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      His Pregnancy Bargain

      By

      Kim Lawrence lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘YOU said what?’

      Even the anonymity of the phone could not disguise the natural authority in his most famous client’s voice or, at that moment, the irritation and astonishment that had crept into the distinctive deep tones.

      It had been a good idea not to have this particular conversation face to face, decided Malcolm, who was starting to feel uncomfortably like a man stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. Yes, the analogy worked—if his sister was the rock, Luc could easily be considered a hard place.

      Eyes slightly narrowed, Malcolm summoned an image of the younger man’s startlingly good-looking face. The sharp jutting cheekbones, an aggressively angular jaw a wide, mobile mouth capable of issuing painfully blunt comments, and deep-set eyes. He gave a mental shudder as he considered those penetrating, spookily pale grey eyes. No doubt about it, Luc definitely constituted a hard place…a very hard place!

      When Malcolm had initially met the first-time author of the sexy action thriller that had landed on his desk, he hadn’t been able to believe his luck. Luc wasn’t only incredibly photogenic, he was articulate and witty. Malcolm’s visions of women snatching the book off the shelves after they’d seen his new client charming the pants off the public on the chat-show circuit were dashed when the guy had calmly announced that he was a writer, not a salesman.

      Luc had spelt out his conditions to Malcolm. He wasn’t available for interviews or photo opportunities; in fact he wanted to remain anonymous. If the books weren’t good enough to sell on their own merits, so be it.

      Malcolm’s argument that one unfortunate experience at the hands of the press was not sufficient reason to make a disastrous business decision had not impressed Luc who, never one to take anyone’s word for anything, had had a clause inserted in his contract.

      Malcolm injected a note of desperate bonhomie into his voice. ‘I was sure you’d love to come for the weekend so I sort of, well, I…I said you would.’

      Perversely the silence that greeted his confession was more nerve-shredding than a tirade of angry abuse might be—Luc didn’t get loud when he was mad.

      The words ‘soft but deadly’ sprang unbidden into Malcolm’s head.

      ‘It’ll all be very casual. No need to dress up. Charming woman, my sister—everyone loves her parties.’

      Luc squinted up at the wall he had just painted. It really hadn’t looked that blue on the label and the room was north facing…too cold. It would have to go.

      ‘Have you developed a sense of humour, Mal? Or have you gone totally insane?’ The latter explanation seemed much more likely to Luc.

      ‘I know how you get after you’ve delivered a book.’

      ‘Relieved…?’

      ‘A weekend in the country is just what you need,’ pronounced the editor firmly.

      ‘I live in the country,’ came the deceptively gentle reminder.

      ‘No, you live in the back of beyond,’ Malcolm corrected with an audible shudder in his beautifully modulated voice. ‘I’m talking about Sussex; they have pavements there.’

      The observation made Luc smile, but Malcolm, on the other end of the line, didn’t have the comfort of seeing the warmth it lent his lean, dark features.

      ‘Only recently someone persuaded me that what I needed was a place in town…losing touch with reality, someone said, I seem to recall…? Now who was that? Oh, I remember—you!’

      ‘Good company, excellent food…’ Malcolm had a rare talent for selective deafness, which came in handy at moments like this. ‘You like old things, don’t you…? My brother-in-law was a great collector and they tell me the house is Elizabethan in parts, a moat, the whole thing,’ he finished vaguely before producing his winning argument. ‘Ghosts…!’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘They have a ghost—several, I expect. Never seen them myself, of course, but…people doing psychical research come to look in the cellar and they open to the public on bank holidays so it must be something special.’

      At the other end of the line the thought of the landed gentry brought a disdainful sneer to Luc’s face. Personal experience had not given him a rosy view of the families who had once divided the wealth of the country between them. His father had worked on an estate as a forester until the titled owners had decided to turf him out of his tied cottage.

      A job and home lost in one fell swoop, and all his dad had done was tug his forelock respectfully when they had explained that tourists were a more cost-effective way to utilise their resources. It was the meekness, the way he had accepted his fate that had filled Luc, then ten, with seething anger.

      He had resolved on the spot that he would never bow and scrape to anyone. This resolve had been hardened into grim resolution as he had watched the defeated droop of his father’s shoulders become permanent over the months that had followed.

      He had been more adaptable than his father, who had struggled to fit in the large industrial town they had moved to. It hadn’t been an accident that he’d lost the country burr that had made him the obvious target of bullies in the inner-city school.

      Luc was a survivor.

      Malcolm continued. ‘Gilbert left my sister pots of money. Do you shoot, Luc?’

      ‘Shoot?’ Luc ejaculated in a tone of disgust. ‘What is this—Gosford Park?’

      ‘I meant clays,’ Malcolm hastened to explain amiably.

      ‘The only thing I shoot are editors who accept invitations on my behalf.’ A spasm of curiosity crossed his handsome face. ‘I’m interested—you knew I wouldn’t agree, so why on earth did you say I would?’

      ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it, but I just heard myself saying it.’ Impossible of course to make someone like Luc understand. ‘You don’t know my sister,’ Malcolm added darkly. ‘When she wants something she’s relentless, like a dripping tap.’

      ‘Sounds