would ever forget him or last night!
He had a face that inspired a second glance and inevitably a third. The sleeping man’s chiselled bone structure was dramatic, a broad intelligent forehead, high carved cheekbones, square chin with a sexy cleft, thick darkly defined brows, an aquiline nose and wide, expressive mouth. If pushed to select an individual feature that set him apart, Lily decided it would have been his eyes.
Beneath heavy lids and framed by lashes that were as dark as his hair and crazily long, his eyes were the deepest, most electrifying blue she had ever seen.
Looking at his sleeping face now, there was something different about him. It took her a few seconds to work out that the subtle difference was something that wasn’t there. It was an absence of the restless energy that hung about him like an invisible force field when he was awake.
It would have been an overstatement to say it made him look vulnerable, but it did make him look younger. Even with the dusting of stubble in the hollows of his cheeks and across his jaw there were enough reminders of his younger self to make Lily’s thoughts slip back. Memories that were now tinged with a rose-tinted nostalgia that had been absent that first time she’d seen him.
She’d known about him, of course. The estate, where her father was the head gardener, and the village had been buzzing with gossip about Benedict, the boy born with the silver spoon, the boy doted on by his proud grandfather. While everyone else had got excited about the fact that he had just moved into the big house, Lily had nursed a quiet and growing resentment.
Warren Court, one of the most important houses still in private hands in the country, was just five hundred yards from the estate cottage where Lily lived. She had known, even then, that in all other ways it was a planet, a whole universe, away. She had been totally prepared—actually determined—to dislike the rich boy.
And then her dad had died and she’d forgotten about Benedict, not even seeing him standing beside his grandfather at the funeral. She had thought no one had seen her slip away when she’d escaped from the churchyard and headed for the pond where her dad had skipped stones from one side to the other.
Something he’d never do any more.
She’d picked up a big stone, weighing it in her hand before launching it into the air. Her heart had felt like the stone as she’d watched it sink, then another and another until her arm had ached and her face had been wet with the tears she’d ignored. But she hadn’t been able to ignore the voice or the crunch of leaves as someone had come to stand behind her.
‘No, not like that, you need a flat one and it’s all in the wrist action. See...’ She’d watched the stone skip lightly across the water.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s easy.’
‘I can’t!’ Fists clenched, she had rounded angrily on him, tilting her head because he was so tall. She’d vented her grief and frustration at the intruder, screaming, ‘My dad is dead and I hate you!’
That was when she’d seen his eyes. So blue, so filled with sympathy as he’d nodded and said simply, ‘I know, it stinks.’ Then he’d handed her another stone and she could still remember how it had felt smooth and cold on her hand. ‘Try this one,’ he’d said.
By the time they’d left, she had made a stone skip three times and she had decided she was in love.
It had been inevitable really. Lily had craved romance and the boy who was almost a man had seemed like the amalgam of all the heroes in the novels she devoured. Not only had he lived in a castle, but to her youthful self he had seemed like the embodiment of a dark and brooding hero. Mature—he was five years older than her—sporty, sophisticated. Lily had woven an intricate web of wildly unrealistic fantasies around him. Fantasies she’d dreamed would come true. Until the night of the ball...
* * *
She had been waiting for weeks for the annual estate workers’ Christmas party, hosted by Benedict’s grandfather in the massive Elizabethan hall of Warren Court, where her mother was now the housekeeper. She knew that Benedict, who had graduated from Oxford that summer and was doing something important in the City, according to his grandfather, would be there.
Lily had spent hours getting ready. Persuaded Lara, who had much better fashion sense and many more clothes thanks to the tips she got at the hotel where she waitressed on Saturdays, to lend her a dress. Then finally Benedict had arrived and the first thing she’d noticed was how different he’d looked, remote somehow in his sleek dark suit. Before she’d had time to absorb all the details, she’d seen that he wasn’t alone.
‘I am so-o-o bored, darling.’ The tall designer-dressed blonde, who had spent the night sneering, hadn’t even bothered lowering her upper-crust voice with its tortured vowels as she’d drawled, ‘When can we leave? You didn’t tell me the place would be full of the local yokels.’
Followed by Lara never missing an opportunity to tease Lily about her ill-disguised crush. ‘Drooling, Lil? So not a good look, sweetie. If you want him, go get him.’
Lily had finally snapped. ‘I don’t want him. I don’t even like him! He’s boring and totally up himself!’ she’d declared before she’d turned and seen Benedict standing behind her.
Since that embarrassing moment she hadn’t seen him or thought about him, not for years. Obviously his high profile meant that she saw his name sometimes, though not often—the financial pages were not really her thing and she didn’t have a clue what an investment tycoon was.
What she hadn’t expected was to bump into him coming out of a bookshop.
She didn’t believe in fate but...well, what else explained it? She had walked out of the door and at the exact same moment he had been walking by. Blinded by a strand of hair whipped across her face by a gust of wind, she had walked into him. Not any of the other people walking by—Benedict.
Coming out of her reverie, she clenched her hands tight as she fought the compulsion to touch his cheek. His deeply tanned skin was dusted with stubble that was the same ebony shade as the thick hair he wore cropped short. He was sleeping so peacefully and, though sleep had ironed out the lines of strain that ran from his nose to his mouth, the dark shadows under his eyes remained. Tired looked sexy on him, she decided as her fascinated gaze lingered on the shadow cast by his long spiky eyelashes against sharp cheekbones.
She released the breath trapped in her tight chest in a slow sibilant sigh. He was beautiful. Yesterday she’d had to bite her tongue to stop herself saying it, then she hadn’t. She’d said it over and over, she’d said it in between kisses and while she’d kissed her way across his chest.
They were lovers.
Her first... She hugged the knowledge to herself, a dreamy expression drifting into her eyes as her thoughts slid back to yesterday and the moment that had changed her life. It had changed her; she felt like a different person...
* * *
‘Lily!’
Benedict had always been one of the few people who never mistook her for her twin.
He handed her the book that she’d dropped and fatally his tanned fingers brushed hers. No teenage sexual fantasy—so safe because it had never been going to happen—had prepared her for the nerve-stripping effect.
The electric sizzle shook her so badly she barely remembered her name as slowly they both rose to their feet, the book they both still grasped acting as a connection they seemed reluctant to break.
It was a passer-by bumping into them that made them break apart, the book falling again to the floor.
The spell broken, they both laughed.
This time she let him pick it up. Staring at the top of his dark head, she gave herself a mental shake and put some defensive tension into her spine. She saw him raise a brow when he looked at the title and this time when he handed it to her she made sure to avoid contact. This triggered a quizzical look that she didn’t react to beyond the flush she was incapable of controlling.
