Ellie Darkins - Surprise Baby For The Heir

She had options. She ran through them as she would for any patient who wanted them, and in her head she was halfway through the referral process to end her pregnancy before she realised that the thought of doing so made her feel sick. Sick in her stomach, sick in her bones.

She realised that it wasn’t the right choice for her.

And that was it, Elspeth thought, as she looked at herself in the mirror. Decision made. She was having a baby.

As she walked out of the bathroom Elspeth could hear her sister typing in her bedroom, and she knocked on the door before pushing it open.

‘Hey, sis. Ready for bed?’

Sarah smiled and turned her head, gesturing for Elspeth to sit. ‘What’s up, Els?’ she asked, frowning. ‘You’re completely white. You’re not going to throw up, are you? If you are, you can get off my bed.’

Elspeth pulled a face, feigning ignorance. ‘I’m fine. How was college today?’

Sarah gave her an insightful look. ‘We already talked about that. Don’t change the subject. You look terrible.’

‘Gee, with a sister like you…’

‘I know—who needs friends? But I’m not letting you off that easy. Come on. Tell me what’s up.’

Elspeth considered her options. It wasn’t as if she could keep it a secret for ever. And she could do with talking about what was on her mind. Maybe if she said the words out loud they would start to feel more real.

‘I—’ Her voice broke, stuck behind a lump in her throat. She coughed, took a deep breath and tried again. ‘I’m pregnant.’

She heard the words for the first time, but it still didn’t help. It felt as if she was talking about someone else. Except for the look on Sarah’s face. That made it a little more real.

‘Okay. Whose is it?’ she asked after a long pause. ‘Not Alex’s?’ she added, looking aghast.

‘No,’ Elspeth said, unable to help smiling at her sister’s horror at the prospect that she was back with her ex. ‘It’s someone…new,’ she said eventually, not sure she wanted her sister to know she’d been picking up strange men at weddings. ‘We’re not really in touch at the moment.’

They weren’t meant to be in touch at all. Not if it meant trying to cram a relationship into a life that she’d already proved had no space for one.

‘Guess that’s going to have to change,’ Sarah said.

Elspeth threw her a look only an older sister could give. ‘You’re very insightful tonight,’ she said.

Sarah turned her chair so that she was looking directly at Elspeth. ‘You’re the one throwing bombshells. I’m just trying to keep up. How long have you known?’

‘I’ve just found out,’ Elspeth said. ‘Don’t tell Mum. Not till I’ve had a chance to speak to her first.’

‘Of course,’ Sarah said, watching her more closely than Elspeth was comfortable with.

Elspeth picked up a book from Sarah’s bed, fiddling with it in her hands, running scenarios through her head, none of which were helping.

‘Can you grab my pyjamas?’ Sarah asked, with a glance at her restless fingers. ‘I’m not getting anywhere with this essay. I think I need to sleep on it.’

‘Of course,’ Elspeth replied, pleased to have the distraction. As she went through the nightly routine—helping Sarah in the bathroom, dressing her, administering her meds and going through her physio regime—her thoughts kept drifting back to Fraser, as hard as she tried to keep them in the present moment.

‘Are you going to tell me about him?’ Sarah asked, and Elspeth realised she had been looking out of the window for the past few minutes, Sarah’s toothbrush in her hand, completely forgotten about.

‘I’m not sure there’s much to tell. I haven’t known him long. I don’t even know if he’s going to want to be involved. I mean, we’ve done okay, haven’t we?’

Sarah gave her a look that wasn’t at all difficult to interpret.

‘I know, I know… I’ll tell him. I know that I have to. It’s just… Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t stick around, you know?’

Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t judge them all by Alex’s standards.’

‘He wasn’t—’ Elspeth started to defend her ex. It hadn’t been his fault that she hadn’t been able to commit to their relationship. She had been asking too much from him—way too much—and she hadn’t been surprised when he had taken the escape route she had offered him.

But Sarah interrupted her before she could explain. ‘Save it, Els. You know he wasn’t the one for you. I’ve got higher hopes for this new one.’

‘You don’t know a thing about him.’

‘Exactly. I don’t know a thing about him other than the look he’s put on your face and I already like him more than the last guy.’

FRASER STARED INTO his coffee and could tell without having to glance at the mirror opposite him that his eyebrows were pulling together in a way that was giving him a line between them.

He was pretty certain that this was a bad idea.

His usual practice when he had unexpected text messages from one-night stands he’d thought he’d never hear from again was to say a polite but firm no, and he should have stuck to that today.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with women—he liked to have fun. But he’d seen first-hand what happened when you let yourself be swept away by emotions. Lust and passion were all well and good for a night or two. But when you gave in to them for longer than that they clouded your judgement and led to the people around you getting hurt.

He got hurt.

That was what he had learned as a teenager, when he’d seen his father throw away twenty years of marriage and move in a woman who hadn’t lasted more than a couple of years. But when Fraser had given him an ultimatum—‘ Either she goes or I do! ’—in the early, heady days of that relationship, his father had chosen his new partner instead of his son.

So Fraser had packed up his things, helped his mother into the car—with her white face and her shocked silence—and left his home, the ancient seat of his ancestors and his title. The estate he had been preparing to inherit from the day he was born.

And he didn’t know if he would ever get them back. All because his dad hadn’t been able to say no to a pretty face and walk away. Seeing what that had done to his mother had made the decision for him. Nothing and no one, no relationship, could be worth the sort of pain that she had gone through.

Meeting with Elspeth now went against every rule he had made for himself and stuck to so rigidly for the past fifteen years. But she had found his phone number somehow and invited him for coffee.

She was clearly keen. Keener than most. And that meant he had to be even firmer than usual. He had to tell her, face to face and in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t interested. He didn’t do relationships. He’d assumed that she’d known that when she’d taken him home halfway through a wedding and then barely woken him for a goodbye kiss the following morning. Had assumed that she wasn’t after anything serious.

So why had she tracked him down? The time for swapping numbers had come and gone without either of them suggesting it, and he had assumed that meant that she felt the same way he did.

Whatever. The whys of the situation didn’t matter. All that mattered was shutting this thing down. And it seemed more effective to do that in person than by text. He could show her that he really meant it.

And show himself.

Because he’d been thinking about Elspeth far more than was reasonable or desirable over the past few weeks. Perhaps it was the way that she had sneaked out in the half-light of dawn. The colours in the room faded in the early morning, the silhouette of her face the only clear thing.