A Special Kind of Woman

by Caroline Anderson

  She looked at her clothes, a plain pencil skirt and a neat blouse, with a comfy old cardigan snuggled over the top because the shop was always chilly until the sun came round, and shook her head. Gilda had really lost it.

  She looked back down at her list, splodged with tears, and felt a sob welling in her chest. What on earth was she to do? Marry him, even though he was only doing it for the baby, or struggle on alone sharing her—or him—with Owen, scrapping about Christmas and birthdays and school holidays, with the poor little mite being passed from pillar to post?

  At least Milly had had absolute security. They may have had nothing else, but her daughter had always known her mother would be there for her come hell or high water, at any hour of the day or night, and there had never been any question of how much she loved her.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ she said, and shut the list into her desk drawer. She had too much to do to waste time in useless contemplation. She’d talk to Owen tonight and, depending on what he said, she’d make a decision.

  And, please, God, she thought, let it be the right one…

  Owen struggled through a difficult day with an enormous effort of will. He was tired after the conference, suffering from lack of sleep, and standing in a hot theatre all day battling to save one life after another after a major incident was not his idea of a restful first day back.

  Still, it occupied his mind totally, which was what he needed in the absence of being able to go and deal with his dilemma immediately.

  Dilemma? he thought, and shook his head. No, not a dilemma. Well, not the baby, anyway. That wasn’t a dilemma, it was a wonderful and precious gift, something he’d thought would never happen to him again. After Josh, he and Jill had never taken steps to prevent another pregnancy, but nothing had happened.

  Jill hadn’t really minded, but Owen had ached for another child for years, and it had only been when Jill had died that he’d finally resigned himself.

  And now Cait was having his baby, and because she’d convinced herself she wanted to do something with Law, of all the dry and tedious things to want to study, she was seeing this precious gift of their child as a burden.

  Well, he’d have to find a way to persuade her otherwise, so he could keep her safe and love and cherish her and their child till the end of his days.

  If the stubborn, silly woman would only let him.

  ‘Retractors,’ he snapped, and the scrub nurse beside him gave him a long-suffering look and slapped them in his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, and her eyebrows shot up.

  ‘You’re like a bear with a sore head today,’ she said under her breath. ‘If I were you, I’d have a hot toddy and an early night.’

  He snorted softly. If only it were that simple.

  Owen rang Cait at six to say he was back at home and would like to see her.

  She looked around her flat, horribly untidy because she’d been working late every night this week and had hardly given it a glance, and wanted to weep with frustration. At the very least, she wanted to have the place clean and tidy so he didn’t start accusing her of being a slut and an unfit mother.

  ‘I thought,’ he went on, ‘if you don’t mind and haven’t got any other plans, maybe I could get a taxi to pick you up and bring you here for a meal.’

  So she was off the hook as far as the housework went, anyway. ‘I don’t know if I can eat,’ she said worriedly, nausea nibbling at her even as she spoke.

  ‘Don’t worry about eating. You can have something simple. I just—Cait, give me a chance,’ he said softly, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he really cared.

  ‘I’ll drive over,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ he protested, but she cut him off.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she corrected. ‘I’m all right to drive. I’m pregnant, Owen, not crippled. I’ll see you later. What time?’

  ‘Seven?’

  She looked at her watch and sighed. ‘OK. I’ll see you then.’

  Pride made her dress up. Pride and a perverse urge to make him want her, even though she knew he didn’t, not really. He was still in love with his wife, and she’d been a fool to imagine that she could have a part in his life.

  She wore the black dress he’d liked the first time they’d gone out, even though it was ridiculously over the top for the occasion, and she put on slinky tights and high, strappy sandals that were totally impractical to drive in but made her legs look as if they went on for ever.

  As an afterthought she put down extra food for Bagpuss, who was getting fat and bossy and more demanding than ever now Milly was gone, and she put on her best coat, courtesy of the Oxfam shop, and drove over to Owen’s, arriving just a few seconds after seven.

  He opened the door immediately and came over to the car to help her out. He was dressed in casual trousers and a cream cashmere sweater that set off his wonderful toffee-coloured eyes, and he scanned her with them as she stepped out of the car and for the briefest moment heat flared in them.

  Good, she thought. She felt more confident knowing she still had some power over him, because she felt terrifyingly powerless in this situation. Not that it was about power, but the balance was firmly in his favour, and whatever happened she was going to be the loser once again.

