By Request Collection Part 2. Natalie Anderson
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‘Well, you certainly had a good chin-wag about me, the pair of you, didn’t you?’ she accused in a wounded voice.
Seth’s grimace said it all. Her grandfather’s widow was garrulous enough without any help from him.
Amazingly, in spite of everything, some deep-boned intuition told Grace that Seth Mason would never be a party to idle gossip, and once again she found herself coming to believe that his dealings with Corinne were purely professional.
‘The fact remains,’ he said, ‘that you were abandoned by your father, and through whatever circumstances he scarcely figured in your life. Don’t let that happen to your own baby.’
Her head was banging so much she was beginning to feel sick; she didn’t feel up to having this conversation with him.
Still trying to come to terms with the fact that he had actually proposed, unable to quite believe it, she said quickly, ‘A lot of women manage perfectly well as single parents today.’
A shoulder moved beneath the superb tailoring of his jacket. ‘It’s up to you, but I’d like to think that you wouldn’t be that selfish.’
When he was prepared to marry a woman he didn’t love for the protection and well-being of his child.
‘You make me feel I have no choice,’ she uttered, feeling the strands of a silken web being slowly but insidiously woven around her.
‘You do have a choice. I’m just asking you to make the right one.’ A few lithe steps brought him within heart-stopping distance of her. ‘Oh, come on, Grace.’ His voice was soft, sultry, deep, like a jungle cat purring. ‘It won’t be so bad.’ The fingers suddenly lifting her chin up, compelling her to look at him, were excruciatingly tender. ‘Maybe I’m not the lawyer-doctor-accountant type you’ve always dreamed you’d be marrying.’ As if! she thought almost hysterically. ‘But we’ve got something that will ensure that any union between us will never be dull.’
He meant in bed.
A wave of excitement curled along her veins, a silent betrayal by her body of all it wanted—no, needed—from him, no matter how strongly her brain tried to deny the fact.
The shock and emotion were too much for her in her present state. As the room seemed to go wavy before her eyes, she dropped her head into her hands with an involuntary little groan, trying to stave off the threatening nausea.
She heard the low invective Seth uttered and could do nothing to resist the arms that were sweeping her effortlessly off her feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?’ he scolded softly.
Caught against his hard, warm strength, her mind and body reeling with myriad sensations, somehow Grace managed a pained little smile. ‘You only seemed concerned with what was going to happen to your baby.’
Those masculine lips curled in self-derision. ‘Believe it or not, I do have a vested interest in its mother, too.’
He carried her through into the quiet luxury of the master bedroom. Compared to hers it was a sanctum of modern living, from the sinking carpet that bore his silent, effortless steps, to the monstrous bed with its very masculine but state-of-the-art cushions and covers that he dragged aside before setting her down on the dark-burgundy sheet covering the mattress.
Helping her out of her coat and jacket and then stooping to remove her shoes, he pressed her gently back on the pillow and pulled the duvet up around her.
‘If you want anything,’ he told her quietly, ‘I’ll be in the next room.’ The degree of solicitude behind that simple statement brought a painful lump to her throat.
‘A vested interest’, he had said, but only because she was having his baby. He didn’t care about her for herself. So why was she letting herself imagine such depth of emotion in his voice?
Nevertheless, no matter how much he had wanted to hurt her and her family, she thought, there was no doubt that he would accept his paternal responsibilities. The hardship and the poverty he had endured as a child and then, thanks to her, as a young man desperate to support the family who had taken him in, had obviously contributed to his determination not to let any child of his suffer in the same way. Although, even without that, there was no question in Grace’s mind that he would still have held the same view about being a seriously hands-on parent. But was she prepared to let him help her bring up her child? Marry him? Apprehension coupled with excitement didn’t do much to ease the painful banging in her head.
If she didn’t, she reflected, and she decided to go it alone, there was no way that her child would go without seeing its father at regular intervals; Seth would demand that, of course, and she wouldn’t try and stop him seeing his child—no matter how much it might hurt her to have to face him on a personal level from time to time, because she didn’t think she would be able to carry on working with him after this. Her child would never want for anything financially. But was that enough?
She remembered how it had felt growing up. Her grandparents had been wonderful, had given her everything she could have wanted. But, guiltily, sometimes she had missed the fun and activities that her school friends seemed to have with their parents—particularly their fathers—younger, more energetic adults who could get involved in a game of tennis with them, or chase after them before scooping them high into the air shrieking with laughter, as fathers always seemed to be able to do. Fathers who were always there and didn’t disappear for months, or even years, on end. She had missed having a birth mother, of course, but she had missed her father more than she could ever put into words, because she had known he was around somewhere. Just not with her. And that had hurt more than she had ever dared to let herself accept.
She thought of the little family she had noticed on the way up here. Two children. Two parents. A happy balance. She owed her child that much, didn’t she? And if—fingers crossed—this little one growing inside her went to its full term, was born safely…
Fear threatened to rise like a dark spectre, but she fought it back. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself think about that now, for the same reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Seth what had happened before. It was a part of her life that she wasn’t particularly proud of and she had paid for it dearly—then pressed it so far to the back of her mind that it was as though that girl she had been and everything that had happened to her had happened to someone else. It wouldn’t help her or him in any way, she reasoned with a kind of muddled logic, to dig it all up now.
So with the muted tones of Seth’s voice conducting business over the phone in the other room, and the elusive scent of him surrounding her in his personal bedding, she made her decision, safe in the knowledge that whatever his feelings towards her he would always be there to love and support his child. And that was all that mattered, she told herself resolutely. Wasn’t it?
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