Liz Fielding - The Bride's Baby

It would be impossible to say whether it was the shudder that ran through her, her tongue moistening her hot, full lower lip or the tiny moan low in her throat that precipitated what happened next.

Or maybe it was none of those things. Maybe this had been in his mind from the very beginning, from the minute he’d first set eyes on her six months ago when he’d walked into her office and had instantly wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

Why he’d provoked today’s meeting.

Because this raw, atavistic connection between two strangers, rather than a wedding that had lain like lead in his gut for weeks, was what today had been all about and the connection between them was as inevitable as it was explosive.

Control? Who did he think he was kidding…?

As his lips touched hers it was like oxygen to a fire that had been smouldering, unseen for months. One minute there was nothing. The next it was wildfire. Unstoppable…

Somehow they made it to the lift and he groped back for the key that closed the doors, sending it silently upward as they tore at the fastenings on each other’s clothes, desperate for skin against skin. Just desperate.

A ping announced the arrival of an email from his office. Tom McFarlane bypassed the trip to Mustique, driven by a woman’s tears to take the first long haul flight out with a vacant seat, and he’d hit the ground running the moment he’d touched down in the Far East. Work. Work had always been the answer.

He opened it. Read the note from his secretary and swore. Then he picked up the picture postcard of Sydney Opera House lying beside the laptop. Read the brief message—‘Wish you were here’—not a question but a statement, before tearing it in two.

‘I’ll be fine…’

Famous last words, Sylvie thought as she regarded the pregnancy test. But then, when she’d said them, she hadn’t been talking about the fact that she’d just had unprotected sex with a man with whom, despite the fact that he’d taken up residence in her brain, she’d never made it to first name terms.

She’d hoped, expected, that he’d call from Mustique, if only to make sure that there had been no consequences to their moment of madness. Maybe, even better, just to say hello. Best of all to say, I’d like to do that again…

Apparently he wouldn’t. No doubt he thought that she’d have dealt with the possibility of any unforeseen consequences without a second thought. It was true; she had momentarily thought about emergency contraception while she’d been walking past a pharmacy the day after Tom McFarlane had made love to her. Then, just like some teenage kid buying his first packet of condoms, she’d come out with a new toothbrush.

Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had given it a second thought.

She was nearly thirty and a baby would not be bad news. She smiled as she lay her hand over her still perfectly flat abdomen. Far from it. It was wonderful news. Totally right. For her, anyway.

Quite what her baby’s father would make of it was another matter altogether. She’d given up hoping for any kind of a call from him when she’d received a freshly drawn cheque in the post, clipped to a compliment slip with ‘settlement in full’ typed on it, followed by someone’s indecipherable initials. Not his. Well, no, he was taking time out in the fabulous villa that Candy had chosen for their honeymoon.

He’d reinstated the twenty per cent she’d deducted and couldn’t have made his point more succinctly. He’d known exactly what he was doing. Had regained control…

She returned the twenty per cent with a brief note, reminding him that she had deducted it from her bill. Stupid, no doubt, but pride had its price and it had been essential to make the point that she did not.

A secretary replied to thank her for pointing out the error, assuring her that Mr McFarlane had been informed.

She wasn’t going to risk that this time. Or a formal letter from a lawyer demanding a paternity test. He had a right to know he was about to become a father, but she was going to make it plain that this was something he’d have to deal with himself and steeled herself to call his office.

She doubted that holidays came easily to him and fully expected that he would have returned early, but was informed that he was still away and did she want to leave a message?

She declined. A letter would be easier. That way she could keep it cool. She pulled a sheet of her personal notepaper from the rack, uncapped her pen.

An hour later she was still sitting there.

How did you tell a man you scarcely knew that he was about to become a father? Especially since Candy had shared her joy that ruining her figure to provide him with an heir had not been part of the deal.

How could she tell a man who apparently had no desire for children of his own that this was the most magical thing that had ever happened to her? Share just how amazing she felt, how happy she was? How life suddenly had real meaning?

She knew he’d hate that and, since she didn’t want him angry, she’d keep it businesslike. Strictly to the point. Give him room to look past a moment of sizzling passion and see what they’d created together so that he could, maybe, find it in his heart to reach out to his child without any burden of liability to get in the way.

Finally, she began.

Dear Tom,

No. That wouldn’t do. She blotted out the memory of crying his name out as he’d brought her body humming to life and scratched out Tom and, clinging instead to the memory of that twenty per cent, she wrote:

Dear Mr McFarlane—that was businesslike.

I’m writing to let you know that as a result of our recent…

She stopped again.

