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He’d been perfectly frank last night that she shouldn’t expect anything lasting from him.
‘A walk to the station would be good. Are you ready to go?’
Leo reached for her hand as they walked along the leafy street, and wound his fingers with hers. It was only when he felt her hesitation, the tension in her muscles, that he realised what he’d done. He didn’t do holding hands. He didn’t do Shall I walk you to the station? because that led to expectation, and that was the very last thing that he wanted.
One morning like this led to another and another, until it became impossible to escape. But her hand felt right in his, her delicate, smooth palm lost in his huge, calloused, weather-worn grip. This was a choice, a pleasure, and he couldn’t make himself take it back or regret it. He let go briefly as they passed through the ticket barrier, and had to stop himself from wrapping an arm around her waist as they walked through the station.
‘I go north here,’ she said eventually, when they reached the stairs. ‘You want the southbound train, right?’
‘Right.’ He hesitated, no more willing to walk away from her now than he had been earlier in the morning. He tightened his hand around hers for a moment, the thought of waving her off causing an unexpected and unfamiliar pang. How could he want to keep hold of her and yet fear being tied to her at the same time?
Rachel wouldn’t settle for someone drifting in and out of her life on a whim or desire. Whoever she decided to share her life with, she’d want him as predictable as the tide—she’d never stake her luck on waves and weather.
If he wanted more of her, it would mean dates and calendars and plans. And contingency plans and comparing schedules and an itinerary agreed months in advance. The thought of those constrictions, of being tied into someone else’s expectations, demands...suddenly it was hard to breathe.
Since the day he’d left school, he hadn’t encountered anything, whether it was a woman, a job, or the thought of family, that had made him want to tie himself down, to trap himself into any situation where he didn’t have a clear and easy way out. He’d spent too many years in a hell he couldn’t escape, trapped in a boarding house with his bullies, and no one to listen to him, to believe him. And all the time, the person he should have been able to go to for help, the person who should have been unquestionably on his side, had been the ringleader.
He’d counted down the days until he could leave school on his calendar, and then had never used one again. He’d sworn that he would never allow himself to be trapped as he was at school. Never find himself in a situation where someone had the power to hurt him, and he couldn’t get away. So why was he gripping Rachel’s hand as if she were a life buoy to a drowning man?
When he looked over at her fidgeting on her heels, all the reasons he knew he should walk away seemed to fade. He knew the dangers, knew that he couldn’t hold on and expect to live untethered. He couldn’t want a future with her in it, but his body refused to accept it. He turned to her, until they were shoulder to shoulder and toe to toe, just millimetres separating their bodies. He could feel the draw of her skin, pulling him towards her, and his fingertips brushed against her cheekbones of their own accord. As his hands moved to cup her face, to turn her lips up to meet his, a screech of brakes broke into his thoughts. He glanced across and saw the train pull up to the southbound platform.
‘I have to go.’ The words came from his lips, though he couldn’t make himself believe them. But the train doors were closing, and with every piercing electronic beep he felt the walls of the station draw closer, his escape window closing.
With a wrench that he felt deep in his gut, he swept his lips across hers, pulled his hands away and then jogged down the stairs and through the doors of the train before either of them had a chance to say another word.
* * *
Rachel stood at the top of the stairs, watching as the train, and Leo, left the station. It was what she had wanted—him gone, and everything back to normal. But watching his train pull out of the station, she recognised the panicky feeling in her chest. He was gone, and she had no way of getting in touch with him. Despite everything, all the reasons she’d given herself that letting him into her life was a bad idea, despite the sense of panic that the thought of that man in her life caused, she wanted more of it. More of him.
Something caught her attention from the corner of her eye, and she started when she realised her train had already pulled up to the platform. She raced down the stairs, but the doors shut and locked with her on the wrong side. Even on his way out of her life Leo was disrupting her schedule. On second thought, she mused, maybe it was a good thing she wasn’t in touch with him. He’d caused quite enough chaos in the one night she’d known him. She glanced up at the information screen, wondering how long the next train would be. Typical Sunday service. She’d be stuck on the platform for an hour.