‘You always were a bookworm,’ he said, smiling. ‘I remember the time I caught you in Grandfather’s library, you hid his first-edition Dickens under your jumper.’
‘You remember that?’ She stopped in her tracks, her amazement giving way to horror. ‘It was a first edition?’
‘Don’t look so worried—the old man didn’t mind.’
‘He knew?’
The lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes deepened as her astonishment drew a laugh from his throat. ‘That you used the place as an unofficial lending library? Well, he did, he doesn’t miss much...so...’ He lowered his gaze from her flushed face, turning his wrist and with a flick of a white cuff revealing his paper-thin watch.
Lily watched with a smile she really hoped said I’m in a hurry too.
The next time you are in danger of believing in magical connections, Lily Gray, she told herself, or a sexual awareness too strong to deny, remember this moment.
‘I was going for a coffee...’ He stopped, his remarkable eyes filled with warmth and other things that made her stomach flip as he gave a twisted, rueful smile and admitted huskily, ‘No, I wasn’t, but I am now.’ Head tilted a little to one side, he smiled into her face. ‘If you’d like...?’
Her knees just stopped short of buckling. They were shaking. She released a carefully controlled sigh, her emotions a mingling of excitement and fear as she thought, if a smile could do this much to her what would a touch do...a kiss...?
Getting ahead of yourself here, Lily. He’s offering you a cappuccino, not a night of wild, head-banging sex! It was just coffee, she reasoned.
‘Yes.’ Too keen, Lily. She gave a smile. ‘I’m not meeting Sam until half four.’
His dark brows twitched into a line above his masterful nose. ‘Is Sam your boyfriend?’
‘A friend,’ she said. And it wasn’t a lie: Samantha Jane was a friend, the first one she’d made at the drama college. Sam wouldn’t mind if she was late; Sam would approve. She often lectured Lily on her love life, or lack of it.
‘You have to stop being so picky,’ Sam had told her. ‘Look at me—I’ve lost count of the number of frogs I’ve kissed but when my prince comes along I’ll recognise the difference, and actually frogs can be fun.’
An hour later Lily and Benedict were still sitting in a cubicle in a small coffee shop and she couldn’t remember what they’d talked about. But she had made him laugh, and he had made her feel smart and sexy. He thought she was funny so she was. After the first five minutes she had relaxed and lowered her guard as their conversation moved from literature, to politics, to her favourite ice cream, to her drama school course and the great opportunity that had recently fallen in her lap. It was only later she’d realised that he’d hardly told her a thing about himself, but then it was, oh, so easy to be wise with hindsight.
‘So I’m going to see you on the big screen?’ Elbows on the table, he’d leant forward, his interest seeming genuine and unfeigned. He had ignored all the women who had eyed him up, not even seeming to notice them. It seemed he only had eyes for her and Lily was flattered. If she’d been a cat, she’d have purred.
‘A small part.’
‘I’m not sure actresses are meant to be self-deprecating.’
‘I’m not, just factual. It’s a small part.’
‘But the TV drama, that’s the lead?’
‘I’ve been really lucky.’
‘You could do with a few lessons in self-publicity.’
She looked at him through her lashes and asked huskily, ‘Are you offering?’
His slow smile made her insides melt and her heart race even faster.
Over her third cup of coffee, looking into his electric-blue eyes, Lily made the dizzying discovery that it was potentially addictive having a man look at you with undisguised desire. Especially when the man in question had, for a large part of your life, represented the perfect ideal and you’d spent your life measuring other men against him—inevitably they had fallen short.
Could that be why she’d still not had a single serious relationship?
The possibility drifted into her head and then was gone because he had caught her hand and, holding it between his thumb and forefinger, was massaging the pad of her palm. The light arabesques sent deep tremors through her body. What she was feeling bore no resemblance to any teenage crush. It bore no resemblance to anything she had felt or imagined feeling.
She didn’t even know she’d closed her eyes until he spoke in his deep husky voice.
‘I have a room.’
She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t.
Her voice sounded throaty and deep, unfamiliar to her own ears, when she finally managed a response: ‘Yes.’
* * *
If she’d known what she was saying yes to she wouldn’t have waited even that long. Last night had been more than Lily had ever dreamed!
Her body still thrummed with the sensual aftermath of their lovemaking and her heart felt full. And there was more to come, much more, there were days and nights and... She felt her heart flutter as she thought of a future with Benedict in it, beside her in her bed. Last night was the start of something...it had to be.
Not romanticising, she told the voice of caution in her head. The sex had been incredible but it had gone beyond the physical; nothing that special could be transitory. She had no name for it, but it had been real.
‘What are you waiting for, Lily?’
Lily had never had an answer for Sam’s exasperated lectures about lowering her expectations and being realistic.
As she directed her searching, hungry gaze at his face a series of sensual images superimposed themselves over his sleeping features. The accompanying taste and textures were so real that the effort of separating herself from them brought a fine sheen of perspiration to Lily’s skin.
She shivered even though she was close enough to feel the warmth of his body. She had an answer to Sam’s question now—Benedict was the man she had been waiting for.
Did he realise that he’d been her first? Last night the memory of Lara’s experience had made her hold back. The man her twin had fallen for had said virgins were not his style—a deal breaker, she remembered Lara saying, while she outlined her solution to the problem.
Did other men feel that way...?
Did Benedict?
Would it be a deal breaker...? Could she take the risk?
Did not telling him constitute lying?
In the end the moment had passed, as had the fear her inexperience might be a problem. But she still didn’t know if he’d realised.
She would ask him, she decided, fighting the strong compulsion to wake him, her lips curved in a contemplative smile. Lily lay down with a sigh and, in an effort to distract herself, began to scroll idly through her emails before moving on to read the latest theatre gossip. She discovered, as her fingers idly flicked through the website, that the play she’d seen the previous week had been nominated for an Olivier award and the fans of a soap were demanding they reinstate a recently axed daytime favourite. A celebrity couple were splitting but staying good friends and a—
Her finger froze as she stared at the screen. The images there screamed silently back at her until she felt as though her skull would explode with the building pressure, the anger aimed as much at herself as him.
‘No!’ she whispered, but though the words and images blurred through the tears in her eyes they remained there, visible evidence of her wilful stupidity!
The piece was written in a gushy style that included quotes from friends of a newly engaged couple. There were several photos of the bride-to-be, the shiny rock on her finger and the groom...the groom...looking handsome on a ski slope, snow on his eyelashes...looking elegant and aloof at a red-carpet event...looking dynamic and sombre at an economic conference.
