Kate Walker - The Christmas Baby's Gift

She’d married Liam to have children. But as her own feelings about her husband had changed, so had her thoughts on bringing a baby into this marriage. And now here, right in front of her, was the image of exactly why she had felt forced to take the decision she had. Stephanie and Tony were so obviously deeply in love. They were a couple in a way that she and Liam could never be, the sort of parents that she dreamed of providing for her own child when the time came.

‘That’s wonderful news.’

She couldn’t even make it sound genuine, Liam reflected bitterly. Oh, perhaps someone who didn’t know their private background might be convinced. They might actually just take the words at face value and not hear the bleak emptiness that threaded through them, draining them of any real warmth and delight. But to someone who was as sensitive to everything about this woman as he was, it was obvious that her heart wasn’t fully in her response. That there was something at the back of it, throwing a dark shadow over her happiness.

And she wouldn’t even look him in the face. Couldn’t meet his eyes. Ever since he’d made that damn stupid remark about breeding she had been avoiding him quite obviously.

He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as he had said it. It had come too close to the truth. To the sort of dynastic marriage their families had wanted and that, at first, they had both been so determined to resist. He had trampled right in, reminding her of one of the reasons—apart, of course, from fancying the pants off each other so that they couldn’t keep their hands, or other parts, to themselves—for their union. And now Stephanie had reminded her of the fact that he had failed to deliver on his promise.

Luckily at that moment the announcement of the fact that supper was being served proved a very welcome diversion. For once he was grateful that the formality his grandfather insisted on for these occasions meant that he and Peta, as the guests of honour at this event, had to lead everyone else into the dining room where the elegant buffet meal was laid out.

‘What can I get you?’

‘Oh—anything—I’m not really hungry.’

She still seemed distracted. Still wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘Okay, then—you go and sit down and I’ll bring you something over. I think I know what you like.’

Did she have to look so relieved to be given the chance to move away? It was obvious that she had chosen a table on the far side of the room, where she could sit on her own, away from everyone else. People would be thinking that they’d had a row—not the best possible image to present on their first anniversary, particularly not when they wanted everyone to believe that theirs was a successful, happy marriage.

‘What’s up with that pretty wife of yours, then, my boy?’

Joshua Hewland’s tones sounded gruffly behind him, making Liam wince inwardly. He supposed that compared to his grandfather’s eighty-two years just turned thirty must seem young, but he had never quite adjusted to the way the old man kept referring to him as ‘my boy’.

‘Nothing’s wrong. She’s just a little tired, that’s all.’

‘Tired?’ Joshua’s response was a blatant snort of disbelief and disapproval. ‘Tired!’

The old man’s watery blue eyes looked sceptical and the glance he turned in Peta’s direction was frankly disapproving.

‘Tired! At her age! Young people these days have no stamina! Why, when I was—’

Abruptly he came to a halt and Liam groaned inwardly as he saw the disapproval fade and a newly speculative expression take its place.

‘Unless, of course… Do you have something to tell me?’

Ruthlessly Liam squashed down the angry retort that rose to his lips. Telling his grandfather that it was none of his business was not the way to handle this, even if it was the reply he most wanted to give. Joshua’s obsession with the Hewland line, the inheritance of the great house and the acres of land that went with it, was positively feudal. It was something that Liam normally respected, something he partly shared, but right now it touched on a very uncomfortable spot indeed and was not something he wanted to talk about, particularly not in such a public place.

‘When and if we do have “something to tell you”,’ he declared stiffly, ‘we’ll tell you in our own good time and not before.’

His grandfather wasn’t pleased. The way the thin old mouth clamped into a tight, hard line made that only too clear. That and the way his bristling white brows drew together in a disapproving frown.

‘Well, don’t mess about with this, lad!’ he ordered brusquely. ‘I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have many years to waste waiting for you to provide me with an heir.’

‘Don’t you mean a legitimate heir?’ Liam snapped back, anger flaring almost out of control.

It had been impossible to come to terms with the way that his grandfather had never fully accepted him, and when the old man harped on about having an heir to Hewland Hall it simply drummed home the way that Joshua was prepared to dismiss the fact that he had once had a daughter. Liam’s mother. But Anna Hewland had offended her father’s old-fashioned principles by having a baby and not even staying with, never mind marrying, the father.

‘At least this child will be born into a legal marriage,’ Joshua returned coldly. ‘Though of course that wouldn’t matter if only your mother had had a child by the man who had the decency to put a ring on her finger.’

‘But she didn’t,’ Liam growled. ‘And so you’re stuck with me.’

As his stepfather had been, he reflected bitterly, recalling just how plain his mother’s husband had made it that he resented having to support Anna’s bastard child while she’d given him none of his own. Nigel Hastings had made his stepson’s life a misery from the moment he had married Liam’s mother, doting openly on the son and daughter he had brought with him from his first marriage and making sure that Anna’s child had felt very much lower than second-best.

