Raye Morgan - Baby on Board - Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret

It struck her now so clearly. All those years she’d clung to something that had been unreal—nothing.

‘To be lovers is more than sex. For lovers the whole person is engaged. Not just the body, but the head and heart. My head was missing that night and so was your heart. I don’t believe you know how to love.’

She might as well have slapped him. Yesterday she’d wanted to, now…

Now she had to deal with the fact that it was Josh, not Michael who was the father of her baby. That it wasn’t simple biology, a surrogacy without emotional involvement or ties, but that, ten years too late, her darkest dream had come true.

She didn’t want to slap him, she wanted to hold him. Wanted him to hold her, tell her that it would be all right…

It was never going to happen.

He’d made his feelings plain. He hadn’t expected or wanted this child. But then he’d once told her, when she’d found him burning photographs of his father, that he would never have children.

Later, when Michael and Josh had gone to the sports centre to beat a squash ball to pulp, Phoebe had told her that there had been an announcement in The Times that morning, telling the world that his father’s new young wife had just given birth to a baby girl.

‘I have to deal with this,’ she said, clutching the pack of feeders to her.

‘You can’t run away from this, Grace. Can’t hide. Can’t curl up in your armchair and make it go away. Posie is our daughter and we’re going to have to sit down and decide what’s best for her.’ He looked down at the dark curls of the baby who was chewing at his shoulder. ‘Make decisions that will alter all our lives.’

‘She’s Phoebe and Michael’s daughter,’ she replied, a touch desperately. She wasn’t ready to talk about anything else right now. She needed time to come to terms with what he’d told her. That she’d had Josh Kingsley’s baby. ‘It says so on her birth certificate, as you’ve just taken great pains to remind me.’

‘All the more reason…’

‘No. You didn’t want her, Josh. You never wanted her. You flew from Australia to try and stop her from being conceived.’

‘And failed.’ He came close to a smile. ‘Not that I’m the first man to face that situation. Although I’m probably the first not to at least have had the fun of getting myself there.’

‘Sorry, I can’t help you with that one, Josh,’ Grace said with a desperate flippancy that she was far from feeling. ‘You’ll just have to dig deep in your memory for consolation.’

‘Not that deep,’ he replied without hesitation, his eyes glinting dangerously as he lifted a hand to her face, ran his thumb down the side of her cheek. And for a moment all she could think about was how he’d kissed her—not ten years ago, but yesterday, when he’d woken her. Kissed her, kissed his baby. Because he’d always known that Posie was his. And now he knew that she was hers, too.

This was the first time either of them had ever talked about the night they’d spent together and Grace discovered that at twenty-eight years of age she could still blush like the shy fourteen-year-old who’d first come to this house.

Maybe Josh, too, was experiencing whatever similar response men felt when, without warning, they stumbled into emotional quicksand because, for a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Grace said, ‘You’re okay, Josh. I don’t have a father who cares enough to get out his shotgun and make you do the decent thing.’

‘I know all about uncaring fathers, Grace. You’re right. Having seen the dark side, fatherhood is not something I ever wanted, but here I am, like it or not.’

And Grace, who hadn’t thought beyond the next hour for more than a week, realised that she had better start putting in some serious thinking time about what future she saw for Posie. For herself.

‘This changes everything, doesn’t it?’ she said, sinking onto the stairs.

Josh sat down beside her, put his spare arm around her, pulled her against his chest. ‘Everything,’ he agreed.

They sat there for long minutes, both of them contemplating the future. Until last week, each had seen the road clear ahead of them. Two separate paths. One a quiet small-town road, the other a challenging climb up a twisting mountain path with the end lost in the clouds. Now their ways merged in a pothole-strewn lane that was shrouded in swirling mists.

It was Posie, waving a hand and grabbing a handful of Josh’s hair, who finally brought them back to now, this minute and, as he yelped, Grace lifted her head, smiling despite everything as she rescued him from Posie’s tight little grasp.

‘Did she pull it out by the roots?’ he asked, rubbing at his scalp.

‘Not much. Get used to it.’

‘Will you help?’

‘I’m in it for the duration, Josh.’

And that, she realised, was all that mattered. She was now the only mother Posie would ever have and she just had to get on with it. If Josh wanted to be a father… Well, that was good, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

And, with that, the world steadied and, realising that she was still clutching the feeders, she got to her feet. Milk. Shower. Work. Concentrate on one thing at a time. Do what had to be done and the rest would fall into place….

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she said, glancing down at him.

‘You’re leaving Posie with me?’ She saw panic flash across his face. ‘What do I do with her?’

She paused, the words ‘Be a father’ burning in her brain. Not fair. She wanted him around for Posie, but she wouldn’t stoop to blackmail.

He hadn’t asked for—or wanted—this.

‘Just keep her amused for a while,’ she said, forcing herself to walk up the stairs, away from them. She got very nearly halfway before she looked back.

He hadn’t moved, but was looking up at her, dark hair still ruffled from bed, ancient jogging pants sagging below his waist, exposing a band of paler skin, feet bare. Posie propped in his elbow, happily sucking at his naked shoulder.

If she had trawled her imagination for a perfect picture of fatherhood, she couldn’t have bettered it.

Don’t go there, she warned herself. It might only take one little tadpole waking up from deep freeze and eager to explore to make a baby, but being a father required a lifetime of commitment.

Josh thought one night made them lovers. He couldn’t even stay married to the same woman for more than a year. He saved his energies for the really important stuff, like dominating his own field of engineering.

‘Better still,’ she said, a catch in her throat, ‘let her amuse you.’

Josh looked at the baby, then back up at her. ‘What does she do?’

‘Do? She’s not a performing seal.’ Then, because he was clearly so far out of his depth he was in danger of drowning, she threw him a lifeline. ‘She’s just learned to roll over. If you put her down on the carpet, she’ll show you.’

She didn’t wait to see what he did, but ran up the two flights of stairs to her own flat, her brain pounding out the words Josh’s baby over and over.

She’d been carrying Josh’s baby inside her for nine months and not known. Had given birth to Josh’s baby and had given her away.

How could she have done that?

How could she have looked at her and not seen? The little eyelid tuck. The grey eyes flecked with amber. A little curl that fell over her right eye.

He was right not to have told her.

To have known and have to give her up, even to her sister, would have been like tearing her heart from her body and, without it, she would never have survived.

Once she finished expressing her milk, Grace took a shower, then sorted through her wardrobe for something suitable for their trip into Maybridge, ignoring her usual bright colours as inappropriate, choosing the navy trouser suit she normally kept for visits to the bank.