The Bachelor's Baby

‘Do you need a hand?’ Had she sounded too eager? Too keen? ‘Not that I know one end of a baby from the other,’ she added quickly.

‘It’s a sharp learning curve, believe me,’ Willow said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Maybe you should start with something less demanding.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just go and put the kettle on. You know where the bathroom is. Help yourself.’

‘Jake! What a surprise. Come on in.’ Mike watched as Jake paid off the taxi and then said, ‘I thought you were still in the US.’

‘I was. Until last night.’ His bag was at his feet and he was holding a small carrier. ‘I bought this for Ben.’

‘And you’ve come straight from the airport? It must be something pretty special.’ Mike took the carrier, glanced at the contents and then looked up. ‘A teddy?’

‘It’s an American teddy.’ Jake realised that as a reason for his dash from the airport it was pretty feeble. He couldn’t think what had possessed him to buy it. Except he’d seen it sitting there, in the airport shop, while he’d been waiting for his flight to be called and he’d thought… ‘Press its paw and it plays Yankee Doodle.’

He couldn’t remember why it had seemed like a good idea at the time. He didn’t do fluffy toys. He didn’t see the point in them. He was the down-to-earth, practical man who’d given his new godson blue chip stock for his christening present. After all, what use was a silver mug? It would just make work and collect dust.

Mike took out the bear, regarded the stars-and-stripes bow tie and waistcoat and grinned. ‘It was a great idea if it brought you down to see us.’ The welcome was warm, and if he wasn’t totally convinced by the reason for the visit he kept his thoughts to himself. ‘Willow will love him.’

‘Great.’ Jake practically cringed with embarrassment. What on earth was he doing?

‘Well, don’t stand on the doorstep, man. If you’ve just flown back from the States you must be fit to drop.’

‘No, I’m intruding. I should have rung first…’ Jake stopped, suddenly unsure of himself. He didn’t do stuff like this, drop in unannounced, buy toys. Let his attention wander in meetings.

‘Nonsense. Willow’s taken Ben for a walk, but she won’t be long and she’ll be thrilled to bits to see you. And since she’ll insist you stay, you might as well take your bag upstairs right now. You know the way.’

Jake dragged a hand over his face. ‘You’re quite sure?’ He frowned as the words echoed in his head, as if someone had just said them a moment before. ‘I don’t know why I came. I should have gone straight home—’

Again Mike’s look suggested he was fooling himself. Again he tactfully kept his thoughts to himself. ‘Jake, you’re a friend, you’re welcome any time. Why don’t you grab a shower while I put some coffee on? Are you hungry? Or can you wait for dinner?’

‘A shower and coffee sound perfect.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘Mike—’ Mike, heading for the kitchen, paused and looked back. On the point of asking about Amy, asking how she was, Jake stopped himself. ‘Nothing. Just thanks.’

‘Sure. Take your time.’

He picked up his bag, carried it up to the guest room and wasted no time getting under the shower. He should be tired. Instead he felt fired up, excited, eager as a puppy fresh from a nap. He switched the shower to cold and stood there while he counted to a hundred. Slowly. It made no difference.

He wandered back into the bedroom, towelling his hair as he gazed out over the fields at the back of the house. From the window he could see Willow hurrying along the footpath, pushing Ben in his buggy, eager to be home.

Marriage, families. He was a puzzled spectator, unable to understand why it worked for some people. It was as if he had a vital piece missing. As if, somewhere inside him, a light hadn’t been switched on.

Amy Jones had switched on something, though. This was new. This eagerness. And the warning bells clanged ever more loudly, warning him that he should have stayed on the other side of the Atlantic until the feeling had passed.

As he turned from the window, pulled on a shirt and a pair of chinos, he heard Willow come in through the back door.

‘Mike! I’m home.’ Home. The word sliced through him like a knife-blade. He had a penthouse apartment that had cost telephone numbers overlooking the Thames, furnished by someone whose job it was to save him the bother of having to think about it. It was a showpiece. It was a declaration of his status. It was hardly a home. ‘Where are you? You won’t believe what I’ve got to tell you.’

He heard her go into the kitchen, her voice dropping as she found Mike. He shouldn’t have come. It had been a mistake, he thought, as he let himself out of the bedroom.

