Her Secret Pregnancy

The new sign would be erected tomorrow, and the notices would go out in all the trade press. The tea-room had been dominating her thoughts for so long now. She’d been bubbling over with excitement about all her plans and hopes for it—but seeing Marcus today had made her confront the fact that he still had the power to affect her in a way that no other man had ever come close to.

She felt the beat of her heart, heavy and strong, as she remembered the way he looked. Different. Older and rougher round the edges. All tousled and tough—and radiating an earthy sexuality she knew she was incompatible with.

The first time she had met him he’d been kind to her. Kind and caring, yes—but in the way that a Victorian benefactor might throw a bone to a starving dog…

As a teenager, Donna had arrived in Winchester on a rainy December day, dressed in jeans and a jumper and a worn tweed jacket she’d picked up at a car-boot sale and which had been too thin to withstand the constant drizzle. She’d been soaked. Her face had been bare of make-up, her lashes matted with raindrops and her hair a wild ginger mess frizzing all the way down down her back.

There had only been one week to go until Christmas, and there’d been fairy-lights threaded everywhere: outside all the shops and pubs, woven into the bare branches of the trees—their colours blurred like jewels through the grey of the relentless rain.

As she’d turned the corner into Westgate street Donna had seen the welcoming blaze of The New Hampshire hotel and had shivered. It was the sort of place you usually only saw in story books—a beautiful, elegant old building, with two bay trees standing in dark, shiny boxes outside. The windows were sparkly-clean and the paintwork gleamed. It was the kind of place which reeked of money. You could tell just by looking. And places like this were always looking for seasonal workers.

Clutching onto her holdall with frozen fingers, she’d pushed the glass doors open and walked into the foyer, where a man had been standing at the top of a ladder, positioning a huge silver star on top of a Christmas tree whose tip was brushing against the high ceiling.

Donna had quietly slid her holdall onto the thick carpet and watched him. He’d been wearing dark trousers, which had looked new and neatly pressed, and his shirt had been exquisitely made. Quality clothes on a quality body.

She had waited until the star was firmly in place. ‘Bravo!’ she cheered, and he looked over his shoulder, frowned, then came slowly down the ladder to face her.

His hair was thick and dark and tapered neatly into his neck, and his eyes were the most extraordinary colour she had ever seen. Icy and pale. Clear and blue. As if they had been washed clean. And Donna felt the first tiptoeing of an emotion she simply didn’t recognise.

He frowned again as he looked her up and down, and his voice matched his clothes. Rich. ‘Can I help you?’

The implication being that he couldn’t. That she was in the wrong place. The story of her life, really. She decided to brazen it out.

‘Do you have a room?’

The surprise in his eyes was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared, and he shrugged his shoulders apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’re fully booked. It’s our busiest time of year and—’

‘Actually, I don’t want a room,’ she interrupted quickly, thinking that it was nice of him to pretend that she could afford a room in a hotel when it was pretty obvious she couldn’t. ‘I’m looking for work.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of work?’

‘Anything. You name it—I can do it! I can wait tables—’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. We’re a silver-service restaurant,’ he said politely.

‘Or peel potatoes?’

He smiled. ‘We have our full complement of kitchen staff.’

‘Oh.’ She pursed her lips together to stop them wobbling and went to pick up her holdall. ‘Okay. Fair enough. Merry Christmas!’

The man sighed. ‘Now you’re making me feel like Scrooge.’

‘You don’t look like Scrooge.’ She grinned. Too cute by far.

He thought how thin her cheeks looked. And how pale. ‘Ever done any work as a chambermaid?’

‘No. But I learn fast.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Nearly twenty.’ The words were out before she could stop them, and she told herself that it wasn’t a lie, merely an exaggeration. Because she also told herself that this man was the kind of man who would try to send her home if he knew she was barely eighteen.

And then where would she go?

‘Been travelling?’ he asked, flicking a pale blue glance over at the holdall, then at the worn elbows of her jacket.

‘Kind of.’

She had been moving around for most of her young life. She liked it that way. It meant that she didn’t have to give away too much about herself. But she could see him looking at her curiously and knew she ought to say something.

‘Bit of a nomad, that’s me,’ she explained with a smile—wondering what had possessed her to add, ‘My mother was an actress. We moved around a lot when I was a child.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He nodded, wondering what he was letting himself in for. But through the glass doors he could see that the rain was now lashing down, to form lake-sized puddles on the pavement outside. It was the kind of night you wouldn’t throw a dog out into. ‘I’ll take you on until the New Year. But no longer—do you understand?’

‘Oh, thanks!’ Donna breathed, looking for a moment as though she was about to fling her arms around him.

Marcus took a hasty step back.

She wasn’t the kind of woman he would normally find attractive in a million years—with her curly ginger hair and pale eyelashes and freckles.

But there was something indomitable about her. Something that made her look small and tough and brave. Something feisty, which was oddly attractive and made him feel strange and warm and prickly inside.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he growled. ‘What’s your name?’

‘It’s Donna. Donna King. What’s yours?’

‘Marcus Foreman.’

