Bound by a Baby Bump (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (17 page)

‘Don’t you want it? Because I can promise you I’ve never wanted anything more. I know that I can’t fix this overnight. I know that it will take time to trust again, but I want to work at this. I want to deserve you again.’

‘I want it, too.’ She could never say otherwise. How could she when her body craved his, when she missed the way that he made her laugh, relax, be the version of herself that wasn’t constantly afraid of something going wrong? ‘It’s just not that simple, Leo.’

‘I know it’s not simple,’ he called over his shoulder as he reached into the holdall he’d thrown on the floor earlier. ‘Trust me, I know that. But it’s not impossible. If we want to try, we
can
do this. And I can prove it.’

He turned back to her with a boyish grin, and held out a dog-eared sketch pad. On the front, in a hand-drawn cursive script, were the words ‘Archer Fairfax Family’.

She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Leo? What’s—’

‘It’s a plan!’ The boyish excitement was back, and he bounced the sofa cushions with his energy. She laughed in response—it was contagious. ‘Not a plan for everything. But what we agreed, a compromise. A plan for the big stuff, the stuff we have to decide in advance. The rest of it we explore as we go along.’

Stunned into silence, she opened the cover and flicked through the first pages. Like the plans she’d once seen on his kitchen table, they were beautiful. Sketched line drawings and scatterings of bullet points and script. His house. Her flat. A baby swaddled in blankets. From the pictures, and a scattering of jottings, a picture of their lives started to emerge. Living together in her flat in London, the baby in a cot by their bed. In the city in the week, close to her work with rented studio space for Leo. Weekends at the coast. The three of them looking out to sea.

She laid the pad in her lap, resting her hands on it, tracing the lines of the sea with a finger.

‘You think we can do this?’

‘I do. I love you, Rachel. I love the way you laugh, and the way you are so utterly unfazed by the most terrifying things I can think of. I love that you stood up to my idiot brother. I love that you’ve been an incredible mother to our child before he—or she—is even here. The past few weeks, not speaking to you, have been the worst that I can remember. I think we already know how to do this; we’ve just been fending for ourselves for so long that we have to remember how to let someone else in.’

‘And you’d do it? You’d live in the city?’ The sea, the beach, his workshop were so much a part of who he was she couldn’t imagine him without them. Would she be enough to make him happy? Could he be content with her?

‘I’d live with you, if you’ll have me. City, sea—we can do both. As long as we’re together.’

‘But your studio...’

‘Is not as important to me as you are. There’s studio space in London. Your office is here—it makes more sense for me to move. And the house isn’t going anywhere. Weekends, holidays by the sea. It’s the best of both worlds.’

She was still staring, she knew. But she could hardly let herself believe this: it was so far from what she had been expecting. Leo was still grinning at her, and her lips turned up in response.

‘Tell me you feel the same. Tell me you want to try.’

‘I don’t know what to say, Leo. Last time I saw you...’

‘Last time you saw me was the worst day of my life. I was angry and scared, and when I realised that you’d gone, that I’d driven you away, I was heartbroken. I swore to myself that I would never let that happen again. That’s why I went home for Christmas and faced my nasty little bully of a brother. And that’s why I’m here, begging you to give us another chance.’

She glanced down again at the sketchbook, the image of the two of them, arms entwined around each other’s bodies, looking out to sea with their baby safe between them. It was everything she wanted. He was everything she wanted.

From the minute she’d met him, she’d been rewriting the plan for her life, rethinking her future. For months it had been a hazy mass of maybes and what-ifs, but now she knew, without doubt, what she wanted. She wanted him, with all the surprises and madness that he brought her. For the way that he made her laugh, made her take risks, made them a family.

She reached up, and cupped his face in her hand. Drawing him close, she pressed a soft kiss to his lips. ‘I love you, Leo. And you’re right, I know we can do this. It’s going to be terrifying and thrilling, and—at times—it’s going to be downright confrontational. Which sounds to me like just about every other family on the planet. But you’re going to make me happy, every day, even when you make me exasperated; and I promise I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy, too.’