What? How could she put into words what had happened. His unexpected tenderness. The soaring joy that had brought the tears pouring down her face…

He hadn’t understood the tears, how could he? She just kept saying, ‘I’m all right…’ Blissfully, brilliantly, wonderfully more than ‘all right’. And she would have told him, but then Josie had rung in a panic because Delores was out of her head on an illegal substance half an hour before everyone was due to arrive and the baker had turned up with the cake and there had been no time. And all she’d said was, ‘I have to go.’

She’d expected him to ring her. Kept hoping he would. But when she’d rung his office using the excuse of reminding him about the cheque—they’d somehow forgotten all about that—she’d been told he was away. He had, apparently, taken her at her word and caught his plane…

Come on, Sylvie. Get a grip. Keep it simple.

…as a result of our recent encounter, I am expecting a baby in July.

Businesslike. To the point. Cool. Except there was nothing cold about having a baby. When she’d seen the result of the pregnancy test there had been a rush of an emotion so powerful that she could hardly breathe…

Please believe me when I say that I do not hold you in any way responsible. It was my decision alone to go ahead with the pregnancy and I’m perfectly capable of supporting both myself and my son or daughter. My purpose in writing is not to make any demands on you, but obviously you have a right to know that you are about to become a father. Should you wish to be a part of his or her life, I would welcome your involvement without any expectation of commitment to me.

She crossed out without any expectation of commitment to me. You could be too businesslike. Too cool…

You have my assurance that I won’t contact you again, or ever raise the subject in the unlikely event that our paths should cross. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume that you have no wish to be involved.

Yours

Sylvie Smith

What else could she say? That she would never forget him? That he had broken down the protective wall that had been in place ever since Jeremy had decided that he wasn’t up for the ‘worse’ or the unexpectedly ‘poorer’—at least not with her—leaving her with everything in place for a wedding except the groom.

That she would always be grateful to him for that. And for the precious gift of a baby.

A new family. The chance to begin again…

No. That would be laying an emotional burden on him. Any involvement must not be out of guilt, but because he wanted to be a father. If he didn’t, well, at least that way, her child would be spared the bitter disillusionment she’d suffered at the hands of her own father.

Something dropped on to the paper, puddling the ink. Stupid. There was no reason for tears, absolutely none, and she palmed them away, took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote out her letter minus the crossings out. Then she drove across to the other side of the river and placed her letter in Tom McFarlane’s letter box so that she wasn’t tempted to write again if he didn’t reply, just in case it had been lost in the post. Could be sure that no one else would open it, read it…

Then, since there was nothing else to be done, she went home and started making plans for the changes that were about to happen in her life.

Tom managed to get the last seat on the flight back to London. Four months. He hadn’t stopped travelling for four months. Like a man on the run, he’d been in flight from the memory, burned into his brain, of Sylvie Smith, silent tears pouring down her face.

For a moment, in that still, totally calm space, when he’d spilled his seed into her, he’d felt as if the entire world had suddenly been made over for him, that he was the hunter who’d come home with the biggest prize in the world.

Then he’d seen her tears and realised just what he’d done. That while she kept saying ‘I’ll be fine…’ she was anything but. ‘I have to go…’ when all he wanted was to keep her close.

And work, he’d discovered, was not the answer, which was why he was going back to face her. To beg her to forgive him, beg her for more…

About to go through passport control, he paused at a book shop—with a twelve hour flight ahead of him, he’d need something to read—and found himself confronted by the face that haunted his dreams, both waking and sleeping. Not crying now, but smiling serenely out at him from the latest copy of Celebrity.

Saw the story flash—‘Sylvie’s Happy Event!’

He didn’t need an interpreter to decipher ‘happy event’ and for a moment he felt a surge of something so powerful that he felt like a man with the world at his feet. She was wearing something soft and flowing and there was nothing to show that she was pregnant. Only the special glow of a woman who had just told the world that she was having a baby and was totally thrilled about it.

His baby…

He picked up the magazine. Opened it and came crashing back to earth as he saw that the cover photograph had been cropped. Inside, the same photograph showed that she was posed with a tall, fair-haired man and the caption read:

‘Our favourite events organiser Sylvie Smith, who has just announced that she’s expecting a baby later this summer, is pictured here with her childhood sweetheart, the recently divorced Earl of Melchester. Their marriage plans were put on hold when Sylvie’s grandfather died and, as Jeremy put it, “life got in the way”. It’s wonderful to see them looking so happy to be together again and we confidently predict wedding bells very shortly.’

He read it twice, just to be sure, then he tossed the magazine in the nearest bin and went back to the desk to change his ticket.

‘Where do you want to go, Mr McFarlane?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

JOSIE FOWLER flung herself full length into the sofa that had, at considerable expense, been provided for the comfort of their clients. With her feet dangling over the arm and her arm shielding her eyes, she groaned.