Their Baby Surprise

He gave an impatient sigh, called to his driver, who was waiting by the open rear door of a black saloon, to start the engine, and then shifted his attention back to her, ‘Tu plaisantes? You’re kidding? Isn’t that an overreaction to my interview? I wouldn’t have been so easy on the minister if I hadn’t been in such a rush for my flight. I know you legal heads are born pedantic worriers but you really need to relax a little.’

‘This has nothing to do with the interview.’

Realisation dimmed his brilliant eyes to suspicious wariness. He walked to the car door and held it open, silently but grudgingly gesturing for her to get in.

His driver pulled out onto Regent Street and headed south to Oxford Circus. The stores on the iconic shopping street were still closed but the pavements were bustling with early morning commuters, coffees in hand, earphone leads dangling, heading to work. There was a buzz in the air; only now in late April were they having the first true warm days of spring.

He twisted to face her, drumming his phone on his knee like an insect at night tap-tap-tapping against a window pane desperate to reach the light inside. ‘I take it that you’re resigning because of our night together.’

She tried to stay impassive. She had been through worse. And survived. But having to share the most wonderful but scary news of her life with a man she barely knew had her rehearsed words stick in her throat and she only managed to eke out a pathetic, ‘Yes.’

‘I thought we had both agreed to put it behind us.’

Oh, God. There was no easy way to say this.

Get it over and done with. Then you can move on with your life.

A fresh bout of nausea joined her pounding heart.

The car was suddenly way too hot.

The panicked, terrified void that had almost consumed her in her doctor’s consulting room reared up again. How would she cope? She couldn’t possibly raise a child on her own. She knew nothing about child-rearing, being a parent.

And what if her depression returned? What would she do then? But it wouldn’t. She was strong now.

And then there were all those selfish thoughts that had eaten her up with guilt: what of her aspirations to become head of Legal, to move into a larger apartment in London, to travel?

She gulped in some air and forced herself to look into those green heartbreaker eyes. ‘I’m pregnant.’

He jerked away.

Behind him, they swept past Trafalgar Square.

Brow furrowed, he stared at her. ‘Because of that night?’

‘Yes! Of course it was that night. I wouldn’t be here telling you if I had any doubt about that. I’m eight weeks pregnant—it has to be you.’

Lucien was once again tapping his phone against his knee, the silver case banging against the charcoal wool of his trousers. She had wrapped her legs around his that night, felt the hard muscle of his thighs. A night of insanity that had knocked her life completely off course.

Lucien shook his head. ‘We used protection.’

She fiddled with the window switch on the door and lowered her window, needing relief from the heat rising in her. Not able to meet his eye, she muttered, ‘Not in the garden...’ She trailed off and looked at him, praying he didn’t need further explanation.

He winced and looked away.

Lucien had held a reception in his Mayfair home for all of his HQ senior management on the night of his first AGM. Lucien’s takeover of Huet had heralded a bonanza for the hairdressers and fashion stores in the vicinity of Huet HQ as the entire female workforce fell for his rugged looks and alpha charisma. But Charlotte knew a player when she saw one. And she refused to join his fan club. Having her heart broken once in a lifetime was once too often for her liking. No man would ever get the opportunity to do so again. In fact she went out of her way to ignore him whenever she saw him at work.

But a week before the party she had to meet with him to discuss issues on a bid contract. And, despite herself, his astute charm and lightning intelligence had threatened to melt her cynicism. At the end of the meeting, dizzy from the effect of being so close to him, she had almost tripped over a low coffee table as she had struggled to leave his office. While he had worn an amused lethal grin.

Brief glances were all they had shared the night of the reception. He had shown no interest in talking to her, and as the party had broken up she had gone out into the garden to find her phone that she’d left there, relieved to get away from her pretence that she was oblivious to him, but also a little miffed that he had spoken to practically everyone else except her. About to go back inside, she had felt her heart somersault when he had walked down the cobbled garden path towards her, his large frame even bigger as his shadow had moved towards her and engulfed her. She had offered a polite thanks and said she should leave with everyone else. But he’d told her that they were alone. Everyone else had already left.

