Their Baby Surprise

He was going to be a father.

Something he’d never wanted to be.

Never wanting the responsibility, the fear of failing his child, never wanting to mess up, never wanting to have to face the fact that he was no better than his own father.

And he had always believed that a child deserved to be brought up in a loving environment with committed, responsible parents. Everything he didn’t have.

But a failed, tempestuous, torturous marriage when he was in his late teens had proved to him that he was totally incapable of any such commitment.

And now, before he could even start to process it all, to make sense of this turn in his life, Charlotte was trying to snatch it away.

Those sea-green eyes steadily held his stare when he looked back at her, the only hint of her nervousness in how she fingered the cream lined pages of her notebook.

He leaned a little closer to her. She backed away, her hand rising to touch against the edge of her delicate jawline.

Pain radiated in his own jawline, moving up through his clamped teeth and into his cheekbones. The scar above his ear throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. ‘As you’re pregnant, I’m going to ask you nicely to explain exactly what you mean when you say you don’t want me in your lives.’

She recoiled a little at first but then sat more upright in her seat, both hands running over the material of her black skirt. She settled challenging eyes on him. ‘You don’t want to be a father, not with your lifestyle and commitments... Let’s not get into an argument about this.’

‘Are you saying that I wouldn’t be a good father?’

Her head snapped back at his growl. Crossing one long leg over the other, she held her hands in a tight bunch on her lap. ‘Oh, come on, you’re constantly travelling, your social life keeps at least three celebrity magazines in business. Are you seriously telling me that you have time to fit being a father into that schedule? That you even want to be a father?’

Irritation tightened his chest. She might be right in everything she said, but a sense of being cheated out of something he hadn’t even begun to understand had him ask quietly, ‘And you think you have the right to make that decision for me?’

She grabbed her black leather handbag off the floor of the car and sat it on her lap. She lobbed her notebook into it and hugged the hard lines of the small rectangular bag to her stomach. ‘When it comes to protecting my baby, yes.’

He inhaled a deep breath. ‘Are you seriously saying that you have to protect this child from me?’

‘Well, you’re hardly “father of the year” material, are you? I don’t believe for one minute that you really want the responsibility of a child.’

She had to be kidding.

‘I’m a CEO of a company with a thirty-billion turnover, for crying out loud. Responsible should be my middle name.’

She gave him a satisfied look, the look of a prosecutor knowing they had caught the defendant out. ‘Tell me, just how many companies have you acquired in the past ten years?’

He folded his arms. ‘Sixteen.’

‘And how many countries have you lived in?’

‘What are you getting at, Charlotte?’

‘The way you constantly move around the globe is hardly the sign of a man able to give stability and commitment to a child, is it?’

This conversation had gone too far. He leaned closer to her and growled, ‘Let me get this straight. You want me out of your lives but yet are expecting me to blindly trust you in raising my baby?’

The words my baby leapt from his mouth unconsciously.

Charlotte looked at him aghast. ‘I’ll give my baby security, routine. I’ll be the best mother that I can be.’

Beneath her defiant tone, there was a nervousness she didn’t quite manage to disguise. Was she as confident about being a parent as she was trying to portray? ‘Did you want this—to be pregnant? To be a mother?’

She lifted one of the gold chain handles of her bag, the only hint of flamboyance in her entire wardrobe, and twisted it around her index finger, the metal tightening as she twisted once, twice, three times. ‘Not until now.’

‘Why?’

She gave a shrug. ‘I was focused on my career.’

Dieu! This was such a mess. A thought tugged in his heart and leaked out into his chest: this baby deserved better than this. He needed to start focusing on the practicalities, understanding just where they stood. ‘Are you seeing anyone else?’

She eyed him warily. ‘Why are you asking?’

He fisted his hands, a stab of jealousy sideswiping him at the possibility that she was dating someone. ‘I want to understand who will support you.’

She unravelled the chain from her finger, in one fast, furious movement. ‘You’re the father. There’s no one else in my life.’ She paused and vigorously rubbed the red welts the chain had left. ‘I know you might find all of that hard to believe given your social life, but it’s the truth.’

He itched with the desire to reach for her finger and soothe her skin himself. That night she had touched him lightly, tenderly, almost reverentially with those delicate hands. That feather-light touch just one of the many inexcusable reasons why he had broken his own ethical code that he never dated employees, never mind slept with them. Exasperated at his own weakness and lack of honour that night, he said sharply, ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the media.’

She rose a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘I saw a picture of you with Annabelle Foster online over the weekend.’

Yes, Annabelle Foster, a TV news reporter, had accompanied him to a Homelessness charity ball, but they had left early, his driver dropping Annabelle directly home. Alone.

Since his night with Charlotte he had dated a few women, but he had ended each date early, a restlessness making his bones itch as he had tried but failed to focus on his date across the restaurant table from him, images of Charlotte’s vulnerable, tender, passionate gaze when they had made love in his bed leaving him with no appetite. For anything.

‘It’s tiresome to attend functions on my own. I enjoy having company, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything more serious than a night out.’

She considered his answer with a suspicious frown but then, with an it doesn’t matter anyway shrug, swung her bag back to the floor. She gave him the faintest whisper of an understanding sigh. ‘I know this must have come as a shock to you. It did to me. But I want this baby... I want to give him or her the same happy childhood I had, with lots of love, laughter, happiness, certainty.’

All of the things he hadn’t had as a child. Instead he’d had arguments and accusations and animosity.

The worst being the night he’d woken to hear his mother sob downstairs that she hated her life, hated being married to his father, hated being tied down with a child with no way out.

His father had lashed back demanding to know if she seriously thought he wanted any of this, a nightmare marriage, his dreams of university, of a better life, long abandoned as he was now straddled with a wife and child to support.

It was another four years before they divorced, five years until his mother eventually threw Lucien out for punching her new boyfriend. Her boyfriend had caught Lucien stealing his beer and had flung a beer can at him. Lucien, sick of the controlling bully who spent his days belittling his mother, had launched himself at him, long past caring about the consequences of anything he did in life. He had ended up with a permanent scar over his ear and living in a fleapit in Bordeaux at the age of seventeen. But at least there, there wasn’t the constant silent, frightening tension of waiting for another bitter argument to start.

History could not repeat itself. This baby was never to feel unwanted.

That thought hit him hard in his gut, in his heart.

‘So who will support you in raising the baby?’

Her arms folded tightly on her waist. ‘My parents will be nearby. I know they will adore being grandparents.’

Which was something...but a feeling of loss, of not being in control of how his life was changing, of needing to make sure he got this right had him warn, ‘Being a single parent won’t be easy.’

She closed the window beside her and gave a shrug. ‘I’ll manage.’