Nine Month Countdown

For the first time, she really felt the beach sand beneath her toes. Felt the kiss of the ocean breeze.

She deserved a break, even if she didn’t have time for a holiday.

And really, what was the harm of letting her guard down with a gorgeous, charming stranger, just for a few minutes?

Then she’d go check her email, and then back to the wedding.

Simple.

TWO (#ulink_812859ac-931a-5deb-8708-edbf9ebfbe26)

Very calmly, Ivy snapped the clear lid over the end of the test, and took a long, deep soothing breath.

She was sitting on the closed lid of a toilet. A very nice toilet in a very expensive Perth skyscraper, but a toilet, none the less. A public toilet.

This had been a very stupid idea.

Buying the test itself had seemed the rational thing to do this morning. Her driver, Simon, hadn’t suspected a thing when she’d asked him to stop at a pharmacy on the way to her ten a.m. meeting. And even if he had wondered why Ivy Molyneux was bothering to run into a pharmacy for whatever lady thing he thought she needed—rather than asking one of her assistants—it wasn’t as if he’d ask her.

Yet she’d still fidgeted in the back seat of the car as they’d driven away, as if Simon had X-ray vision and could see through the layers of her handbag and pharmacy paper bag should he glance in his rear-view mirror.

The plan had been to wait until she was home this evening. Safely alone in the privacy of her home in Peppermint Grove, where she could pee on a stick and irrationally stress and worry alone for the two minutes she was supposed to wait because—come on, it was totally normal to be two days late, even if that had never, ever, ever happened before...

Of course someone else had just walked into the bathroom, and now she had to wait in this excruciating state as she listened to the other woman pee—because it now seemed beyond her to look down, to look down at the test that by now would display the result.

The reality.

All she had to do was look down and this would all be over.

This thing, this day, this moment that she had not expected at all. That night seemed a lifetime ago. April was already back from her honeymoon. Ivy’s work days had been as endless as ever and her weekends had been so blurred into her weeks that she’d barely noticed them. Life had gone on. She’d gone on, just as normal. That night—that totally out of character night—was long behind her. She hadn’t given it, or Angus, another thought.

Well, barely. Maybe, just maybe, when she’d been in that space between wake and sleep when her brain finally emptied of all things Molyneux Mining, maybe she’d let herself remember. Remember the way her skin had shivered when Angus had looked at her. The way her heart had zipped to a million beats a minute when he’d finally touched her. How she’d felt in his arms. How he’d felt beneath her fingertips.

How it had all felt. To do that. To do something so crazy, so uninhibited, so...

Reckless.

The toilet flushed beside her, then footsteps, and then the cubicle door closed. The basin had some silly sensor arrangement to turn on, and Ivy had to wait as the other woman tried to work it out, and then listen to her jump and giggle when the water finally gushed out.

Just go. Just go, just go, just go.

But also just stay. Stay, stay, stay for ever, so she never had to look down, never had to know.

But then she wasn’t into delaying things, was she? That was why she was here, in this public toilet, holding the test.

Because she couldn’t wait. Couldn’t even wait until her ten a.m. meeting was over. She’d excused herself mid meeting, and now she’d taken way, way too long.

The bathroom door clicked shut, and Ivy was finally alone amongst all this marble and the softest of background music.

And now she had to look down.

And now she couldn’t lie to herself that she was just being silly, and that there was nothing to worry about, and that she was on the pill and even if she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t forgotten a pill amongst all the time zones and delays on the way to April’s wedding that surely the odds were still in her favour. Because people tried to do this for years and it didn’t work. People who were trying, people who wanted this, people...

Two pink lines.

She’d looked down only to confirm what she already knew. What she’d known deep down for the past two-hundred-odd minutes since the absence of her period had suddenly dawned on her.

She was pregnant.

She was pregnant.

Ivy took a deep, audible breath, and willed the tears in her eyes to go still. Then she stuffed the test back into its box, back into its pharmacy paper bag and back into her handbag.

Then she went back to the meeting with her business face on and no one—she hoped liked hell—was the wiser.

No, only one person knew that Ivy Molyneux’s life had just completely fallen apart.

And unfortunately, that number would soon have to increase to two.

* * *

Angus’s feet pounded on the heavy rubber of the treadmill, his breaths coming slow and regular.

Sweat had long ago soaked his grey T-shirt black, and the muscles of his calves and thighs had given up protesting and now simply burned.

This was the bit he loved. This time after he’d conquered the arguments from both his brain and body and simply kept on going.

He’d been like this since his late teens, since the sudden death of his father. He’d gone for his first run immediately after his mum had told him the terrible news—an impossibly long run fuelled by intense, raging grief. And that run had triggered a near addiction that had him craving the adrenalin rush of exercise, craving the burn, and craving the pain.

He had no issue admitting that one of the reasons he’d joined the army was so he could be paid to reach this high. On some days he couldn’t believe his luck that he earned his living effectively living out many a childhood fantasy—the helicopters, the firearms, the boats, the tactical training...

Angus shook his head as he ran, shifting his focus back to his body.

Running on a treadmill was not his preference. Here in the gym at the barracks, he’d much rather be lifting weights, or, even better, completing a punishing PT session with the rest of his squadron.

But when it came down to it, the method was irrelevant. Winning the battle over his body was what mattered. Especially now, especially while injured.

Technically he was on medical leave, but clearly losing physical condition wasn’t an option in his job. He’d been down at the barracks daily, excluding that weekend in Bali. Even there he’d made locating the hotel gym a priority.

Except the morning after the wedding. That morning he’d slept in.

Despite the sweat and the screaming of his muscles, Angus grinned.

Ivy must have worn him out.

He reached out to slow the speed on the treadmill, reducing his pace from near sprint down to a brisk walk as he cooled down.

It wasn’t the first time the beautiful billionaire had popped into his head. It surprised him. There had been no question as to what that night had been. Neither he nor Ivy wanted anything beyond those few...admittedly incredible...hours on that beach.