Liz Fielding - The Bachelor's Baby

She was wearing thick cord trousers and heavy boots that contrasted with the femininity of a broad-brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. And a man’s shirt. What man?

She stopped, rubbed her sleeve across her face, leaving her cheek streaked with dirt, and he forgot about the shirt as anxiety squeezed the breath from his lungs. Should she be working like this? Digging?

‘Should you be doing that?’ he demanded harshly.

‘If I want homegrown beans on my table, then yes,’ she replied easily, no trace of surprise in her voice. ‘But if you’re volunteering, be my guest.’ She pushed the spade into the soil, stepped back and turned to look at him. He needed, wanted to see into her eyes; the hat threw shade across her face, keeping her thoughts hidden. But her voice caught at him, drawing him closer.

Jake’s voice was hard, angry. Amy had heard him open the gate, walk around the cottage, and had recognised footsteps last heard racing away from her.

She’d forced herself to carry on working, leaving him to speak first, even though she longed to leap up, fling herself into his arms and pull him inside the house so that she could show him just how pleased she was to see him, hoping he was feeling the same hot surge of excitement, desire. She felt raw, unbridled pleasure that he’d returned.

For a moment he took a step closer, as if he felt it too, but then he stopped. The sun was low at his back and his face was shadowed so that she couldn’t see his expression. Which was perhaps a good thing, if it matched his voice.

‘I thought you were still in America,’ she said, when the silence grew too long.

‘I was. Now I’m back. Should you be doing that?’ he repeated. ‘In your condition.’

Her condition? She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. He couldn’t know. There was no way on earth he could know. Yet his voice, his repeated question, suggested that somehow he did, and when she didn’t answer he turned abruptly and walked towards the rear door of the cottage, pushed it open, ducking under the low lintel as he went inside. Amy abandoned the bean trench for the second time that afternoon and, pulling off her gardening gloves, followed him.

He wasn’t in the mud room or the kitchen. ‘Jake? Where are you?’ she called, dropping her gloves, kicking off her earth-caked boots. A creak from the floor above her betrayed his whereabouts. What on earth…? ‘Jake, what are doing? What do you want?’

Upstairs, in the bathroom, Jake gripped the basin. This couldn’t be happening to him. It couldn’t be true. Fatherhood had no part in his life plan. He didn’t want this. No way. Never.

Except that it was. The evidence was apparently there, right there, before his eyes.

His hand was shaking as he reached for the piece of plastic with its telltale line of blue. He gripped it hard, wrapping it in his fist, wanting to break it, smash it, make it go away. Such a small thing. So insignificant. So easy to overlook.

He wouldn’t have known what it was but for Willow. If he’d called in to see Amy…

If!

Who did he think he was fooling? He hadn’t been able to wait to see her! All the teddies in the world couldn’t hide the truth of that. He’d have come here and made hot, sweet love with her, then they’d have shared a shower, and with the evidence right in front of him he still wouldn’t have known.

How long would she have waited to tell him? Until it was too late to do anything about it. ‘…not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned…’ was what Willow had said to Mike.

His hands bunched into fists and he banged them down on the white porcelain sink. How much had she planned? All of it? Even that dramatic last-minute entry at the christening?

She’d known he would be there, singled him out, enchanting him with her green eyes and seductive voice. And he didn’t doubt for a minute she knew, understood exactly what effect she would have on any susceptible man.

Oh, yes. It had been planned, and, libido rampant, he’d fallen for it. Right down to that last magical embrace when her kiss had trawled him in, tempting him beyond thought…

What a fool! What an idiot!

What on earth had possessed him? He was a man with ‘precaution’ stamped on his brain. Mike had as good as warned him. ‘Take care,’ he’d said. He hadn’t added, ‘She’ll bewitch you.’ Not that it would have made any difference.

Jake had thought himself invulnerable to even the most meticulously planned guerilla attack on his heart. It had been tried before and his heart was totally immune to sentiments beyond his experience, beyond his understanding. Which was why he’d so cavalierly ignored the danger signals, Mike’s warning.

So now what?

Did she believe that he would marry her because she was carrying his child? Had she picked out a millionaire daddy for her baby? Well, she’d picked the wrong man for those games.

‘Jake?’

He turned as softly, oh, so softly, her voice caressed him, teased him, stole into every corner of his mind.

Take care.

Mike was right. Even now it was taking every ounce of self-control to stop himself from reaching out for her, from taking her into his arms, telling her that it would be all right.

He knew better.

He wasn’t like Mike, who’d grown up in a warm, caring family and had learned to play happy families at his mother’s knee. He’d warned Amy, told her that he didn’t do commitment, and the sooner she understood that it would take more than a blue line on a stick of plastic to suck him into her tender trap, the better.

‘Jake?’ she repeated, the soft inflection inviting an explanation.

‘Amy?’ he responded, his voice lifting in ironic mimicry. And opened his hand so that she would know exactly what he meant. ‘Now, I’ll ask you again. Should you be digging in your condition?’

‘I’m pregnant, Jake,’ she said quietly, refusing to respond to the aggression in his voice. ‘Not an invalid.’

‘And you intend going through with it?’ he demanded.

She regarded him steadily, sorrowfully, her eyes all too visible now, all too easy to read, and he dearly wished the words unsaid. Unthought.

‘This is my baby, Jake. She might only be this big—’ and she held her finger and thumb with scarcely a space between them ‘—but she’s my little girl.’ Then she turned and walked out of the bathroom.

Jake frowned, followed her down the stairs. ‘You can tell that it’s a girl? Already?’ he demanded.

She shook her head impatiently. ‘Go away, Jake. This is nothing to do with you.’

‘Nothing…’ His breath caught in his throat. ‘Are you saying this is not my baby?’ he demanded. If she was, the sick feeling that had been sitting like a stone in his stomach since Willow erupted into the kitchen with her news should have evaporated. It hadn’t. It had shifted, changed, deepened. ‘Well? Are you?’

‘No, Jake, I’m not saying that. She’s your baby. Our baby. What I’m saying is that you needn’t…’

‘What? I needn’t what?’

‘Worry about us.’ Her hand hovered briefly at her waist, so that he would know which ‘us’ she was referring to, before she let it drop to her side. ‘I don’t need you to hold my hand. We don’t need you. If it bothers you, just go away, forget you ever came here. Forget you ever met me.’

He stared at her. Was she serious? ‘That’s what you want?’ She didn’t answer him and he suddenly realised what was going on. She wanted a baby with a daddy rich enough to ensure that it lacked for nothing. She didn’t want the trouble of a man about the house. ‘I’ll be hearing from your lawyers, is that it?’ he asked, keeping his own voice flat and expressionless.

‘Lawyers?’ She shook her head, as if he was slow-witted or something. ‘I don’t want your money, Jake. I have money. I run a successful business…’