Bound by a Baby Bump (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (15 page)

‘What’s going on here? Boys?’

Rachel turned on the spot, to find Michelle and Francis behind her.

‘It’s nothing, Mum,’ Leo said, painting on a smile that would convince no one. ‘We were just on our way back.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing; it sounded to us as if Nick said something to upset Rachel. Nick?’

He smiled, smirked, and raised his palms in innocence. ‘A complete misunderstanding. Hormo—’

She saw anger flash again in Leo’s eyes, and his fist reach back. She grabbed his hand and threw him a warning look. The last thing this situation needed was to escalate into violence.

‘Finish that word and you’ll live to regret it.’ Even as she said the words, she was aware of the damage that she was doing, that Leo had tried for years to keep the family oblivious to the problems at the heart of it, and here she was hanging out dirty laundry for anyone to see. But Nick had bullied and intimidated for too long. She wasn’t a scared child and she wouldn’t stand for it.

She locked eyes with Nick, refusing to be the first to look away. She didn’t want him thinking he could cow her, that she would back down from him as she was sure that many others had done in the past. She was at an advantage—had known his capacity for malice before even meeting him—and she had no intention of falling for his charming shtick.

Leo’s voice broke the heavy silence. ‘Mum, I’m sorry but I think we need to be going. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.’

‘But, Leo,’ Michelle protested. ‘There’s something you’re all hiding and I don’t like it. We should talk about this.’

‘It’s between me and Nick. It wasn’t fair of us to bring it up now and spoil your birthday. We’ll sort it out another time.’

‘Rachel?’

She hesitated, wanting to help. Leo was allowing Nick to drive a wedge into the heart of the family. However much he thought he was helping his mum, he wasn’t hiding from her the fact that something was wrong. But it wasn’t her story to tell—the most she could do was be there for Leo when he decided it was the right time.

‘I think we should go, Michelle. But it’s been so lovely meeting you. And I’ll speak to you soon. I’ll email you the pictures from the scan.’

‘It’s been lovely meeting you, too,’ Leo’s mum replied, though the wary look she gave her sons told them all she wasn’t happy about them leaving before this was sorted. ‘I can’t tell you how excited we are about the baby. And you being part of the family, of course.’

Leo hustled her out of the house so quickly she barely had a chance to kiss Francis on the cheek and throw Nicholas an ‘I know your game’ glare.

The silence in the car was thick and heavy, and lasted for far longer than Rachel liked. Past cross, past angry and heading to furious. With every minute that went by with Leo not saying a word, the dread in her belly grew thicker and the chance of the day ending without another argument disappeared.

They sat in silence for a moment longer after the car pulled up outside the house. And Rachel wondered what Leo was working up to. She could see from his white knuckles on the steering wheel and the solid tension from left fingertip to right, through the stiff lines of his arms and shoulders, that it was something big.

He was angry. And although she knew how much he hated his brother and how angry he was at him, she also knew he was mad at her. She’d told herself on the drive back that the reason his eyes had been fixed so determinedly on the road was an overzealous adherence to the Highway Code. But the fact that his eyes remained fixed through the windscreen, even now they were stationary, confirmed her worst fear. He couldn’t even look at her. Perhaps she had been rash confronting Nick like that, when she knew how much history there was between Leo and his brother. And how Leo had kept their problems secret from the rest of the family for years. But was she meant to ignore it? Let Nick get away with hurting and provoking Leo, because that was what he always did? Perhaps. It was what Leo had wanted. He’d never asked her to jump to his defence. But when someone hurt him, it hurt her. It hurt their family, and she hadn’t been able to stand it.

‘I’m sorry.’ She reached out a hand and brushed it against Leo’s, hoping to soften the tension there. But he flinched away from her. She caught her breath, shocked by the pain his rejection had caused in her chest. ‘I didn’t mean to cause a scene.’

‘Well, you still did a good job of it. You know I didn’t want my parents to find out about the problems between me and Nick. I don’t want them to have to deal with our issues. You knew that and yet you went ahead anyway.’