With his hand tangled in her hair, he kissed her back, wrapping his arm around her until he had his whole little family, his whole world, where he wanted them.

EPILOGUE

L
OOK
UP
.

Rachel leaned against the bathroom door frame, watching Leo sprawled out on the bed. A tray of toast and coffee lay on the duvet beside him, and she had to fight the déjà vu. Nine months ago, she’d stood in this exact spot, and held her breath when she’d seen Leo still in her bed long after she’d thought he’d gone. This morning the picture was almost identical, apart from the precious bundle tucked into the crook of Leo’s arm.

Their daughter. Three days old, and already the centre around which their whole world revolved.

Suddenly, Leo looked up and caught her eye. His face broke into a vast grin, his eyes shining; still with that disbelieving expression they’d both worn since the midwife had placed the baby on her chest and announced that they had a daughter.

She moved the tray to her bedside table, and slipped into the bed beside her lover and their baby girl, and breathed a sigh of contentment as she curled under Leo’s other arm. ‘Is this real?’ she asked, looking up at him.

‘I hope so, because I’m not letting her go. Or you.’ Leo gazed from her to their daughter, his eyes still dreamy.

As Rachel reached across for the toast, her eye was caught by the corner of a sketch pad peeking out from under the bed. Just one of the many things she was getting used to since Leo had moved in: the propensity of belongings to show up anywhere and everywhere. That first morning, it would have driven her mad. Today it made her smile, evidence all around her of her new life, her new family.

She pulled the sketch pad up beside them and leafed through the familiar pictures as she ate her breakfast, lingering on the picture of them looking out to sea, the image that had spoken to her heart the day Leo had turned up asking her to trust him, to love him.

There were new pictures since then; she’d seen Leo scribbling away in the evenings as she’d scrolled through spreadsheets and handed over the final projects at work. There were sketches of her, her vast belly, her sleeping—or trying to. And over the past three days the most precious drawings of all. Their daughter’s first hours. The first time she’d nursed, the first time she’d snuggled up in her Moses basket beside their bed. Her face screwed up with tears.

As she turned the page again, she started with surprise. A piece of paper had been pasted in. A drawing not of her or the baby. But of a hollow circle of wood, the grain spinning around the outside and through the centre. Her forehead creased as she turned the book through ninety degrees, trying to see where this picture fitted into the story. A new sculpture Leo was working on, perhaps, pasted into the wrong book? But when she turned the page, there it was again. The grain slightly different this time, more delicate. And the dimensions were different, too. The outer circle slightly narrower, the space inside larger.

When she turned the page again, the same image greeted her. This time with scribbled dimensions in millimetres, and fractions of millimetres, and something sparkling and glinting at the very top of the arch.

She dropped the book.

It was a sculpture, or a plan for one. A tiny sculpture, about the size of...

She looked up at Leo in surprise. ‘A ring?’

He smiled down at her, shuffling the baby in his arms as he reached under the duvet and pulled out a small wooden box, carved with a question mark on top, and unmistakably Leo’s work.

As he handed it to her, she held his gaze, looking long and intensely into his eyes, trying to calm the galloping of her pulse and the hitches in her breathing. The box was smooth and warm in her hand, and she took a moment to trace the inscription on the lid with the pad of her finger.

She opened it slowly, pulling her eyes away from Leo’s now, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

A diamond gleamed at her, nestling in the wood-grained platinum as her antique bottle had nestled in the sand.

‘Leo, it’s beautiful.’ She was so taken aback by its delicate beauty that for a moment its greater significance was lost on her. All her brain could process was the care and attention put into this exquisite item. Until Leo reached for her left hand, and pulled it towards him.

‘Rachel, you’ve already made me happier and luckier than any man alive deserves to be. And I want you for ever. Will you be my wife?’

She grabbed his hand harder and hauled herself up on the bed until she was kneeling in front of him.