Her chest lifted in a tremulous sigh as she started breathing again and turned her head.
‘Nobody is surprised,’ she’d read.
Well, they were wrong; she’d been. Self-disgust left a rancid, metallic aftertaste in her mouth as she asked herself, Why are you surprised? You saw what you wanted in him, not what was there. He’s a man, and you were an easy lay.
Anger and devastating hurt clawed at Lily’s throat as she struggled to swallow a sob. Hands clenched, her nails gouging deep into the soft skin of her palms, she turned her hard, glittering stare on his sleeping face.
At sixteen she’d seen through him; she’d had more sense then than she did at twenty-two! Even if he had assumed that she was perfectly all right with one-night stands, he was engaged, newly engaged, for God’s sake!
On the brink of waking him, confronting him, Lily pulled back, breathing hard as she struggled to regain some control. Would venting her feelings of outrage, would the satisfaction of confronting him, be worth exposing her own humiliation? It would be tantamount to admitting she was a naïve idiot who believed in soul mates and true love.
Anything, she decided, was better than that!
Shaking from head to toe, she pushed back the covers, freezing like a creature caught in the headlights when he groaned. She waited, heart hammering, until his breathing had settled into a deep regular pattern again before standing up.
Naked, she moved around the room, shooting wary glances at the sleeping figure as she gathered her clothes. She dressed in the bathroom, not daring to put on the light, and slipped like a thief into the early morning. It felt furtive and sordid, but then, she reflected grimly, it was.
It wasn’t until she was on the tube that she realised she had lost one of her earrings.
It wasn’t the only thing she had lost. But what Lily didn’t know then was that she had also gained something...
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_2a44fed7-44b0-5b1f-a879-add638acabb1)
FOR THE FIRST two days of her holiday Lily had put on a sundress over her bikini, applied some clear gloss to her lips and a light smudge of eye shadow before walking, sandals in hand, along the white sandy beach. She’d joined the other guests in the dining room, a structure with a roof but no walls. In the evening, guests could eat and listen to music provided by a talented in-house pianist, while watching the sun go down over the ocean as they sipped exotic-looking, but lethal, cocktails.
Pretty much idyllic with one small but significant negative: Lily had no one to share the experience with. This was not a problem for her, just other people, it seemed. So this morning, she’d decided to have her meals on the patio of her beach-front bungalow.
‘Just ring through if you’d like lunch here too, miss.’
Lily smiled at the maid, Mathilde, who had come to collect her breakfast things. ‘I thought I might explore a little, walk into town maybe, so afternoon tea would be better and I’ll have my dinner here.’
‘Alone?’ The maid looked almost as disapproving as her mother would have.
Lily nodded firmly.
To say you couldn’t move without falling over honeymooners was a slight exaggeration, but the adult-only luxury resort was, unsurprisingly, geared towards loved-up couples. The only other singleton Lily had encountered was a chatty middle-aged travel writer. While it was interesting to know that the island had once belonged to Denmark before they sold it to America, another lecture over dinner tonight did not appeal.
And besides, these days being alone was something of a treat. Until you were a mother, she mused, picking up her towel and setting off along the white sand in the opposite direction to the maid, you could never quite grasp how much your life changed.
Not that she’d change it, she thought, her expression softening into a warm smile as she thought of her daughter. Motherhood might not have been something she’d planned, but Lily could not imagine her life any other way now. She missed Emmy so desperately, it actually felt as though she had a body part missing. But there was a guilty pleasure in spending half an hour on her nails and a couple of hours reading without interruptions.
Still, a new laptop—the third prize in the magazine competition—would have been a more practical option.
‘You can’t pass up a holiday in a tropical paradise!’ Her mother had been outraged by the suggestion.
‘But Emmy...’
‘You think I can’t look after my granddaughter for a week?’
‘Of course you can. But I couldn’t possibly let you...’
Lily felt guilty enough as it was that she relied on her parent so much. Her mother had been incredibly supportive all the way through her difficult pregnancy and then a real sanity saver during those early sleep-deprived months. Lily would never have been able to take on her part-time job if her mum hadn’t been there ready and cheerfully willing to look after Emmy on those two mornings she worked at the local college.
‘What would I do on this island of sea and sand?’
‘That you have to ask shows how much you need this holiday. When was the last time you had a half-hour to call your own, Lily? When did you last spend some time socially with anyone your own age? You need to let your hair down. You might even meet someone...?’
Lily gave an exasperated sigh. She knew exactly where this was going. ‘I know you want to see me married off, Mum, but—’
‘I want to see you happy, Lily. I want to see both my girls happy.’
Lily knew what ‘happy’ meant to her mum, who was fond of saying,‘There’s someone out there for everyone—a soul mate. I found mine,’ she added. ‘There was never and never will be any other man for me but your father.’
Lily had always struggled to reconcile the misty-eyed romanticism with her childhood memories of angry raised voices, slamming doors and tears. Lily never voiced her thoughts, she felt disloyal for even thinking them, though she sometimes wondered if her mum really felt that way or if it was her way of dealing with being widowed so young. Had she been telling the stories for so long she believed them...?
‘I am happy, Mum.’ Why did no one believe her?
And even if she had been looking for romance, she had no time for it. Juggling her part-time job in the college drama department and the unpaid hours she put in at the hospice—where her mother fundraised so tirelessly—with caring for her two-year-old daughter left no time for anything except falling into bed exhausted at the end of the day.
Lily considered her life rich and fulfilling. Occasionally she thought what if...? But those thoughts were swiftly quashed. She still had ambitions; they just weren’t the same ones she’d had as a final-year drama student. Back then she’d had several small parts in TV dramas under her belt and the lead role in a new costume drama to walk into when she graduated—not bad for the invisible twin.
But her life had changed unexpectedly and she didn’t resent it. Now she wanted more than anything to be a role model for her daughter. Although she’d been an OK actress, she had discovered by accident she was a better than OK teacher. As soon as Emmy was in school she had plans to get the qualifications to enable her to lecture and not just be an assistant. She might never see her own name in lights, but she might be responsible for some other shy, awkward kid—as she’d been—discovering the liberation of becoming someone else on stage.
Lily’s thoughts were not on her future career as she wandered down the deserted beach, her feet sinking into the sand. She was replaying the conversation she’d had via the computer link with her daughter the previous evening. Well, conversation might be overstating it. Emmy had fallen asleep after five minutes on her grandmother’s knee saying loudly that she wanted a dog, a wiggy dog.
