‘I CAN’T BELIEVE IT. Have I said that already? Yes. I have. But it’s...well, pet, you know the old saying...you spend a lifetime waiting for a bus and then two come along one after the other. First Dan and lovely, lovely Julie and now you and Leandro. You know your dad and I couldn’t be happier...’
Celia made a game effort to smile. She and her mother were in the kitchen clearing away the dishes. Leandro and her father had remained in the sitting room for a while, bonding over a glass of port, which, for her father, could be classified as a celebration after-dinner drink, and had then retired for the night. Leandro had swanned into the kitchen, given her mother a hug and a peck on the cheek, effusively thanked her for the best roast dinner he had ever had, and announced that he would be heading up.
It had taken a little over a week for her to summon up the necessary courage to make the trip to Shrewsbury so that she could break the joyful news to her parents.
A husband-to-be...a baby on the way...love at first sight...every romantic dream rolled into one with dizzying speed.
They had both patiently explained the situation with Julie and her engagement to Leandro as soon as they had arrived several hours earlier but, as it turned out, both her parents were already aware of the backstory.
Dan had told them all about the engagement of convenience and how it had crashed and burned when he and Julie had fallen in love.
‘I would have told you,’ Lizzie Drew had said sheepishly, ‘but we’d only just about found out ourselves and I thought it best if Dan and Julie told you themselves. Cleared the air. I know they planned on meeting Leandro, but they wanted to reassure Julie’s father first that he had nothing to worry about. It all seemed a bit of a muddle for me to start trying to dissect down the end of the line but now that you’re both here...and, well! What a wonderful turn up for the books!’
As far as her mum was concerned, Celia discovered very quickly that her fairy story of meeting the guy of her dreams was every bit as romantic as Julie and Dan’s had been.
The fact that Leandro had been prepared to marry a woman so that he could rescue her father from pain and penury already spoke volumes. There was already a halo on his head by the time they’d rung the doorbell.
And Leandro had not failed when it came to keeping the halo in place. He had gone full throttle with the charm and, over the course of dinner, Celia had watched her parents visibly melt.
If they had been favourably predisposed towards Leandro to start with, then, by the time the sticky toffee pudding was eaten, they had become full-time members of his fan club.
Not for one single second had either of them had any doubts that she and Leandro were in love.
The pregnancy had said it all.
They had such faith in her, and were so disingenuously convinced that their daughter would never fall pregnant unless love was involved because that was how she had been brought up, that the entire evening had been filled with teary-eyed smiles and congratulations and enthusiastic wedding planning.
Now, with the last dish finally washed and at a little after eleven, Celia felt as exhausted as if she’d run a marathon. She looked around the sparkling kitchen and wondered whether she could hang around for another couple of hours pointlessly wiping the counters, because arrangements on the sleeping front all seemed to be a bit of a nightmare.
‘You go on up, Mum,’ she said faintly as her mother headed to the kitchen door. ‘I’ll stay here...er...’ she looked around her at the spotless kitchen with a hint of desperation ‘...and unload the dishwasher. You and Dad are leaving first thing in the morning for your cruise—you don’t want to come down to a full dishwasher...’
Quite rightly, her mother looked a little startled at this suggestion.
‘I wish you had come sooner, darling. I so would have liked to have spent longer going over all the wedding plans...you know... Dan’s getting married but there’s nothing like a mother and her daughter when it comes to weddings.’
‘Well, like I mentioned, Mum...it’s going to be a small wedding...all under the radar...literally just you, Dad, Dan and Julie and Julie’s dad...piled into a register office...’
She smiled brightly while wondering how her life had veered so wildly off course from what she had always planned for herself.
The girl who had been saved from marrying the wrong guy was now marrying the wrong guy.
The girl who had thought she’d learned lessons had ended up learning nothing at all.