‘Yes, Leo. Of course, yes. I love you. I will always love you, and everything you’ve given me, and I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.’ She slipped the ring onto her finger, lifted the baby out of Leo’s arms and into her basket, and leaned over to kiss her fiancé.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from THE PREGNANCY SECRET by Cara Colter.

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CHAPTER ONE

A
BLOCK
AWAY
from a destination he had no desire to reach, it pierced Kade Brennan’s distracted mind that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

There were no sirens, but the strobes of the blue and red bar lights on top of half a dozen police cruisers were pulsing strenuously. It was jarringly at odds with the crystal clear morning light that filtered, a suffused lime green, through the unfurling spring leaves of the huge cottonwoods that lined the shores of the Bow River.

Now, above the sounds of a river bloated with spring runoff, above the sounds of the cheerful chirping of birds, above the sounds of the morning rush of traffic, Kade could hear the distinctive static of emergency frequency radios. A robotic female voice was calling a code he did not understand. It looked as if there was an ambulance in that cluster of emergency vehicles.

Kade broke into a run, dodging traffic as he cut across the early-morning crush of cars on Memorial Drive to the residential street on the other side.

It was one of those postcard-pretty Calgary blocks that looked as if nothing bad could ever happen on it. It was an older neighborhood of arts and crafts–style houses, many of them now turned into thriving cottage businesses. Nestled under the huge canopies of mature trees, Kade noted, were an art-supply store, an organic bakery, an antiques shop and a shoe store.

This neighborhood was made even more desirable by the fact it was connected to downtown Calgary by the Peace Bridge, a pedestrian-only walkway over the river that Kade had just crossed.

Except at this moment the postcard-pretty street that looked as if nothing bad could ever happen on it was completely choked with police cars. People walking to work had stopped and were milling about.

Kade, shouldering through them, caught bits of conversation.

“What happened?”

“No idea, but from the police presence, it must be bad.”

“A murder, maybe?” The speaker could not hide the little treble of excitement at having his morning walk to work interrupted in such a thrilling fashion.

Kade shot him a dark look and shoved his way, with even more urgency, to the front of the milling crowd, scanning the addresses on the cottagey houses and businesses until he found the right one. He moved toward it.

“Sir?” A uniformed man was suddenly in front of him, blocking his path. “You can’t go any farther.”

Kade ignored him, and found a hand on his arm.

Kade shook off the hand impatiently. “I’m looking for my wife.” Technically, that was true. For a little while longer anyway.

“Kade,” Jessica had said last night over the phone, “we need to discuss the divorce.” He hadn’t seen her for more than a year. She’d given him the address on this street, and he’d walked over from his downtown condo, annoyed at what his reluctance about meeting her was saying about him.

All this was certainly way too complicated to try to explain to the fresh-faced young policeman blocking his way.

“Her name is Jessica Brennan.” Kade saw, immediately, in the young policeman’s face that somehow all these police cars had something to do with her.

No
, something in him screamed silently, a wolf howl of pure pain,
no
.

It was exactly the same silent scream he had stifled inside himself when he’d heard the word
divorce
. What did it mean, he’d asked himself as he hung up his phone, that she wanted the divorce finalized?

Last night, lying awake, Kade had convinced himself that it could only be good for both of them to move on.

But from his reaction to this, to the fact all these police cars had something to do with her, he knew the lie he had told himself—that he didn’t care—was monstrous in proportion.

“She’s okay, I think. There’s been a break-in. I understand she was injured, but it’s non-life-threatening.”

Jessica injured in a break-in? Kade barely registered the non-life-threatening part. He felt a surge of helpless fury.

“She’s okay,” the young cop repeated. “Go that way.”

It was upsetting to Kade that his momentary panic and rage had shown in his face, made him an open book to the cop, who had read his distress and tried to reassure.

He took a second to school himself so that he would not be as transparent to Jessica. He looked up the walk he was being directed to. Twin white lilacs in full and fragrant bloom guarded each side of a trellised gate. The house beyond the gate was the house Jessica had always wanted.

