Secret Baby, Surprise Parents

He told himself that he should wait.

Go down to the basement flat, take a shower. But to do that, he’d need the key and the key cupboard was in the kitchen.

For the first time for as long as he could remember, he was frozen in indecision, unable to move. Staring down at the hall table where a pile of post—cards, some addressed to Grace, some to him—waited to be opened. Read.

He frowned. Cards?

He opened one, saw the lilies. In sympathy…

He dropped it as if burned, stepped back, dragged his hands over his face, through his hair as he looked down the hall. Then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned and walked slowly towards the kitchen.

He pushed the door very gently. It still squeaked. How many times had he heard Michael promise Phoebe that he’d do something about it?

He’d offered to do it himself, but Phoebe had just smiled. She liked the warning squeak, she’d told him. Liked to have something to complain about once in a while. It wasn’t good for a man to believe he was perfect.

He could have told her that Michael didn’t believe that. On the contrary. But that had been a secret between the two of them and, somehow, he’d managed to smile back.

He paused, holding his breath, but there was no sound and he stepped into the room that had always been the hub of the house. Warm, roomy, with a big table for everyone to gather around. An old armchair by the Aga that the fourteen-year-old Grace had taken to like a security blanket, homing in on it when she’d arrived clutching a plastic bag that contained everything she possessed under one arm, a small scruffy terrier under the other.

The pair of them had practically lived in it. And it was the first place she’d taken the puppy he’d given her when old Harry had died a few months later and he’d been afraid her heart was going to break.

The puppy, too, had finally died of old age, but now she had a new love. Posie. The baby she had borne with the purest heart as surrogate for the sister who had given her a home and who was now lying, boneless in sleep, against her shoulder.

Michael, hoping that if Josh saw the baby he would finally understand, forgive him even, had e-mailed him endless photographs of Posie, giving him a running commentary on her progress since the day she’d been born, refusing to be deterred by Josh’s lack of response.

There had been no photographs of Grace until the christening and then only in a group consisting of Grace, as godmother, holding Posie, flanked by Michael and Phoebe. A happy picture in which everyone had been smiling and sent, he suspected, with just a touch of defiance. A ‘see what you’re missing’ message.

He hadn’t cared about that. He’d only cared about Grace and he’d cropped the picture so that it was only of Grace and Posie. He’d had it enlarged and printed so that he could carry it with him.

Her face had been outwardly serene, but a photograph was just a two-dimensional image. It was without warmth, scent. You could touch it, but it gave nothing back. But then it had been a very long time since Grace had given anything back to him. Keeping her distance, her eyes always guarded on his visits home.

At least he’d had time to get over his shock that, some time in the last year, she’d cut her beautiful long hair into a short elfin style. He’d come to terms with the fact that her boyish figure had finally filled out in lush womanly curves.

But this scene was not a photograph.

This was an intimate view of motherhood as only a husband, a father would see it and he stood perfectly still, scarcely daring to breathe, wanting to hold the moment, freeze this timeless image in his memory. Then, almost in slow motion, he saw the empty feeding bottle that had dropped into her lap begin a slow slide to the floor.

He moved swiftly to catch it before it hit the tiles and woke her, but when he looked up he realised that his attempt to keep her from being disturbed had failed.

Or maybe not. Her eyes were open and she was looking at him, but she wasn’t truly awake. She wasn’t seeing him. He froze, holding his breath, willing her to close them again and drift back off to sleep.

She stirred. ‘Michael?’ she said.

Not quite seeing him, not yet remembering. Still he hoped…

She blinked, focused, frowned.

He saw the exact moment when it all came flooding back, and instinctively reached out to her as he had a year ago. As if he could somehow stop time, go back, save her from a world of pain. ‘Grace…’

‘Oh, Josh…’

In that unguarded moment, in those two little words, it was all there. All the loss, all the heartache and, sinking to his knees, this time he did not step back, but followed through, gathering her into his arms, holding her close.