‘How was I supposed to let him say those things about you and me—and let him get away with it?’

‘I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.’ He turned to face her now, and his rage showed in his every feature, his skin flushed, his forehead lined, his mouth thin and hard. He had retreated to the far side of the car, arms crossed again, putting every distance and barrier he could between them again. She was desperate to reach out to him, to feel his arms wrapped around her as they had just a few hours ago. ‘There are ways of dealing with this that don’t involve my parents.’

‘Yes, and those ways have led to you suffering in silence for years. I couldn’t add to that, couldn’t stand by and watch you hurting. Again.’

‘I told you not to interfere, Rachel. It’s not worth tearing my family apart for. However much he may have dented your ego.’

‘It’s not about my ego, Leo.’ Her voice was raised now, too, frustrated that he thought this all came down to her wanting to defend her reputation. It was nothing to do with her. She wanted to defend Leo. To protect him. ‘He can say what he likes about me. I don’t care about his opinion. But I won’t let him get away with bullying. And I can’t believe you think your parents don’t know what’s going on. Are you really that blind? They must have known for years if that’s how you normally behave when you’re at home. Your mother watches you like a hawk. If you’d just talk to them—’

‘And say what? My brother bullied me when we were children. He made me miserable, and I avoid seeing you if it means seeing him. There is no easy solution to this, Rachel. I don’t want to have to make my parents choose. Can’t fix this on a schedule. I’m sorry that my family won’t bend to what you want.’

‘That’s not what I was trying to do, Leo.’ The heat went out of her voice, as she realised how badly Leo had misunderstood her, how big a hole she had dug for them. ‘I’ve apologised for being rash. He was rude; I pulled him up on it. That’s all.’

‘That’s enough! That’s enough to keep Nick happy, for him to be satisfied that he’s got to me again. I specifically told you that I didn’t want a confrontation. What happened is in the past, and I want it to stay there. I’m happy with how I’ve moved on, and I don’t need to relive the worst years of my life just because you want to play happy families. Especially when your own family is so messed up. You think you can come to my parents’ home and dig up issues that have been dealt with, but you can’t even face your own problems. Can’t tell your parents that they’ve suffocated you with their overprotection. That you’re crippled because of the way they have treated you.’

His words hit her like a slap, and she sucked in a breath, tried to recover from their sting. All she had done was try to help him, and he threw her own failed family life back in her face. ‘I—’

‘You trapped me,’ he said. ‘And now there’s nothing I can do. I can never be free of you.’

She counted to ten very,
very
slowly, reminding herself that murdering the father of her unborn child was in nobody’s best interest.

‘We’re obviously both emotional. I think we need to cool down and talk about this tomorrow. Let’s just go to bed and get some sleep.’

She reached for the door handle but turned back when she realised Leo hadn’t moved. ‘Aren’t you coming inside?’

‘I don’t think I’m going to want to talk about this tomorrow.’

She sighed. ‘We’ll talk about it tonight, then, if that’s what you want. But either way you’re going to have to get out of the car.’

She let out a relieved breath when he finally let go, and turned to look at her.

But when his eyes met hers, she wished she’d let him sit there a little longer. Because what she saw made the dread she’d felt earlier seem like the lightest of butterflies. What she felt now was a lead anvil, heavy despair just waiting to crush her.

‘I don’t want to talk about it tonight. I don’t want to talk about it tomorrow. Rachel, I don’t want to talk about this at all. I realised something, driving back here. We’ve both made a mess of our family lives. And still we think we’re doing the right thing creating a new family out of two people who barely know each other and have nothing more in common than an ill-advised night in bed together. We’re making a mistake.’

‘Leo, I don’t understand.’ Tears broke her voice, but she forced words out anyway, trying to find a way to fix this. ‘What mistake?’

‘This!’ A sharp, sweeping hand movement took in the two of them.

‘You’ve changed your mind about the baby. About wanting to be involved?’

