Be My Baby: Her Parenthood Assignment / Three Weddings and a Baby

She’d be right, of course, if she did tell him he was being unfair. Maybe that was why he wanted to hear it from her. Perhaps it would help stop the rollercoaster his emotions were riding on at the moment. Heaven knew he was powerless to do it himself.

But that wasn’t it, and he knew it. He wanted to see her skin flush and her eyes flash, just as they were doing now.

‘Too gutless?’

‘That’s right. You’re too scared to tell people what you really think, in case they don’t like you any more. Well, get over it!’ He knew he was pushing her too far, but he couldn’t stop himself.

‘You want to know what I really think?’

‘Yes, I do.’

She faltered when he said that, as if she hadn’t actually expected anyone to be interested in what she had to say. But he could see she was revving up to it, and the adrenaline surge that hit him made him feel triumphant at the prospect.

‘Okay, okay. Just give me a second.’ She was all jittery, hardly able to keep still. She plunged her hands into her jeans pockets, pulled them out again and smoothed down her hair. He almost laughed at the gesture. Even when she was about to yell, she couldn’t help making some part of herself more presentable.

‘I think…I think you’re too hard on Heather!’ The words fell out in a jumble. He wasn’t sure whether he thought she looked surprised or relieved she’d got the sentence out.

‘Too hard?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

She shoved her hands back in her pockets.

‘Come on, Gaby, don’t lose it now! Don’t water it down and make it nice. Just let the words come out the way they want to.’

He saw fire glint in her eyes and his stomach rolled. He’d better be ready for what he was prodding her into unleashing.

‘You are a control freak, Luke Armstrong! If you can’t get your own way, you have a tantrum. And you wonder where Heather gets it from!’ She wasn’t shouting, or at least not speaking at shouting volume, but her words carried the same vehemence as if she were shrieking at the top of her lungs.

‘I think you bully her. I think you push and push to make her match the idea of the perfect daughter you have in your head. But it’s stifling her, Luke! Suffocating her. One day you’ll open your eyes and realise you’ve snuffed out the wonderful spark inside her, and she’ll never forgive you for it. You’ll never forgive yourself, either. So if you want that for her, just keep going the way you are, but don’t expect me to hang around and watch you do it!’

All the time she’d been speaking her eyes hadn’t left him. She’d fixed him with an intense, burning stare and he was unable to look away. She broke eye contact and looked at the ceiling.

‘You need to give her space to be herself, Luke. To love her, you need to let her be free.’

Her eyes returned to him as she spoke the last phrase. She wasn’t quite so heated now and her breathing was fast and shallow. Somewhere along the line they’d stopped talking about just Heather.

Adrenaline from the row was still crashing through his system. In the silence, he could hear it inside his head, throbbing in his ears. And all he could see were those chestnut eyes, waiting for him to respond. But, instead of being shuttered, they glowed with a defiant light.

She looked incredible. Lit up from the inside. In fact, she looked so alive that the only possible response was to close the distance between them, cup her face in his hands and kiss her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HIS lips met hers and she reeled with shock. One moment she’d been ready to punch his lights out, now her hands were moving from where they’d been dangling at her sides to smooth over the muscles of his shoulders. She shouldn’t be hanging on to him like this! She ought to be slapping his face.

And she probably would have done, if the kiss had been different. In the split second before he’d kissed her, she’d thought it was going to be as forceful as his journey across the room, but she was wrong.

His lips were soft and tender and working a crazy kind of magic inside her. His hands moved from her face to cradle the back of her neck and run through her hair. Any self-respecting female would melt at this point—and she didn’t think she was far from it. There was already a worrying tingling in the tips of her toes.

She didn’t have any choice in the matter. She had to kiss him back. And as she did, everything seemed to spiral in slow motion. She clasped her fingers behind his neck and relaxed into the kiss.

Oh, wow!

The pins and needles that had started in her toes, now prickled behind her knees. You couldn’t lose consciousness from a kiss, could you? Luke’s mouth moved from her mouth to her neck and she decided it was entirely possible.

They were perfectly in tune with each other and, for once in her life, everything seemed to be a perfect fit. Being here in Luke’s arms felt so natural, so right. She forgot all the reasons why this was sheer madness and lost herself in the moment.

The sound of a door banging upstairs made them spring apart like a pair of guilty fourteen-year-olds caught behind the bike sheds. They stared at each other, eyes like saucers. If it were any consolation, he looked twice as shocked as she felt.

‘Heather,’ she managed to croak.

His tore his eyes from her and focused on the door. ‘Yes. Heather. Right. I’d better go and—’

‘Yes, you’d better.’

And then he was gone. Gaby slumped into the nearest chair and put trembling fingers to her lips. They pulsed as if he were still kissing her.

Luke paused on the landing to muster his scattered emotions. Had he lost his mind? A quick look at the haggard face in the mirror at the top of the stairs told him he wasn’t far off.

He’d kissed Gaby. The nanny!

Except she was more than that. Only he didn’t know what. He only knew she got inside his skin and he didn’t know why. But he didn’t have time to ponder that right now; he had a daughter to sort out. Her sobs were audible though her closed bedroom door.

What had he done?

He knocked lightly on the door. ‘Heather?’ Some unintelligible wailing was his reply. He pushed the door open gently and stepped inside. She was curled up on the bed, her back to him, hugging her cuddly rabbit.

‘Heather, sweetheart? I’m so sorry.’

She lifted her head to look at him with surprise. And no wonder. Usually, after he’d yelled at her for no good reason, he just brushed it away and never talked about it again. All this time he’d never once apologised. Somehow it had seemed like it was admitting failure and weakness, and that wasn’t what she needed from him. How could he have got it so wrong?

‘I really am sorry, darling. Will you forgive me?’

Now she sat up and looked at him. ‘Me? Forgive you?’

‘Yes. Dads make mistakes sometimes too, you know. And I think I’ve been making far too many since we’ve been living together again.’

Heather sniffed and he offered her a tissue from the box on the dressing table.

‘I wish I could start it all again, go back a few months and be a different kind of dad. A better one, anyway. I know it’s difficult to understand, but being away…in prison…made it hard for me to be anything but angry—at everyone and everything, not just you. And I wish I hadn’t, Heather.’ His voice began to wobble. ‘I love you so much. And I’m so sorry.’

Heather reached out and touched the place where a tear was trailing down his left cheek. She followed it with her finger, clearly astonished at the sight of it. And then her face crumpled and her own tears came hot and fast. He pulled her into his arms and she clung on to him. They stayed there, rocking almost imperceptibly, for what seemed an age.

When finally it didn’t seem like an impossible task to loosen his arms, he pulled away from her and looked into her eyes. She was still confused, but the rage was no longer there.

‘I meant it, sweetheart. I want to try and do things differently from now on. I can’t promise I’m going to get it right all the time, but I’m going to try my hardest. You’re all I’ve got and I don’t want to lose you.’