The girl who’d dreamt of a big white wedding, with all her friends and relatives there, was looking forward to a register office and an event that would be a formality, just a piece of paper signed legitimising the union she had been persuaded into. Not that it had taken much persuasion. Not only could she see things from Leandro’s point of view...not only could she empathise with his need to provide two parents for his child where he had had one, but from her point of view, yes, a child should never pay for the mistakes of its parents.
If, in the years to come, their situation became insupportable, then that was another matter.
For the moment, as he had pointed out, they got along very well indeed and how, he had inserted deftly, would she ever be able to explain to their son or daughter that they had been denied the advantages of having both parents because she’d decided that she wouldn’t give it a go?
Celia had seen the harshness on his beautiful face and had known what he had been thinking. That his own mother hadn’t been bothered and look at the legacy she had left behind.
But she knew that she had wandered into a minefield because everything had changed.
She hadn’t been able to fault him. For the past week and a half, he had seen her three times and together, like business associates, they had hammered out their way forward.
He had listened to her concerns and had answered all of them, fairly and gently and with understanding. She had told him that there was no way she wanted to live in London.
‘I can’t imagine bringing up a child in the city,’ she had admitted, looking around his spartan, urban space and wondering whether there could possibly be anywhere less suited to a child. ‘I grew up in the country and I know it would be inconvenient, but if we get married, then we need to find a solution to that.’
He had agreed with alacrity. There was Surrey...there was Berkshire...there were countless towns and villages where she could find the space she needed, which would also be commutable to London.
‘You can keep your shop here, in London,’ he had said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe leave the running of it to your assistants? And start afresh wherever we settle. I imagine the provinces might prove a very lucrative market for wedding dresses unless, of course, you want to pack in working altogether, which would be absolutely fine with me.’
Celia had hurriedly turned down that suggestion. The thought of being dependent for ever on someone who didn’t love her and was only with her for the sake of the child they had conceived didn’t sit well.
There were moments when she almost wished that he weren’t quite so nice because nice was not what she wanted. She missed the Leandro who had looked at her with simmering passion, who had made love to her until she’d wanted to scream with pleasure. She missed the sexy, sensual familiarity that had grown between them during those magical days in Scotland, when they had been prisoners of the weather.
Now, he gave her respect and she didn’t know what to do with it.
The guy who had huskily asked her to continue what they’d started when they returned to London had gone for good.
In his place was the guy who, undeniably, wanted to do the right thing and quite frankly would turn out to be a great dad.
But he no longer touched her. He kept his distance and that hurt even though she knew, in a muddled way, that touching would just add to the complications.
Was he assuming that, because this was a business arrangement for him, what they would have would be along the same lines as what he had agreed with Julie? An open marriage of sorts where she would discreetly overlook any misdemeanours?
Or was he just biding his time? He might genuinely believe that two parents were better than one, but maybe, subconsciously, he also knew that a divorced guy had a lot more rights than one who had never married.
Was he playing a waiting game? He certainly no longer had any interest in her on the physical level.
It was a subject Celia dared not broach because of the worms that might start crawling out of the can.
Did she really want him to kindly tell her that she wasn’t his type after all? That what they’d had had worked in Scotland, where reality was something they had left behind? That it just wasn’t something, on reflection, that could survive the light of day?
Did she want him to know how much she missed him? No, she didn’t.
They would marry and who knew—it was possible that seeing him up close and personal all the time would put paid to the hold he had over her. How long could one person carry on loving someone who wasn’t interested?
The house was quiet by the time she made her way up to the bedroom that her mother had lovingly made up for them, right down to flowers in the vase on the chest of drawers and some kind of scent that filled the room with the smell of cedarwood.
She quietly pushed open the door to a semi-darkened room and Leandro on the bed and, suddenly, she was on red-hot alert, her senses quivering with forbidden excitement. The horse might have bolted and it might have been futile trying to bolt the stable door, but right now there was no comfort in the fact that they had been lovers.
She felt his dangerous presence and shivered.
‘You’re on the bed.’ Celia folded her arms and stared down at Leandro, who returned her gaze, unperturbed.
