The Baby Question

Even if he did have the sexiest eyes she’d ever seen. She’d fallen for them years ago. She wasn’t falling for them again.

Oh, no …

She was a web designer. He was amazed, although he shouldn’t have been. If he’d given it a moment’s thought, he would have realised that sitting at home with only the dog for company while she waited to see if she was pregnant wouldn’t be enough for her. She was too bright, far too bright and full of imagination and life and restless invention.

In the past two years since she’d given up work and settled down to wait for the baby that hadn’t come, she’d redone the house from end to end, got Midas from a rescue centre and turned him from a cowering, gangly pup into a bright and confident dog who was her devoted companion, and sorted out the grounds of the house with the help of an army of skilled gardeners and landscapers.

That accomplished, he must have been crazy to imagine she would then settle down to wait for maternity to catch up with her.

Not Laurie. Of course she’d needed something to do.

But to do it in secret, without sharing it with him—that rankled. Hurt, in fact, he thought in surprise. He wondered when things had started to go wrong, and realised with shock that he hadn’t even noticed that they had until now, when he’d thought about it and remembered what it used to be like between them.

Things had gone wrong, though, or she wouldn’t be here now, hundreds of miles from home, making him tea before she threw him out on his ear. Well, tough. He wasn’t going, not till this was sorted out, and it looked like the weather was playing right into his hands.

A quick glance at the window showed that night had fallen while they’d been talking, the clouds so thick and full they’d snuffed out the last of the daylight.

He stood up and swished the little curtains shut at the single window, blocking out the view of the snowflakes that were starting to whirl against the glass. In an hour, with any luck, it would be falling too thick and fast to allow him to venture out, so he’d have to stay.

They might be snowed in for days …

He felt his body stir. He’d missed her. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d seen her last, and a little making up would be fun. Hiding a smile of satisfaction, he settled back in the chair, picked up the mug of tea she pushed towards him and prepared to wait her out.

It infuriated her when he did that.

Sat there, with his tea propped on his belt buckle, a patient look on his face, and said nothing.

She hated silence. She always had, and he knew it. Of all the things he did that got her mad, this was the worst.

She promised herself she wouldn’t rise, not this time. Picking up her own tea, she changed the subject from her to him. ‘How was New York?’ she asked, as if they were sitting in their own kitchen and she hadn’t just walked out on him and moved to the other end of the British Isles.

He didn’t twitch an eyebrow, to his credit, but then he was a very successful businessman and used to hiding his reactions.

‘Cold, dull. I missed you.’

If only that were true, she thought sadly, remembering the times he’d gone away at first and how glad she’d been to have him back—how eagerly she’d welcomed him.

But recently …

‘How’s Mike?’ she asked, enquiring after the New York partner who handled most of the North American business, and refusing to rise to the bait.

‘All right. He asked how you were.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

He smiled, a slight hitch of one side of his mouth, not really a smile so much as a grimace. ‘I told him you were fine,’ he said softly.

She looked away. She couldn’t face down those piercing, all-seeing eyes. He was too good at boardroom games. She should know. She’d played them with him only a few years ago, before she’d ‘retired’ from active involvement in his business ventures and settled back to wait for the baby.

She sighed and sipped her tea, wishing he would go away and knowing full well he wouldn’t, not at least without a promise from her to come home—a promise she couldn’t make. ‘When did you get back?’ she asked, wondering about his jet lag and if he’d had any sleep.

‘Yesterday afternoon. I was home just after four.’ The unspoken reproach hung in the air and irritated her into retaliation.

‘I didn’t know you were coming back yesterday.’

‘No, of course not,’ he said, and then continued with mild reproach. ‘Not that you were there to take my call—’

‘I don’t have to be there twenty-four hours a day,’ she reminded him sharply, and his eyebrow quirked up in response.

‘Of course you don’t,’ he said soothingly. ‘But you know my mobile number, and I do think that you could perhaps have done more than leave a note before you walked out on our relationship.’

There was no attempt now to hide the reproach, his voice hardening and showing, for the first time, his true feelings. Good. She could deal with that. She couldn’t deal with the bland, expressionless board-room persona he’d been conveying for the past few minutes. And if he was angry, then maybe he cared, and maybe, just maybe, there was hope for them.

‘I didn’t walk out on our relationship, I just wanted a little space,’ she reminded him.

‘I would have given you space if you’d asked for it. You could have said so. You know you only have to ask for anything.’

‘Maybe I didn’t want to ask. Maybe I’m sick of asking for everything.’

‘Sick of sharing?’

‘We don’t share,’ she told him flatly. ‘We hardly share anything any more. I’m amazed you noticed I wasn’t there—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course I noticed.’

‘Yes, you would have had to pour your own drink, make your own supper. Poor little lamb.’

He growled under his breath, and she buried her nose in her mug and ignored him.

‘You could have said something, discussed it with me,’ he went on, hammering home the point.

‘And have you brush it aside? Or trivialise it? Patronise me with another of your “you don’t want to do that” lectures? I didn’t want that, Rob. I wanted to think—to have time to work out in my own mind just how I feel about us, before it’s too late.’

Too late?’

‘Yes, too late. Before we become locked together irretrievably into parenthood. I want to be sure I want your baby before I conceive, and at the moment I’m not sure—not sure at all, about any of it.’

‘I take it you’re not pregnant, then, again,’ he said cautiously, putting her hackles up.

‘No, I’m not damn well pregnant. I don’t get pregnant, remember, so all this might be academic anyway—’

‘And the business?’ he said smoothly, moving on without drawing breath. ‘How long have you been running that? A year? Eighteen months?’

‘Nearly a year.’

‘A year. You’ve been running it for a year—successfully, by all indications—and yet you didn’t think to mention it.’

She had. Over and over again, she’d nearly told him, but it had never seemed like the right time.