Bound by a Baby Bump (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (6 page)

‘Luckily for you, the kitchen and bathrooms were finished first,’ he said with a grin.

‘This is beautiful.’ She was still slightly taken aback by the contrast of this room with the building sites she’d seen so far, but determined to stay focused. ‘Did you do all the work yourself?’

He nodded. ‘Everything I legally can—an electrician did a couple of bits, but most of it was me.’

‘You’ve done a great job.’

‘Thanks.’ He smiled and nodded, without false modesty or undue pride. ‘Can I get you anything before I go and clean myself up? Coffee? Tea?’ He glanced down at his sawdust-caked jeans and T-shirt as he spoke.

She brushed off his offer, instead getting him to point her towards coffee and mugs. When he’d disappeared up the stairs, Rachel turned to the cupboard and started on the coffee, almost squealing with delight when the tin next to the kettle turned out to contain cake and biscuits. Her eyes threatened to fill with tears—stupid hormones. But she guessed he wasn’t the type to keep cake in the cupboard, and that meant it was only there for her sake. Butterflies were still causing havoc in her tummy, and she reluctantly admitted to herself that her nerves were more about the man, today, than the baby.

Once the initial gigantic I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-next panic had receded slightly, the day after she’d taken the pregnancy test, she’d started to think more and more about the baby growing inside her. About bringing a new life into the world, and excitement had grown and grown. Her thoughts about Leo? Still bound up with an almighty warning sign. And seeing his home, the centre of his disorder, hadn’t helped. She rubbed her belly, thinking soothing thoughts, not wanting to inflict her worries on her baby. It seemed important already that she didn’t allow her concerns to become his, or hers. Not as her parents had with her.

She turned as she heard Leo’s footsteps on the stairs, and he appeared around the curve of the staircase in clean jeans and a black T-shirt, his hair a little damp.

‘Sorry to abandon you like that. I looked in the mirror and thought I’d gone prematurely grey so I jumped in the shower to get rid of the dust.’

She smiled as she transferred coffee pot, mugs and cake to the table. ‘And here was me thinking the shock had sent you all Marie Antoinette.’

He raised an eyebrow, questioning.

‘Hair went white overnight? Never mind, obscure reference. Coffee and cake?’

‘Sounds good,’ Leo said, pulling out a chair and dropping into it. She watched his hands as he hacked a couple of wedges of cake, impressed and wondering whether she now had a pregnancy get-out clause when it came to denying her sweet tooth. She pulled up the chair beside him and poured the coffee, sending him sideways glances, wondering if he was finding this sudden domesticity as strange as she was. Bizarre, she thought. That she could find something so ordinary as coffee and cake new and nerve-racking when they were already somehow a family.

Rachel sipped the coffee and flinched when it scalded her lips. But it was worth it for the familiar caffeine buzz. The smell, even the taste, made her feel more comfortable. More herself. And the act of sitting at a great big table with a hot cup of coffee was all she needed to get her brain in gear, and have her reaching for her tablet. She grabbed her handbag, which she’d left propped by the chair, and pulled out all the plans she’d made since she’d first read
Pregnant
on that test. They had a lot to discuss, and it made sense to start work, she thought. She pulled herself up slightly on the word
work
; technically this was personal. But her—their—new life was going to take so much organising that it might as well be work. It was easier to think of it that way. To slot Leo and their child and all the changes they represented into her life as she would any other project. Because what was the alternative—chucking out everything she thought she knew and starting again?

But when she’d spread out her tablet and binders and looked up, she found Leo staring at her, a grimace on his face. She faltered slightly at the hard lines of his brows. The white knuckles of his fists.

‘What are they?’ The words were forced through his teeth, none too friendly. She glanced down—a little confused about how this had caused so much hostility. It wasn’t as if he even knew what her plans contained. He’d gone white even at the thought of them.

‘It’s a tablet.’ She spoke slowly, treading carefully in light of his sudden shift in mood. Not wanting to upset things further. ‘And some charts. I had a few ideas about how we’re going to make this work. I thought you might want to talk them through.’