He had smiled down at her. A kind, easy smile. A Well, what will we do now? type of smile. And she had foolishly stepped towards him, all thought and caution abandoned to that wonderful, what seemed sincere, glistening green gaze.

She had reached out her hand towards his open suit jacket with an unbearable urge to touch the dark grey material, to make contact with him.

And he had stepped towards her. Run his fingertips along her cheek.

And the next thing she’d known, his mouth had been on hers, hot, seeking, exploring.

In an instant her body had been aflame. His fingertips, his mouth, his scent, his hard, hard, hard body making her lose every inhibition, every memory, every protective layer she had grown over her heart and soul in the past six years.

Frenzied, they had unbuttoned and unzipped without thought, driven by a desperate hunger for one another. But when he had claimed her against that cold garden wall, she had stilled and her heart had gone into free fall. All of those memories of her ex’s betrayal, of how lonely and ugly and beaten she had felt during her depression, had gushed back and threatened to drown her. Lucien had gently drawn away and watched her with a soul-destroying questioning, as though wanting to understand. Only after did it dawn on her that this was a key skill of any Lothario. The pretence to care.

But that night he had brought her to his bedroom and, her body weak with longing though her heart had been afraid, she had willingly gone. And he had made love to her, slowly and tenderly. And after she had cried in his bathroom when she’d realised how empty her life was...and how stupid, stupid, stupid she was to have slept with her womanising boss.

Now, as he faced the consequences of that night, he ran a hand across the deep frown lines of his forehead and muttered, ‘Zut!’

Unexpected sadness pulled hard in her chest. A baby should bring joy, not this shock. What was he even thinking?

Did he hate her for this?

Bitterly regret the fire that had raged between them in the garden and the seconds when they had become one and senselessly forgot all thoughts as to the need to use protection?

Regret the baby growing inside her?

A fierce protectiveness surged through her.

Dismayed at how her hands were trembling, she pulled her notebook from her handbag and opened it to the pages where she had bullet-pointed her action plan. Needing the comfort of seeing in black and white her strategy for coping with this shocking but incredible turn in her life. ‘My doctor confirmed two days ago that I’m almost eight weeks pregnant. My apartment here in London is too small to raise a baby so I’ve decided I’ll move to the countryside, close to where my parents live. I will get work locally.’

He waved off her words with an impatient flick of his hand.

For five, ten, twenty seconds he stared at her intently, his gaze burning a hole in her heart.

He leaned a little closer, his shoulders tense, his eyes scanning her features like an interrogator searching for tell-tale body-language slips in a crime suspect. ‘Are you certain that I’m the father?’

The lawyer in her knew that it was a reasonable question. But the woman in her, the mother-to-be, the idealist who believed in truth, fairness and honour, felt his question like a slap. She felt her throat constrict, a heaviness invade her sinuses, a burning sensation in her eyes. She was not going to cry. She was strong. A fighter. She sucked in some air. He was the serial dater, not her.

‘I haven’t slept with another man in a very long time. What happened between us was not typical for me,’ she said fiercely.

She paused and cringed at having given him too much information and wondered why she felt she had to justify herself to him. Annoyed that she was doing so, she pulled in a steadying breath. ‘I want nothing from you. I don’t need financial support and I know a baby will not fit into your lifestyle. I want to give my child security and stability, a happy childhood. I’ve told you that you will be a father because you have the right to know but I don’t want or need you in our lives.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u84aa8ffb-41d6-5985-9a72-1828201ef2b5)

‘I DON’T WANT or need you in our lives.’

Charlotte’s words smashed into him.

His car, now opposite the entrance to the darkly historic Tower of London, was snarled up in a herd of London double-decker red buses and he had to rein in the desire to leap from the car and run. To run off the adrenaline twitching in his muscles, drying out his mouth, spinning his heart in crazy arcs.