He was half naked and she hoped that the nudity didn’t extend beyond what she could see because she didn’t think her blood pressure could take it.
‘Where else am I supposed to be?’
‘Leandro,’ she muttered, but she could feel her fingers digging into her arms, ‘this isn’t going to work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...because this isn’t what we’re about now!’
No, Leandro thought. Under normal circumstances, wouldn’t this have been a good outcome? A marriage of convenience, admittedly, but one with the bonus of hot sex. With or without the hot sex, however, it was a union he had been determined to cement. The fierceness of what he felt for this unborn baby astonished him, but he wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t exist, and, that being the case, his mind had leapt several steps ahead, to a scenario in which they went their separate ways, sharing custodial rights.
A child toing and froing from one house to another. Different wardrobes in different places, treading a thin line between what was diplomatic to say to one parent in the absence of the other.
Eventually, another man would come on the scene. How long before that other man became central to his child’s life? How long before his flesh and blood started calling another guy his dad?
Right there and then, Leandro had known that no way was that ever going to be allowed to happen on his watch. And more than that...more than all those plausible scenarios was the uneasy recognition that she was pulling away from him. Hell! He didn’t want to care but he was finding that he did. He didn’t want her distance. He wanted...what? Could it be the ease of connection they had had before things had become complicated? Before a future he had never considered became the present with which they both had to deal?
Now here they were.
‘This room,’ he told her, voice cooling, ‘is the size of a matchbox. You want me to sleep on the ground? I’ll sleep on the ground.’ How ironic that they were now in the most intimate situation possible and yet she couldn’t bear the thought of sharing her bed with him. ‘And what if they poke their heads in and find the pair of love birds not sharing the same bed?’
‘They’re leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. They’d never know.’
‘Fine.’ Leandro shrugged and made to fling aside the duvet.
‘Okay. No. They...it might be hard to explain if they popped in to say goodbye before they left.’
‘Yes. After the effusive welcome we received, there might have been disappointment all round if they thought we’d ended the evening on a raging argument serious enough to send us shooting off in separate bedrooms. What’s the problem with sharing a bed? Have I tried to lay a single finger on you since you came back into my life? Have I given you any reason to believe that I’m anything other than a decent guy trying to do the decent thing, which doesn’t include forcing himself on a woman who’s not interested?’
Their eyes tangled, his darkly brooding, holding her gaze until she was the first to look away.
If he’d hoped to force a response from her, then it hadn’t been forthcoming and he was annoyed with himself for trying to corner her into saying something, anything that would let him know what exactly was going on behind that guarded exterior.
Foremost wasn’t the crazy issue that he was still attracted to her. It wasn’t even the realisation that he had become the very man he had always sworn he never would...a man vulnerable to someone else’s decisions. First and foremost and the only thing that mattered was the knowledge that she was having his baby and he was going to marry her, going to be a full-time father with none of the hopeless complications associated with any kind of joint custody.
Sure, joint custody would always be a damn sight better than what he had had as a kid, but it still would never be in the same league as a child having both parents there.
He noted the tic in her neck and the steady blush that invaded her cheeks and he wondered whether she was trying to work out how to knock him back without getting into a pointless war of words.
‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Celia tilted her chin at a mutinous, defensive angle. ‘I just thought that it might be a bit awkward... It’s not a very big bed...’
‘Feel free to barricade yourself behind the cushions but trust me...if our bodies touch during the night, then I assure you it will be purely accidental.’
Which, Celia thought with such a sharp stab of pain that she momentarily felt faint, pretty much said it all. Accidental touching where before there had been touching with intent, with intent and passion and desire and, she’d sometimes thought, more affection and tenderness than he was probably even aware of.
‘I would never,’ Leandro said gravely, his voice warmer, ‘do anything that might make you feel in the least bit uncomfortable. If it would make you feel a little...less awkward, I can head down to the kitchen and spend a couple of hours working, give you time to fall asleep in peace.’