It was a cute character cottage, pale green, like the fresh colors of spring all around it. But it wasn’t her home. A sign hung over the shadowed shelter of an inviting porch.

Baby Boomer, and in smaller letters, Your Place for All Things Baby.

Jessica had given him only the house number. She hadn’t said a word about
that
.

And he knew exactly why. Because, for a moment, that familiar anger was there, overriding even the knife of panic that had begun to ease when the young cop had said she was okay.
Hell’s bells, did she never give up?

Or was the anger because the house, her new business and that phone call last night were evidence that she was ready to move on?

It was not as if, Kade told himself sternly, he wasn’t ready to move on. In fact, he already had. He was just completely satisfied with the way things were. His company, Oilfield Supplies, had reached dizzying heights over the past year. Without the complication of a troubled relationship, he had been able to focus his attention intensely on business. The payoffs had been huge. He was a man who enjoyed success. Divorce did not fit with his picture of himself.

Divorce.

It was going to force him to face his own failure instead of ignore it. Or maybe not. Maybe these days you just signed a piece of paper and it was done. Over.

Could something like that ever be over? Not really. He knew that from trying to bury himself in work for the past year.

If it was over, why did he still wear his ring? He had talked himself into believing it was to protect himself from the interest of the many women he encountered. Not personally. He had no personal life. But professionally he met beautiful, sophisticated,
interested
women every day. He did not need those kinds of complications.

He was aware, suddenly, he did not want Jessica to see he was still wearing that ring that bound him to her, so he took it off and slipped it in his pocket.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, a warrior needing the opponent—when had Jessica become the opponent?—not to know he had a single doubt or fear, Kade took the wide steps, freshly painted the color of rich dairy cream, two at a time.

In startling and violent contrast to the sweet charm of the house, the glass had been smashed out of the squares of paned glass in the door. The door hung open, the catch that should have held it closed dangling uselessly.

Inside that door Kade skidded to a halt, aware of glass crackling under his feet. His eyes adjusted to the dimness as he burst out of the bright morning light. He had entered into a world more terrifying to him than an inhabited bear den.

The space was terrifying because of what was in it. It was the world he and Jessica had tried so hard to have and could not. It was a world of softness and light and dreamy hopes.

The stacks of tiny baby things made other memories crowd around Kade, of crying, and arguing, and a desperate sense of having come up against something he could not make right. Ever.

He sucked in another warrior’s breath. There was a cluster of people across the room. He caught a glimpse of wheat-colored hair at the center of it and forced himself not to bolt over there.

He would not let her see what this—her injury, this building full of baby things—did to him.

Unfortunately, if he was not quite ready to see her, he had to take a moment to gather himself, and that forced him to look around.

The interior dividing walls within the house had been torn down to make one large room. What remained for walls were painted a shade of pale green one muted tone removed from that of the exterior of the house. The large space was connected by the expanse of old hardwood, rich with patina, and yet rugs and bookcases had been used to artfully divide the open area into four spaces.

Each was unique, and each so obviously represented a nursery.

One was a fantasy in pink: the crib was all done in pink flowered bedding, with pink-striped sheets and a fluffy pink elephant sprawled at the center. A polka-dot pink dress that looked like doll clothes was laid out on a change table. The letters
g-i-r-l
were suspended by invisible threads from the ceiling. A rocking chair, with pillows that matched the bedding, sat at right angles to the crib.

The next space was a composition in shades of pale blue. The crib and its bedding, again, were the main focus, but the eye was drawn to the vignette of boyish things that surrounded it. There were toy trains and tractors and trucks displayed on the shelves of a bookcase. Miniature overalls and an equally miniature ball cap hung on an antique coatrack beside it. A pair of impossibly small work boots hung from their laces off the same rack.

Next was one all done in lacy white, like a wedding dress, a basket on the floor overflowing with white stuffies: lambs and polar bears and little white dogs. The final display had two cribs, implying twins, and a shade of yellow as pale as baby duck down repeated in the bedding and lamp shades and teeny outfits.

