Rebecca Winters - Baby's On The Way!

‘Look at me,’ he ordered her, his voice steady and understanding. ‘Rachel?’ Her darting gaze locked onto him.

‘You can breathe just fine,’ he told her, his eyes fixed on hers, his voice calm but firm. ‘I’m going to count and you’re going to breathe out. Then you’re going to breathe in.’ She nodded, willing herself to believe him, listening to his voice rather than the racing of her mind as he counted ‘one...two...three...’ With her lungs so full she thought they might burst, she looked at his eyes, focused on his words, the simplicity and predictability of the numbers, and let her chest relax, let go of the solid tightness of her shoulders and the terror in her mind. As she gradually felt her body return to normal, she slumped back on the bench, and Leo did the same.

‘Thanks,’ she managed eventually.

‘Okay,’ Leo said. ‘I think one thing we have to agree on right now is that neither of us is particularly able to make important decisions at the moment.’

‘I—’

‘Just had a panic attack. Forgive me if I take that to mean we need a little time.’ She nodded slowly, unable to dispute his words. This might be easier if she were doing it alone, she thought. If she could make a plan exactly as she wanted, and then stick to it.

She knew without question that life couldn’t happen that way with Leo. He would throw her plans off course from the first possible moment, and insist on chaos as often as possible after that. Just the thought of it made her chest feel tight again.

‘Do you have to go back to the office or can I see you home?’ Not words to help her to breathe normally.

‘I have to get back,’ she said, thinking of her and Will’s schedule for the afternoon. She couldn’t just not turn up.

‘We need to talk, properly,’ Leo said, and reached for her hand—a spark of something half remembered flickered between their skin. Her first instinct was to snatch her hand back—his touch was too dangerous—but his fingers clamped around hers before she could. His other hand tucked her hair behind her ear, and smudged away a tear that was trickling over her cheek. He turned her to look at him, and she relaxed, thinking how easy it would be to lean forward, to brush her lips against his, to lose herself for a moment. Leo’s breathing quickened, and she knew he’d thought it, too. But, she told herself, the last thing this situation needed was more complications.

She dropped her gaze and pulled back slightly.

‘Perhaps we should talk in a few days, when we’ve had time to think...’ Her voice tailed off as she tried to reshape her view of the world to imagine how that conversation would go. ‘Are you coming up to London again?’

‘No,’ Leo said, with a small shake of his head. ‘Not for a while. But you could come down to my place in Dorset, get away for a few days.’

Rachel opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand to stop her. ‘Just hear me out. There’s space, fresh air and distance from your office. I’m not promising sea air has all the answers, but maybe a change of perspective...?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’

‘And I’m not sure what choice we have. I can’t see that getting to know each other is optional, now. I know where you live—where you work. I’ve even seen you in action. Don’t you think it’s fair that you see a little of my life, too?’

She nodded. ‘Perhaps I could come for the day.’

‘Honestly, by the time you’ve travelled, you’ll want to stay longer,’ Leo said. ‘Plan to come at the weekend. Stay Saturday night. I have a guest room,’ he added, no doubt noticing the refusal that was about to leave her lips.

She tried hard to think of some way to skewer this logic, some way to get out of this scenario that had her holed up with a man she found dangerously irresistible—the man who had got her pregnant. But whichever way she looked at it, she could see that he was right.

‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll come.’

CHAPTER FOUR

LEO COLLAPSED ONTO the sand, chest heaving and limbs comfortingly heavy.

A baby. He still couldn’t quite connect that concept with his life. How had that even...? Okay, so it wasn’t as if he needed a diagram, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t believe Rachel when she said she’d taken the morning-after pill. They were just that tiny fraction of a per cent that the maths for a double contraceptive fail worked out as. Maybe at the end of this weekend—he glanced at the sun; Rachel would be here in a few hours—it would feel more real.

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead as he tried to think, the rhythmic crash of the waves on the sand soothing in its familiarity. Was real —knowing that there was absolutely, definitely no way of getting out of this—going to feel better? How could it? He’d all but walked away from his family. Had been happy managing on his own. But what could he do now? He’d enjoyed every minute of what had got them here, and he would take responsibility for what they’d done.

His head should be spinning. These past few days he should have wanted to scream, or run, or, God, faint or something. But instead, he felt nothing. A blank, empty space filled his brain, keeping feelings at bay.

But as he sat, thinking, he noticed a warm yellow glow creeping around the edges of that numb void. A hint of some emotion that was waiting, just out of reach, but heading closer.

He flopped back onto the sand, covering his eyes from the intense glare of the sun with his arm. Part of him wanted to go. To turn around and walk away and just imagine he’d never laid eyes on Rachel. Pretend that one night, one night that had tied him into a lifetime of commitment, had never happened. But then a flash of memory assailed him—a gentle, lazy smile on Rachel’s lips in the dim early-morning light. Too tired for games, too sated for self-protection, he’d seen for the first time the real, unguarded woman, with no barriers, no motives, no second-guessing. He couldn’t make himself regret that moment, that instant connection.

And there went the ‘numb’ phase, as the memory of his desire and passion that night was chased from his body by nausea-inducing fear. He let out a long, unsteady breath. God, he wished he’d appreciated ‘dazed’ more.

For a moment the thought of that commitment, the inescapable permanency of it, threatened to paralyse him, bringing back every nightmare and the sleepless nights between. The last time Leo Fairfax had been this frightened of the future.

But he was going to be a father. He and Rachel—that fascinating, maddening, excessively disciplined woman he’d been unable to shake from his mind for weeks now, had somehow, against all her best-laid plans, and his lack of them, created a new human life. The magnitude of the realisation stole his breath for a few long moments as he looked up and out across the water, trying to imagine who he was, this whole new person that they had created. But the vision remained hazy, too unformed to be anything more than broad strokes of a life.

* * *

Rachel stepped out of the taxi—she’d insisted to Leo that she could, and would, get to his place under her own steam—and gasped in horror. He’d warned her on the phone that he was doing some renovations, but this was...it was ramshackle. The ground all around was either churned up or covered in bags of building materials, and the windows were still covered by plastic sheeting. Most concerning of all, the roof seemed to consist of a couple of blue tarpaulins, flapping gently in the breeze. She glanced up further, relieved to see that the sky was still a clear, sunny blue, without a cloud in sight.

Thank goodness she had a list of practically every hotel in Dorset, sorted by distance from the coastal village Leo’s postcode had directed her to. And a list of taxi companies, too. And train times back to London. As she’d saved them all on her tablet, just in case she found herself out of network coverage, she’d hoped that she wouldn’t actually need them. She wanted to use her time here to get to know Leo better—it was essential, in the circumstances. And staying in a hotel the whole weekend would mean less time together. But she wasn’t sure that a building site was the best place to get to know each other, either.