The Bride's Baby

couldn’t move. An emptiness that he hadn’t experienced since the day he’d realised that his mother was never coming back and he was completely alone…

‘A daughter,’ she said, laying a protective hand over the curve of her abdomen. ‘The scan showed that it’s a girl.’

‘…a daughter,’ he said softly.

A little girl who’d have blonde curls and blue eyes and a smile to break a father’s heart.

‘I wonder how he’ll feel when he hears,’ he said, but only because he wanted her to think about it.

He already knew.

Cut out, shut off from something he could never be a part of.

‘You care?’ she demanded, astonished. Looking at him as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You’re actually concerned?’

‘Yes, Sylvie, I’m concerned. He’s your father. His heart will break.’

Under the flush of heat from the fire, she went white.

‘How dare you?’ she said, gathering herself, pushing herself out of the chair, swaying slightly.

‘Sylvie, I’m sorry…’ He scrambled to his feet, reaching out to steady her, aware that he’d strayed into a minefield but too late to do more than apologise. This was all strange to him. He’d wanted, just for a moment, to share her happy childhood memories, not drag up bad ones.

It had never occurred to him that she could have had anything but the perfect childhood.

‘Sorry? Is that it?’ she said, shaking him off. ‘You’ve got some kind of nerve, Tom McFarlane.’ And she was striding to the door while he was still trying to work out what he’d done that was so awful.

Abandoning him to his foolish fantasies of happy families.

‘Sylvie, please…’ He was at the door before she reached it, blocking her way.

She refused to look at him, to speak to him. Just waited for him to recall his manners and let her pass, but he couldn’t do that. Not until he’d said the words that were sitting like a lump in his throat.

He’d already apologised for the helpless, angry insult that had spilled from his lips earlier that morning-rare enough-but now he found himself apologising again, even though he didn’t know why. Would have said anything if only she’d look at him, talk to him, stay…

‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business…’

She looked up at the ceiling, determinedly ignoring him, but her eyes were suspiciously bright and he wanted to take her, sweep her into his arms, hold her, reassure her. Protect her from making what seemed to him to be the biggest mistake of her life.

Marrying Jeremy Hillyer had to be a mistake. He’d let her down once and he’d do it again.

She didn’t have to marry him just because she was having his baby.

Or was that it?

Was she so desperate to give her baby something that she felt she’d been denied? If so, she was wrong. Her father may not have been the ideal ‘daddy’; her childhood may not have been quite the picture book perfect life that he’d imagined. To go with this picture book house. But she did have a father and he knew exactly how the man must feel every time one of his letters or cards came back marked ‘Return to Sender’.

‘You lost your mother, Sylvie. You can’t bring her back, but you still have a father. Don’t let anger and pride keep you from him.’

‘Don’t!’ She turned on him, eyes blazing, and he took a step back in the face of an anger so palpable that it felt like a punch on the jaw.

For a moment he thought she was going to say more, but she just shook her head and he said, ‘What?’

‘Just don’t!’ And now the tears were threatening to spill over, but even as he reached for her, determined to take her back to the fire where he could hold her so that she could cry, get it out of her system, she took a step back and said, ‘Don’t be such a damn hypocrite.’

She didn’t wait for a response, but wrenched open the door and was gone from him, running up the stairs, leaving him to try and work out what he’d said that had made her so angry.

Hypocrite? Where had that come from?

All he’d done was encourage her to get in touch with her father. The birth of a baby was a time for new beginnings, a good time to bury old quarrels. She might not want to hear that, but how did saying it make him a hypocrite?

He was halfway up the stairs, determined to demand an answer, before reality brought him crashing to a halt.

She might have responded to his kiss, be anything but immune to the hot wire that seemed to run between them, but she was still pregnant with Jeremy Hillyer’s child.

Was still going to marry the boy next door.

Sylvie gained the sanctuary of her bedroom and leaned against the door, breathing heavily, tears stinging against lids blocking out the fast fading light.

How could a man with such fire in his eyes, whose simplest kiss could dissolve her bones and who, with a touch could sear her to the soul, be so cold?

How dared he disapprove of the way she’d shut her father out of her life when he was refusing to acknowledge his own child?

Not by one word, one gesture, had he indicated that he was in any way interested. She could live with that for herself, but what had an innocent, unborn child done to merit such treatment?

She’d accepted, completely and sincerely, that the decision to have his baby had been entirely hers. She could have taken the morning-after pill. Had a termination. She had not consulted him but had taken the responsibility on herself and because of that she’d given him the chance to walk away. Forget it had ever happened.

No blame, no foul.

It was only now, confronted with the reality of what that really meant, did she fully understand how much she’d hoped for a different outcome.

She’d hoped, believed, that by removing everything from the equation but the fact that he was about to become a father, he’d be able to love his little girl as an unexpected gift.

How dumb could she be? At least if she’d sent in the lawyers, gone after him for maintenance, he’d have been forced to confront reality, would have become engaged with his daughter if only on a financial level. He’d demand contact fast enough then.

The billionaire entrepreneur who’d checked every item on the account would want value for money.

‘Damn him,’ she said, angrily swiping away the dampness that clung to her lashes with the heels of her hands. Then laid them gently over her baby and whispered, ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I messed up. Got it wrong.’

A bit of a family failing, that. But her mother hadn’t fallen apart when life had dealt her a tricky hand. She’d handled it all with dignity, courage, humour.

Her marriage. Cancer. Even the loss of everything she’d held dear.

All that and with love and understanding too. Always with love. Especially for the unhappy man she’d fallen in love with and married. A man who’d loved his own father so much he’d lived a lie rather than ‘come out’ and bring the old reactionary’s world crashing down. Who had loved her too.

How could Tom McFarlane be so right about that and so wrong about everything else?

‘What’ll I do, Mum?’ she whispered. ‘What would you do?’

Work had always been the answer. Fingers might get burned when a deal went wrong, but the heart remained unscathed, so Tom did what he always did when nothing else made sense. He returned to the library; not to the warmth of the fire but to the huge antique desk and the package of documents and personal stuff that had piled up while he’d been away and which Pam had couriered back from the office so that he could catch up with ongoing projects and set to work.

She’d even included the ‘Coming Next Month’ page from the latest edition of Celebrity, where a photograph of Longbourne Court promoted the ‘world’s favourite wedding planner’s personal fantasy wedding’ from The Pink Ribbon Club’s Wedding Fayre.

He bit down hard, pushed it away so hard that it slid on to the floor along with a load of other stuff. He left it, intent on tossing away out of date invitations, letters from organisations asking him to speak, donate, join their boards. Clearing out the debris so that he could get back to what he knew. Making money.