‘I’m telling you it’s true, Mike. There’s no mistake.’ He paused on the stairs as Willow’s voice rose again.

‘Amy’s pregnant.’

It was like stepping off a cliff.

‘Willow…’ Mike’s voice was a sharp warning, but she didn’t appear to notice.

‘Up you come, sweetheart,’ she said, picking up Ben before rattling on. ‘She had that little thing—you know, the little plastic thing from the pregnancy test. I went upstairs to change Ben and it was there…right there in a pot on the windowsill in her bathroom.’ She laughed.

‘I did that, too. You teased me about it but I couldn’t bear to throw it away. I needed to see it every day just to remind myself it was true…’ Jake wasn’t sure how he descended the remainder of the stairs. ‘The blue line was a bit fuzzy but there isn’t any doubt about it.’

‘Did you say anything to her?’

‘No, of course not. She’ll tell me when she’s ready and I’ll act as surprised as anything.’ Jake stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Willow, pink-cheeked with excitement from hurrying home with her news, blow into Ben’s neck, making him giggle. A charming scene of domesticity that he saw, but had no way of understanding. ‘The thing I can’t work out is who the father could be. She’s not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned, but I didn’t know she’d been involved with anyone recently…’ She looked up, as if sensing something. ‘Mike?’

Mike was looking right at him. He didn’t need to guess who the father of Amy’s baby was. He knew.

Willow, suddenly realising they weren’t alone, spun round. ‘Jake! I didn’t see your car. Darling, how lovely to see you. Are you staying?’

‘I…um…’ He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find his voice to say the words. This couldn’t be happening.

‘Jake’s staying,’ Mike said, helping him out. ‘But I think right now he has something he needs to do. Why don’t we go and put Ben to bed, hmm?’

Her forehead creased as she latched on to the sudden inexplicable tension, her gaze switching between Mike and Jake and then it clicked. For a moment she had trouble keeping her lower lip from hitting the floor until, with a supreme effort at self-control, she said, ‘Good plan.’

Jake pushed open the gate, paused. The garden had moved on while he’d been away. The bluebells had faded and now lilac, thick with blossom, scented the air and a blackbird was singing from a high perch in an apple tree.

A small black cat blinked sleepy yellow eyes at him from a patch of catnip. And from the rear of the cottage he could hear Amy’s voice raised in a lilting song that might have been a lullaby.

He refused to succumb to such seductive enchantment. He wasn’t enchanted. He was mad, mad as hell, and Amy was about to hear all about it. He found her wielding a spade with an easy competence that suggested long practice; her gardening skills were clearly not confined to picking flowers.

She was wearing thick cord trousers and heavy boots that contrasted with the femininity of a broad-brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. And a man’s shirt. What man?

She stopped, rubbed her sleeve across her face, leaving her cheek streaked with dirt, and he forgot about the shirt as anxiety squeezed the breath from his lungs. Should she be working like this? Digging?

‘Should you be doing that?’ he demanded harshly.

‘If I want homegrown beans on my table, then yes,’ she replied easily, no trace of surprise in her voice. ‘But if you’re volunteering, be my guest.’ She pushed the spade into the soil, stepped back and turned to look at him. He needed, wanted to see into her eyes; the hat threw shade across her face, keeping her thoughts hidden. But her voice caught at him, drawing him closer.

Jake’s voice was hard, angry. Amy had heard him open the gate, walk around the cottage, and had recognised footsteps last heard racing away from her.

She’d forced herself to carry on working, leaving him to speak first, even though she longed to leap up, fling herself into his arms and pull him inside the house so that she could show him just how pleased she was to see him, hoping he was feeling the same hot surge of excitement, desire. She felt raw, unbridled pleasure that he’d returned.

For a moment he took a step closer, as if he felt it too, but then he stopped. The sun was low at his back and his face was shadowed so that she couldn’t see his expression. Which was perhaps a good thing, if it matched his voice.

‘I thought you were still in America,’ she said, when the silence grew too long.

‘I was. Now I’m back. Should you be doing that?’ he repeated. ‘In your condition.’

Her condition? She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. He couldn’t know. There was no way on earth he could know. Yet his voice, his repeated question, suggested that somehow he did, and when she didn’t answer he turned abruptly and walked towards the rear door of the cottage, pushed it open, ducking under the low lintel as he went inside. Amy abandoned the bean trench for the second time that afternoon and, pulling off her gardening gloves, followed him.