For ten years he’d lived with a memory of her in his arms, the heavy silk of her hair trailing across his skin, her sweet mouth a torment of innocence and knowing eagerness as she’d taken him to a place that until then he hadn’t known he had wanted to go.

He’d lived with the memory of tearing himself away from her, fully aware that he’d done the unforgivable, then compounded his sin by leaving her asleep in his bed to wake alone.

He’d told himself that he’d had no choice.

Grace had needed security, a settled home, a man who would put her first while, for as long as he could remember, he’d had his eyes set on far horizons, on travelling light and fast. He’d needed total freedom to take risks as he built an empire of his own.

But nothing he had done, nothing he had achieved, not even a hastily conceived and swiftly regretted marriage, had ever dulled the memory of that one night they’d spent together and still, in his dreams, his younger self reached out for her.

It had been unbearably worse during the last twelve months. Sleep had been elusive and when he did manage an hour he woke with an almost desperate yearning for something precious, something that was lost for ever.

This. This woman clinging to him, this child…

He brushed his lips against her temple and then, his head full of the warm, milky scent of baby, he kissed Posie and for one perfect moment all the pain, all the agony of the last twenty-four hours fell away.

Grace floated towards consciousness in slow, confused stages. She had no idea where she was, or why there was a weight against her shoulder, pinning her down. Why Michael was there, watching her. Knowing on some untapped level of consciousness that it couldn’t be him.

Then, as she slowly, unwillingly surfaced, he said her name. Just that.

‘Grace…’

Exactly as he had once, years and years ago, before gathering her up in his arms. And she knew that it wasn’t Michael, it was Josh. Josh who had his arms around her, was holding her as if he’d never let her go. A rerun of every dream she’d had since he’d walked out of her life, gone away ten years ago without a word, leaving a vast, gaping hole in her world. And she clung to him, needing the comfort of his physical closeness. Just needing him.

She felt the touch of his lips against her hair as he kissed her. The warmth of his mouth, his breath against her temple. And then she was looking up at him and he was kissing her as he had done every night of her life in dreams that gave her no peace.

There was the same shocked surprise that had them drawing back to stare at one another ten years ago, as if suddenly everything made sense, before they had come together with a sudden desperate urgency, his mouth branding her as his own, the heat of their passion fusing them forever as one. A heat that had been followed by ten years of ice….

Now, as then, it was the only thing in the world that she wanted.

It was so long since he’d held her.

Not since he’d left her sleeping. Gone away without a word. No, ‘wait for me’. Nothing to give her hope that he’d return for her. Not even a simple goodbye.

He had come back, of course, full of what he’d seen, done, his plans. Always cutting his visits short, impatient to be somewhere else, with someone else.

But she’d never let her guard down again, had never let him see how much he’d hurt her, never let him get that close again. She’d avoided the hugs and kisses so freely bestowed on the prodigal on his increasingly rare visits home, keeping away until all the excitement was over. Making sure she had a date for the celebratory family dinner that had always been a feature of his homecoming—because there had always been some new achievement to celebrate. His own company. His first international contract. His marriage…

Yet now, weakly, she clung to him, drinking in the tender touch of his lips, the never-to-be-forgotten scent of his skin.

Needing him as he’d never needed her. Knowing that even now, in his grief, he would be self-contained, in control, his head somewhere else.

He was holding her now, not because he needed comfort, but because he knew that she did. Just as she had all those years ago.

He’d hold her, kiss her, lie with her even if that was what she wanted. It was how men gave closeness, comfort to women.

That was all it had ever been, even then. When, after years of keeping her feelings to herself, doing a pretty good job of being the teasing friend who criticised his choice in clothes, girls, music, she’d finally broken down the night before he’d gone away—not to university this time, or on some backpacking gap year adventure with his friends—but to the other side of the world to start a new life.

Distraught, unable to express her loss in mere words, she’d thrown herself at him and maybe, facing the risk of the unknown, he’d been feeling a little uncertain, too.

She didn’t blame him for taking what she’d so freely offered, so freely given. It was what she had wanted, after all. Had always wanted. Her mistake had been in believing that once he understood that, he’d stay.