‘She means waggy, I think,’ Elizabeth had translated, stroking her granddaughter’s curly head. ‘She grabbed Robert’s poor old Lab by the tail and wouldn’t let go.’
Lily’s eyes misted as the longing to hold her daughter, smell her hair, brought an emotional lump to her throat.
Dropping her towel on the sand, she stared out to sea, the ache in her chest a mixture of pride and loneliness as she waded out into the warm, clear water.
* * *
Returning the painting had been a theatrical stunt. The big reveal had gone down like a lead balloon, but in his defence Ben had tried everything else. Nothing had worked. His grandfather had refused then, as he did now, to give an inch. He still refused to concede that selling off the odd heirloom or parcel of land was not a fiscally sound form of long-term financial planning.
This morning the argument had not gone on long before his grandfather had given his never darken my dooragain speech and Ben, knowing that if he stayed he’d say something he’d regret, had accepted the invite.
Striding through the corridors of the old house, he’d predictably felt his anger fade, leaving frustration and the realisation that he needed a change of tactics. Governments and financial institutions listened to his analyses, they valued his opinion, but he just had to accept that his grandfather didn’t even think of him as an adult, let alone someone qualified to offer advice.
He’d paused, responding to a text from his PA reminding him he had a meeting in Paris in two hours, when he heard the sound. Glancing through the deep stone-mullioned window at the helicopter he’d arrived in, which was sitting on the south lawn, Ben was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard it. Then he heard it again—the sound of a child crying.
Curious, he slid his phone back into his pocket and followed the sound of the cries. The search led him to the kitchen, a room that, like the plumbing at Warren Court, would have made a Victorian feel right at home.
The door to the vast room was open, and as he stepped inside the source of the noise, a child held by his grandfather’s harassed-looking housekeeper, Elizabeth Gray, let out an ear-piercing screech, made even louder by the room’s tremendous acoustics.
‘Wow, that’s quite a set of lungs.’ And quite a head of hair. The wild red curls on the toddler’s head opened a memory he’d have preferred to stay locked inside the file marked move on.
And he had moved on; it was ancient history.
‘Benedict!’
Would Elizabeth’s smile have been so warm and welcoming had she known he’d slept with one of her daughters? The lazy speculation vanished as she advanced towards him holding the screaming child. Horror slid into the vacuum it left.
‘Your grandfather didn’t tell me you were coming...’
‘He didn’t know.’ Ben prided himself on the ability to extricate himself from uncomfortable situations, but for once his ingenuity failed him.
‘Are you staying for...? Never mind—hold her, will you?’
It was not a suggestion or a request, it was a plea, which he hadn’t responded to when he had found his arms filled with crying toddler. A new experience for him... He stood rigid, holding the wriggling, screaming child the same way he would an unexploded bomb—at arm’s length! He’d have felt more comfortable with a bomb; they were more predictable.
Ben had nothing against children, and he understood why people felt the urge to procreate, he just wondered why some did. People like his mother, who had never made any pretence of being maternal. His mother, who had done her level best to forget that she’d had a child after she’d given birth and had done so pretty successfully. She had never made any bones about what came first—her career. And as she’d pointed out, not having a mother coddling him had made him self-reliant.
He recognised similar character traits—some might call them faults—in himself. He was ambitious, ruthlessly focused on his work. Ben had no illusions about his character. Bottom line, he was selfish. That combined with razor-sharp instincts made him successful in his chosen career.
He didn’t need those instincts to tell him he’d have been a terrible parent. It was pretty obvious. Being a good parent required sacrifice and compromise, which he was simply not capable of. His decision not to have children was yet another bone of contention between him and his grandfather, who was fixated on the idea of the family name living on.
‘Is she ill?’ He struggled to hide his unease and eyed the child warily. She might be attractive, but right now, with her crumpled, tear-stained face as red as her hair, she wasn’t.
‘She bumped her head, slipped chasing the cat. Now let’s have a look...it’s not deep,’ Elizabeth said, brushing a mass of auburn curls from the squawking kid’s head. ‘But it simply won’t stop bleeding and Emmy doesn’t like the sight of blood. But she’s a brave girl, aren’t you, my darling?’ she crooned.
The brave girl gave another ear-splitting bawl. Was it normal for a kid to be that loud? Ben, who had been his parents’ only mistake, wasn’t sure.
‘I didn’t know Lara had a child,’ he said, struggling to make himself heard above the din. ‘Is she visiting, or have they moved back from the States?’ he asked, pretending a polite interest he didn’t feel. Though he’d felt mild surprise when the news of the wedding had reached his ears six months after the event.
Lara Gray was the last person he would have imagined marrying young, she’d been a bit of a wild child, but then what did he know? Her sister had always seemed like the last sort of person who’d spend the night with a man and leave before he woke.
But she had.
To wake and find the pillow beside him empty should have been a relief. Yet finding her gone, leaving nothing but the elusive scent of her perfume, scratches on his shoulders and a pearl earring, he’d been furious. While recognising his response as irrational and disproportionate, Ben had struggled to shrug it off. Even now, three years later, the sight of a red curl could flip his mood.
He didn’t like being used, and he’d always hated bad manners.
Sure, Ben, you’re getting worked up after nearly three years over bad manners...what did you want from her, a thank-you note?
Ben’s ego was not fragile and there had been occasions in his life when he would have liked to fast-forward past the morning-after scene. Yet when he had reached across, anticipating contact with warm womanly skin, and found nothing but a cold indent his anger had almost, but not completely, masked that initial gut reaction...loss.
It was no use pretending otherwise—the timing had been bad. He’d known it but he’d still done it. He’d known that his personal life, in the immediate future, was going to be subjected to public scrutiny. His on-off engagement when it came out was going to sell papers, but if it had got out that he’d fallen straight into another relationship, or at least into another bed...was it fair to expose Lily to that sort of smutty tabloid speculation?
You had to laugh at the irony—not that he had. But then what man wouldn’t feel a little raw if he’d woken up and found that the woman who had awoken dormant chivalrous instincts—and who just happened to be the best sex he’d ever had—had walked out? But then life was a learning curve and he’d moved on.
He’d rationalised the event. Lily had been what he’d needed, when he’d needed it. He’d just been surprised really—she’d always seemed so...sweet. Well, good for her. Clearly she had her mind firmly focused on her career and sex was strictly recreational. He’d met any number of women with that pragmatic attitude; he’d dated more than a few.
‘Lara?’ Elizabeth, blowing a strand of blonde hair from her eyes, looked up, appearing surprised by the comment. ‘Lara doesn’t have children. This is Lily’s little girl.’