He wasn’t in the mud room or the kitchen. ‘Jake? Where are you?’ she called, dropping her gloves, kicking off her earth-caked boots. A creak from the floor above her betrayed his whereabouts. What on earth…? ‘Jake, what are doing? What do you want?’

Upstairs, in the bathroom, Jake gripped the basin. This couldn’t be happening to him. It couldn’t be true. Fatherhood had no part in his life plan. He didn’t want this. No way. Never.

Except that it was. The evidence was apparently there, right there, before his eyes.

His hand was shaking as he reached for the piece of plastic with its telltale line of blue. He gripped it hard, wrapping it in his fist, wanting to break it, smash it, make it go away. Such a small thing. So insignificant. So easy to overlook.

He wouldn’t have known what it was but for Willow. If he’d called in to see Amy…

If!

Who did he think he was fooling? He hadn’t been able to wait to see her! All the teddies in the world couldn’t hide the truth of that. He’d have come here and made hot, sweet love with her, then they’d have shared a shower, and with the evidence right in front of him he still wouldn’t have known.

How long would she have waited to tell him? Until it was too late to do anything about it. ‘…not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned…’ was what Willow had said to Mike.

His hands bunched into fists and he banged them down on the white porcelain sink. How much had she planned? All of it? Even that dramatic last-minute entry at the christening?

She’d known he would be there, singled him out, enchanting him with her green eyes and seductive voice. And he didn’t doubt for a minute she knew, understood exactly what effect she would have on any susceptible man.

Oh, yes. It had been planned, and, libido rampant, he’d fallen for it. Right down to that last magical embrace when her kiss had trawled him in, tempting him beyond thought…

What a fool! What an idiot!

What on earth had possessed him? He was a man with ‘precaution’ stamped on his brain. Mike had as good as warned him. ‘Take care,’ he’d said. He hadn’t added, ‘She’ll bewitch you.’ Not that it would have made any difference.

Jake had thought himself invulnerable to even the most meticulously planned guerilla attack on his heart. It had been tried before and his heart was totally immune to sentiments beyond his experience, beyond his understanding. Which was why he’d so cavalierly ignored the danger signals, Mike’s warning.

So now what?

Did she believe that he would marry her because she was carrying his child? Had she picked out a millionaire daddy for her baby? Well, she’d picked the wrong man for those games.

‘Jake?’

He turned as softly, oh, so softly, her voice caressed him, teased him, stole into every corner of his mind.

Take care.

Mike was right. Even now it was taking every ounce of self-control to stop himself from reaching out for her, from taking her into his arms, telling her that it would be all right.

He knew better.

He wasn’t like Mike, who’d grown up in a warm, caring family and had learned to play happy families at his mother’s knee. He’d warned Amy, told her that he didn’t do commitment, and the sooner she understood that it would take more than a blue line on a stick of plastic to suck him into her tender trap, the better.

‘Jake?’ she repeated, the soft inflection inviting an explanation.

‘Amy?’ he responded, his voice lifting in ironic mimicry. And opened his hand so that she would know exactly what he meant. ‘Now, I’ll ask you again. Should you be digging in your condition?’

‘I’m pregnant, Jake,’ she said quietly, refusing to respond to the aggression in his voice. ‘Not an invalid.’

‘And you intend going through with it?’ he demanded.

She regarded him steadily, sorrowfully, her eyes all too visible now, all too easy to read, and he dearly wished the words unsaid. Unthought.

‘This is my baby, Jake. She might only be this big—’ and she held her finger and thumb with scarcely a space between them ‘—but she’s my little girl.’ Then she turned and walked out of the bathroom.

Jake frowned, followed her down the stairs. ‘You can tell that it’s a girl? Already?’ he demanded.

She shook her head impatiently. ‘Go away, Jake. This is nothing to do with you.’

‘Nothing…’ His breath caught in his throat. ‘Are you saying this is not my baby?’ he demanded. If she was, the sick feeling that had been sitting like a stone in his stomach since Willow erupted into the kitchen with her news should have evaporated. It hadn’t. It had shifted, changed, deepened. ‘Well? Are you?’

