And she didn’t have to be brave or strong. She just felt as if she was as their baby inched its way into the world.
It was hard, gritty work—and then there was the reward.
‘Black hair,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s a Devereux.’
‘It hurts enough to be one!’
He smiled as she trumped him, and then looked at her with black eyes that were always dark. Yet, like the night, there were some darknesses more beautiful than others. Some less lonely. And some you never forgot.
‘Come on, Merida,’ he told her.
Merida breathed in deeply and gathered her strength. And pushed when she wasn’t sure she knew how to. She pushed not against but towards love.
And then she pushed again.
And again.
‘One more,’ Ethan said.
And then they met the sum of their love.
Long-limbed, she unfurled, jittery and indignant, flailing at the bright, noisy world.
And Ethan watched as Merida held her as if she would never let her go.
Of course he could not remember all those days so long ago when his mother had discarded him with such ease. But he knew in his soul that it was a hurt his child would never know.
And then he held her himself.
She wore a little white cap and stared up at him with huge dark eyes, and Ethan was besotted with his little girl.
He looked over to his stunning wife.
‘For a one-night stand, I did very well for myself,’ he said, and smiled.
‘It wasn’t a one-night stand,’ Merida refuted. ‘I just happened to sleep with you on our first date.’
It had been a date, Ethan thought as they kissed, their baby between them. Their first date. And it would not be their last.
‘I’m going to spend the rest of our lives making up for lost time.’
‘It was hell,’ Merida said, ‘but I still loved every minute.’
‘And me,’ Ethan said.
After all, she had awoken his heart.
EPILOGUE
‘MY FATHER WANTS to come down to see her.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Merida sat up in the bed. ‘We’ll take her up to see him.’
‘I said that, but he insists on coming down.’ Ethan hesitated. ‘He wants photos.’
‘Of course.’
‘No.’ Ethan was quite sure she didn’t understand. ‘He wants the happy family shot.’
Merida lay back on the pillow and gave an exhausted half-laugh.
Ethan had told her that he knew now that there had been no affair with Meghan. And he’d told her about the hell of those family photos, being forced to smile when his heart was damaged almost to broken.
Then he’d told her his child would never be exposed to that.
‘Ethan...’
‘I know.’ He looked at his wife, who was beyond exhausted. ‘No photos.’
And of all the things she knew of her husband, she knew he was doing his hardest to get this fatherhood thing right. That, even when his heart was both bursting with love and splitting with grief, he was doing his best to do right by her.
‘Of course he can have his photo with Ava—and if he wants a family shot then so do I. I’ll ask if there’s someone who can come and do something with my hair, and—’
‘I can do it.’
Naomi had just come from the airport. Her suitcases were stacked in a corner and she had popped in to glimpse her new charge.
‘I’ll help you get ready for the photos and then—’
A gruff voice interrupted the chatter. ‘There’s no need for all that.’
Merida looked up as Jobe Devereux was wheeled in.
He wore a silk dressing gown and his salt and pepper hair was immaculate. There was not a drip or machine in sight, and Merida could absolutely guess the effort he had gone to for this.
This was the amazing family she had married into.
‘So when do I get to meet her?’ Jobe asked.
‘Now!’ Merida smiled.
Ava was there, quiet in her little Perspex crib, so quiet that Jobe hadn’t seen her.
And now Merida watched as Ethan went over, pulled back the little blanket and picked up their tiny daughter.
She was a shock of dark hair and bunched-up pink legs, with name tags around her ankles and flailing arms, and she let out an angry cry.
But Ethan hushed her. He held her tight in his arms as he tucked her blanket around her, and he was just so tender with her that it brought tears to Merida’s eyes.
‘Meet Ava,’ Ethan said, and handed the tiny little girl to his father.
Merida stopped even trying to fight the tears as three generations met. Oh, she wanted photos. A hundred of them. She wanted these precious moments captured.
The way Ethan proudly looked on as his father embraced his granddaughter and told them things they could never have known without him being here.
‘Those blue eyes will be black by New Year,’ Jobe said, never taking his eyes from Ava. ‘Abe’s took four weeks to turn, and Ethan’s three...’
And Jobe passed on more of those tiny details that mattered and that only someone who loved you knew.
‘I’m going to head off.’ Naomi gave Merida a kiss as a porter came for her cases.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Merida said. ‘Your room’s all ready...’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Naomi said. ‘I’m going to sleep off this jet-lag and be ready for when you bring Ava home.’