She lifted her shoulders in a tiny questioning movement. ‘Should I call you Mr Foreman?’

It was such a sweetly old-fashioned proposition that he almost laughed, then checked himself in time. He didn’t want her thinking he was making fun of her. ‘You’re only a year younger than me.’ He smiled gently, not noticing her wince. ‘Marcus will do just fine.’

‘Marcus,’ she said shyly. ‘Are you the boss?’

It took a moment for him to answer. ‘Yes,’ he said abruptly. He still couldn’t quite get used to the fact that this place was now his. But then his father had only been dead a year. He looked down at her and his features softened.

Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like tiny brown stars, and her cheekbones looked much too sharp. She could do with a little fleshing out. ‘Have you eaten?’

Donna’s eyes grew wary. Could he tell? That she hadn’t seen a square meal in getting on for a week? And what kind of conclusions would he draw from that?

He watched her reaction and was reminded of a stray cat his mother had once let him keep. The creature had been starving, yet stubborn—mistrusting any attempts at kindness—and Marcus had learnt that the only way to handle that cat was to seem not to care. He shrugged, sounding as if she could take it or leave it. ‘There’s plenty of food here if you want some.’

‘Okay.’ She shrugged too. ‘Might as well.’

He took her down to the kitchen and introduced her to the staff, and then found things to keep him occupied while she ate and he watched her out of the corner of his eye.

He had never seen anyone eat with so much greed, or so much hunger. Especially a woman. Yet she didn’t tear at the food like an animal. Hers was a graceful greed. She savoured every single mouthful with pleasure—and when she’d finally finished she wiped her mouth delicately with a napkin, like some sort of princess, and beamed him a smile.

And that smile pierced Marcus’s armour like a ray of sunshine hitting a sheet of ice.

As spring slid into early summer, Marcus showed no sign of asking her to leave. And Donna heaved a huge sigh of relief, because she loved the town and she loved the hotel and she wanted to stay.

She loved the grey flint walls of the ancient buildings and the sound of the choristers’ voices spilling their pure, sweet notes into the scented air around the cathedral square. She loved the lush green and crystal streams of the water meadows, where you could walk for miles and feel that you’d stepped back a century. And maybe more than a bit of her loved Marcus, too. Who wouldn’t?

It was the first place that had felt like home for a long time. Maybe ever.

She made herself indispensable by working as hard as possible. And Donna could work. If there was one thing her childhood had taught her it was that you didn’t get anything for nothing.

Her mother had been a stripper—spending her nights performing in run-down theatres along the coast and her days mostly sleeping. In a way, Donna had brought herself up—making herself as invisible as she knew how. Because a little girl had fitted uneasily into the kind of life her mother had chosen.

She knew that Marcus’s father had died the year before, and one day she plucked up enough courage to ask him what had happened to his mother.

Mistake!

The icy-blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I j-just wondered.’

‘She’s been dead for a long time,’ he snapped.

She thought that it was an odd way to put it. As though a chapter of his own life had come to an end with his mother’s death. Maybe it had.

‘And how old were you?’ she asked.

He scowled at the intrusion. ‘I was nine, and, yes—before you make the obvious response—it was awful. Okay? And I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?’

End of subject. But Donna was relieved, in a funny kind of way. The kind of person who didn’t like to explain was also the kind of person who didn’t ask too many questions. Although it wasn’t as if a man like Marcus would be interested in one of his chambermaids, was it?

But sometimes she caught him watching her, when he thought she wasn’t looking. And sometimes he even let his guard down enough to laugh at something she said. And sometimes he would tease her about her pale eyelashes, and the way she used to nibble the tip of her thumb when she was nervous.

One day he found her in the staffroom, playing cards with one of the waiters, and he challenged her to play. Only to discover that she could beat him at every card game he’d ever learnt.

Marcus was a man who admired expertise in whatever field it was demonstrated, and he seemed to look at her in a completely different light after that. He told her that watching her shuffle the cards was like poetry in motion, and Donna beamed with pleasure at the praise.

‘Where ever did you learn to play like that?’ he questioned.

‘Oh, here and there,’ she told him airily. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘No, you’re right. I don’t!’ he laughed.

And it was at times like these that Donna had to remind herself that there were some men you should never start getting attracted to, on account of who they were.

And Marcus Foreman was one of them.

He had a younger brother called Lucas, who was nearly as good-looking as his brother, but foxy in a way that Marcus wasn’t foxy. And blond, not dark. He was a photographer, of sorts, and he was away travelling, somewhere in Thailand, He hadn’t even bothered coming back for Christmas. But Marcus didn’t seem to mind.

The first time Donna met Lucas she was on her hands and knees brushing up some crumbs from behind a large pot plant on the first-floor landing, when she heard a low wolf whistle from behind her.

She whirled round, bashing her elbow in the process, and saw a man with blue eyes who looked like a fallen angel. She recognised the likeness immediately. ‘You must be Lucas!’ she cried.

‘And you must be a hallucination,’ he murmured, licking his bottom lip like an old-fashioned villian. ‘Wow! Stand up. Go on!’