‘Lily is married?’ Ben, who had never been one to wrap up unpalatable truths in pretty packaging, found himself not analysing too deeply his powerful gut response to this news.
‘No, she isn’t married. Lily is a single parent. I’m very proud of her,’ she added defensively, explaining, ‘She moved back to the village. She works part-time at the college and I help out when I can.’
Ben struggled to take on board all the information and the surprisingly strong emotions it shook loose.
So no big acting career, no glamorous red carpets, no name in lights, just... He looked at the child, who had stopped crying. Tears trembled on the ends of her sooty lashes as she returned his look with one of deep suspicion through eyes that were a deep blue.
Cobalt blue.
He stiffened as somewhere in the back of his mind the seeds of a crazy suspicion sent out tentative roots.
‘That must be a struggle.’ His sympathy elicited a nod.
‘Oh, I love helping... Just hold still a moment for Granny. Emmy is a total sweetheart but Lily...’
‘M...Mummy...’ Ben watched the child’s lower lip tremble ominously before she gave another sniff, her small rounded chin jutting pugnaciously as she yelled, ‘Want Mummy now!’
‘A child who knows her own mind.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘She certainly does, not at all like Lily. She was always the easy one. Lara, now that was another story. Mummy will be home soon, darling, five more sleeps. Hard to explain time to children.’ Elizabeth gave a grunt as she successfully taped down a sticking plaster to the child’s forehead. ‘All done.’ She clapped her hands.
Ben watched as the kid followed suit, clapping her chubby little hands. His brain was working but his thoughts kept coming up against a big brick wall. He couldn’t see past it because there was nothing to see. He was making the classic mistake of trying to make the facts fit a theory. In this case a totally crazy theory!
The tension that had climbed into his shoulders eased a notch as he recognised the trap he had almost fallen into. His mouth twisted into an ironic self-mocking smile. A lot of people in this world had blue eyes; presumably the kid’s father had been one of them.
A moment later his smile vanished. As the child continued to squirm in his arms he caught a glimpse of something. A nerve beside his mouth jumped. Blue eyes were not unique, but how many people beside his own mother had that distinctive birthmark? he asked himself, fighting the urge to lift the child’s hair to examine the pigmented crescent closer.
‘M...M...Mama...’ The kid caught hold of his tie and shoved the silk into her mouth.
Who did she call dada?
‘Don’t do that, Emmy, you’ll choke.’ Her grandmother prised the soggy cloth from her mouth and directed an apologetic smile at him. A look of concern crossed her face. ‘Sorry about... Are you all right?’
Ben inhaled, dredging deep into his inner resources to force his features into something that passed for a smile. ‘I had words with my grandfather.’ It suddenly seemed a long time ago.
The explanation was accepted by Elizabeth, who held out her arms for the child, the furrow between her brows deepening as he made no move to react.
The question he’d refused to acknowledge slid into his head. Was the child...his child? His daughter?
This was surreal...
It was impossible!
His eyes slid to the baby in his arms and she looked back at him, solemn and serious, then with a grin as she grabbed his soggy tie again.
‘Mine!’
Ben felt something break loose inside him and swallowed, reluctant to put a name to the uncomfortable emotion that tightened like a band across his chest.
‘No, Emmy! Sorry, Ben...’
This time Ben reacted to the extended arms. As he handed the child over he breathed in the scent of her hair and felt the smooth softness of her cheek. He swallowed. It simply wasn’t possible.
Of course it was and he knew it.
Elizabeth took a moment to disentangle the determined chubby hands from the tie, ignoring the shrill yell of frustration when she succeeded.
‘Your grandfather misses you, you know.’
Ben shook his head to clear the loud static buzz in his brain. ‘He hides it well.’
This was one of life’s crossroad moments, when choices changed lives...his life...a life he liked the way it was...the life he had chosen. The inner struggle didn’t last long, though the resentment of finding himself in this position deepened.
Knowing for sure he had fathered a child was not news he would welcome, but it was preferable to not knowing, to live with that question mark.
His shoulders squared with decision as he masked his feelings behind a casual smile.
‘So you’re babysitting?’ Losing the battle to maintain objectivity, he struggled to keep the disapproval he felt out of his voice. He never had understood why people had kids if they couldn’t wait to farm them out.
‘Actually I have her all week, don’t I, darling?’ Elizabeth, her expression doting, tucked a shiny curl behind Emmy’s ear as the child’s head dropped on her shoulder. ‘Lily won a prize in a competition,’ she explained. ‘A week’s holiday in the sun.’
His jaw clenched. So motherhood hadn’t cramped Lily’s style.
‘She was going to refuse it.’
Sure she was, Ben thought, hiding his disbelief behind an interested smile.
‘I all but had to tie her up to get her to the airport, but it’s just what she needs, a bit of sun. She’s basically put her whole life on hold, but that’s never healthy. I keep telling her, she has to have a life outside of Emmy. But does she listen?’
As Elizabeth chuntered on the image of Lily in a bikini set up a string of images that Ben, despising his lack of control, breathed his way through. He came out the other side feeling resentful and furious at his lack of self-control. Even if this wasn’t his kid, he had nothing but contempt for a parent who put their own selfish needs ahead of their child.
‘That’s an unusual birthmark she...?’ He watched for any sign of reaction to his question on the housekeeper’s face. Either she was the world’s best actress or didn’t know either.
‘Emmy... Emily Rose.’ Her grandmother brushed aside a hank of burnished hair from the child’s forehead and touched the small mark near her right temple. ‘It looks like the moon, doesn’t it?’
Jumping to conclusions in his business was often the difference between success and failure. Sure, gut instinct came into it, but you had to gather data, sift through the evidence, calculate the probabilities before you made a call.
Ben never jumped to conclusions, and now was not a good time to start. In his experience the best way to kill crazy ideas was throw facts at them.
Clutching at straws, Ben?
Ignoring the inner ironic voice, he asked casually, ‘How old is she?’
‘Two. She was actually due on the twins’ birthday but Lily took a tumble and she came a month early.’
‘My mother has a birthmark similar to that one, or she did.’ His mother had had it removed while they were doing her first facelift.
‘How is your mother?’ Elizabeth asked politely.
Ben, who knew the question was inspired by good manners not genuine interest, shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’ Then, acting on an impulse that he had no control over, he touched a shiny curl before drawing his hand back as though burnt. ‘Her hair is just like her mother’s.’
