The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

He still held. He was cradling her like a child but this was no child. She’d slumped against him but the slump had turned to something more. Her face was buried in his shoulder but the rest of her... She was moulded to him. Her breasts were pressed to his chest. His face was in her hair.

‘I can’t...’ It was a ragged whisper.

‘I have it in hand,’ he told her, and before she could make any objections he swung her into his arms and strode with her into his bedroom.

The woman needed tissues. There were tissues in his bedroom and that’s where he was headed.

* * *

One minute she was cradled against Ben Logan, sobbing her heart out, releasing months of pent-up emotion and who knew what else besides. The next she was in his arms, being carried into his bedroom.

She should make some sort of protest, but who was protesting? She was making no protest at all.

They’d made love before as complete strangers. They weren’t strangers now. Or maybe they were, she thought, dazed. How did she know this man?

She did.

He lived in a different world from her, a world he pretty much owned.

She felt she knew him inside out.

To the world this man was a hero, a rich, smart, controlling wheeler and dealer in the world’s finances. But she’d seen what lay beneath. She’d seen the core that was pure need.

Who was she kidding? The need was entirely hers and she couldn’t resist it for a minute.

She was catching her breath, finding control of a sort. The dumb weeping had stopped so when Ben set her on the bathroom bench and handed her a wad of tissues she could do something about it.

She blew her nose, hard, and Ben blinked.

‘There’s my romantic girl.’

She choked on something between a chuckle and a sob, but it was erring more towards the chuckle.

Something was happening inside her. She was in this man’s bathroom. He was looking at her with such concern...

‘Your face is puffy.’

‘And there’s a truly romantic statement,’ she managed. ‘I bet you say that to all the women in your life.’

‘There are no women in my life.’ He picked up a facecloth, wet it and gently wiped her eyes. Then her whole face. ‘Just the mother of my child.’

What was it about that statement that took her breath away? That made her toes curl?

That made her drop her tissues into the neat designer trash slot and look up at him and smile.

‘Ben...’

It was all she had to say. All the longing in the world was in that word. It was a question and an answer all by itself.

She put her arms up and looped her hands around his neck. He stopped and lifted her yet again.

‘Your place or mine?’ he asked huskily, managing to smile.

‘I’ve only got a king-size bed,’ she managed back. ‘Puny. I bet yours is bigger.’

‘You’d better believe it,’ he said, and she did.

And that was practically the last thing she was capable of thinking for a very long time.

* * *

She woke and the morning sun was streaming over the luxurious white coverlet. She woke and the softness of the duvet enfolded her.

She woke and Ben was gone.

For a moment she refused to let herself think it. She lay and savoured the warmth, the feeling of sheer, unmitigated luxury, the knowledge that she’d been made love to with a passion that maybe she’d never feel again.

He’d made her feel alive. He’d made her feel a woman as she’d never believed she could feel.

He’d made her feel loved.

But he wasn’t here now.

She’d slept, at last, cocooned in the strength and heat of his body. She’d slept thinking everything was right in her world. What could possibly be wrong?

She’d slept thinking she was being held by Ben and he’d never let her go.

She stirred, tentatively, like a caterpillar nervous of emerging from the safety of its dreamlike cocoon.

The clock on her bedside table said twelve.

Twelve? She’d slept how long? No wonder Ben had left her.

He’d left her.

Hey, she was still in his bed. Possession’s nine tenths of the law, she decided, and stretched like a languorous cat.

Cat, caterpillar, whatever. She surely wasn’t herself.

There was a note on his pillow.

A Dear John letter? She almost smiled. She was playing make-believe in her head. Scenario after scenario. All of them included Ben.

The note, however, was straightforward. Not a lot of room for fantasy here.

I need to go into work. I left loose ends yesterday and they’re getting strident. Sleep as long as you want. It’s Saturday, no cleaners come near the place so you have the apartment to yourself. I’ll be home late but tomorrow is yours. Think of what you’d like to do with it.

Ben.