  Her hand slid down over her abdomen. No, not the loser, she thought. Never that, my little one. Not with you.

  Owen took her elbow and helped her across the gravel, and because she was wearing those ridiculous shoes she let him. She got a stone in the toe, but she said nothing, just pasted on a smile and kept walking, and he took her into the house and settled her in the sitting room.

  The fire was lit, and the dogs wagged their tails but didn’t bother to move. It was too warm and comfortable, and she didn’t blame them.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  Cait looked up into his eyes, shadowed now because his back was to the light, and wished she could read his expression. ‘Please. Could I have water?’

  ‘I’ve got mineral water—fizzy, with ice and lemon?’

  It sounded wonderful. ‘Please.’

  He went up to the kitchen, and she surreptitiously slipped her shoe off and removed the stone, then put it back on just as he returned with a tall glass in each hand.

  ‘How was work?’ she asked, throwing him, and he gave a short laugh and dropped onto the other end of the sofa.

  ‘Horrendous. There was a gas explosion in a factory. That’s why they called me in. I spent the day gluing people together again, not always successfully.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Mmm. Whatever.’ He stared down into his glass, shadows chasing across his face, and she knew he was reliving the horrors of the day. Then he turned to her, his eyes searching her face, and his mouth twitched into a fleeting smile. ‘Sorry. I haven’t even asked about you. How are you? How was your day? Are you OK?’

  ‘Sick. Busy.’ Sad because you don’t love me.

  ‘I’m sorry—about the baby. I feel so guilty about this, because I should really have thought about it when we made love, but—well, Jill and I never needed to. After Josh she didn’t get pregnant again, and I suppose I’ve just stopped thinking about it.’

  ‘Most woman are on the Pill,’ she said in mitigation. ‘You’d think I’d remember, but I didn’t even think about it. I suppose it’s been such a long time—it isn’t something I do,’ she explained, wondering if it was possible to become a virgin again after eighteen years, because that was what she’d felt like.

  ‘No—I don’t, either. It was the first time since Jill died. It just didn’t seem right before, but somehow, with you—’ He broke off, staring down into his glass again, and she wondered if he had a script concealed in it, little flashcards with key words on.

  Oh, lord.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be so beautiful,’ he said softly, and his words nearly reduced her to tears. ‘I thought it would be messy and difficult and I’d feel bad afterwards, but it wasn’t and I didn’t, and
if we had to conceive a child, then to have done it that night seems somehow right.’

  He put his glass down and took hers away, moving closer to her and taking her hand in his.

  ‘Cait, I know this isn’t what you wanted from your life, but it’s happening, and we have to make the best of it. I don’t know what you want to do, but if there’s any way I can help, I will. If you want to go away and take a degree, I’ll get a nanny to look after the baby and you can come home at weekends and in the holidays, and we’ll manage somehow, if it’s what you want.

  ‘Or if you just want to carry on running your shop, you could let the flat and run it from here, or expand it upstairs into the flat, or move to another shop nearer—whatever. And Milly—there’ll always be room for Milly here with you, you know that, don’t you? Or if you just want to stop work and stay at home with the baby—whatever you want, whatever would make you happy.’

  Owen trailed off, and she realised his eyes were glazed with tears. Oh, lord, she thought, he really wants this baby. If he and Jill never had any more and he wanted them, no wonder he’s so desperate to have it here.

  ‘You could even have the spare room, if you’d rather. We could divide off one end of it to make a nursery, and you and the baby could share it. Or you could have Josh’s rooms and be even more separate, if you would rather.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Apart from the baby?’

  ‘You,’ he said after a long pause. ‘I want you, Cait. I love you. I was going to ask you to marry me tonight, when I came back from Italy. I’d got a ring and everything. Then you started talking about going away, and I suddenly wasn’t sure if you would want me.’

  His voice cracked slightly, and Cait felt a great well of love building up inside her.’ Owen, of course I want you!’ she said raggedly. ‘I don’t care about my course! It’s boring. I just thought—I don’t know, I’d thought about it for such a long time, and there it was. I was only doing it because I’d been planning it for years, but I don’t want to go away. I don’t want to do anything except have your baby and live here with you. I just didn’t think you’d want me.’

  ‘Not want you?’ he said, stunned. ‘Cait, how could I not want you? You’re warm and funny and brave and beautiful—what is there about you not to want?’

