JENNIE LUCAS - One Night - Sensual Bargains - Nine Months to Redeem Him / A Deal with Benefits / After Hours with Her Ex

“Just nerves,” I said weakly.

“You look like you ate a bad curry. Or else it’s the flu.” Wrinkling her nose, she leaned away from me ever so slightly. “My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant....”

“I’m fine,” I repeated sharply, then swallowed, my head falling back as another wave of nausea went through me.

So much for my acting skills. Clearly not fooled, the girl looked nervously from side to side. “Oh. Good. Well. Um... Please excuse me. I have to practice my lines...over there.”

Getting up, she left in a hurry, as if she’d found herself sitting next to Typhoid Mary. I couldn’t blame her, because I felt perilously close to throwing up. Leaning my head against the wall, I closed my eyes and tried to breathe. I was so close to auditioning now. In a moment, they would call my name. I would speak my lines on the stage.

Then the casting agents would tell me that I sucked. It would be hideous and soul-crushing but at least I could slink home afterward and no longer be lying when I told Edward that while he was working eighteen-hour days at his office in Canary Wharf, I’d spent the day pursuing my dreams.

Just a few minutes more, and it would be over. I tried to breathe. They would probably cut me off halfway through my lines, in fact, and tell me I was too fat/thin/old/young/wrong, or just dismiss me with a curt Thank you. All I needed to do was speak a few lines and...

My lines. My eyes flew open as I slapped my hand on my forehead. What were my lines? I’d practiced them for two days, practiced them in the shower and as I walked through the barren garden behind Edward’s lavish Kensington townhouse. I knew those lines by heart. But they’d fled completely out of my brain and...

Then I really did feel sick and I raced for the adjacent bathroom, reaching it just in time. Afterward, I splashed cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked pale and sweaty. My eyes looked big and afraid.

My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant.

Leaving the bathroom, I walked out to the hallway. Then I kept walking, straight out of the theater, until I was outside breathing fresh, cold air.

My nausea subsided a bit. The sky was dark and overcast, not cold enough to snow but threatening chilling rain.

It was the first of March, but spring still felt far away. I walked slowly for the underground station, my legs trembling.

My sister looked like that the first three months she was pregnant.

The possibility of pregnancy hadn’t even occurred to me. I carefully hadn’t let it occur to me. I couldn’t be pregnant. It was impossible.

I stopped abruptly on the sidewalk, causing the tourists behind me to exclaim as they nearly walked into me.

Edward had gone out of his way to take precautions. But I hadn’t even worried about it, because I assumed Edward knew what he was doing. He was the one who never wanted to commit to anyone, and what could be a greater commitment than a child?

But there had been a few near misses. A few times he didn’t put on the condom until almost too late. And that one time in the shower...

Feeling dazed, I walked heavily to Charing Cross station nearby and barely managed to get on the right train. I stared at the map above the seats as the subway car swayed. My cycle was late. In fact, I realized with a sense of chill, I hadn’t had a period since we’d arrived in London two months ago. There could be all kinds of reasons for that. I was stressed by my halfhearted attempts at breaking into the London theater scene. I was stressed by the fact that I was lying to Edward about it. And then there was the nausea. I’d told myself my body was still growing accustomed to Greenwich Mean Time, or as the girl had suggested, I’d eaten a bad fish vindaloo.

All right, so my breasts felt fuller, and they’d been heavy and a little sore. But—I blushed—I’d assumed that was just from all the sex. The rough play at night was almost the only time I ever saw Edward anymore.

Every morning, his driver collected him before dawn to take him to his building in Canary Wharf, gleaming and modern, with a private shower and futon in his private office suite, and four PAs to service his every whim. Battling to save the deal that his cousin was trying to sabotage, he’d worked eighteen hours a day, Sundays included, and usually didn’t return until long after I was in bed. Some nights he never bothered to come home at all.

But on the rest, Edward woke me up in the dark to make love to me. A bright, hot fire in the night, when his powerful body took mine with hungry, insatiable demand. Sometime before dawn, I’d feel him kiss my temple, hear him whisper, Good luck today. I’m proud of you. Half-asleep, I’d sigh back, Good luck, and then he was gone. I’d awake in the morning with sunlight slanting through the windows, and his side of the bed empty. And I would be alone.

My days in London were lonely. I missed the life we’d had in Cornwall. I missed Penryth Hall.

Everything had changed.

Was it about to change more?

Distracted by my thoughts, I almost missed my stop at High Street Kensington. I exited the underground station and then, not daring to meet the pimply sales clerk’s eyes, I bought a pregnancy test from the pharmacy on the corner.

Edward had offered his driver’s services to take me to auditions, but I didn’t think it would do me any favors to arrive via chauffeured car, like the kept woman I’d somehow become. Plus, then I would have had to actually go to the auditions. Easier to take the underground and keep my independence—and my secrets. I didn’t want Edward to feel disappointed in me, as he would if he knew I hadn’t made it to a single audition in two months, in spite of all my bravado.

I hadn’t wanted a driver then, but now, as I trudged up the street with my pharmacy bag tucked into my purse, the cold gray drizzle turned to half-frozen rain, soaking through my light cotton jacket, and I suddenly wished I had someone to look after me. Someone who would take me in his arms and tell me everything was going to be all right. Because I was scared.

I reached Edward’s beautiful Georgian townhouse, with its five bedrooms and private garden, in an elegant neighborhood a few blocks from Kensington Palace. Heavily, I walked up the steps and punched the security code, then opened the front door.

“Diana?” Mrs. Corrigan’s voice called from the kitchen. “Is that you, dear?”

“Yes,” I said dully. No need to panic, I told myself. I’d take the pregnancy test. Once it said negative, I’d relax, and have a good laugh at my fears, along with a calming glass of wine.

“Come back,” she called. “I’m in the kitchen.”

“Just a minute.” I went to the front bathroom. Trembling, I took the test. I waited. And waited. Be negative, I willed, staring down at it. Be negative.

The test looked back at me.

Positive.

The test fell from my numb hand. Then I grabbed it and looked at it again. Still positive. I stuffed it at the bottom of the trash, hiding it beneath the empty bag. Which was ridiculous.

Soon there would be no hiding it.

Pregnant. My teeth chattered as I stumbled slowly down the hall to the large modern kitchen at the back. Pregnant.

I looked out the big windows by the kitchen, overlooking the private garden that would be beautiful in spring, but at the moment was bleak and bare and covered with shards of melting snow.

“There you are, dear.” Mrs. Corrigan, his full-time London housekeeper, was making a lemon cake. “Mr. St. Cyr just phoned for you.”

“He called here?” My heart unfolded like a flower. Edward had never called me from work before. Had he somehow known I needed him, felt it in his heart?