‘Believe me, Grandfather, I want a child from this marriage every bit as much as you do.’

More, perhaps. As a lonely, unwanted adolescent he had escaped into dreams of his own home, his own family, a baby that was truly his. When his turn came to be a parent, he had vowed to himself, he would be the best father he could possibly be, erasing all the emptiness of the past in the warmth of his relationship with his child.

‘I want to hold my great-grandchild in my arms before I die,’ the old man stated flatly. ‘What’s so wrong with that? What’re you doing, lad? Firing blanks?’

Hell!

It was meant to be below the belt, he knew that. But the fact that it hit home with more cruelty than Joshua had been aiming for was solely down to the thoughts that had been running through Liam’s head for weeks. The private fears that had nagged at him in his lowest moments.

Clamping his mouth tight shut, he bit back the savage retort that almost escaped him, concentrating fiercely on pouring himself and Peta a glass of wine and adding them to the tray on which he had already placed the plates of food.

‘I’m working on it,’ he growled furiously when he felt able to speak without exploding. ‘Believe me, if I have anything to do with it you’ll have that great-grandchild of yours by this time next year.’

He’d almost given himself away there, he thought cynically, cursing the display of temper that had somehow escaped even his ruthless control. It had alerted his grandfather’s suspicions. He could almost feel the old man’s gaze burning between his shoulders as he made his way across the room to where Peta sat.

She did look rather washed out, he thought. Unusually pale, and, now that he studied her more closely, there were faint shadows under the beautiful eyes. Shadows that the skilful application of make-up hadn’t quite concealed.

Under the elegant jacket and shirt his heart gave a sudden jolt, thudding against his ribs as a sudden suspicion slid into his head. Was it possible…?

‘What did your grandfather want?’ was her first question, as he had known it must be. But at least this time he was prepared. He’d been imagining things earlier, he told himself privately. There couldn’t be anything wrong. He didn’t feel as if there was anything wrong. And, if he’d read the signs right, then maybe Peta had news for him that would put all his concerns aside once and for all.

‘Oh, just to congratulate us.’

He had himself almost back under control now. His tone was as even as he wanted, the smile he directed into her eyes apparently easy and without a care. He’d guessed her secret, he told himself. All he had to do was to give her the opportunity to tell him.

‘Congratulate?’

Peta had reached for her glass of wine but now she paused with it lifted just partway from the tray.

Congratulate? Just the thought sent tremors of shock running through her. Had Liam said something that had made his grandfather think his dearest wish was coming true?

‘On our anniversary, of course.’ He said it lightly enough, but suddenly there was a new note in his voice, one that hadn’t been there before—and one that she couldn’t begin to interpret properly.

‘He didn’t look congratulatory—if anything he looked annoyed. Liam?’ she tried again when he didn’t answer her, instead reaching for a bread roll and breaking it open roughly. ‘Was he angry about something?’

Somewhere she’d overstepped some invisible line, crossed a boundary that she didn’t even know existed. Liam didn’t say a word but a sudden stiffening of his long body, the way the strong fingers tightened, a disturbing change in his eyes, all communicated silently the fact that he didn’t want to answer the question.

Which of course only made her all the more anxious for him to do so.

‘What did he say?’

For the space of a couple of uneven heartbeats she thought that he wasn’t going to respond, and all the nerves in her body stretched taut in tension at the fear of just what he wanted to hide from her. But then suddenly Liam shrugged dismissively and lifted his clouded green gaze to her face.

‘Not angry,’ he said carelessly, dropping the mutilated roll and reaching for his own glass in turn. ‘It was more that he was disappointed that Steph and Tony beat us to it in the baby stakes.’

‘Ohh!’

Hastily Peta put down the glass that she had lifted to her lips; suddenly knowing that she couldn’t drink from it. Not now. Liam’s words had made her throat close over abruptly. There was no way she could swallow anything without choking desperately.

‘It means that much to him!’

‘I told you he wants an heir for this place. But you knew that when you agreed to marry me.’

And it had all seemed so much easier then. So much less complicated. But she hadn’t been thinking straight.

She hadn’t been thinking at all.

They had both known from the start that her parents and Liam’s grandfather had been matchmaking with a vengeance when they had arranged for the two of them to meet. Peta had been away in America for five years, working in Seattle, and before that she had been at university, only coming home in the holidays. So she had only seen Liam once or twice, and then perhaps for a brief moment or two. The boy, and then the adolescent she had known vaguely, had grown into a dark and devastating man. One she had been instantly drawn to and one who, if it hadn’t been for her parents’ interference and manipulation, she would have been glad to get to know better.