And her eyes were just like his. But it wasn’t just her eyes: the angle of her childish jaw, the birthmark... In contrast to his slow, measured words, Ben’s brain was firmly on fast-forward now. If ever there was a moment to retain the clear objectivity he was famed for, this was it.
Objectivity!
What was the point in objectivity when the truth was staring him in the face? He took a deep breath, his shoulders straightening. Unless someone offered him concrete proof to the contrary, this was his child.
Elizabeth nodded, gave a nostalgic smile and sighed. ‘I used to love brushing the girls’ hair when they were little. They grow up so fast.’
‘It’s very...’ He paused, the muscles in his tanned throat working as he pushed away the intrusive image of curly red strands brushing his chest and belly. The memory darkened his eyes to midnight blue.
‘It’s glorious,’ continued the fond grandmother. ‘It’s from my husband’s side,’ she confided. ‘They have a lot of redheads, Irish skin and hair. They always burned in the sun. Not that this little one will have the same problem,’ she said, touching the child’s rosily golden cheek.
Though he felt as though he were bleeding control through every pore he somehow managed to sound casual enough not to make alarm bells ring as he scanned the toddler’s face and commented casually, ‘She’s inherited her father’s colouring?’
He watched the older woman’s expression grow shuttered.
‘I don’t know. Lily doesn’t talk about him.’ Her eyes lowered, hiding her expression as she transferred the weight of the now-sleeping child from one shoulder to the other.
I bet she doesn’t, he thought grimly. But she would. When she got back, he’d be waiting.
Why wait?
‘Your room, should I...? Jane is around somewhere?’
‘I’m not staying, but I’d love a cup of coffee before I head off.’
He lingered another half-hour and, over a coffee, extracted the information he needed. A firm believer in choosing your own battle ground and the advantage of surprise, Ben saw no reason to wait around while Lily sunned herself on some tropical beach.
He wanted to see her face when he turned up. He wanted to hear the truth from her own lips, even if it was nearly three damned years too late!
Pushing away the image of those lips parting as his mouth crashed down on them, he strode purposefully from the building.
* * *
It wasn’t until an hour later that he realised why the island paradise sounded familiar.
‘So I’ll cancel everything for the next, what...three days?’ Another person might have sounded stressed, but his PA was her usual serenely unflappable self. Considering he’d contacted her on his way to the airport and told her to free up his calendar.
‘Better make it four.’
‘All right, four. Will you be staying at the house or shall I book you in somewhere?’
‘House?’ The question produced a frowning response.
‘Have you changed your mind about putting it on the market?’
It finally clicked. She was talking about the property he’d inherited last year from his great-uncle.
‘For now. I’ll check it out, see if it’s worth staying there.’
The flight took for ever. When they finally landed at the private airstrip he arranged for his bag to be dropped at the house, while he headed straight for the hotel that Elizabeth Gray had described as a paradise.
And a prerequisite of paradise was temptation.
Ben lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. He was jet-lagged. No, actually, he’d been jet-lagged when he arrived at Warren Court twelve hours ago. Now walking in totally inappropriate handmade leather shoes along the deserted white sand beach still wearing the same suit, he had gone way beyond mere jet lag.
He was operating on a combination of adrenaline and anger. The hours that had passed since his discovery had not reduced the latter, but the delay had worn his patience to a single-cell thickness.
With his eyes still on the horizon, he dropped down into a crouch and balanced on his heels, examining the sand for the light indents he had followed from her beach bungalow. A redhead was not so difficult to track down, especially when generous tips were involved. A muscle tightened in his chiselled jaw as his efforts were rewarded. The footprints were still there, but they were now heading out to the water.
Straightening up, he altered course, heading towards the towel that lay in a crumpled heap a few feet away. As he picked it up his nostrils flared at the faint but distinctive scent of rose impregnating the soft fabric. He gave a snort of self-disgust as his libido gave a hefty kick.
He still remembered that scent; he remembered everything.
Ignoring the sizzling slither of heat that licked along his nerve endings, Ben muttered under his breath and clenched the fabric in his hands. He levelled his steely gaze at the head of the figure far out in the water. Too far given the luridly painted warning signs along the beach that informed of currents behind the reef.
If this day had carried a convenient warning sign he might have stayed in bed. Ben’s entire body clenched in anticipation as the figure in the water began to swim towards the shore.
* * *
Behind her the water appeared clear azure blending almost seamlessly into the sky. Ahead of her it was turquoise and clear as crystal. The warmth was totally seductive and though she had only intended to stay out for a few minutes she had quickly lost track of time. She was enjoying swimming lazily, though kept in mind the maid’s story of the tourist who, after a boozy dinner, had ignored the warning signs or probably not seen them and tragically drowned because he’d ventured past the protective reef.
One of the things she had noticed about motherhood was it made a person very aware of their own mortality and a lot more risk averse. Not that she’d ever been a massive risk taker—well, only once!
Seeing the shore through a watery haze and pretty much spent, Lily paused and, holding her chin up, felt for the sandy bottom, acknowledging the toe contact with a sigh of relief. She bounced along for a few feet, spitting out water before she could place her feet flat on the sand. With the water at shoulder level she walked her way down to waist level, aware as she did so that she wasn’t alone. There was a figure on the beach.
She assumed it was one of her fellow guests. This stretch of beach, though not private but because of its remote inaccessibility, was used almost exclusively by the guests at the beach resort. Lily lifted one hand in greeting while she pushed her wet hair back from her face with the other and blinked away the water from her eyelashes.
Then her vision cleared.
For a moment shock wiped her mind as she refused to accept what she was seeing. Her heart thudding with adrenaline-fuelled speed, she closed her eyes, wiped away the moisture with her hand and opened them again.
He was still there, the man in the incongruous dark suit, tall, dark and terrifying familiar. He returned her stare with incredible eyes, the colour rare but not unique—she saw that colour every day.
The last time she’d looked into those eyes she had melted. She didn’t melt now, she froze. Every muscle and nerve fibre went into shock. Her brain shut down, a protective response to a situation where she had no other defences to fall back on.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f6dcddd8-62ed-559f-9fbd-baccd955f648)
FOR SOME REASON her baby’s father was standing there looking taller and more imposing than she remembered. He was wearing a medium grey tailored suit, white shirt open at the neck—the only concession to the setting. The bespoke tailoring was almost as inappropriate as the tight ache low in her pelvis. Yet somehow he made her feel as if she were the one dressed inappropriately or at least inadequately.