‘Oh, you did?’ He took a long sip of his coffee—diversionary tactic, she guessed. ‘And here was me thinking you were about to present me with a finished plan.’ She dropped her eyes and felt her cheeks warm—it had never occurred to her to wait until she’d spoken to him before drawing up their options. But now they were laid out in front of her, and Leo was so obviously fighting to keep his annoyance under control, she could see that he was right.

‘Did you just expect me to go along with everything you’d decided?’

Well, it wasn’t as if he’d made any suggestions—it had been all down to her.

But when could he have contributed? She’d not seen him since they’d found out the news; she hadn’t given him a chance. ‘I’m sorry. I should have spoken to you first.’ Her plans were good, though, thorough. They covered myriad scenarios with timetables, budgets and schedules. And of course Leo had a say. But
she
was the one carrying the baby.
She
was the one who would have to take time off for the birth.
She
was the one who would have to decide whether, and how, she could return to work.

She was the one who would have to put what little she recognised of her life back together after the baby was born.

And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered what Leo wanted. She’d given him plenty of options, with his involvement ranging from full-time parenting to ‘financial contribution only’. Even—though nothing she’d seen of Leo so far told her that she’d need it—a ‘no involvement’ plan.

‘I thought we were going to have a coffee.’ Leo’s tone was still harsh, and he gripped his mug as if struggling to keep his temper.

‘Can’t we drink and talk?’

‘Sure, we can drink and talk. But that’s not what you’re suggesting. You want to drink and
work
.’

He was beyond tense now, and heading directly for angry. His body language was defensive, closed, and she could see from the lines of fear on his face that she’d stumbled into deeper waters than she’d thought. He wasn’t just angry at her for doing this without him. Her temper had lit in response to his, but she forced it down, trying to keep neutral. Trying to understand what had him so wary. If she blew up, too, they’d never talk this through.

‘We don’t have to do this all today. But I’d like to make a start, if we can. We’ve got quite a lot to get through—’

‘Get through?’ He slammed his mug onto the table, and hot coffee spilled onto the wood, creeping towards her papers. She pulled them back, eyeing Leo, suddenly realising she’d completely underestimated how badly she’d read him, how much distance there was between them. How impossible it was going to be to create a family out of this mess. ‘I’m not a project, Rachel. I’m not a client or a boss or someone you’re giving a presentation to. This isn’t going to be solved over a working lunch and a follow-up email.’

‘But—’

‘No!’

Rachel set her cup down slowly, willing herself to remain calm in the face of his raw emotion, wishing she could understand what was making him react this way. She hadn’t expected this to be
easy
, but she hadn’t expected such vehement opposition, either. She shut her eyes and counted to ten, hoping that when she opened them again Leo would’ve lost the frightened, cornered,
angry
look that twisted his features—usually so effortlessly sexy—into something ugly.

She looked up. He had calmed a little, the redness draining from his face, but there were still deep creases between his brows, and his mouth was set in a harsh line.

‘I’m sorry, but I cannot have your plan dictated to me and just go along with it.’ The clipped consonants and snappy vowels gave away the effort that near-civility was costing him. ‘I know you need this. I know you want everything decided, booked, settled. But it’s not just you now. Can’t you see that?’ He could see it, and he didn’t know how to get away from it. ‘If we decide something, we have to do it
together.
I will not let you plan and schedule and itemise my life just because I happened to get you pregnant. That doesn’t give you the right to come in here and tell me how it’s going to be.’

‘I’ve given you choices...options.’ Finally she couldn’t keep the anger from her own voice. With the venom contained in his, it didn’t seem optional—it was a necessity. A way to fend off his biting accusations.

‘You don’t get to
give
me anything. That’s not how
together
works.’

‘What’s made you so scared?’ she asked. ‘Tell me why my having a plan freaks you out. Because as far as I can see, with us barely knowing each other, and living hours apart, and having an actual
baby
together, some idea of how we’re going to cope seems like a good idea. So why is it you blanch, pretty much start shaking and bite my head off?’