Kade stood, sucking air into his chest, taking it all in and fighting the unmanly desire to cut and run.

How could Jessica do this? Work every day with the thing that had caused her, and him—and them—such unbelievable heartache? He felt all that anger with Jessica solidifying inside his chest.
Now
he was ready to face her.

He narrowed his eyes and looked to the cluster of people. They were at the very back of the old house, behind a counter with an old-fashioned cash register perched on it. Feeling as if his masculinity and size could damage the spaces, he passed through them quickly, holding his breath and being careful not to touch anything. Kade edged his way to the back of the room, inserting a firmness into his step that he did not feel.

It was unnecessary, because she didn’t open her eyes as Kade arrived at the back of the store. Jessica was strapped to a wheeled gurney. Her eyes were tightly shut. A uniformed medic was leaning over her, splinting her right arm below her shoved-up sleeve. Two police officers, a man and a woman, stood by, notepads out.

Seeing Jessica would have been, at any time, like taking a punch to the stomach. But seeing her like this was unbearable.

It reminded him of the hardest lesson his marriage had taught him: even though it was his deepest desire, he had been unable to protect her.

Studying her now, without her awareness, Kade could see subtle changes in her. She looked oddly grown-up in a buttoned-up white blouse and a gray pencil skirt. Her slender feet were encased in a pair of very practical and very plain flat pumps. She looked professional, and yet oddly dowdy, like that British nanny on television. Her look, if it could be called that, filled him with a certain sense of relief.

Jessica was obviously not out to capture a man.

But she looked so serious, not that he expected her to be upbeat, given the circumstances. She looked every inch the pragmatic businesswoman she had evidently become, rather than the artist she had always been. He was pretty sure the only day he’d ever seen Jessica out of jeans was the day they’d gotten married.

Her hair was the same color, untouched by dye, wheat ripening in a field, but had been bobbed off short, in a way that made her features seem elegant and chiseled and mature rather than gamine and friendly and girlish. Or maybe it was because she had lost weight that her features, especially her cheekbones, seemed to be in such sharp relief. She had on not a drop of makeup. Again, Kade felt a completely unwanted niggle of relief. She was obviously not making the least effort to play up her natural beauty.

Despite the fact she looked both the same and different, despite the fact she looked pale and bruised and despite the fact she was dressed in a way that suggested she did not like drawing attention to herself, Jessica did what she had always done, even though he tried to steel himself against reacting to her.

From the first moment he had seen her laughter-filled face on campus, he had been captivated. She had been sitting with friends at an outdoor picnic area. She had looked his way just as he was crossing a huge expanse of lawn, late for class.

His heart had done then exactly what it did now. It had stood still. And he had never made that class. Instead, he had crossed the lawn to her and to his destiny.

Jessica—then Clark—hadn’t been beautiful in the traditional way. A little powder had not done anything to hide her freckles, which had already been darkening from the sun. Her glossy hair, sun streaked, had been spilling out of a clip at the back of her head. She’d been supercasual in a pink T-shirt and jean shorts with frayed cuffs. Her toenails had been painted to match her shirt.

But it was her eyes that had captivated him: as green as a leprechaun’s and sparkling with just as much mischief. She had, if he recalled correctly, and he was sure he was, been wearing just a hint of makeup that day, shadow around her eyes that made them the deep, inviting green of a mountain pond. Her smile had been so compelling, warm, engaging, full of energy, infused with a force of life.

But two years of marriage had stripped her of all of that effervescent joy. And he could see, from the downturned line around her mouth, it had not returned. Kade welcomed the iciness he felt settle around his heart.

He had not been enough for her.

Still, even with that thought like an acid inside him, he could not stop himself from moving closer to her.

He was shocked that he wanted to kiss her forehead, to brush the hair back from the smoothness of her brow. Instead, he laid his palm over her slender forearm, so aware his hand could encircle it completely. He saw that she was no longer wearing her rings.