It was a wondrous, exhausting, exhilarating afternoon.
Even Abe appeared, minus Candice. He didn’t stay long.
And when the day was done—when Ava had been fed and changed—he took their baby and wrapped her in a cream shawl, laid her safely down in her crib. He stroked her with a feather-light trace of her brow, soothing her to sleep.
‘I can’t wait to get you both home,’ Ethan said as he watched his daughter prepare for her first night’s sleep.
It would be Jobe’s home that they’d sleep in for now, but that didn’t daunt Ethan any more. New memories were being made and would soon line the walls.
‘See this?’ he said to Merida, and took out his phone. ‘It’s going on the wall.’
It was a gorgeous picture of a bride and groom, kissing on a rather gorgeous bridge.
‘Our wedding day...’ Merida smiled.
‘I loved you then,’ Ethan told her. ‘And I love you now. I always shall.’
They had found their love.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed The Innocent’s Shock Pregnancy by Carol Marinelli you’re sure to enjoy these other One Night With Consequences stories!
The Sheikh’s Shock Child
by Susan Stephens
Crowned for the Sheikh’s Baby
by Sharon Kendrick
The Italian’s One-Night Consequence
by Cathy Williams
Princess’s Nine-Month Secret
by Kate Hewitt
Consequence of the Tycoon’s Revenge
by Trish Morey
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Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child
by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN THE OTHER shoe finally dropped, and hard, Shona Sinclair couldn’t say she was entirely surprised.
Horrified, yes. Terrified—certainly.
But not surprised.
On some level, she had always known this day would come.
Get ready, she told herself stoutly. Because it’s finally here.
There were four men, cold-eyed and burly. She had never seen royal guards before, not in real life, but she hadn’t the slightest doubt that was exactly what they were. She knew it the moment she saw them. They came into the restaurant in a kind of rolling, lethal wave. They looked to the right and to the left, not looking for tables like everyone else who wandered in from the streets of the French Quarter, but more as if they were taking stock of every single person in the place.
If asked, Shona was certain they’d have an accurate count of all the busboys as well as the few patrons scattered amongst the tables who picked at their down-market gumbo and rubbery beignets.
Shona knew who they were. She knew. And more, she knew what their appearance meant. She could feel it like a shuddering thing that wrapped around her and shook her so hard she couldn’t breathe for a moment.
But she still held out hope. She caught her breath and she hoped.
It could be a celebrity, she told herself. That happened with some regularity here in New Orleans, even in a less than A-list place like this. But these men didn’t have that Hollywood look. They were too serious, for one thing.
And they were looking directly at her, for another.
It was early yet. The dinner service had yet to really kick into gear and the restaurant was still fairly empty. But this was the famous French Quarter in New Orleans. It could fill up at any time and frequently did, because “laissez les bon temps rouler” knew no set mealtimes.
Shona prayed for a crowd. Fervently.
But when the door opened, it wasn’t a gift from any god Shona knew. Another man walked in, flanked by two more guards, and that was it.
It was all over.
Her worst nightmare had come to pass.
Because she knew the man who stood there, adjusting the cuffs of his mind-numbingly expensive-looking suit with impatient little jerks, gazing around as if he found his surroundings deeply offensive. He took in the decor, which was aimed directly at the tourist trade with vintage New Orleans street signs and Saints football memorabilia plastering the walls.
Then he took his time redirecting that dark, arrogant gaze of his back to Shona.
Where it held.
And she knew too much about him. Things that crowded into her memory and flowed like a kind of painful lava all through her body no matter how she tried to tell herself he didn’t affect her.
He did.
He still did.
She knew that his eyes were not black, as they seemed from a distance, but were instead a breathtaking dark green she had only ever seen on one other human being. And that his face was even more of a marvel up close, all high cheekbones and that hard, tempting mouth. And his hands, elegant and strong all at once, could work magic.
Shona knew that his laugh could make a woman forget herself completely and his smile could make that same woman think that losing herself like that was worth it.
She’d forgotten many things since that searing night five years ago—her sense of humor, maybe, and any sense of who that silly girl had been that night she’d changed her life forever thanks to her own foolishness and a gorgeous stranger in a bar—but she hadn’t forgotten him.
Despite her best attempts.
“Hello, Shona,” he said, and even his voice was the same. “How nice to see you again.”
She had never forgotten the sound of him, either. That low, rich voice that washed over her like a caress, his cultured British accent layered with hints of his own country, the faraway kingdom of Khalia.