Screamingly self-conscious of every inch of exposed skin, Lily called on all her rusty acting skills and lifted her chin acknowledging his presence with a tiny lift of her hand and an expression of small world surprise. Only it wasn’t, it was a massive world and he was here. Hard to believe that meant anything good. Pushing through the moment of panic, she forced herself to leave the shallows; the sense of impending doom remained.
Counselling herself sternly not to assume the worst, she took a tiny grain of comfort from the fact that Emmy was safely at home. She wished she were there too as her eyes made an unscheduled covetous sweep up the long, lean length of him. It was pretty hard to pretend to be composed when your stomach felt as if you’d just stepped off a cliff.
But it was sand, not air, beneath her feet and she made herself walk towards him. Lily was so focused on controlling herself and taking that next step that she got within a few feet of Ben before registering the clenched rigidity of his stance. Anger—it radiated off him in waves, and it was all aimed at her. Anger was actually too mild a word for the volcanic aura of antagonism he was vibrating. He pinned her with a stare that was as hard and unforgiving as tempered steel.
Hampered by guilt, fear, a racing heart and a skin-crawling self-consciousness, Lily pushed away the image of her daughter’s face and struggled to return the glare with some degree of composure. Beneath her carefully schooled expression her brain was firing off scenarios to explain his presence, all carefully avoiding the most obvious.
He knew!
Fighting the increasingly urgent compulsion to swim back out to sea, she straightened her shoulders and speared her hands into her long drenched hair before shaking it back from her face. Unable to maintain contact with the accusing blue glare for more than a second, she cleared her throat and broke the tense, explosive silence.
‘Hello.’ She discovered her voice sounded weirdly normal.
* * *
Hello...?
She didn’t even have the grace to look guilty, she just looked... The muscles in his brown throat worked as he dragged his wandering gaze up the slim length of her sinuous pale curves. The fury he could barely contain mingled with a large dollop of desire. He couldn’t deny his reaction when his body still thrummed with the testosterone-fuelled heat that had immobilised him with lust as she’d emerged from the waves like some mythical goddess.
But, in his defence, Lily Gray was the sort of woman who could stop traffic wearing a bin sack. And right now she was wearing very little at all. His eyes made another unscheduled dip. The black bikini consisted of a few triangles of cloth tied together with tiny metallic loops, three in total, one rested between her glorious breasts, the others low on each hip bone. The colour emphasised the creamy, opalescent pallor of her glistening skin. It was every bit as incredible as he remembered it, he thought, hungrily devouring the details. Her body might be lusher than it had been three years ago—in a very good way—but he would still be able to span her waist with his hands.
He looked at them and now realised he still had hold of her towel. The muscles around his jaw tightened as he felt a fresh blast of scalding self-disgust at his lack of control over his emotions. He thrust the towel at her with a grunt.
* * *
‘Thank you.’ Under the cover of a stiff automatic smile, her swirling thoughts raced as she wrapped the soft fabric sarong-wise across her breasts and waited, with a sense of fatalism that approached a Zen-like calm, for him to speak.
When he didn’t, she flung a rope of wet hair over her shoulders. She was amazed that her hands were still steady, despite the fact that under the calm, pulses of fear continued to pound through her body and her knees felt ready to give way.
She was living her worst nightmare. If the ground had opened up at her feet, she would have gladly jumped into the black hole.
No obliging hole appeared, so she met his hostile stare with as much composure as she could summon.
‘This is a surprise. So what are you doing here?’
‘Have a guess?’ he ground back, tearing his eyes from the small trickle of sea water running down the curve of her pale, creamy shoulder.
‘I was never very good at guessing games,’ she blurted, her voice a low driven undertone almost drowned by the low hiss of waves breaking on the shore. ‘If you have something to say...?’ The tense silence stretched. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me I’m late for my massage.’ She made to move past him but he blocked her path. The sheer menace of his physical presence would have made her pause if his next words hadn’t frozen her to the spot.
‘Oh, well, when you can fit me into your schedule, I thought we might have a conversation. One like—oh, I don’t know... How about: Ben, it totally slipped my mind, but I had your baby a few years back...?’
She closed her eyes and thought, Oh, hell... Well, maybe now was as good a time as any to get this over with. Sucking in a short, tense breath, every muscle in her body taut, she turned and looked him in the face and nodded.
‘Sorry.’ Then because it crossed her mind he might think she was sorry she’d had Emmy she tacked on hastily, ‘That you found out about it in the way—’ She stopped. She didn’t know how he’d found out, but she supposed the significant bit was it hadn’t been from her. ‘This way.’
He clenched his jaw and ground out grimly, ‘So you’re not even going to deny it?’
A bit late now. ‘I’m not a good liar.’
His lip curled. ‘Oh, I think you’re a very good liar.’
‘I didn’t lie, I just decided not to—’
‘Burden me with the truth?’
She winced at the acid sarcasm and began to resent his occupation of the moral high ground as she jerked her eyes up to meet his intense blue glare.
‘Or were you just not sure who the father was?’
The insult, because there was no doubt he intended it as such, drew a wobbly little laugh from her aching throat. She clamped her teeth over it and lifted her chin. It was an irony she had no intention of sharing with him. She could at least retain that much pride. Having him know she’d thought their one-night stand was the start of something special would have been too cringingly humiliating; she’d prefer he think she was some sort of bed-hopping tart.
‘Oh, there was never any doubt about that,’ she said quietly.
‘Because I’m curious,’ he said, his control straining at the leash. ‘Did you ever intend to tell me?’
‘I thought about it.’ Lily didn’t register the hissing sound her admission wrenched from his clenched teeth. Her eyes glazed as her thoughts drifted backwards. After the initial shock had worn off she had thought about little else. The tipping point had been the article his ex had written. It had seemed like fate that she’d picked it up in the waiting room before her first appointment with the midwife.
It turned out Ben had only been engaged for five minutes before he’d got cold feet and dumped the poor woman. Commitment phobic, the gorgeous ex-model had explained, but the real breaking point, she had confided, had been his refusal to have a family.
You had to admire the woman. She’d have been perfectly justified, in Lily’s opinion, if she’d chosen to stick the knife in. But instead she’d displayed a really healthy attitude focusing on the future, her career change and plugging her new cookery book that was to hit the shelves soon.
That had sealed the deal for Lily. She’d known then that she couldn’t tell him.
‘But I knew how you’d react,’ she continued.
He arched a sardonic brow and ground his teeth in reaction to this claim of psychic abilities. ‘And how is that?’
Lily studied his face, her heart clenched in her chest. Even mad, he was beautiful. She spread her hands in an expressive gesture. ‘Pretty much like this.’
