His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Cathy Williams

  But, she thought, what about her? And was that the sort of forced relationship that would benefit a child, anyway?

  ‘In all the times I thought about marriage,’ she said, ‘it was never with a reluctant partner who was dragged into it, kicking and screaming, because I’d accidentally ended up pregnant. And you, Matt—you must surely feel the same as I do? You must have wanted something more than to find yourself having to propose marriage to a woman you would never normally be with...’ She lowered her eyes and balled her small hands into fists.

  ‘Don’t underestimate the power of your sex appeal,’ he muttered roughly. ‘And, just for the record, I never pictured myself being married at all, so, no. No romantic fantasies swirling in my head that are now being put to rest because of this situation.’

  He vaulted upright and restlessly paced the room, as though in the grip of a power surge he couldn’t resist. He paused eventually but remained standing over her. ‘It must have been a shock for you,’ he said gruffly. He thought of her realising that she was pregnant, alone and doubtless afraid, and he was swamped by a feeling of confusing tenderness that had nothing to do with the baby.

  Violet looked up at him. This was what he did so well. Alongside that forceful, driving personality was an ability to empathise that reminded you just how complex and three-dimensional a man he was.

  ‘Of course,’ she muttered. ‘I never expected anything like this. I’m not like you. I did picture myself being married one day, having kids. I just never...’

  ‘Imagined that it would be with someone like me, Violet?’

  Violet looked away. Her heart was beating inside her like a drum. Someone like him? If only he knew! She might have idly dreamt of being with Mr Ordinary, who would have been such an antidote to the nomadic life she had endured growing up, but reality had decided to take her down a somewhat different route.

  He wanted to marry her, and for a moment she took time out to think about what a life with that might look like. Lazy Sunday mornings lying in bed, laughing at those silly jokes of his... Cooking together... Making love whenever and wherever... And then, when the baby came, parenthood with all its ups and downs, but parenthood as a couple...

  It was seductive, but Violet knew that it was the stuff of fantasy. The reality was that she would be hitching her wagon to a guy who had never planned marriage and basically found it impossible to sustain a relationship with any woman for longer than five seconds. He couldn’t do that with women he was genuinely attracted to, so what were her chances? How long would it take for him to get bored of her, baby or no baby? And then what? Would he fool around behind her back? Or would he become a long-suffering partner, eventually resentful and bitter for having been forced into a marriage he hadn’t banked on? Both prospects appalled her because to become dependent on someone only for them to let you down... There could be nothing worse. Her father had let her down. Yes, she had coped, because she adored him, but he had let her down. She wasn’t going to be let down again.

  ‘Yes.’ She took the plunge, killing rosy dreams of what would never be. ‘You can say what you like, Matt, but it wouldn’t be fair on a child for us to be harnessed together, always thinking that we could have been happier with other partners if I hadn’t fallen pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, but, Violet...’ His voice thickened and she shivered as their eyes tangled. ‘You make a union between us sound like such a catastrophe in the making, but we both know that it wouldn’t be all bad...’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE CAME CLOSE. He touched her. Just a light, fleeting touch, the brush of his finger on her cheek, but it was enough to make her breath hitch in her throat. Her eyelids fluttered and she inhaled on a sigh, quite unable to control her response.

  ‘See what I mean?’ he murmured persuasively. ‘One minute you’re giving rousing speeches about our unsuitability, and the next minute you’re quivering for me.’

  ‘I am not quivering for you!’ She was alarmed at the undercurrent of weakness she could detect in that protest.

  ‘I still want you, Violet.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘We get married and no one is going to say that the sex isn’t going to sizzle.’

  ‘Sizzling sex vanishes after a while. You know that.’ She clicked her tongue but her skin was burning from where he had touched her, and her head was awash with hot memories of their brief, intense time together in Melbourne. ‘Look at what happens when the sizzling sex fizzles out like a burnt-out firecracker, Matt. It’s bye-bye, it’s been good knowing you time. That’s fine when it’s just another five-minute relationship, but when two people are tied together by marriage, when there’s a child involved, well, the burnt-out firecracker begins to look like a pretty bad idea.’

  ‘None of my girlfriends happened to be pregnant,’ he fired back.

  ‘And because I am doesn’t mean that marriage is the only solution, however much hands-on time you would want to have with our child. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get bored when the firecracker burns out.’

  Matt’s jaw tightened with frustration. On the surface, what she said made sense. It was true. Sizzling sex always had a tendency to turn to ashes in the blink of an eye, but this wasn’t the same, and he was staggered that she couldn’t see that. That a child being involved made all the difference. A child would make staying power the essence, the sizzling sex a bonus.

  She wasn’t just another woman to him—which was, somehow, what she was trying to say. She was the mother of his child... He frowned as thoughts tried to rearrange themselves in his head. More than that, she was...hell!...more than just someone who had shared his bed. Much more.

  His thoughts screeched to a stop before they could gather pace and travel down that unexplored road.