‘No. Not about that. I want this baby. I want to be a good father. But I don’t want to do it like this. With you and me playing happy families. It’s impossible. We have to face facts.’

She pushed open the car door and shambled out onto the path, not wanting to believe what she was hearing. She’d spent six months redrawing her picture of her life, trying to see the shapes and contours and details of her future. In the last weeks, she’d finally started to understand it. To see the picture emerging from the chaos. To push the fragments of her old life into this new scenario with Leo and the baby and make sense of it all. And in the last days she’d felt the pleasure and delights of falling into bed with him, of feeling his arms around her, and knowing that whatever big, scary, overwhelming emotions she’d felt in the past six months, he returned them. He felt for her as much as she did for him.

And that was what was driving the knife of hurt into her chest. The complete corruption of her life plans was nothing compared to the pain of him pushing her away. That not only did he not love her, he wasn’t even interested in trying. She pushed away from the car, stumbling slightly as she headed up the path. She wasn’t even sure where she was going; all she knew was that she had to get away from him.

She wrapped her arms around her belly, protecting her baby from his harsh words and her own hurt. He was just striking out because he had seen his brother. She stopped for a moment and almost walked back. And then she saw the hard, uncompromising expression he wore and hesitated. But they were expecting a child. They couldn’t just give up. She took another step back to the car and spoke. ‘Leo, please. I don’t believe that you can just walk away—’

He climbed out of the car and leant against it, keeping the hulk of metal between them. ‘And that was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? Me completely unable to walk away from this. Trapped. No way out. You planned it.’

His words struck her like arrows. The injustice biting at her. Each word’s sting sharper than the last.

‘I—’

‘I can never be free of you.’

It wasn’t the words that hurt the most; it was the expression on his face. The pain, fear and resignation that told her he meant every one of them. He was broken, afraid and angry—and he blamed her entirely. She walked to the door, grabbed the spare key from beneath a plant pot and let herself in, not looking back to see whether Leo was following her. Upstairs, she swept her clothes from a drawer with one hand while ordering a cab from her smartphone with the other. By the time she returned to the front door, packed and ready to go, she’d already had a text to tell her the car was on the way.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself to see Leo.

She couldn’t believe that he’d accused her of trapping him on purpose. Couldn’t believe that this man, with whom she’d felt so close just a few hours before, could believe her capable of deceiving him. No crappy childhood made it okay to treat her like that.

He wasn’t in the house. She’d listened for him when she’d left the guest room, not quite sure whether she wanted him to be there or not. But as she’d tiptoed through the cottage it had become clear to her that there was no need to be quiet. He wasn’t there. When she opened the front door, the car was still there. Doors closed and locked, with no sign of Leo.

He must have walked down to the beach, she surmised. Either to walk by the water or work in his studio. She considered walking down there to find him. But even if the prospect of walking down an uneven and unlit coastal path at night while six months pregnant hadn’t seemed like a stupid idea, she wouldn’t have gone. Why should she chase after him, after what he had said to her? Why should she give him the courtesy of letting him know that she was going, when he could stand there and accuse her of lying to him, of deliberately getting pregnant? Of manipulating him.

As she looked out of the front door, her taxi pulled up. And with one last look down the path to the beach, she opened the door and slipped inside.

* * *

Leo laid his hands flat on his workbench and let out a long breath. His skin felt tight and itchy, as though it were too small for his body. He’d watched Rachel walk into his house and shut the door and then suddenly it had seemed impossible to stay still. Adrenaline had flooded his body and demanded that he move.

He’d stalked off at a tearing pace down the path to the beach, not knowing why he was going, where he was going. And already regretting his words to Rachel. But he had felt trapped in the situation and in that second he had hated it. It didn’t matter whether he would choose to be with her, whether if circumstances had been different they could have found a way to be together. All that mattered was that the baby had locked them together for life, and he’d had no choice about it. About any of it. It had seemed so important, in that moment, to have a choice about something. To control the nature of their relationship, now that he knew that she would be in his life for ever. Even if it meant hurting Rachel, hurting himself, in the process.