  ‘I can’t cook,’ she said, laughing tearfully. ‘And I’m a lousy housewife.’

  ‘That’s fine. So am I. I have a housekeeper for that very reason.’

  ‘And I’m an unmarried mother, and in your position in the community—’

  ‘What position?’ he said, his voice disgusted. ‘People don’t care about that sort of thing any more. Anyway, if I have anything to say about it you won’t be an unmarried mother for very much longer.’

  He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a little ring, diamonds and sapphires in a very old setting, the light sparkling off the stones and dazzling her through her tears. ‘I got it from Gilda next door. I told her it was for you. I didn’t tell her why, but I think she guessed.’

  Cait remembered Gilda that morning, staring at her hand and mumbling something about a dress. ‘That’s what she was on about,’ she said slowly. ‘I saw her this morning. She obviously expected that I’d be wearing it, but I wasn’t. I was crying over a list of pros and cons—well, pros, actually. There was only one con, and I don’t think it applies.’

  ‘What was it?’ he asked.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I thought you’d hate me, after a while. I’d be in your house, untidying everything, the baby would be screaming, you’d be tired and fed up with us all, and I thought you’d start to wonder why on earth you’d agreed to it. But maybe you won’t.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said, taking her hand and slipping the ring onto her finger. It was a perfect fit, a tiny bit on the loose side if anything, but that was probably as well as she was pregnant and her fingers might swell.

  ‘You haven’t actually asked me to marry you yet,’ she reminded him. ‘Not properly. Not for the right reasons.’

  ‘I haven’t? How remiss.’

  He slid off the sofa onto his knees, took her hand in his and stared deep into her eyes. ‘I love you, Cait,’ he said carefully, every word clear so she couldn’t possibly mistake it. ‘I think I’ve loved you since I found you crying over your steering-wheel in the car park the day we took the kids to uni. I don’t know if you love me. I hope you do, or that you’ll learn to, because I know I’ll love you till the day I die. Marry me, Cait. Let’s be a family—a real family, all five of us. God knows, we all deserve it.’

  Owen reached out a hand and brushed the tears from her cheeks with his knuckles. ‘Marry me, my darling. Please?’

  She nodded, unable to speak, and then she swallowed hard and took a steadying breath. ‘Of course I’ll marry you—and of course I love you, you idiot!’ she said, and then she was in his arms, wrapped hard against his chest, her mascara ruining the front of his beautiful cashmere sweater. ‘Oh, look what I’ve done,’ she said wretchedly when he straightened up.

  ‘Forget it. You can cry all over everything I own for all I care. It’s all yours anyway.’ He pulled her to her feet, tutted and pushed her down again, then took off her ridiculous shoes. ‘You can’t walk in these, you’ll mess your back up,’ he said crossly, and lifted her into his arms.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she said curiously.

  ‘Bed,’ he replied. ‘I’m tired. I want to lie down somewhere comfortable and hold you and listen to you telling me you love me until I fall asleep in your arms.’

  ‘What a lovely idea. What about supper?’

  ‘You want to eat, too?’ he said, and put her down again. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you, of course.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Pregnant women are always unreasonable. I should have remembered that.’ He made a detour into the kitchen, picked up the biscuit tin and a bottle of mineral water and handed them to her, then scooped all of them up into his arms and carried her up to bed.

  ‘You’re looking very smug,’ she remarked as he put her down in the middle of the bed.

  ‘Am I?’ Owen sat down beside her, his face suddenly serious. ‘I don’t mean to be. When Jill died, I thought I’d lost everything, and when Josh went away I felt as if I’d come to the end of the road. I was just thirty-nine, and there was nothing left for me except my career—and then I met you. You’ve given me my life back, Cait. You’ve given me love and laughter, and another family to look forward to—a baby I thought I’d never have, a teenage daughter to test my patience and a beautiful woman to walk beside me through our lives. Can you blame me for looking just a tiny bit smug?’

  His smile was gentle and a little sad, and she swallowed hard and hugged him.

  ‘No. No, I can’t. I feel the same.’

  His eyes darkened and, taking the biscuits and the water away from her, he lay down beside her and took her into his arms. ‘I love you,’ he said softly, and kissed her…

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.

  and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark ownerand/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2008

  by Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Caroline Anderson 2001

  ISBN: 9781408904237

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Copyright