But maybe she could do something useful with the time. A quick search on her phone showed a pharmacy just around the corner that should be open. Walking quickly, she headed to the chemist—a few minutes and several rather personal questions later, she had emergency contraception and a bottle of water. She read quickly through the information on the packet as she waited in a quiet corner of the station. Ninety-five per cent effective. Not ideal—but in the circumstances, the best she was going to get. She swallowed the pill then forced the issue from her mind, and looked through both hers and Will’s schedules for the next week.
There were a couple of things she’d need to look into once she got to the office. Meetings that had been added at the last minute, when she was too busy with organising the fundraiser to pull together all the research and paperwork that she knew Will would need in order to prepare.
She worked through a few of her emails, making adjustments to her plan for the week as she went and slotting in new items for her Monday morning meeting with Will.
After the meeting she’d be able to plan out the rest of her week almost to the last minute. And her regular ‘contingency’ and ‘AOB’ slots meant that even the unexpected would have to bend to her plans and not the other way around.
She’d come to rely on that order, needed those careful plans to make her feel safe. Because without them what else was there?
It had been the only way for years that she’d been able to quiet her feelings of chaos and panic. The men who’d broken into her childhood home hadn’t planned to hurt anyone, the court had heard: they’d thought the house would be empty, had no idea that a fourteen-year-old Rachel was home alone. So when she’d startled one of them as he’d been rifling through the video collection, he’d panicked and lashed out at her. It was a pretty unpleasant knock to her head, but nothing serious. And eventually the nightmares she’d suffered had stopped, but that hadn’t stopped her parents’ guilt at leaving her at home. They’d fussed and smothered and, on occasion, wailed, insisting that Rachel inform them of her whereabouts at all times. Curfews were to be observed to the minute, unless she wanted to afflict a full-on panic-attack meltdown on her parents.
So she could be flexible if she had to be. ‘AOB’ and ‘unexpected’ had their own places in her plans, and that was all last night had been. But perhaps she shouldn’t do it again. Those slots should be kept strictly for emergencies. Not for blonds who were hard to forget in the morning.
CHAPTER THREE (#u5a199136-55d9-5ed3-8852-ce84be365808)
RACHEL SCROLLED THROUGH the next two weeks of Will’s schedule, looking for a half-hour slot. She knew that she’d pencilled it in somewhere, knowing that this phone call would come at some point. Ah, there it was. The seventeenth. How could she have forgotten that? She put the details into the calendar, added links to the relevant paperwork on the servers, made sure that everyone involved in the project was copied into the invitation and saved everything. She smiled to herself, satisfied with her work. She’d been an executive assistant at Appleby and Associates, a financial services company in the city, for more than five years and prided herself on always knowing what Will needed before he did. If only everything was that easy, she thought, glancing again at the date. It won’t change, she told herself. It doesn’t matter how many times you look at it. She sat still and shut her eyes for a moment, concentrating on her body, not sure what she hoped, or even wanted to feel. Anything other than the hint of queasiness in her stomach and tiredness in her bones that had started to feel permanent. For the past week, seven full days since her period should have arrived, every day had been a whole load of nothing. And this after a half-hearted, barely-there appearance last month.
How long did she wait? she wondered. A week wasn’t that big a deal, was it? She’d been busier than ever since that night—with Will’s eye somewhat off the ball now he actually had a personal life. And then he and Maya had started coming up with more and more fundraising ideas to support the charity, and it felt as if she hadn’t had a moment to herself since then. It was just the stress. Except she wasn’t stressed. She’d just worked the new projects into their routine and it had been fine. She wasn’t stressed; she was just late. And it seemed like a little too much of a coincidence that the first time she’d ever been late coincided with her first ever sexual wardrobe malfunction. That ninety-five-per-cent figure had been haunting her thoughts for six days now.
She should probably talk to Leo, she thought. But she hadn’t asked for his number that night—could she face calling his father, whose gala invitation he had taken, to try and get hold of him?
At least at the moment she had nothing to tell. But she couldn’t leave it that way for long. She needed to know what she was dealing with. If—and it was still a big one—but if she was pregnant, then the sooner she knew, the sooner she could formulate a plan. It was twelve-thirty now, which gave her enough time to nip to the chemist’s around the corner, grab a pregnancy test and a sandwich, and be back at her desk well before Will’s two o’clock meeting. She locked her computer and grabbed her bag from her drawer, then headed out of the building.