‘It’s okay,’ Celia muttered, flushing. ‘I’ll get changed and of course it’s not a problem sharing the bed. I... I apologise for—’
‘Forget it!’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘This is new for the both of us. Let’s put this kind of thing down to teething problems.’
She did.
She took her time showering unnecessarily and then she took her time applying some night cream and then doing a few deep-breathing exercises before she returned to the bedroom in the most conservative nightwear she had, long bottoms and a short-sleeved top firmly buttoned up.
She slept. Soundly. If their bodies accidentally touched, then she wasn’t aware of it.
She woke at five, her senses alert to her parents up and about and trying to be as quiet as they could.
Next to her, Leandro was still asleep, the covers half off, his muscular, bronzed body so compellingly beautiful that she remained frozen and in awe, drinking in the sight and luxuriating in the freedom of appreciating him, of not having to hide her love because he was sleeping.
Then she slid off the bed, tiptoed out of the bedroom and only detoured via the bathroom to shove on her bathrobe so that she could go and wish her parents a good holiday.
They might have been in a state of simmering excitement about their departure but not so excited that they didn’t have time to repeat the mantra of how wonderful they thought Leandro was. So much better suited to her than Martin had been, for all Martin’s sterling qualities. Celia marvelled that her parents could both misread Leandro so completely but, then again, the guy could charm the birds from the trees and he had dazzled them both, maybe just the way he’d dazzled her.
It was nearly an hour before she headed back to the bedroom but still only just after six in the morning and she half expected Leandro to still be asleep, but when she quietly pushed open the bedroom door, heartened by the fact that the lights hadn’t been switched on, she was shocked to find that the bed was empty and Leandro was perched on a chair by the window. He had pulled open the curtains just enough for her eyes to quickly adjust to the fact that he had changed into jeans and a tee shirt. His long legs were stretched out at an angle and next to him...
Draped half on, half off the stout chest of drawers she had used ever since she’d been a kid...
Celia’s mouth dropped open and she took a couple of faltering steps forward.
‘What...what’s this doing out?’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘You’ve been rummaging in my wardrobe?’
‘Hunting down a face towel. Thought there might be a stash there. You never said you’d hung onto your wedding dress from years ago.’
‘Because that was none of your business!’ But she walked towards the dress, covered in its voluminous mothproof cover, and gazed down for a few seconds at it.
When she rested her hand on it, she didn’t flinch as he covered it with his own.
Leandro watched her closely.
He’d vaguely been rooting around for a face towel but the truth was that he’d heard her sidle out of the bedroom and had known that she’d been heading down to chat to her parents before they left on their holiday.
They’d slept in her bedroom. There was stuff everywhere, from the pictures in the frames on the dressing table to the old board games in a stack on the shelf above the chest of drawers.
He’d leapt out of bed, slung on some clothes and taken his time looking at the pictures, stories of a happy childhood. He’d only peered into the wardrobe because he’d just happened to be standing in front of it and his curiosity about Celia had been piqued by the mementoes all around him.
And the wedding dress had been impossible to miss because it was the only thing in the cupboard and it took up so much space.
He knew that she didn’t pine for her ex. She might have been hurt but she had never registered any lingering pain when she’d mentioned him.
But that didn’t mean that the experience had killed off all her dreams. She’d planned for the big white wedding and she’d hung onto the dress because it had been a reminder of what she had longed for.
In a flash, Leandro realised just how much she was willing to sacrifice for the sake of a child neither of them had reckoned on.
Not just her hopes of finding Mr Perfect, after she’d almost married Mr Imperfect, but all the other things that went with that. The courtship...the planning for the big day...the confetti and photos and speeches and the driving off to the romantic honeymoon. The way she now rested her small hand on that dress and the wistful look in her eyes said it all and something inside Leandro twisted.
‘I’m not going to force your hand,’ he said roughly. Their eyes met and he nodded at the wedding dress. ‘If you’re still holding onto dreams, then I don’t want to be the one to trample all over them.’
‘That’s not what you said to me a few days ago. A few days ago you made it clear that marriage was the only solution as far as you were concerned.’