Before she had become pregnant Lily had never asked herself if she wanted to be a mother. Unlike Ben, who it turned out had decided never to be a father. A man who broke off an engagement because having children was a deal breaker was not going to be happy to learn he was about to be a dad by a one-night stand.
‘So how did you find out?’
‘How did I find out?’ He shook his head and looked at her as though she were insane. ‘I saw her, I saw me...’ he ground out, shaking his dark head in an incredulous motion from side to side. ‘Your mother doesn’t know?’
She swallowed, thinking of all the occasions when she had been tempted to confide in someone, wishing she could.
‘Not Mum, not... You can relax, I didn’t tell anyone.’ Not even her twin actually. Especially not her married twin, who was desperate to get pregnant and not having any luck. Having always been able to confide in Lara, Lily found it hard to deal with this new reality. She just hoped that the wall that had built up between them would be removed when Lara finally got pregnant.
‘Relax!’
Lily could feel the anger rolling off him in waves. She struggled to show she was not intimidated by it, but it was not easy when it was buffeting her like a storm-force wind. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself physically retreating from his anger, focusing on the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.
‘No one else needs to know, nothing needs to change,’ she assured him earnestly.
Lily could hear his white teeth grind as he closed his eyes and muttered under his breath. He opened them again and she staggered from the contemptuous blast of his deep blue eyes. ‘It already has changed.’
She opened her mouth to contradict him and her glance connected with his relentless stare. Lily was the first to look away.
‘How the hell is it possible for your mother—for everyone—not to see?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. On this one point they were on the same page. ‘It’s always seemed obvious to me but no one else seemed to notice. So I thought why—’
‘Bother?’ He cut across her, his voice a furious growl. ‘I am a father!’
‘Biologically.’ She lowered her lashes to hide the hurt and sadness that surfaced when she thought of her little girl, who deserved a father who loved her.
Ben flicked her a look of incredulous scorn and lashed back accusingly, ‘You don’t think a child needs a father?’
Lily almost laughed, but she felt suddenly like crying. ‘It depends on the father.’ Better her baby had no father, than one who didn’t want her.
Lily knew that her own dad had loved her and her twin, but the argument she had overheard the night before he’d died still haunted her. Looking back with adult eyes, she was able to see it for what it had been—a couple with money problems fighting, saying things they didn’t mean. But she still remembered how it had felt when her dad had yelled, Why do you think we’ve got no money? You’re the one who wanted to keep them.
Lily shook herself free from her silent depressing reverie. At her sides her hands clenched. No. She would protect her baby from ever feeling unwanted.
Just the baby?
Hadn’t there been the smallest hint of self-preservation in her decision? Having Ben in her life, a constant reminder of her romantic self-delusion, would not have been easy to deal with.
It would have been agony. Just looking at him, she thought it was! She was no longer naïve enough to call it love, but the primal reaction she had to him was not something she could control, even if it was just sex.
* * *
The quiet rebuttal caused Ben to draw a breath. His smouldering gaze dropped, his lashes brushing the slashing angle of his cheek that hid the flicker of uncertainty in his blue eyes. He wondered, wasn’t she right?
His own father had been marginally more involved in his life than his mother, not because of any genuine fatherly feelings but only in the sense that he’d cared more about appearances.
Would he be any better?
Self-doubt was not something that kept Ben awake at night. He’d made his share of bad decisions. The secret was being prepared to take responsibility and live with the consequences of those flawed decisions, even life-changing ones.
But this hadn’t been his decision.
But it had happened, so deal with it, Ben!
‘So you decided to take me out of the equation.’ Just saying it out loud made his anger spike hotly. That it was an equation he had never wanted to be part of did not lessen his sense of outrage or his determination to do the right thing, for his daughter.
‘I didn’t think of it quite in those terms, but yes...if you like.’
‘And you were only thinking of Emily Rose?’
The underlying mockery in his voice brought her rounded chin up. ‘It’s my job.’
‘And you decided that her life would be better without me in it...?’
* * *
Not fooled by his light conversational tone, Lily didn’t react. She stood there watching him warily, determined not to let him see that his comment had slipped under her defences.
‘What about what she wants?’
She angled an uneasy look up at his lean face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A child shouldn’t grow up feeling unloved or unwanted.’
‘She isn’t!’ Lily shot back, furious at the suggestion.
‘You were happy to let her think her father doesn’t love or want her. Did you pause when you were making your unilateral decision to think how she might feel a few years down the line thinking that her father had rejected her? How that might affect her emotional development, her future relationships? You’re willing to deprive her of what you had...what you took for granted... Well, I’m not.’
The statement had more impact because Ben clearly wasn’t canvassing for the sympathy vote; he was simply stating a fact. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Lily felt her own tender heart soften. A child herself at the time, it had never occurred to her to wonder why Ben had come to live with his grandfather. That he had been unwanted had not even crossed her mind.
‘I’m going to make damned sure that my daughter isn’t going to grow up thinking she’s to blame. She’ll have what every kid deserves. What I—’
Didn’t have, Lily completed silently as he paused for breath. She trawled her memory trying to think of a single occasion when she had seen Ben’s parents at Warren Court after Ben had moved in. She came up blank.
‘I’m sorry that you were an unhappy child, but—’
He pinned her with a cold blue stare. ‘This isn’t about me. It’s about what is best for our child. You may feel it’s some sort of badge of honour to struggle financially but—’
‘I don’t!’ she protested, smothering a dangerous wave of empathy along with the image of a sad, lonely little boy. Ben was not a little boy any more; he was a powerful man. A very angry, powerful man. And he was angry at her. ‘You never wanted children...’
‘And you wanted to put your career on hold just as it was taking off?’
‘That’s not the point!’
His brows lifted as his lips tugged into a triumphant smile. ‘Exactly. Even if I was the total rat you think I am, even if I had been given the option and chose not to be part of her life, I have a financial obligation at least.’
‘This isn’t about money!’
‘No, it’s about a hell of a lot more,’ he growled. ‘More than your selfish pride. So save me the poor and proud of it speech. My daughter is going to have all the advantages I can give her, so get used to it.’
‘You think you can just appear out of nowhere and take control?’ She managed to project scorn, but below the surface there was a strong steady pulse of fear feeding into her bloodstream.
He shrugged and gave a wolfish grin that left his blue eyes hard and cold. ‘Now you come to mention it, yes.’
Despite the sun beating down she shivered, suddenly icily cold. She recalled a recent article in which a rival had called Ben Warrender a ‘wolf in designer clothes, who wouldn’t even get a crease in his suit while he casually destroyed your life for profit’

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