Baby on Board: Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret

‘Is she?’ he repeated, so intently that she knew without doubt that he wanted it to be so. That, despite his opposition, despite everything, he desperately wanted this little girl to be his child. For a moment it felt as if the world had truly been made over. But the joy swiftly faded into something closer to fear.

Her mother had warned her. “He seems attached.”

For ten years she’d been living in a fantasy world in which Josh Kingsley was her hero, the boy she’d fallen in love with. But what did she know about the man he’d become? At home he was just Josh, but in the real world he was a power to be reckoned with. A man who’d built an empire from nothing. Who’d broken her heart when he’d brought home a laughing bride, then on his next visit announced, without apparent emotion, that the marriage had been a mistake. A man who other men treated with respect and, maybe, fear. A man who saw only the prize…

She’d wanted him to bond with Posie and, against all the odds, it seemed that he had. Now, too late, she realised that it was not his mother, or hers, who she’d have to fight to keep her baby. It was him.

‘I’ve only your word for that, Josh,’ she said, crossing to the buggy and tucking Posie in, fastening her safely, freeing herself for the fight before turning to face him. ‘It never occurred to me to doubt you, but maybe we’d both be easier in our minds if we had a DNA test.’

‘What? No…’

Not the answer he’d expected, she noted with a glimmer of satisfaction as he took a step towards her.

Her feet wanted to take another step back, keep a safe distance between them, but her head demanded she hold her ground. One step could be put down to shock. Two looked like retreat and this was a moment for standing her ground.

‘Just in case Michael came to his senses,’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘That would let you off the hook, wouldn’t it?’

She knew that wasn’t what he’d meant, but the alternative was too shocking to deserve acknowledgement.

‘You made it very clear that you were simply going through the motions to keep him happy,’ she said. ‘That an actual baby was the last thing you’d anticipated or wanted, and I can understand why you wanted to put a stop to it…’

She faltered, stopped, hearing what she was saying and realising that it wasn’t true. She didn’t understand. Worse, she was still pretending, still hiding, protecting herself from hurt. But this was more important than her feelings. More important than his.

Overwhelmed by a heart-pounding rush of anger at his selfishness, she said, ‘Actually, no, I can’t imagine why you’d be that cruel, but then I do have a heart.’

The raw slash of colour that darkened Josh’s cheekbones was a warning that she’d gone too far, but she discovered that she didn’t give a damn. He’d just insulted her beyond reason and she wasn’t going to stand there and take it.

‘Unless,’ she continued with a reckless disregard for the consequences, ‘you really think that I’d cheat my sister, foist a child conceived out of careless passion rather than a clinical donation on a couple so desperate that they would have done anything, even lied to the person they loved most in the world—’

If she’d hit him the effect couldn’t have been more dramatic.

‘No!’ he said, and it was too late to step back as he surged forward, seized her, his fingers biting into her arms. ‘No!’

‘No what?’ she demanded, meeting his fury head-on and refusing to be intimidated, refusing to back down. She owed it to Posie, owed it to herself, to stand up to him.

‘No what?’ she repeated, when he just stood there, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. Well, he hadn’t. Not like this. Empowered by motherhood and ready to take on the world.

He took a shuddering breath that seemed to come from deep within his soul and then, never taking his eyes off her, said, ‘No. I don’t need a DNA test. No. I don’t want to be let off the hook. No. I don’t believe you’d lie to me…’ He broke away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘I’m sorry, but when I saw you with Makepeace, his arm around you, you looked like a family and it just all seemed to make perfect sense…’

He looked so utterly wretched and where a moment before she’d been angry, now she didn’t know what to think. She only knew what she felt. Grief. Confusion. Fear at the enormous responsibility for a precious life.

And maybe part of her anger was because she suspected he’d been right when he’d accused her of being too scared to risk a relationship, move on, make a life away from the safety of Phoebe and Michael’s home.

Had pining after him been the safe option?

‘Josh?’

The muscles in his jaw were working as he clamped down to hold back the tears and in a heartbeat the tables were turned. She could weep, but he was a man. Faced with loss, all he could do was get angry, lash out.