He couldn’t do it then and he wouldn’t now.

He’d comfort her. He’d deal with the legal stuff and then, once everything had been settled, made tidy, the tears dried away, he’d fly off to Sydney or Hong Kong, China or South America. Wherever the life he’d made for himself out there in the big wide world took him. He’d go without a backward glance.

Leave her without a backward glance.

At eighteen she’d been so sure she could change him, that once she’d shown him how much she loved him he would never leave her.

At twenty-eight she knew better and, gathering herself, she pulled back, straightened legs that, curled up beneath her, had gone to sleep so that Josh was forced to move, sit back on his heels.

But, try as she might, she couldn’t look away.

It was as if she were seeing him for the first time in years. Maybe she was. Or maybe she was looking at him for the first time in years instead of just glancing at him as if he was someone to be remembered only when he passed through on his way to somewhere else, forgotten again the minute he was out of sight.

She’d perfected that glance over the years.

Now she was really looking at him.

He seemed to have grown, she thought. Not physically. He’d always been a larger-than-life figure. Clever, with a touch of recklessness that lent an edge to everything he did, he’d not only dominated the school sports field but stood head and shoulders above the crowd academically, too.

He’d had those broad shoulders even then, but he’d grown harder over the years and these days he carried himself with the confidence of a man who’d taken on the world and won. And the close-clipped beard that darkened his cheeks—new since his last brief, terrible visit—added an edge of strangeness to a face that had once been as familiar to her as her own.

But this Josh Kingsley was a stranger.

She’d known him—or thought she had—and for one shining moment he had been entirely hers. But dawn had come and she’d woken alone, her illusions shattered beyond repair.

Older, wiser, she understood why he’d gone. That it had been the only thing he could do because if he’d stayed ten years ago, he would, sooner or later, have blamed her for his lost dreams. It was so easy for love to turn to hate. And nothing had changed.

He was home now, but once everything was settled, tidied away, he’d go away again because Maybridge was—always had been—too small for Josh Kingsley.

CHAPTER TWO

‘GRACE,’ he said, repeating her name. Calling her back from her thoughts, her memories. That was all. Just her name. Well, what else could he say? That he was sorry about his last visit? Sorry he’d got it all so wrong?

It was far too late for that and, without warning, she found herself wanting to slap him, yell at him for being such a fool. For staying away when coming home would have made his brother so happy. When it would have meant something.

‘Where were you?’ she demanded.

Josh shook his head. ‘In the mountains. Everest. I was so close that I took a few days to go to a place with no work, no phone…’

He looked so desolate that she wanted to reach out and gather him close. Comfort him. Instead, she turned to the baby at her shoulder, kissed her precious head.

How two brothers could be so different—one gentle, caring, the other so completely cut off from emotional involvement—was a total mystery to her and falling in love with him had been the biggest mistake of her life. But, too young to know better, how could she have done anything else?

He had been her white knight.

Fourteen years old, in a strange town, faced with yet another school—when school had only ever been a place of torment—it could have been, would have been a nightmare if Josh hadn’t ridden to her rescue that first terrifying day.

He’d seen her fear and, by the simple action of tossing her a spare crash helmet and taking her into school on the back of his motorbike, he’d turned her life around. He’d made everything all right by giving her instant street cred, an immediate ‘in’ with the cool girls in her class, who’d all wanted to know Josh Kingsley. And with the cool guys, who’d wanted to be him. At this school there had been no shortage of girls who’d wanted to be her friend.

Not that she’d been stupid enough to believe that she was the attraction.

She’d known it was Josh they all wanted to be near, but that had never bothered her. Why would it when she’d understood exactly how they felt? Not that she had worn her heart on her sleeve. A ride was one thing, but a sixth-form god like Josh Kingsley was never going to stoop to taking a fourth-year girl to a school dance.

She’s almost felt sorry for the girls he did date. Each one had thought that her dreams had come true, but she’d known better. He’d shared his dreams with her and she’d always known that he couldn’t wait to escape the small-town confines of Maybridge. Discover the life waiting for him beyond the horizon.