He scraped his chair backwards, leaving a good couple of feet between him and the table, the space acting like a force field around him. ‘I can’t do it like this, Rachel. I won’t. I can’t sit here, backed into a corner with no way out of what you’ve decided for us. I won’t be trapped.’

And with that he headed straight out of the door, leaving her sitting at the kitchen table wondering what the hell had just happened. Her heart was hammering in her chest, tears pricked at her eyes, and her fingers shook slightly when she reached for a cloth to mop up the spilled coffee.

How had they got here? They’d gone from almost kissing when she’d arrived to the point where they couldn’t be in the same room together.

And now she was scared—because nothing he had said or done made her believe that he was in any way glad about the fact they were having a baby. In the days since she’d found out she was expecting, she’d started to look forward to being a parent. Feel joy at the prospect of meeting the new life they had created. Of course there was an enormous dose of full-body-paralysis fear, not least when she tried to think about how she could possibly spend the next eighteen—or eighty—years trying to maintain some sort of contact with Leo.

The thought of having to live with the disorder and randomness that Leo so clearly needed threated to bring on another panic attack. But when he had headed for the door just now, her stomach had dropped and her heart had felt as if it had stopped. She had been filled with an overwhelming dread that he might not come back. That he was leaving her to have this baby alone. She knew that she could do it if she had to. But in the second that she thought that Leo might be walking away, she wanted him by her side. Chaos and all. They had made this new life together, and she wanted to find a way for them to be a family.

She cleared away a few pieces from the table—for no reason other than that she didn’t want to be just sitting waiting for him when he got back. So when she heard his footsteps at the door, she had her back to him, running something under the tap and holding her breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, in a shaky voice redolent of raw emotion.

She stared into the sink a little longer, gathering her thoughts, and fighting down the swell of tears that seemed to be climbing her throat. She couldn’t account for them, couldn’t reason why the croak of his voice made hers swell with sympathy.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned off the tap and slumped back against the sink, relief washing through her. ‘I shouldn’t have made those plans without you.’

‘And I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m genuinely sorry. But there are some things we need to talk about if we’re going to make this work. I know you like to have everything all worked out, but I can’t do that.’

‘So what am I meant to do? Just wait and see if you turn up at my office again?’ She tried to laugh, to pretend she could live like that, but it sounded hollow even to her.

‘Would that be so bad? I’d make sure I was there when you—when the baby—needed me. Does everything need to be planned months in advance?’

Her spine straightened again; Leo’s presence was seemingly anathema to serenity. ‘And is that what I should tell my doctor? Oh, I’ll definitely come along at some point. An appointment? No. I’ll just arrive when I’m ready.’

‘And what about the baby—is he allowed to arrive when he’s ready, or are you going to hold him to whatever due date the doctors pull out of the air? I hope for his sake he isn’t late.’

She was about to snap back, when her train of thought faltered and her voice failed. ‘Wait, he?’ she asked, with the beginnings of a smile tweaking her lips. ‘Who says it’s a boy?’

His face softened, and for the first time she saw the hard expression around his eyes ease, and his usual humorous glint return. She found she was relieved to see it, had been worried for a few moments that she and the baby had caused its disappearance to become permanent. It had been his determination to make her laugh that had drawn them together that first night, and she was worried that without that humour between them the very foundations they were working on were unsteady.

‘I don’t know. In my head, when I think about how things will be, I just always see a boy.’

‘You’ve thought about it?’

His eyes bugged.

‘Have I thought about it? What else am I meant to think about? Have you thought about anything else?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘So what do you?’

He raised an eyebrow by way of a question. ‘What do I...?’

‘What do you think, when you think about it?’

He crossed to the table and dropped into a seat, reaching for his abandoned cup of coffee. A smile was creeping across her face at the sight of the hint of a grin on his. He thought about their baby. The knowledge glowed inside her. ‘I don’t know. Just flashes of things, I suppose.’