Having His Babies. Lindsay Armstrong
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apart from nicknaming her Slim quite early on in the piece, their relationship had been strictly professional.
He observed her raised eyebrows with a faint smile twisting his lips. ‘I am a free man now, Ms Montrose, if it’s your conscience you’re worried about—or mine. Besides, I feel you deserve the best meal and best bottle of champagne I can come up with. You’ve certainly earned it, that was quite a fight you put up.’
Her lips quivered in suppressed laughter. ‘If you must know there were days when I found myself wishing you’d at least give her the damn dogs.’
He laughed softly. ‘Paddy and Flynn are as big as small ponies. How she planned to have them in an apartment in Sydney makes the mind boggle.’
‘In that case I accept, Mr Hewitt,’ Clare said after a moment’s thought.
And, having never discussed his ex-wife, Serena, personally, that was the last mention he made of her.
They had dinner that night, then again a month later.
It was on this occasion that he said to her, ‘I’d like to see you again, Clare.’
She looked across the candle at him, her aquamarine eyes slightly wary.
‘But only if that’s what you would like. You see, whilst I thought it was inappropriate at the time to tell you this, you’ve been on my mind in a certain way for many months now.’
And he looked at her with a clear question in his eyes.
Clare found herself breathing a little raggedly as she recalled the many times over the past months when she’d had to admit to herself that she was attracted to this man, and had wished quietly that he was not a client, not a divorcee. Times when she’d lain in bed at night with the sound of the sea rhythmically bathing the shore so close by, and wondering how he saw her.
‘I,’ she said slowly, ‘have had the same problem at times.’
He looked faintly wry. ‘Then you hid it well.’
‘It would have been unprofessional to do otherwise. For that matter, so did you.’
He grimaced but didn’t answer directly. ‘Your career means a lot to you, doesn’t it, Clare?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that why you’re looking a little troubled and wary?’ he said gently, and slid his hand over to cover hers.
‘No. I suppose I’m surprised for one thing.’ Her fingers trembled beneath his. ‘I’m not terribly experienced for another.’
‘You shouldn’t be surprised. In your own quiet way you’re—captivating. And we know each other pretty well now.’
‘In some ways,’ she agreed.
‘Walk with me along the beach?’ he suggested.
The beach was only across the road and she agreed. They took their shoes off and paddled in the shallows, Clare holding the skirt of her long floral dress up. Then they sat on a bench on a grassy promontory and watched the lights of a big ship as it slid up the coast, and the flash of the Byron Bay Lighthouse.
To her surprise, they talked. He told her about his great-grandfather and how he’d come to Australia with only a few pounds in his pocket. He talked about his son, Sean, who was now seven and had a very high IQ and an equally high propensity for getting into trouble, and about how his latest crop of macadamia nuts was progressing.
And she responded, gradually relaxing and telling him about her teenage years when her fascination with law had begun to emerge, her years at university and something of her home life. She’d grown up in Armidale, a leafy, pretty town of some substance on the tablelands of New South Wales about three hundred and seventy kilometres south of Lennox Head. Armidale was home to the University of New England and home to her father’s prosperous tractor and farm machine agency.
She told Lachlan that she was an only child, and something about her gentle, retiring mother. Also, how her father dominated her mother and had tried to dominate her.
‘Which fed your ambition, I suppose,’ he commented.
‘Probably,’ she agreed with a little grimace.
‘Helped along by being as bright as a tack, no doubt.’
‘That hasn’t always been an asset,’ she said slowly.
He put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Frightened all guys away, you mean?’
Clare hesitated because she was suddenly acutely conscious of him, but she tested it in her mind, this first physical contact. And came to the conclusion that she felt comfortable against him, that she liked the subtle scent of clean cotton and his faint lemony aftershave, and even wished to draw closer to his warmth and bulk.
‘Perhaps,’ she answered eventually. ‘Not that it’s ever bothered me greatly,’ she added honestly.
‘It hasn’t frightened me away—it’s part of the attraction,’ he said quietly. And he started to kiss her for the first time.
Initially she was aware that the feel of his fingers moving gently on her cheek was pleasant. That his lips were cool and dry and she seemed not to mind parting her own for him. Then her senses took over.
The hunger that she’d battened down for twelve months asserted itself and the intimate act of being kissed by a man became a mutual pleasure.
The difference between her own soft skin and the slight graze she felt as she trailed her fingertips along his jaw, the knowledge that he could probably span her waist in his long, strong hands—all this brought a heady feel of elation and desire.
The feel of his arms around her, the feel of him against her body was rapturous and ignited a steady flame within her that made her forget the beach, the bench, the park. It was as if the only beacon in the night was this man and the mixture of excitement and quivering need he aroused in her...
When they drew apart, Clare was stunned and speechless for a few moments. Then she said, ‘I didn’t expect that...’
He grinned. ‘That we would generate those kind of fireworks? I did.’
Two weeks later they became lovers.
Coming back to the present again, Clare moved restlessly in her office chair and put her hand on her stomach.
It was six months since she’d begun a relationship with Lachlan Hewitt. Six months during which she’d been—well, almost blissfully happy, she conceded to herself. Six months during which the power of their attraction still took her by surprise.
He still called her Slim, but he used it now in moments of great intimacy, when her slender figure with its pale satiny skin fascinated him and together they experienced the kind of passion she’d thought might never exist for her.
Then there was the friendship they enjoyed, the moments of laughter, the things they did together such as climbing to the top of Lennox Head and watching the hang-gliders take off. But there were no ties—she still worked as hard as ever and if she wasn’t available he never made a fuss, and vice versa.
She visited Rosemont, the family home, often, and knew young Sean as well as Lachlan’s aunt May who ran the house, and Paddy and Flynn who were the size of small ponies but otherwise charming and gentle dogs.
By mutual, unspoken consent, she never stayed at Rosemont, however, although Lachlan stayed often at her apartment. But she didn’t feel excluded by this; she wouldn’t have felt right about it anyway.
Yet there had been times, she mused, still with her hand resting gently on her stomach, when an unidentifiable sense of unease had troubled her. How strange that an unplanned pregnancy should crystallize it all, she thought suddenly, and sat up.
She picked up her pen to doodle absently on her blotter and asked herself some things that she should have asked months