The Christmas Baby's Gift

‘Nothing’s wrong. She’s just a little tired, that’s all.’

‘Tired?’ Joshua’s response was a blatant snort of disbelief and disapproval. ‘Tired!’

The old man’s watery blue eyes looked sceptical and the glance he turned in Peta’s direction was frankly disapproving.

‘Tired! At her age! Young people these days have no stamina! Why, when I was—’

Abruptly he came to a halt and Liam groaned inwardly as he saw the disapproval fade and a newly speculative expression take its place.

‘Unless, of course… Do you have something to tell me?’

Ruthlessly Liam squashed down the angry retort that rose to his lips. Telling his grandfather that it was none of his business was not the way to handle this, even if it was the reply he most wanted to give. Joshua’s obsession with the Hewland line, the inheritance of the great house and the acres of land that went with it, was positively feudal. It was something that Liam normally respected, something he partly shared, but right now it touched on a very uncomfortable spot indeed and was not something he wanted to talk about, particularly not in such a public place.

‘When and if we do have “something to tell you”,’ he declared stiffly, ‘we’ll tell you in our own good time and not before.’

His grandfather wasn’t pleased. The way the thin old mouth clamped into a tight, hard line made that only too clear. That and the way his bristling white brows drew together in a disapproving frown.

‘Well, don’t mess about with this, lad!’ he ordered brusquely. ‘I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have many years to waste waiting for you to provide me with an heir.’

‘Don’t you mean a legitimate heir?’ Liam snapped back, anger flaring almost out of control.

It had been impossible to come to terms with the way that his grandfather had never fully accepted him, and when the old man harped on about having an heir to Hewland Hall it simply drummed home the way that Joshua was prepared to dismiss the fact that he had once had a daughter. Liam’s mother. But Anna Hewland had offended her father’s old-fashioned principles by having a baby and not even staying with, never mind marrying, the father.

‘At least this child will be born into a legal marriage,’ Joshua returned coldly. ‘Though of course that wouldn’t matter if only your mother had had a child by the man who had the decency to put a ring on her finger.’

‘But she didn’t,’ Liam growled. ‘And so you’re stuck with me.’

As his stepfather had been, he reflected bitterly, recalling just how plain his mother’s husband had made it that he resented having to support Anna’s bastard child while she’d given him none of his own. Nigel Hastings had made his stepson’s life a misery from the moment he had married Liam’s mother, doting openly on the son and daughter he had brought with him from his first marriage and making sure that Anna’s child had felt very much lower than second-best.

‘Believe me, Grandfather, I want a child from this marriage every bit as much as you do.’

More, perhaps. As a lonely, unwanted adolescent he had escaped into dreams of his own home, his own family, a baby that was truly his. When his turn came to be a parent, he had vowed to himself, he would be the best father he could possibly be, erasing all the emptiness of the past in the warmth of his relationship with his child.

‘I want to hold my great-grandchild in my arms before I die,’ the old man stated flatly. ‘What’s so wrong with that? What’re you doing, lad? Firing blanks?’

Hell!

It was meant to be below the belt, he knew that. But the fact that it hit home with more cruelty than Joshua had been aiming for was solely down to the thoughts that had been running through Liam’s head for weeks. The private fears that had nagged at him in his lowest moments.

Clamping his mouth tight shut, he bit back the savage retort that almost escaped him, concentrating fiercely on pouring himself and Peta a glass of wine and adding them to the tray on which he had already placed the plates of food.

‘I’m working on it,’ he growled furiously when he felt able to speak without exploding. ‘Believe me, if I have anything to do with it you’ll have that great-grandchild of yours by this time next year.’

He’d almost given himself away there, he thought cynically, cursing the display of temper that had somehow escaped even his ruthless control. It had alerted his grandfather’s suspicions. He could almost feel the old man’s gaze burning between his shoulders as he made his way across the room to where Peta sat.

She did look rather washed out, he thought. Unusually pale, and, now that he studied her more closely, there were faint shadows under the beautiful eyes. Shadows that the skilful application of make-up hadn’t quite concealed.

Under the elegant jacket and shirt his heart gave a sudden jolt, thudding against his ribs as a sudden suspicion slid into his head. Was it possible…?

‘What did your grandfather want?’ was her first question, as he had known it must be. But at least this time he was prepared. He’d been imagining things earlier, he told himself privately. There couldn’t be anything wrong. He didn’t feel as if there was anything wrong. And, if he’d read the signs right, then maybe Peta had news for him that would put all his concerns aside once and for all.

‘Oh, just to congratulate us.’

He had himself almost back under control now. His tone was as even as he wanted, the smile he directed into her eyes apparently easy and without a care. He’d guessed her secret, he told himself. All he had to do was to give her the opportunity to tell him.

‘Congratulate?’

Peta had reached for her glass of wine but now she paused with it lifted just partway from the tray.

Congratulate? Just the thought sent tremors of shock running through her. Had Liam said something that had made his grandfather think his dearest wish was coming true?

‘On our anniversary, of course.’ He said it lightly enough, but suddenly there was a new note in his voice, one that hadn’t been there before—and one that she couldn’t begin to interpret properly.

‘He didn’t look congratulatory—if anything he looked annoyed. Liam?’ she tried again when he didn’t answer her, instead reaching for a bread roll and breaking it open roughly. ‘Was he angry about something?’

Somewhere she’d overstepped some invisible line, crossed a boundary that she didn’t even know existed. Liam didn’t say a word but a sudden stiffening of his long body, the way the strong fingers tightened, a disturbing change in his eyes, all communicated silently the fact that he didn’t want to answer the question.

Which of course only made her all the more anxious for him to do so.

‘What did he say?’

For the space of a couple of uneven heartbeats she thought that he wasn’t going to respond, and all the nerves in her body stretched taut in tension at the fear of just what he wanted to hide from her. But then suddenly Liam shrugged dismissively and lifted his clouded green gaze to her face.

‘Not angry,’ he said carelessly, dropping the mutilated roll and reaching for his own glass in turn. ‘It was more that he was disappointed that Steph and Tony beat us to it in the baby stakes.’

‘Ohh!’

Hastily Peta put down the glass that she had lifted to her lips; suddenly knowing that she couldn’t drink from it. Not now. Liam’s words had made her throat close over abruptly. There was no way she could swallow anything without choking desperately.

‘It means that much to him!’

‘I told you he wants an heir for this place. But you knew that when you agreed to marry me.’

And it had all seemed so much easier then. So much less complicated. But she hadn’t been thinking straight.

She hadn’t been thinking at all.

They had both known from the start that her parents and Liam’s grandfather had been matchmaking with a vengeance when they had arranged for the two of them to meet. Peta had been away in America for five years, working in Seattle, and before that she had been at university, only coming home in the holidays. So she had only seen Liam once or twice, and then perhaps for a brief moment or two. The boy, and then the adolescent she had known vaguely, had grown into a dark and devastating man. One she had been instantly drawn to and one who, if it hadn’t been for her parents’ interference and manipulation, she would have been glad to get to know better.

‘It was why he and your parents introduced us in the first place.’

Liam’s tone of voice, the expression in his eyes, told her clearly that he too was thinking of the way they had met, the part their elders had played in getting them together.

‘They weren’t exactly subtle about it, were they?’

She aimed for airy lightness and missed it by a mile. It still stunned her to reflect on the way that, meaning to deliberately sabotage the matchmaking plan and go their own free way, they had in fact fallen in with exactly what the Lassiters and old Mr Hewland had wanted, though in the end for their own private reasons.