Twenty minutes later she locked the cubicle door and sat on the lid of the toilet, reading through the packet instructions.
Pee, wait, read. And then she’d know.
She peed. She waited. The seconds on her phone stopwatch ticked by slowly, as if the whole universe wanted to put this off as much as she did.
At twelve fifty-nine she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for that last, long second, and then looked at the stick.
Pregnant.
She could barely see as she walked—dazed—out of the bathroom. She stopped at the coffee machine, as was her habit after lunch, and as she was about to select her usual order she stopped herself, blinked a couple of times, and selected decaf instead. She reached for the cup and took a sip, and felt the relief and comfort of her routine in place of the caffeine rush.
‘Got the jitters?’
She whipped around at the sound of that familiar voice and felt the blood drain from her face.
‘Leo, what a—’
She couldn’t finish the word, never mind the sentence. What was he doing here? Why today? Why right now? Why did he have to look even better than she remembered? Sun-bleached, tanned and twinkling with humour.
He was watching her with careful eyes. And he reached out and took the cup from her shaking hands. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. But you looked as if you were in a world of your own.’
‘No, it’s... It’s... Leo?’
He gave her a smug grin, and that helped her regain her senses somewhat. He wouldn’t be looking at me like that if he knew what I knew, she thought. If he knew that in a few short months he’d be dad to a bouncing baby boy or...
She felt her blood drain lower still, and had to lean back against the counter in the small kitchen to keep her balance. Leo took a step closer and set the coffee down beside her, before taking her hand and looking closely at her face.
‘You’re white as a sheet,’ he said. ‘I’d love to take the credit for you swooning and all, but I’m worried. Are you ill? Should I call someone?’
‘No, no,’ she said, trying to regain composure amid the rush of her thoughts and the swirl of sensation from his fingertips. ‘I’m surprised, that’s all. And in need of a coffee.’
‘So why are you drinking decaf?’
Great, she thought. Walked straight into that one. ‘Because I’ve already drunk too much today, and know that I’ll need a proper one before this afternoon’s over.’ Hopefully that would allay any more questions. She moved forwards tentatively, moving her weight from the counter to her feet, and almost smiled before she felt herself sway slightly. She really should have eaten that sandwich before taking the test, she thought. Because right now, despite her achingly empty stomach, and rather light head, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to keep even a mouthful down.
‘That’s it, you’re not well,’ Leo declared, eyeing her carefully. ‘You need to take the afternoon off.’ She gave a shaky laugh, tensing slightly at this reminder of Leo’s cavalier attitude to a nine-to-five.
‘I’m fine, honestly. I’ve just not had lunch yet.’
‘Then let me walk you to your desk, at least.’
‘Leo, please, just leave it.’
This wasn’t fair. She was careful. She was always careful. And then when events had conspired against her, she’d gone straight to the pharmacy and taken that pill. Why did she have to be that five per cent?
She had to tell him. He had a right to know. They had a right to make any decisions that needed to be made together. But did she have to do this just now, before she’d even had a chance to get used to it herself?
Leo was standing in front of her, close, too close, and she needed space to think about this. But she couldn’t do that, because her calendar was full all afternoon. And all of tomorrow, and the day after that. Every minute of every day was accounted for. And she liked it like that; she just wished that she’d known to schedule in time to adjust to pregnancy, to becoming a mother. At that thought her knees went, and even though it was only for a second she knew that Leo had seen it. He slipped his arm around her.
‘Where’s your desk?’ he asked.
She laid her hand on his at her waist, grateful for the support, but well aware that she couldn’t be half carried through her office. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and grabbed hold of her self-control. She pushed Leo’s arm away gently and stood up, forcing her heels into the floor, and walked across to her desk. Leo followed beside her looking concerned, but not trying to touch her.
‘So what are you doing here?’ she asked when she was safely back at her desk, looking for any excuse to draw the conversation away from herself. ‘You probably should have called first—I try and keep my personal life away from work.’
He gave her an assessing look and then leant back against her desk.
‘One, I couldn’t have called because you didn’t give me your number. And two, as delightful as it’s been running into you, I’m not here to see you.’
