The Bachelor's Baby

That was all. Normality returned. Amy took baby Ben from his mother. The vicar ushered them towards the font and Jake thought he must have imagined the spark of something hot and sweet that had crossed the space between himself and Amy. An unspoken promise that said… Not now. Later.

As if she’d read his mind Amaryllis Jones lifted her lashes, flickered a sideways glance at him.

Her eyes weren’t blue. They were green and ocean-deep and he was suddenly out of his depth and floundering. It was an unfamiliar sensation and every instinct warned him that he should head for the door while he still could. But he was keeping a promise he’d made to stand as godfather to Mike and Willow’s first child and escape wasn’t an option.

Yet all through the service Jake was distracted by the scent of the flowers she carried. It wove a spell through his mind so that all through the tea that followed, and the champagne and the toasts to baby Ben’s health and happiness, he was intensely aware of her presence shimmering on the edge of his consciousness. Once the photographs had been taken, and escape was possible, they had circled the company, keeping the maximum distance between them as if by unspoken agreement, understanding that to be close was to risk instant conflagration.

But when he’d glanced in her direction he’d had the feeling that he’d just missed meeting her gaze. Maybe it was simply his imagination working overtime. Maybe. Yet without a word spoken, without a gesture or so much as a lift of a brow, they arrived at the door at the same time, ready to leave.

‘Hold on, Amy, it’s raining again,’ Mike said, as he walked them to the door. ‘You’ll get wet on your broomstick. I’ll run you home.’

‘Broomstick?’ Jake repeated, turning to risk the heat of those dangerous eyes.

And for the first time since she’d arrived in church Amy met his gaze head-on. ‘Mike thinks I’m a witch.’ She should have been smiling. She wasn’t. ‘Don’t you, Mike?’ she asked, but her eyes continued to hold Jake prisoner.

Mike hesitated, and she tilted her head back and laughed, her throat a perfect white curve that Jake’s hand ached to cradle. Then Willow called from the nursery and Amy said, ‘You’re needed, Mike.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘I’ll take Amy home,’ Jake said.

‘You’re quite sure? It’s out of your way…’

‘Quite sure.’ He’d been going that way ever since Amy had looked at him. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe she was a witch.

‘Oh. Right. Well, thanks… And thank you for today. Both of you. Give us a call when you get back from the States, Jake. Come and stay.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, Mike added, ‘And take care.’

They paused on the doorstep and there was a moment of silence while Amy, her eyes level with his, regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You’re quite sure?’ she asked after a moment, echoing Mike’s words.

She wasn’t talking about the lift.

Neither was he when he replied, ‘Quite sure.’ Jake led the way to his car, opened the door. Her cloak trailed over the edge and he bent to lift it, tuck it inside. The material was soft, sensual beneath his fingers. Silk velvet. Like a woman’s skin. Maybe that was why his hands were shaking as he slid the key into the ignition. ‘Which way?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Left.’ He glanced at her. ‘I live on the other side of the village. It’s not far.’

Not far, but it was a different world. Mike and Willow’s home was minimalist modern, a labour-saving miracle of architecture designed for busy people and set in a low maintenance courtyard garden with a small paddock beyond that was grazed by a neighbour’s elderly pony.

Amy, in total contrast, lived in a piecrust cottage surrounded by an old-fashioned garden filled with spring flowers that bloomed with wild abandon. They spilled over onto the brick paths, splattering their legs with raindrops as they ran for the door.

Once they’d reached the shelter of the pitch-roofed porch they paused for breath. And to look at one another. Take a moment to consider. Nothing had been said, but they both knew that once he was beyond the front door all the thoughts that were now safely in their heads would spill over into unstoppable action; there would be no stepping back.

It was as if she was saying, You’re quite sure? again. But this time silently. His own silence was all the answer she needed, and she held out her key to him. It hung there between them, shimmering dull silver in the stormy light, and at the back of Jake’s mind warning bells began to ring.

‘I don’t do commitment,’ he said roughly. Almost hoping that she would tell him to go. Leave. Get out.

