Her Secret Pregnancy

The man sighed. ‘Now you’re making me feel like Scrooge.’

‘You don’t look like Scrooge.’ She grinned. Too cute by far.

He thought how thin her cheeks looked. And how pale. ‘Ever done any work as a chambermaid?’

‘No. But I learn fast.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Nearly twenty.’ The words were out before she could stop them, and she told herself that it wasn’t a lie, merely an exaggeration. Because she also told herself that this man was the kind of man who would try to send her home if he knew she was barely eighteen.

And then where would she go?

‘Been travelling?’ he asked, flicking a pale blue glance over at the holdall, then at the worn elbows of her jacket.

‘Kind of.’

She had been moving around for most of her young life. She liked it that way. It meant that she didn’t have to give away too much about herself. But she could see him looking at her curiously and knew she ought to say something.

‘Bit of a nomad, that’s me,’ she explained with a smile—wondering what had possessed her to add, ‘My mother was an actress. We moved around a lot when I was a child.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He nodded, wondering what he was letting himself in for. But through the glass doors he could see that the rain was now lashing down, to form lake-sized puddles on the pavement outside. It was the kind of night you wouldn’t throw a dog out into. ‘I’ll take you on until the New Year. But no longer—do you understand?’

‘Oh, thanks!’ Donna breathed, looking for a moment as though she was about to fling her arms around him.

Marcus took a hasty step back.

She wasn’t the kind of woman he would normally find attractive in a million years—with her curly ginger hair and pale eyelashes and freckles.

But there was something indomitable about her. Something that made her look small and tough and brave. Something feisty, which was oddly attractive and made him feel strange and warm and prickly inside.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he growled. ‘What’s your name?’

‘It’s Donna. Donna King. What’s yours?’

‘Marcus Foreman.’

She lifted her shoulders in a tiny questioning movement. ‘Should I call you Mr Foreman?’

It was such a sweetly old-fashioned proposition that he almost laughed, then checked himself in time. He didn’t want her thinking he was making fun of her. ‘You’re only a year younger than me.’ He smiled gently, not noticing her wince. ‘Marcus will do just fine.’

‘Marcus,’ she said shyly. ‘Are you the boss?’

It took a moment for him to answer. ‘Yes,’ he said abruptly. He still couldn’t quite get used to the fact that this place was now his. But then his father had only been dead a year. He looked down at her and his features softened.

Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like tiny brown stars, and her cheekbones looked much too sharp. She could do with a little fleshing out. ‘Have you eaten?’

Donna’s eyes grew wary. Could he tell? That she hadn’t seen a square meal in getting on for a week? And what kind of conclusions would he draw from that?

He watched her reaction and was reminded of a stray cat his mother had once let him keep. The creature had been starving, yet stubborn—mistrusting any attempts at kindness—and Marcus had learnt that the only way to handle that cat was to seem not to care. He shrugged, sounding as if she could take it or leave it. ‘There’s plenty of food here if you want some.’

‘Okay.’ She shrugged too. ‘Might as well.’

He took her down to the kitchen and introduced her to the staff, and then found things to keep him occupied while she ate and he watched her out of the corner of his eye.

He had never seen anyone eat with so much greed, or so much hunger. Especially a woman. Yet she didn’t tear at the food like an animal. Hers was a graceful greed. She savoured every single mouthful with pleasure—and when she’d finally finished she wiped her mouth delicately with a napkin, like some sort of princess, and beamed him a smile.

And that smile pierced Marcus’s armour like a ray of sunshine hitting a sheet of ice.

As spring slid into early summer, Marcus showed no sign of asking her to leave. And Donna heaved a huge sigh of relief, because she loved the town and she loved the hotel and she wanted to stay.

She loved the grey flint walls of the ancient buildings and the sound of the choristers’ voices spilling their pure, sweet notes into the scented air around the cathedral square. She loved the lush green and crystal streams of the water meadows, where you could walk for miles and feel that you’d stepped back a century. And maybe more than a bit of her loved Marcus, too. Who wouldn’t?

It was the first place that had felt like home for a long time. Maybe ever.

She made herself indispensable by working as hard as possible. And Donna could work. If there was one thing her childhood had taught her it was that you didn’t get anything for nothing.

Her mother had been a stripper—spending her nights performing in run-down theatres along the coast and her days mostly sleeping. In a way, Donna had brought herself up—making herself as invisible as she knew how. Because a little girl had fitted uneasily into the kind of life her mother had chosen.

She knew that Marcus’s father had died the year before, and one day she plucked up enough courage to ask him what had happened to his mother.

Mistake!

The icy-blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I j-just wondered.’

‘She’s been dead for a long time,’ he snapped.

She thought that it was an odd way to put it. As though a chapter of his own life had come to an end with his mother’s death. Maybe it had.

‘And how old were you?’ she asked.

He scowled at the intrusion. ‘I was nine, and, yes—before you make the obvious response—it was awful. Okay? And I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?’

End of subject. But Donna was relieved, in a funny kind of way. The kind of person who didn’t like to explain was also the kind of person who didn’t ask too many questions. Although it wasn’t as if a man like Marcus would be interested in one of his chambermaids, was it?

But sometimes she caught him watching her, when he thought she wasn’t looking. And sometimes he even let his guard down enough to laugh at something she said. And sometimes he would tease her about her pale eyelashes, and the way she used to nibble the tip of her thumb when she was nervous.

One day he found her in the staffroom, playing cards with one of the waiters, and he challenged her to play. Only to discover that she could beat him at every card game he’d ever learnt.

Marcus was a man who admired expertise in whatever field it was demonstrated, and he seemed to look at her in a completely different light after that. He told her that watching her shuffle the cards was like poetry in motion, and Donna beamed with pleasure at the praise.

‘Where ever did you learn to play like that?’ he questioned.

‘Oh, here and there,’ she told him airily. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘No, you’re right. I don’t!’ he laughed.