‘It still is but I have no intention of getting what I want by using a whip.’
Celia raised her eyebrows at this change in tune, then she sighed, thought of what life would look like without him in it, now that she had reconciled herself to marrying him.
It wasn’t an attractive picture.
Disentangling her parents from the happy-ever-after fairy-tale ending was just the cherry on top. The truth was that she had guiltily found herself painting unrealistic pictures in her head about life with Leandro.
Of course he didn’t love her! Good heavens, he no longer even wanted to come near her physically! There were so many problems associated with those two things, but hadn’t there been just a tiny bloom of possibilities cutting a forbidden path through all of that? Hadn’t a little voice carried on saying, however much she’d tried to shut it down, that who knew what lay around the corner...?
‘You’re not,’ she confessed. ‘So I really didn’t think that we would end up...well, here, when I came to tell you about the pregnancy, but I agree that two parents are usually better than one and you’ve met Mum and Dad. That was how I was brought up. So you’re not forcing my hand. If I really and truly didn’t want to go through with it, then I wouldn’t. And for the wedding dress? I hung onto it...’ She paused and glanced down, noting with surprise his hand on hers and quietly slipping hers free ‘...because it was the first one I ever tried my hand at after I finished my course. I...it’s not even properly finished, so it isn’t as though I could sell it...’
Her voice petered out and the silence hung heavily between them for a few seconds.
She didn’t know where this was going and she had no idea what was coming next, so she was shocked when he said, voice low and even, ‘We’ve talked about a lot of things, by which I mean, we’ve gone through all the reasons why we’ve decided on...doing what needs to be done for the sake of this baby. We’ve agreed on where we could live and the money side of things...but on a less...formal level, you’re going to be giving a lot up for this.’
‘As are you.’
‘We also,’ he said neutrally, ‘find ourselves in the unique position of being in the most intimate situation possible without the benefit of really knowing one another.’
‘I...’ Celia was hurt because she’d thought they’d got to know one another well over that short space of time. She’d told him things she’d never told anyone else. Had she been a complete fool in thinking that perhaps it might have been the same for him? Just a little? ‘I...yes, I suppose you’re right...’
‘To make this really work, maybe we should take some time out together.’
‘You think that because I didn’t tell you about the wedding dress you don’t know me?’
‘How much do we know one another?’ His voice was a low, lazy drawl.
In truth, Leandro realised that he had been more unsettled by that wedding dress in the cupboard than he’d thought. Of course it had made him realise what she was giving up, all the intangible things she was saying goodbye to.
He patted himself on the back because that showed a magnanimous side to him of which he was proud, even though the emotional response was unusual enough to floor him.
But now that he considered it in a little more depth, he wondered whether her nostalgia for romance would leave ajar a door through which she would eventually be tempted to enter. Would she want to see what was on the other side?
He would take things back a bit, he’d determined. They’d skipped a lot of steps in the process she’d probably spent her whole life looking forward to. He’d met her parents, had been charmed by them, had seen them for the traditional sort who truly believed in the power of love. He didn’t get it, but what he did get was the power of sex and that was something they had had in abundance.
So she had given him the cold shoulder when he’d suggested they continue. Maybe she’d had big dreams of walking off into a rosy sunset arm in arm with some guy who probably didn’t exist, whom she might or might not meet one fine day and to whom she would give her heart.
But they were here now and something about her alarm at sharing the bed with him the night before had nudged something inside him. Was she as indifferent to him as she wanted to be? Or was there still the same simmering attraction inside her that, if enticed, would blow hot and fierce as it had done before?
She might not welcome a reaction that didn’t suit her ideals but if they were to be married...? Then the world turned on its axis, didn’t it?
Thoughts of seduction, let loose from the cage in which they had been confined, roared out with the power of a sudden burning conflagration.
Seduction rarely involved the prosaic. They had done prosaic, insofar as prosaic could exist in their current situation.