Shona had never heard of Khalia before she’d met him. And now she knew far more than she wanted about a place she had no intention of ever seeing firsthand. Such as where the kingdom was situated, tucked there on the Arabian Peninsula above the sparkling Arabian Sea. Its royal family. Its standing in the international community, even. She’d made it her business to know as much as possible ever since that terrible day five years ago, when she’d opened up a magazine in her obstetrician’s office to discover that the baby she was carrying—the result of a one-night stand with a stranger whose name she didn’t know in full and whom she’d assumed she’d never see again—belonged to Prince Malak of Khalia.
He had been right there on a glossy gossip magazine page, dripping in blonde supermodels in one of the many fancy European cities Shona had never visited and knew she never would. Places like Europe were little more than fantasies for a girl like Shona, who’d had no family, no prospects and a chip on her shoulder about both that she liked to think of as her own personal pet.
Princes were even more unattainable than trips to Europe, she was sure. She’d had absolutely no doubt that if she actually managed to reach him to tell him what had happened and that, surprise, he had a baby on the way—assuming a prince could be reached in the first place, because she doubted anyone could simply call the man at will—he would bluster back into her life the way men like him always seemed to do with women like her. He would do nothing but cause trouble, because that was what rich men did. Because they could. She’d seen it happen more than once. Women down on Shona’s level were good for a night or two, maybe, but certainly not good enough to carry a rich man’s child.
As far as Shona could tell, wealthy men seemed to travel with legal teams at the ready to draw up nondisclosure agreements and engineer payoffs at a moment’s notice—anything to keep the baby far away from the man’s real family and the wife who usually knew nothing about her husband’s extracurricular activities. As well as curtail any future blackmail scenarios. But those were the happy stories. Far scarier were the women who’d lost their babies altogether because they didn’t have the money to fight in court.
That wasn’t going to happen to her, Shona had vowed that day in the doctor’s office, the glossy magazine wrinkling in her panicked grip. She had nothing in the world but her baby and she’d be keeping him, come hell, high water or some random royal sheikh.
Shona had never wanted to lay eyes on Prince Malak of Khalia again.
That hadn’t changed.
“Do not pretend you do not remember me,” Malak said, as Shona started to tell that very lie. That mouth of his curved, and she thought there was something sardonic in the way he looked at her across the sticky floor of the restaurant. “I can see that you do. And besides, lying is so unbecoming, is it not?”
Her body melted at the sound of his voice. In ways that she planned to beat out of herself when she’d handled this, by hand, if necessary. But in the meantime, he certainly didn’t need to know that he still had that effect on her.
“I can’t say I particularly care if you find anything
I do becoming or not,” Shona replied, the same way she would to any crazy person who wandered in off the streets. Her reward was instant expressions of outrage from his guards, though Malak’s dark eyes only gleamed. “I see you’ve come with friends this time. A social call, I can only assume. Too bad I’m so busy or I’d love to catch up.”
Malak smiled at that, though it was nothing like the smile she remembered from that night. This one was cool. Powerful, somehow. It made something deep inside her uncoil in a kind of white-hot panic. Worse, he didn’t dismiss his guards, which told Shona all she needed to know about whether or not this was just a weird kind of coincidence years too late. A thick sort of uneasiness wound its way around and around her, until it felt like a noose pulled tight.
Because while it was always possible that he’d come back because he cycled through all his affairs every few years or so and conducted reunions as a matter of course, she knew that was highly unlikely. This was a famous prince, for God’s sake. He was knee-deep in willing women wherever he went. Why would he need to repeat himself?
Which left exactly one reason he would be here in the restaurant where she worked, not at her home—likely, she thought in a sickening rush of understanding, because he’d already been to her little rental house on a not-great street a fifteen-minute walk from the French Quarter.
She was wildly, insanely happy she’d dropped Miles at her friend Ursula’s house before work. Though perhaps friend was a strong word. Ursula had a six-year-old and also worked strange hours. They’d met years ago, waiting tables in the same place a few blocks over, and had been swapping child care ever since. They were bound together by necessity and the odd drink here and there, that was all.
The truth was, Shona knew as little about friendship as she did about family.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Malak asked.
And she hadn’t known him more than that single, fateful night five years ago, it was true. But the man she’d thought he was during that long, impossibly carnal night that she refused to be ashamed of, no matter what had happened afterward, had never sounded like that.
As if he was not so much asking a question, but delivering orders.
The Innocent's Shock Pregnancy Page 16