She didn’t say any of those things. She said nothing, her green eyes holding his, demanding that he make his own decision about whether to go or stay. The warning bells clanged with a desperate urgency but all afternoon her eyes had silently promised him everything he had ever wanted from a woman. Promised that she would fulfil his every dream.

She was wasting her time. He had no dreams. He was a hollow man, rich in the stuff that money could buy, but without a heart, incapable of love.

Most of the time he lived with it, scarcely noticing the emptiness. Today, wrapped in the warmth of friends whose love for each other, whose happiness had reached new heights with the birth of their baby son, he had been painfully aware of his own shortcomings.

Amy Jones was offering him a chance to forget, lose himself for a few hours, and without a word he gathered in key and woman in one movement. For a moment he simply held her, breathed in the scent of rain-washed earth and wallflowers and bluebells. For a moment anything seemed possible.

Fantasy, he knew, but his mouth came down on hers with a deep hunger, a longing to be proved wrong.

CHAPTER ONE

FIRST MONTH. Your pregnancy will not have been confirmed yet. Many women, however, feel pregnant without knowing quite why.

AMY didn’t need the test to confirm what her body was already telling her. What, in her mind, she already knew, had known from the moment when the early-morning sun had turned the world gold in a moment of pure magic.

Even before that.

She’d known how it would be in that first second when Jake had turned and watched her walk towards him. Known that this was the man she’d been waiting for. That this was the moment.

Afterwards Jake had held her, and although he’d said nothing she’d known that he, too, had felt something way beyond his expectations of a casual encounter with a woman he’d made it clear he was making no promises to see again. But she’d looked into his velvet-brown eyes and seen something beyond the moment. She’d seen fear, too.

He was afraid of this. Not just of giving, but of receiving love.

She smiled as she waited, remembering. He’d given generously. Far more than he’d intended. Now, maybe, she’d have to convince him that it was enough. Which might be more difficult. For both of them.

She glanced impatiently at her watch. Despite her certainty, she’d left her assistant to close up the shop and rushed home, impatient for chemical proof, to be reassured that hope and imagination weren’t simply working overtime.

And now it was taking all her will-power not to stare at the little plastic wand, willing the blue line to appear and make it official.

The time waiting for the result of the test seemed far longer than the two weeks since Jake had left her bed. Said goodbye with a kiss that had somehow lingered and, in that golden dawn, had deepened and erupted into something else entirely before he’d dragged himself back to reality and raced away to catch a plane without so much as an ‘I’ll call you’ or ‘I’ll see you’ to suggest he’d be back. She’d expected nothing else. Not from Jake.

He’d warned her. He didn’t pretend.

Lying alone in the warm nest of her bed, listening as he’d moved swiftly through the cottage, snapped the door shut behind him as if to convince himself of the finality of his departure, heard his wheels spin against the gravel of the lane as he’d sped away from her, she had wondered what made him so afraid.

Wondered what had happened in the past to send him racing away from the warmth of a woman’s arms, even when he’d plainly longed to stay.

Cross with herself for standing there, waiting for the test to develop, she put the wand down on the edge of the bath. She didn’t need it. She had better things to do.

She opened the door to the small front bedroom she’d been using as an office. Her hand briefly touched her waist. She’d be working from home more in the future; she’d need her little office.

The other spare room was stacked with stock from her shop. Boxes of handmade soaps, scented candles, essential oils. She’d have to rent more space from Mike, she decided as she looked about her, run her mail-order business from the craft centre.

She’d have to totally reorganise the shop, too. It was time to promote Vicki, give her more responsibility, take on someone else part-time. She was going to need help. A lot more help. A sudden tremor of doubt shivered through her. Suppose she couldn’t cope on her own?

For a moment her hand touched her waist. No, not on her own. Never again. Her baby might be no bigger than a match-head, there might be nothing yet for the world to see, but inside her something amazing was happening. Already her baby had a backbone, a primitive heart…

The low afternoon sun was shining in through a window that overlooked the rear garden. Yes, this would make a perfect nursery. She could see it already…had the colours picked out in her mind…

And she stopped being cool and serious and totally in control and rushed back to the bathroom.

Yes!