Not that it had stopped her from having the same foolish fantasies. Or, ultimately, making the same mistake.

Maybe he read all that in her face—she was too tired to keep her feelings under wraps—because he stood up, took a step back, placed the baby feeder he was holding on the table beside her.

‘It was about to fall,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want it to wake you. Elspeth warned me not to disturb you when she let me in.’

Too late for that. Years too late.

‘Has she gone?’

He nodded. ‘She said to tell you that she’ll call in the morning.’

‘She’s been wonderful. She’s stayed here, manned the phones, organised food for after the funeral. But she’s grieving, too. She needs to rest.’ Not that Josh looked particularly great. He might have had the luxury of a first-class sleeping berth to take the edge off the long flight to London, but there was a greyness about his skin and his eyes were like stones. ‘How are you?’

‘I’ll think about that later.’

‘When you’re back in Sydney?’ she asked, reminding herself that this, like all his visits, was only a break from his real life.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘Not until everything is settled.’

‘Everything?’

‘I’m Michael’s executor. I have to arrange for probate, settle his estate.’

‘A week should do it,’ she retaliated, and immediately regretted it. He had to be hurting, whether he was showing it or not. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t! Don’t apologise to me.’ He looked up, took another deep breath. ‘You and Phoebe were so close. She was like a mother to you.’

‘A lot better than the real thing.’

‘Yes.’ He looked at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to say something she’d find hard to forgive. In the end he just said, ‘Have you managed to contact your mother? Let her know what happened?’

She shook her head.

Her mother turned up occasionally, stayed for a week or two before drifting off again, a constant wanderer. Phoebe had bought her a mobile phone, but she had refused to take it and there was never anything as substantial as an address.

‘There was a card from somewhere in India a couple of months ago. Whether she’s still there…’ She shook her head. ‘Elspeth rang the consulate and she left messages with everyone who might be in contact with her, but she’s even harder to get hold of than you.’

‘I’m sorry, Grace. I flew back to Sydney from Nepal so I missed any messages you left at the office.’

‘Nepal?’ Then she remembered. ‘Everest. What on earth were you doing there?’

‘Making a pilgrimage.’

And if she felt lost, he looked it.

‘I was going to call Michael, tell him I was looking at the sun setting on the mountain, but my hands were so cold that I dropped the phone.’ He pushed his hands deep into his pockets as if, even now, he needed to warm them. ‘We once planned to take that trip together.’

‘Did you? I never knew that.’

He shrugged. ‘It was when our parents first split. Before he met Phoebe.’

She frowned. ‘She wouldn’t have stopped him going.’

‘Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to leave her, even for a month. She was everything he ever wanted.’

While he’d had nothing, Grace thought. At least her mother did, occasionally, put in an appearance. It was disruptive, unsettling, but it was better than the nothingness that Josh had been left with when his parents had chosen to follow their own desires.

‘Michael would have been happy to know that you finally made your dream trip,’ she told him.

‘Yes, he would. He wanted everyone to be happy. While I suspect all I wanted to do was make him feel bad…’

‘No…’ Her hand was on his arm before she could even think about it, but he stared at the floor as if unable to meet her gaze. ‘Why would he feel bad? You were there. You were thinking of him.’ Then, ‘Did it match the vision?’

‘The mountains were beyond anything I could describe, Grace. They made everything else seem so small, so unimportant. I wanted to tell him that. Tell him…’

‘He knows, Josh,’ she said, swallowing down the ache in her throat. ‘He knows.’

‘You think?’ Josh forced himself to look up, face her. ‘I should have been here. I can’t bear the thought of you having to go through all this on your own….’

‘I wasn’t on my own. Everyone helped. Toby was wonderful.’

Toby.

Josh felt his guts twist at the name.

Toby Makepeace. Her ideal man. Reliable. Solid. Always here.

‘Michael’s partners took care of all the arrangements for the funeral. And once your father arrived and took charge—’

‘He’s here?’

