Her Pregnancy Surprise: His Pregnancy Bargain / The Pregnancy Secret / Their Pregnancy Bombshell
that is.’
There, it was out! She ought to be feeling a sense of release, but what she was actually feeling was sick…very sick. She pressed a hand to her mouth and waited, her eyes half closed, for the waves of nausea to pass.
When the imminent danger of throwing up had passed, she swallowed and opened her anxious eyes. Luc hadn’t moved a muscle since she had blurted out her news. She gave a frustrated sigh. Whatever he was feeling, she wasn’t going to see it here—a granite rock face would have been easier to read than those strong symmetrical contours. It was actually his total lack of response, his eerie stillness, that revealed he had even heard what she had said.
‘With your baby…obviously.’ She coloured. Maybe it wasn’t obvious at all to him?
It was possible that he thought she acted with equal wanton abandon with every man that took her fancy…
On the brink of making a disastrous confession, Megan bit her tongue. Luc didn’t need to hear how special he was, and the fact that she had never felt that way with any other man was something that ought to be kept on a need-to-know basis, and he definitely didn’t need to know!
‘Don’t worry, I’m not here to make a scene,’ she told him, gruffly earnest. ‘I just thought that you had the right to know. And,’ she added, ‘it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to say in a letter. Actually it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to say full stop,’ she added in a dry undertone. Belatedly she realised this comment might have come over as a little light on empathy. ‘Or hear,’ she tacked on generously.
Luc’s vibrant complexion had acquired a grey tinge as he lost the last shred of his habitual cool. She’d been prepared for shaken, but Megan got seriously alarmed when he suddenly buried his face in his hands. His classical profile was hidden from her view, but she could hear the laboured sound of his breathing from where she was sitting.
After a few moments his head lifted and she was relieved to see his colour was improved. ‘A baby…?’
She nodded, sympathetic to his traumatised condition.
He shook his head from side to side in the hope the action might kick-start his numb brain.
‘So you weren’t taking the pill…?’ He saw the pain flare in her eyes and thought, Good move Luc, let her think you’re blaming her, you insensitive bastard.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t think…I should…’
‘Neither of us thought, Megan.’ His expressionless voice cut into her disjointed stream of self-recriminations.
Megan lapsed into unhappy silence. Through the mesh of her lashes she watched his chest lift as he sucked in a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry, you must be—’
‘I’m not asking for anything from you,’ she interrupted quickly. She saw some emotion, indefinable but strong, flare briefly in his eyes before she ploughed heavily on. ‘I appreciate this is my responsibility. Of course, if you want to have some input, that is fine.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘INPUT…’ Luc repeated, looking at Megan as though she had run mad.
She exhaled a small gusty sigh of relief as she managed to wrench her fascinated eyes from the muscle in his lean cheek that was clenching and unclenching. ‘And if you don’t that’s equally fine,’ she told him with an upbeat smile. ‘There’s no pressure.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘I’m trying to be positive,’ she rebutted. Considering she was attempting to make this easy for him, he didn’t seem wildly appreciative.
His narrowed eyes scanned her face. ‘So you’ve decided to have this baby.’
‘You sound surprised?’
His brows lifted. ‘Well, what about your career?’
‘What about my career?’ Angrily, she pretended not to see where he was going with this.
‘I thought that was the most important thing in your life. The thing you’re prepared to sacrifice a personal life for.’
‘It is part of my life, and it is important, but my priorities have changed…’ Her expression grew defensive. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind.’
‘It could change again…?’
Megan’s heart gave a sickening thud. This was what she had been dreading him suggesting. She shook her head and ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘No, I’ve thought this thing through quite carefully,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling the prickle of hot tears behind her eyelids. ‘I can see how you’d like this to go away, but I want this baby.’
An expression of revulsion crossed his face. ‘Are you suggesting I would pressure you into having a termination?’
As this was exactly what she had assumed he was talking about, she just stared back at him mutely. His white-lipped fury gave lie to her assumption that he was taking this reasonably calmly under the circumstances.
Luc wasn’t calm, unless you considered volcanoes about to erupt calm!
‘I misunderstood,’ she admitted with a shrug. Misunderstanding or not, there was a point that needed making here. ‘Accidental or not, you’re the baby’s father…I can’t prove it, of course—’
‘For God’s sake, woman, of course it’s my baby. Do you think I imagine you make a habit of having unprotected sex any more than I do?’ he demanded impatiently. The furrow between his brows deepened as their eyes locked. ‘My God,’ he breathed. ‘You did think that, didn’t you?’
Megan shook her head, then nodded, then grabbed two handfuls of hair and grimaced as she rocked forward and back again. ‘I don’t know what I thought,’ she admitted huskily.
The anger faded from Luc’s face as he looked at the dejected, dispirited set of her hunched shoulders. ‘It must have been a confusing few weeks for you. It might make things a little easier to have someone to talk this out with…?’
The soft suggestion brought her head up with a snap. ‘Get any idea I came here to ask your advice right out of your head. I already know what I’m going to do,’ she ground out.
‘So basically what you’re saying is you’re going to do exactly what you want to, no matter what I say.’ His eyes, like molten silver, locked onto hers.
‘In a nutshell.’
Luc took a deep sustaining breath and told himself he didn’t have the right to be angry. What else could she have said? He’d backed her into a corner.
He even agreed with her, in the abstract, her body…her baby…her decision, but this wasn’t an abstract baby. This wasn’t just any baby. It was his baby…A few minutes ago he’d been aghast to hear what she had come to tell him, with bewildering speed his attitude had undergone a dramatic change. It amazed Luc how the idea of having a child could grow on a man.
‘So if you’ve thought this out, tell me, how are you going to cope with a baby and a demanding job?’
‘As luck would have it the firm I work for is relocating to a site nine miles from home so I’m going back,’ she explained. ‘It’s a good place to bring up a child. I should know; I was brought up there.’
‘And you’re expecting your mother to bring up your child for you…Have you considered that having a young baby foisted on her at her age might not be what she wants? What’s so funny?’ he wanted to know when her lips twitched.
Megan shook her head, she judged that he had had enough shocks for one day. Besides, this wasn’t her news to share. ‘Actually,’ she explained, ‘Mum is moving to Paris.’
The