  ‘Marriage is about more than what makes logical sense on a piece of paper. Successful marriages are based on love and a loving background is what a child deserves.’ She looked down. She had a fleeting vision of what it might be like if he really loved her. Perfect.

  She raised serious brown eyes to him. ‘I don’t know anything about your background,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked with you for over two years, and I know everything about your take on relationships, but I don’t know anything about your childhood. It’s ironic that I was always the reserved one and yet you now know everything there is to know about me. I saw my dad fetching photos out to show you when he thought my back was turned. Back from hospital, and in the space of a handful of days before you left, he manages to bore you with stories about me and show you pictures of me growing up.’

  ‘Who said I was bored? He’s a proud dad. He may have been a wild dad who was fond of going off the rails but, one look at the way the two of you interact, and it’s easy to see that you both adore one another. I liked seeing pictures of you as a kid. You looked serious even then. Hair in pigtails, frowning at the camera. All that was missing was a pair of specs. Think that paternal pride counts for nothing?’

  ‘I never said that!’

  ‘Think it’s okay to deprive me of that experience because marriage is more than what makes sense on a piece of paper? Do you imagine that I wouldn’t want to have the chance to love my child? To be there for him or her?’

  ‘You’re twisting my words!’

  ‘You tell me that part-time parenting is acceptable. Would you be applauding that slice of wisdom if you were the one doing the part-time parenting?’

  ‘You told me that there was no way you would try and...and...’

  ‘In an ideal world, there would be no lines drawn in the sand between us, given the situation,’ Matt told her coldly. ‘But the scenario you have in mind has nothing to do with an ideal world.’

  ‘I’m being realistic.’

  ‘You’re being selfish.’

  ‘You’re not even a family man!’ Violet protested heatedly.r />
  No, Matt thought, he wasn’t. Never had been. When you grew up without the warmth of a family unit, when the people you turned to were strangers in an expensive boarding school paid to take the hit, then dreams of cosy sing-songs round the piano with loved ones never even registered on the radar once you reached a certain age.

  But here he was, facing the family unit he had never courted. More than anything else, he wanted to make sure that his own flesh and blood didn’t lack the way he had. He wanted to be the buffer for his child against the slings and arrows of life, which was something he didn’t feel he’d had. He wanted to make sure that the past never repeated itself. The remoteness of his wealthy parents had felt like a wall of ice around him, and there was no way he wasn’t going to do his damnedest to make sure he was there for this child. Being sidelined wasn’t going to work. Neither, he thought with mounting frustration, was trying to strong-arm the stubborn, sexy, mulish woman glaring at him.

  ‘Don’t push me on this, Violet,’ he rasped, but his eyes drifted down her body and he felt an ache in his groin as memories of their passionate lovemaking surfaced.

  Violet sensed some infinitesimal shift in atmosphere and her eyes widened. ‘Matt, I think it’s time I headed back home. I know you mean well, offering to defuse this hand grenade by putting a ring on my finger, but I have no intention of letting you pay such a high price for a situation you didn’t see coming.’

  ‘Jesus, Violet!’

  Time to go, Violet decided. She stood up, but suddenly the world was doing a giddy twirl and the ground no longer felt quite so steady under her feet. She swayed and in one leap Matt was there by her side. When he spoke, his voice was laced with urgency.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ This as he lifted her off her feet and began carrying her out of the sitting room and towards a bank of rooms sprouting from either side of the wide, wooden-floored corridor. ‘I’m calling a doctor.’

  ‘No!’ She didn’t bother trying to struggle free. The light-headed feeling was abating, but one look at his face and she could see that he was worried sick.

  In an instant, she realised that his marriage proposal wasn’t just the gesture of someone resentfully doing something through a sense of obligation because that was how he had been brought up. No. This was his baby, and he genuinely wanted to be there to see things through from beginning to end, and that gave her pause for thought. His concern might not be for her, but should she deprive him of the opportunity to be a full-time father because she wanted more from him than he could ever give?

  Was she, as he had said, being selfish?

  She could see all sorts of complications from a relationship that wasn’t grounded in love, but was his black-and-white approach really one she should take? Sometimes a person could become paralysed when they overthought a situation.

  Her breathing was shallow as he gently levered her onto the bed. His bed. Giddiness and nausea were not enough to prevent a rush of curiosity.

  His room was vast. The bed was the size of a football field. There were no old-fashioned hanging lights, just the twinkle of spotlights on the ceiling. The furniture was grey, built-in, high-gloss. And, as in the sitting room, there were books and papers on surfaces. He was as casual when it came to tidiness here in his house as he was in his office. Clothes had been dumped on a chair by the window and there were two pairs of trainers on the ground, half-submerged beneath a sweatshirt.

  His messiness was strangely endearing. It was almost as if he was so intensely clever, his mind so incisive and quick, that the tedious business of tidying up was a hassle he couldn’t bother with. He was just too focused on other things.

  She assumed he had a long-suffering housekeeper who came in and cleaned up behind him.