‘He flew back straight after the funeral. There was some big debate at the European Parliament that he couldn’t miss.’

About to make some comment about his father’s priorities, he thought better of it. Who was he to criticise?

‘And my mother? Has she raced back to the toy boy in Japan?’

‘She’s staying with friends in London.’

‘Waiting for the will to be read,’ he said heavily.

‘Josh!’ Then, ‘She said she’d come back when you got here. I sent her a text.’

‘I refer to the answer I gave earlier.’ Then he shook his head. His issues with his family were solely his concern. ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.’ He pushed his parents from his mind and said, ‘Thank you for sticking with it, Grace. Not just leaving a message with the Sydney office.’

‘I wanted to tell you myself, although if I’d realised how long it would take…’

‘It must have felt like a year.’

‘A lifetime.’ Then, quickly, ‘Your staff were terrific, by the way. Will you thank them for me? If I’d thought about it, I’d have anticipated resistance to handing out contact numbers to someone they don’t know.’

‘Of course they know you,’ he said. ‘Do you think I don’t talk about you all?’ Then, almost as if he were embarrassed by this brief outburst, ‘Besides, they have an any time, anywhere list.’

‘And I’m on that?’

‘We both know that the only time you’d ever call me would be with news I had to hear.’

Once Grace would have laughed at that.

If only he knew how many times she’d picked up the phone, her hand on the fast dial number, not to speak to him, but simply to hear his voice. How she’d longed to go back to the way it had once been, when they had been friends…teased one another…told one another everything.

Almost everything.

‘Grace—’

‘I’m going to miss Michael so much,’ she said quickly. Taking a step back from the memory of a night that had changed everything. When she’d thrown all that away. ‘There wasn’t a kinder, sweeter—’

‘Don’t.’ He closed his eyes for a moment, then, gathering himself, he opened them and looked straight at her. ‘Don’t put him on a pedestal, Grace. Michael wasn’t perfect. He had his faults like the rest of us.’

Grace was too angry to answer him. Even now he wouldn’t let go of whatever had been driving him…

Instead, she held Posie close as she got to her feet, supporting her head with her hand. Then, when she didn’t stir, she laid her in the crib beside her chair.

For a moment her tiny arms and legs waved as if searching for her warmth and her face creased up, as if she was about to cry. Grace laid her hand on her tummy until, reassured by the contact, the baby finally relaxed.

Once she was settled, Grace crossed to the kettle, turned it on, not because she wanted something to drink, but because anything was better than doing nothing.

‘Your flat is ready for you,’ she said, glancing at him. ‘The bed’s made up and you’ll find the basics in your fridge. It’s too late to do anything today and I’m sure you need to catch up on your sleep.’

‘I’ll hang on for a while. The sooner I slot back into this time zone, the sooner I’ll beat the jet lag.’

‘Is that right? As someone whose only trip overseas was the Isle of Man, I’ll have to take your word for it.’

‘The Isle of Man isn’t overseas, Grace.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I wouldn’t advise walking there.’

That earned her one of those smiles that never failed to light up her insides and, feeling instantly guilty, she looked away.

‘There’s a casserole in the oven and I’m just about to eat. I’m not sure what meal time you’re on but, if you’re serious about keeping local hours, you’d be wise to join me.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Oddly enough,’ she said, ‘neither am I, but unlike you I can’t indulge in the luxury of missing meals.’

She stopped herself. His body clock must be all over the place and while snapping at him might make her feel better, would certainly help distract her from an almost irresistible urge to throw caution to the winds, fling herself at him and beg him to make it better, it wasn’t fair on him.

‘Look, why don’t you go and take a shower? Maybe have a shave?’ she suggested. ‘See how you feel then?’

He ran a hand over his chin. ‘You don’t like the beard?’

‘Beard?’ Under the pretext of assessing the short dark beard that covered his firm chin, cheeks hollowed with exhaustion, she indulged herself in a long look. Finally shaking her head as if in disbelief, she said, ‘Are you telling me that the stubble is deliberate?’