‘No, Jake, I’m not saying that. She’s your baby. Our baby. What I’m saying is that you needn’t…’

‘What? I needn’t what?’

‘Worry about us.’ Her hand hovered briefly at her waist, so that he would know which ‘us’ she was referring to, before she let it drop to her side. ‘I don’t need you to hold my hand. We don’t need you. If it bothers you, just go away, forget you ever came here. Forget you ever met me.’

He stared at her. Was she serious? ‘That’s what you want?’ She didn’t answer him and he suddenly realised what was going on. She wanted a baby with a daddy rich enough to ensure that it lacked for nothing. She didn’t want the trouble of a man about the house. ‘I’ll be hearing from your lawyers, is that it?’ he asked, keeping his own voice flat and expressionless.

‘Lawyers?’ She shook her head, as if he was slow-witted or something. ‘I don’t want your money, Jake. I have money. I run a successful business…’

Yeah, sure. He wasn’t that slow. ‘You can’t run a business with a baby on your hip.’

‘Watch me.’ Then she made the slightest of gestures, apparently dismissing him and his concerns. ‘Or not. As you please. You said you don’t do commitment, Jake. I heard you, and you can believe me when I promise that you’re not committed to me or my baby. Financially or emotionally.’ There was a crispness in her voice that suggested she was losing patience. ‘And you needn’t worry about what Mike and Willow will think. I’ll speak to them. They know me; they’ll understand.’

‘Will they? I’m damned if I do.’

‘No? Well, I’m sorry, Jake, I’m afraid I can’t put it any plainer.’

And she crossed to the door, opened it as if she was setting free some small frightened creature that she was pushing out into the world for its own good.

Standing on the threshold, his thoughts in a turmoil, he realised that he didn’t want to go. He just didn’t know how to stay. And if he did stay it would give Amaryllis Jones entirely the wrong idea about his determination not to get caught up in the emotional rollercoaster she had boarded.

Bad idea.

Instead he headed for the gate while he still remembered how, determined not to look back once he’d got there. If she was bluffing, well, he was calling her.

The door clicked shut before he’d gone half a dozen steps and he swung round, taken by surprise.

Dammit, she meant it! She really meant it!

Well, that was just fine. So did he. Now they both knew where they stood.

CHAPTER TWO

SECOND MONTH. The tendency to put on weight begins. Morning sickness may begin to bother you now, although it won’t necessarily be in the mornings. It’s time to visit your doctor and maybe get a scan.

‘YOUR dates suggest you shouldn’t plan anything strenuous for the second half of December.’ The doctor crossed to the sink to wash her hands.

‘You mean I’ll have to put the two weeks’ skiing in Klosters on hold?’ Amy asked, grinning stupidly. First intuition, then chemistry, and now medical science had confirmed that she was pregnant and she was grinning for Britain. Until she realised how snug her waistband had become. ‘Uh, should I be putting on weight already, Sally?’

‘I’m afraid so. You’ve had the fun; it’s downhill all the way from here.’

‘Downhill? I thought I was supposed to glow.’

‘You will, my dear. You will. It’s nature’s compensation for the morning sickness, the heartburn, the loss of visual contact with your feet—’

‘Okay, okay,’ Amy said quickly. ‘That’ll do. I get the picture.’

‘Do you?’ Dr Sally Maitland turned and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Pregnancy is the easy bit. I’d be happier if I thought this wasn’t going to be parenthood for one,’ she said. ‘That your baby’s father…’ she paused momentarily, but when no name was forthcoming carried on ‘…is planning on sticking around to see through what he started.’

That was the trouble with having a doctor who’d known you since she’d put you in your mother’s arms. She didn’t feel the need to be in the least bit tactful. As for the question…

It was a week since Jake had walked out of her cottage, called a cab on his mobile as he’d walked back to Mike and Willow’s place and high-tailed it back to London with a face like thunder. She’d had the details from Willow, who’d raced over, full of remorse at her unintentional blunder.

‘He’s had a bit of shock,’ she’d said, in an attempt to excuse his reaction to the news. ‘It’s all my fault, blurting it out like that to Mike. I am so sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Willow. He’d have had to know sooner or later.’