  He was punching a number into his mobile phone, talking in a low voice, then listening to whatever was being said to him. After a handful of minutes, he disconnected the call and moved to stand by the side of the bed, arms folded.

  ‘A few questions,’ he said. ‘And honest answers would be helpful.’ He rattled off a series of questions and then asked finally, ‘Have you eaten anything today?’

  About to assure him that of course she had, Violet opened her mouth, frowned and blushed.

  ‘Not as such...’ When had she last eaten? The long trip over...the prospect of breaking the news about the pregnancy to Matt...the stress... Her appetite had vanished, and now she was having difficulty in remembering just what she had eaten and when.

  ‘Not as such? What does not as such mean? Have you eaten anything today or not? It’s a straightforward question.’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ Violet mumbled.

  ‘So when was the last time you ate?’

  ‘Well... I picked at some food on the plane... And of course I’ve been meaning to pop out and do a shop...but I’ve been so stressed out. I think I grabbed some—’

  ‘Stop right there, Violet. Even from the depths of my ignorance I know that you have to have a proper eating routine when you’re pregnant!’ He shook his head incredulously.

  ‘That’s not fair—and it’s not just because I may have missed a meal or two. I feel dizzy and nauseous a lot of the time,’ she grudgingly admitted.

  ‘We’ll talk about what’s fair and what’s not fair once you’ve been fed. I’ll go and...make something.’ He hesitated. ‘I could order something in, but I think you need to eat sooner rather than later.’

  He was gone a while, during which time Violet tussled with the idea of getting out of his bed and joining him in the kitchen, but when she tried standing up she felt woozy again and had to lie back down. That being the case, the made herself as comfortable as she could. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned the trousers that had been a poor choice, but she had not wanted to advertise her rounded stomach any more than was necessary when it had come to confronting him with news of the pregnancy. She hadn’t wanted to walk into his office and witness the look of dawning horror on his face because he had taken one look at her and guessed. No, she had wanted to build up to it because it gave her time, but she should have just worn something loose, elasticated and comfortable.

  He kicked open the bedroom door and entered with a tray in his hand. ‘Juice,’ he said, ‘and cheese on toast.’ There was nothing else he could think of preparing that wouldn’t have taken for ever to do.

  The snack consisted of two slabs of bread lathered with butter and drowning under layers of thickly cut cheddar.

  Suddenly ravenous, Violet tucked into the toast like a starving person at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Meanwhile, Matt pulled a chair to the side of the bed and watched her with narrowed eyes as she ate.

  ‘You were telling me that your nausea wasn’t solely the result of your skipping a meal or two...’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s flesh that one-syllable answer out a little, Violet. How long has this been going on?’

  ‘From the beginning.’ She fidgeted and glanced away from his all-seeing gaze. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘It’s a big deal. Seen the doctor about that?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Even though she was well aware of all the problems associated with having an unplanned pregnancy—even though she was realistic enough to accept that it had hardly been her dream to have a child without the support of a caring partner by her side—the thought of going to a doctor to be told that something might go wrong filled her with dread. There had never been a moment’s doubt in her mind that she very much wanted this baby.

  The silence that greeted this was oppressive and forced her into speech.

  ‘I should have eaten.’ She plucked at her shirt, mouth downturned. ‘I feel much better now. Lots of women suffer from extreme morning sickness. It’s not a big deal, like I said. Now, I’ll leave you to get on with the day and mull over everything.’

  She didn’t feel like leaving. She didn’t fancy being on her
own. She wanted to be with him when the next wave of nausea washed over her, making her want to sit down and put her head in her hands. He made her feel so safe. He was a solid brick wall, a rampart against everything that threatened to overwhelm her, and she just wanted to let him handle everything. It was silly and cowardly, but it was also an irresistible force.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, this business of your forgetting to eat because you’ve been busy has shown me that you can’t be trusted to look after yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I never banked on this happening, but now that it has I intend, like I said to you, to be committed the whole way through. If you can’t look after yourself, then you’re going to need someone to look after you, and from where I’m standing I’m the only candidate for the job.’

  ‘It won’t happen again and, if it does, I’m perfectly capable of handling it.’

  ‘Don’t fight me on this.’

  Violet looked at him for a long while. She thought about the way he had reacted to news that would turn his orderly life upside down. No complaints, no accusations, no ranting and railing and tearing his hair out. No, he had risen to the occasion and had not hesitated to utter those words which for him would have been the biggest of personal sacrifices. He had proposed marriage. He didn’t love her but, as he had said, he wanted to be given the chance of loving his baby on a full-time basis, and who could feel aggrieved at that?

  She thought of those dark warnings as well. He was a fair guy, and she didn’t think that he would really drag her through the courts to claim his rights as a father, but could she be sure? These were exceptional circumstances, and Matt Falconer was nothing if not unpredictable when it came to handling exceptional circumstances. How ruthless would he be prepared to be, and would she be able to fight him? Would she want to? Would that benefit the baby she was carrying? Her heart sped up because no one rose to the dizzy heights that he had without having his fair streak of ruthlessness.