‘Oh.’ Just when she’d thought this day couldn’t get any worse. She thanked her forethought in ordering a perfectly fitted ergonomic chair that wouldn’t allow her to slump with disappointment even if she’d wanted to. Which, she told herself strictly, she absolutely didn’t.
‘Seeing you is just a very pleasant bonus,’ he added with a hot smile that softened her disappointment, reminded her of that night and reached right to her belly. ‘And as you haven’t eaten, can I take you for lunch?’
‘I’ve...I’ve already taken my lunch break. And if you’re not here to see me, then surely you have plans.’
‘Right,’ he said slowly, as if only just remembering. ‘I have a meeting with Will.’
‘No, you don’t.’
He laughed out loud. ‘I promise you I do. I called him this morning, told him I was in town unexpectedly. He wanted a chat about something I mentioned at the fundraiser so we said we’d grab a few minutes this afternoon. I’m sorry, should I have checked with you first?’
‘No, of course not. Will, however—’
‘Is the boss—last time I checked.’
She spun round at the sound of Will’s voice.
‘And entirely dependent on my secretarial talents. And knows how much I love surprises.’
‘Well, that’s me told.’ Will laughed, reaching out to shake Leo’s hand. ‘Sorry I’m a few minutes late, and, as I’m sure Rachel has already told you, I have another meeting in twenty minutes. But we can talk through a couple of ideas if you like and then follow up over Skype?’
‘Perfect,’ Leo said. ‘And then Rachel and I are going to head out for a bite to eat. Assuming that’s not a problem with the boss.’ Her eyes whipped to him, and her jaw dropped open at the sheer cheek of it.
‘No problem at all,’ Will said, with a raised eyebrow in her direction. ‘I assume everything’s set for my two o’clock?’
Professional pride forced her not to snap at either one of them. ‘Files are on your desk, electronic copies are attached to the calendar appointment. The access codes for the teleconferencing are in there, too, but I can dial in for you if you need me to.’ She fought the urge to tell Leo to sod off. Because much as his heavy-handed interference with Will rankled, if she didn’t go now, then when was she going to tell him? It needed doing, and she’d be surprised if she was presented with a better opportunity than this.
‘No, it’s fine. I’m sure I can manage on my own for a couple of hours, despite what you might think. You go, enjoy yourself,’ he said with a smirk that told her she was definitely not forgiven for interfering with his love-life.
Rachel looked pointedly at the clock. ‘Your next meeting is in fifteen minutes, Will. Do I need to contact everyone and let them know it’ll be late starting?’
He laughed, and she cursed the permanent good mood he’d been in since the night of the fundraiser. He had been so much easier to manage before. And she had no one to blame but herself.
‘Come on through, Leo,’ he said, with a smile in his voice that matched the grin on his face.
Rachel busied herself working through straining inboxes, her own, Will’s, as well as one of the generic admin accounts. Then she flicked through her hard-copy inbox, separating out her own items from Will’s, checking that the assistants had marked the correct pages for him to sign, adding sticky tabs where they hadn’t. Finally she tackled the outbox, dividing up the signed documents into the recipients they needed to be sent to next. The second hand on the clock above Will’s door crawled round, until she was certain that physics was working against her.
Except this was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To put this off—for ever, if that were an option. She didn’t want to see Leo. Didn’t want to have lunch with him. She wanted to never see him again, never feel the loss of control that she’d experienced that night. And that had had consequences just as frightening as she’d ever imagined.
A baby. Where was she meant to fit a baby into her life? The Friday-afternoon ‘catching up with the trade press’ hour? She wasn’t exactly experienced at motherhood, but she was pretty sure that a baby needed more than an hour a week. Even if she pulled together every single one of her contingency and emergency hours it was less than a day a week. No, having this baby meant ripping up everything that made her feel safe and secure, and starting over completely. She leant back in her chair, surveying the piles of paperwork covering her desk. What was the point to this? Because it wouldn’t matter how neat the piles, how precise and efficient her system. At some point, this would all fall apart.
She had choices. She didn’t have to do this, to have this baby. But even as she thought it, the tearing pain in her heart told her that it wasn’t the right choice for her.
She was having this baby.
Now she just had to tell Leo.
She glanced up at the clock again—one-fifty-eight—and wondered if Will would remember his call. Should she buzz through and remind him? So that he didn’t run late or so that she could get to lunch with Leo? She didn’t want to think too hard about the answer to that.