He was the boss’s brother. So Donna did as he asked and rose to her feet, not much liking the smile on his face as he looked her up and down as if he’d never seen a woman before.

‘Oh, my word!’ he breathed softly. ‘No wonder big brother wasn’t crazy about me coming home—he obviously wanted to keep a living, breathing Barbie doll all to himself!’

‘Stay away from her, Lucas—do you hear that?’ came a soft command, and Marcus walked up behind his brother as soundlessly as a wraith, silently cursing himself for the attractive enticement having Donna King around the place was proving to be. Those scruffy clothes she’d arrived in had done a remarkable job of concealing a body which regular meals and regular sleep had transformed into something resembling a centrefold.

She was as bright as a button, too. Hard-working. Friendly. And considerate—from what little he knew of her. And he deliberately kept it as little as he could. Knowledge equalled understanding, and understanding could lead on to all kinds of unwanted things.

And whilst Marcus was honest enough to admit that he fancied the pants off Donna King—he was also honest enough to realise that they were worlds apart. Worlds.

Lucas shot Donna a search-me kind of look. ‘Marcus likes playing the big macho bit!’ he grinned.

‘Leave that now, will you please, Donna?’ snapped Marcus, because she had bent over to flick up the last few crumbs of dust.

‘But—’

‘Just leave it!’

Donna straightened up and smoothed down the pale green uniform which strained so horribly over her bust, slotting the brush onto the dustpan before looking up at Marcus and smiling. ‘Are we still on for a game later?’

Lucas’s pupils dilated. ‘A game of what?’

‘Not tonight,’ said Marcus tightly. ‘Just go away, Donna, will you? I want to talk to Lucas in private!’

Afterwards, Marcus realised that the worst thing he could possibly have done was to warn Lucas off the luscious chambermaid. His wayward brother loved nothing more than a slice of forbidden fruit.

But what alternative did he have? He didn’t think for a moment that she was an unsullied young virgin—but for all Donna’s worldliness she had a curious and refreshing innocence about her.

It was a potent combination—and one which caused him to lie awake at night, aching and sweating and pressing his groin hard against the mattress, as if he was trying to punish himself.

Donna saw how different the two brothers were. Marcus was the serious one, with all the responsibilities of the hotel weighing heavily on his shoulders. Lucas was simply devil-may-care. While Marcus seemed reluctant to find out anything about her Lucas wanted to know everything. And a little bit more besides.

But his openness made up for his inquisitiveness. He was so forthcoming—not like his brother at all. Through Lucas she heard about their childhood. About their wild and beautiful mother—so different from their steady, unimaginative father.

Lucas was candid to the point of indiscretion, Donna realised. He seemed unfazed by telling her of his mother’s infidelities and the ensuing rows. He explained that his father had been too much in thrall to his spectacular wife to ever leave her.

He told her things which in her heart she knew should have remained secret—and maybe that was why she told Lucas the truth about her mother.

He didn’t look at all shocked, merely looked her up and down and said, ‘Yes. I can see exactly why she was a stripper, if her body was anything like yours.’

She could have bitten her tongue out and tossed it away. ‘But you won’t tell Marcus?’ she begged him.

His eyes were sly. ‘Why not?’

‘Please!’

‘Okay,’ he replied easily. ‘Don’t want to shock my uptight big brother, do we?’ The sly look returned. ‘He likes you, doesn’t he?’

Donna shook her head. ‘Only as a card partner,’ she said, fervently trying to convince herself.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Lucas. ‘He used to play bridge with the local vicar, and he never used to look at him like that!’

Lucas was pointing out nothing that Donna hadn’t noticed for herself. Marcus really did seem to like her. That look in his eyes sometimes…an intense kind of longing that made her wonder why on earth he didn’t just throw caution to the wind, take her in his arms and…

She knew exactly why. They weren’t equals. He was the boss and she was the chambermaid and she should never forget that. Because Marcus never did.

Donna saw the hotel grow more and more popular. Everyone wanted to eat there, and it became the place to see and be seen in. Actors and media-types often drove down from London for dinner and a luxurious bed for the night.

One night a famous restaurant critic from a national newspaper came to review the restaurant. Every member of staff worked their socks off, and they all held their breath until the first edition claimed that it was the ‘best-kept secret in the South of England’!

Not for long!

The reservations phone didn’t stop ringing, and Marcus announced that he would be providing a meal in the private function room upstairs—to thank all the staff for their hard work.

Donna wore the only thing she had which was suit-able—a black velvet dress she’d bought at a thrift shop. It was much too old and too severe for her, but it made her figure look absolutely show-stopping. She wore it with a necklace of huge amber beads which matched the colour of her hair exactly.

She drank champagne and let her hair down—literally and figuratively. In between courses she joined the chefs and waiters and shimmied around the room to the music which played in the background, knowing that Marcus was watching her.

And Donna was her mother’s daughter. Whether or not the dancing was learned or inherited—she could dance like a dream.

Marcus couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d never wanted anyone or anything so badly, and once the coffee had been served he gave up trying to resist and slid into the seat next to her.

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