‘Once we’re married, whatever the timeline, the pregnancy will be further along,’ he murmured. ‘You might even find it difficult to travel anywhere...’
‘Travel anywhere?’ Celia looked at him with open bewilderment. ‘I know my car is small,’ she said, ‘but, actually, I will still be able to get around in it! Even if I grow to the size of a barrage balloon, I can just push the seat back a bit and travelling isn’t going to be some kind of dicing-with-misfortune experience, Leandro. I’m not going to be an invalid just because I’m having a baby!’
‘What’s the state of your passport?’ he mused, by way of response, and Celia frowned.
‘I have one. Why do you ask?’
‘I may be realistic,’ he responded wryly, ‘when it comes to finding solutions to problems, but I’m not completely without finesse. Most married couples go on honeymoon.’
‘We’re not most married couples.’
‘In the eyes of your parents, we are, wouldn’t you agree?’ He waited a heartbeat knowing that there was no argument she could use against that. ‘They would hardly expect us to get married, as the loved-up couple they believe us to be, for me to promptly return to work without even paying lip service to my new bride...’
There were so many words in that sentence that were at odds with what actually existed between them that Celia’s head was in a whirl and yet, treacherously, she clung to those words with the desperation of a complete idiot. Loved-up couple...new bride...a honeymoon befitting those things...
He was only stating the obvious, wasn’t he?
They had put on a united front. They had come as the bearer of glad tidings and her parents had not doubted otherwise. Many times, Leandro’s arm had rested across her shoulders...around her waist...his fingers lightly feathering her wrist...his thigh brushing hers as they had sat together on the sofa in the sitting room.
She had been unbearably aware of each and every one of those little intimate gestures because she was so unbearably aware of him. Her parents, of course, would have been equally aware of each and every one of those gestures. Her mother was eagle-eyed when it came to things like that.
Celia was sure that her mum would be nursing some disappointment about the size of the wedding. She would have wanted planning and hats and showing off her daughter to all her friends in the village. But she hadn’t said a word. However, if there were to be no honeymoon and nothing at all to mark the event as something joyous and to be celebrated, then how would she feel?
Would a pretence of a honeymoon be necessary?
‘I suppose we could pretend to do something.’ She frowned, staring off into the distance, and Leandro did his best not to grit his teeth in pure frustration.
Was there a woman as challenging as the one now chewing her lip and staring off as though waiting for divine inspiration? Was it utterly arrogant and egotistic of him to think that there were very few women who wouldn’t have leapt at everything he had offered instead? The ring? And all the benefits that came with that? Which, quite frankly, were more than generous?
‘We could. What,’ he asked with an edge of genuine curiosity, ‘did you have in mind?’
‘Well, we could hide out at your place...’
Leandro burst out laughing and, when he’d sobered up, he gazed at her with amusement. ‘When this breaks, there’ll be some press coverage. I’m a billionaire. I’m not saying the paparazzi are going to be stalking us in the hope of a juicy story, but I’m well enough known in financial and society circles for some interest. If they discover that we’ve put it about that we’re heading off to exotic climes on a pre-baby-being-born honeymoon only to discover that we’re both lurking under the bed at my London place, then I can’t think what will be made of that.’
‘Exotic climes?’
Leandro shrugged. ‘The world is full of some exceptionally lovely outposts.’
‘So you’re thinking we actually go somewhere.’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll sort everything out.’ He grinned. ‘And you can relax. You’re pregnant. Pregnant women are supposed to take it easy. I’ll make sure you don’t have a minute’s stress.’
Celia gaped and blinked. Was he kidding? A honeymoon with this guy so that they could get to know one another and he was guaranteeing her a stress-free experience? What planet was he on?
But of course she knew.
He wanted to make sure they entered this new arrangement as friends, and friends surely didn’t stress about spending time in one another’s company. Did they?
Except for her...
When she thought about being away with him, she felt faint, but he was already rising to his feet, getting ready to start the day, and she knew, with a sinking heart, that what he wanted he was going to get.