‘Later might have been better. When you’d had a chance to get to really know Jake. Find out what makes him tick beyond an insatiable capacity for work and a gift for making money.’ She shrugged. ‘No one else has a clue. Just that this kind of stuff is difficult for him. I believe he had a rough childhood, although he never talks about it. I get the impression that his mother abandoned him and commitment—’

‘It’s all right, Willow. Really.’

‘We’re still friends?’

‘The best. I would have told you about the baby, but I wanted to tell Jake first. You saved me an awkward moment.’

‘I doubt that,’ she said. Then, ‘Give him time to get his head round it. He’ll be back.’

‘Maybe.’ She wasn’t counting on it. Willow hadn’t been there. Hadn’t heard the way he’d asked if she was ‘going through with it.’

‘Deep down he’s a really caring man, Amy. He still helps out the woman who fostered him with her shop. I mean really helps. He could pay someone to do it, but he goes down there, makes sure she’s coping, does her accounts. I’ve even seen him stacking shelves. Okay, so he lives for his work,’ Willow admitted. ‘Seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, but he found time to give us a hand when Mike and I were working on a charity project for deprived kids. He’s never slow to put his hand in his pocket—’

‘I’m not a charity case.’

‘No, of course not. Well, give him time.’

But how much time? Amy wondered. He had something less than eight months, which seemed for ever right now, but the clock was running.

‘Amy?’ She snapped back to the present. To the doctor, who was waiting for some response from her. ‘Is the father going to be sticking around?’

‘What? Oh. I don’t know.’ Which was something of a first for her. It was her ability to read people, feel their moods, understand their uncertainties that had made Mike look at her sideways more than once. This time she seemed to have got it all wrong. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘Right. Well, in that case we’d better get down to practicalities.’ Sally picked up the phone. ‘Let’s see how soon we can get a scan…’

Forget you ever met me.

He’d tried. For three weeks he’d been trying. Absolutely determined to wipe Amy Jones from his memory, he’d thrown himself into work. Work had always been the answer to the emptiness, and there was plenty of that to distract him now that the American deal had finally gone through.

Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t working.

Amy might have told him to go away, forget about her and her baby, and she’d certainly sounded as if she’d meant it.

But it wasn’t that easy. This was his worst nightmare, the kind that brought him awake sweating and shivering in the middle of the night. Forgetting was going to take a lot of effort. Absolute concentration.

For that he needed to wipe away all sense of unfinished business. Of concern. At least the rewards of hard work provided the means to assuage the guilt that was gnawing at him, that would continue to gnaw at him while he worried about how she would cope. Well, he could deal with that.

He regarded the cheque he had written with a certain amount of satisfaction. He might suffer from emotional attachment deficit but he had no doubt that Amy could provide enough emotion for two; he’d had the most vivid experience of her ability to connect, to enfold, to touch. Just the touch of her fingertips on his face had been…

‘They’re waiting for you in the boardroom, Jake.’ His secretary’s disembodied voice on the intercom dragged him back from the heat of his memories. He should have known. Anyone who could give that much would always be a threat to his detachment. His peace of mind. And she would expect something in return. All he had was money.

‘I’ll be right there, Maggie,’ he said. And he signed the cheque. Amy could do the warm, emotional stuff and he would pay the bills. Between them, the baby wouldn’t lack for anything.

He stuffed the cheque in an envelope, addressed it and tossed it into his out tray. Now he could get on with the one thing he understood—making money—and forget all about Amy Jones.

He’d been in the meeting for less than ten minutes when the envelope lying in his out tray began to niggle at him, distracting him. He should have enclosed a note…he should have said something. That he was sorry. That he—

‘Jake?’

No. That would put a crack in his armour, a way in, and he refused to be haunted by this woman. He would end it now. ‘Carry on without me,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘I have to do something. It’ll just take a minute.’

Back in his office he picked up the envelope. Maybe he should take it down there. Maybe he should…

Dear God, what was it about Amy Jones? It was as if she’d invaded his mind, addled his wits. ‘Call a courier, Maggie. I want this delivered right away,’ he said, dropping it on his secretary’s desk. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘No, wait.’ He’d written the address of the cottage, but she’d be at her shop for the rest of the day. ‘Ring Willow Armstrong at the Melchester Chronicle and ask her for Miss Jones’s business address. Send it there.’