At two minutes past two the door opened and Leo walked out, a grin still on his face. But then what did he have to worry about? Who wouldn’t be happy if they could spend all day at the beach or dipping into their trust fund? Well, he might have to think about getting a little responsibility after today.
If he wanted to be involved, that was. She should really have used this time to think about what she was going to tell him, what she was going to ask him. What she wanted from him. She didn’t need him to do this. Frightening as it was, she knew it could be done alone. There were plenty of single mothers out there who balanced parenthood with careers. No doubt all that was needed were killer organisation skills, and she had that one wrapped up nicely.
She refused to look up at him, still annoyed with Leo for his heavy-handedness. Instead she kept her eyes firmly on her monitor as she continued with her work. But she hadn’t counted on a blond head with tanned skin and insanely blue eyes intruding into her field of vision.
‘Ready to go?’ Leo asked as he leaned nonchalantly forward and against her cubicle.
‘Su-u-u-re,’ she replied, buying herself extra milliseconds by dragging out that one syllable for as long as she could without seeming ridiculous. She saved and closed her documents, backed everything up, flicked through her inbox to make sure that nothing urgent had arrived in the past five minutes, and then logged off. She took a sneaky deep breath as she reached under her desk for her handbag and braced herself. She was going to tell him. That was non-negotiable. What happened after that, how Leo reacted, she had zero control over.
Her stomach churned and she wished that she could blame it on morning sickness, but this was just good old-fashioned nerves.
‘Will told me about this great place around the corner,’ Leo said as they walked out of the door and onto the street. Great. He was definitely interfering and it was definitely on purpose.
How was she supposed to do this? Did she just blurt it right out over starters? Ply him with wine beforehand to soften the blow? Maybe she should tell him before they even sat down—that would make it less embarrassing if he did a runner straight off.
And she couldn’t even have a glass of wine to steady her nerves.
Before she had a chance to realise how far they had walked they were passing through the doors of the restaurant and being shown to their table. Somehow in their fifteen-minute meeting, either he or Will had found a moment to call ahead. Perfect.
Now she sat trying to surreptitiously watch him over the top of her menu. He was in a good mood, and a smile was lighting up his face. She wondered at the reason for it. Was it the meeting with Will that had made him happy, or was it sitting here with her? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. She didn’t want to enjoy this, or for him to. Relationships meant chaos; they meant accommodating another person—something she generally didn’t do outside a boss-employee relationship. And even then she only worked with people who were really looking for her to manage them, rather than the other way around. So she indulged in friendships and occasional casual dalliances, knowing that she could get out the minute anything approaching chaos started to impinge on her life. Short flings were satisfying and easy to manage. Leo fitted beautifully into that first category, but was failing miserably with the second.
He looked up and caught her eye.
‘So, anything you fancy?’ he asked with a cheeky grin. She rolled her eyes at the lazy innuendo. He slouched back in his chair and she took a moment to really look at him, in a way she hadn’t allowed herself since the hazy early-morning hours after the fundraiser. She was desperate to smooth the chaotic curls that tumbled rebelliously over his forehead, but was aware at the same time he’d lose something of his charm if she were to do it.
Drawing her eyes away from him, she toyed with a breadstick as they waited in silence for the main courses to arrive. This was bad. This was a bad date. She was a bad date. How had she spent hours with this man, making love as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and now she was struggling to make small talk?
‘Is everything okay?’ Leo asked.
So her complete state of panic hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed. Well, the worried glances he’d been throwing at her for the past fifteen minutes should have been her first clue. She’d chosen to studiously ignore them, worried that acknowledging them would lead to talking about what was wrong. But still, she was surprised by the serious note to his voice, feeling his concern, the connection between them, all the way to her core. She remembered the way she had felt that morning at the railway station, watching his train pull away from the platform and knowing that however much she felt for him, she’d missed any opportunity to explore it. And then he’d waltzed back into her life on the day when exploring any connection between them seemed more impossible than ever.
She had to tell him, and now was as good a time as any. Actually, no, that wasn’t true. Now was the best chance she was going to get. She took a long, fortifying sip of her mineral water, wishing it could have been an ice-cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and opened her mouth to speak.
