LITMIR.BIZ

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in, if she couldn’t learn to live a little less rigidly, he’d find himself stifled and trapped. And if she couldn’t start compromising now, then he couldn’t see how this was ever going to work.

      ‘Perhaps we could start with the next few weeks,’ he said eventually, thinking that even he could manage with planning that far out, if he had to. ‘And anything that needs a specific date. Appointments, travel plans, that sort of thing.’

      Rachel nodded and he could tell from the small smile on her face she already knew exactly how she expected the next few weeks to pan out. She probably had appointments lined up, time blocked out, and knew exactly where he should be and at what time. But she said none of this and instead waited for him to make a suggestion. At least she seemed willing to try as hard as he was to make this work.

      ‘Do you have any doctor’s appointments scheduled? I’m not really sure how this works but I’d like to be there if that’s what you want.’

      ‘I’ve an appointment with my GP in a few days. Probably won’t be much to tell at that stage, from what I’ve read. But generally they want to schedule the first scan at some point around twelve weeks.’

      ‘Twelve weeks?’ He raised a brow in question.

      ‘The twelfth week of the pregnancy. Not twelve weeks from now. Or, in fact, twelve weeks from when we...’ He smiled a little at her embarrassment. ‘The counting is weird,’ she continued, a light blush colouring her cheeks. ‘Right now I think I’m about nine weeks pregnant, even though it’s not that long since we... They count from the first day of your last...’

      ‘Are you going to finish a sentence today?’ He laughed at the sudden appearance of this bashfulness. ‘Or is there always going to be so much guesswork?’

      ‘I’m sorry. It seems stupid to be embarrassed talking about any of this when you’re the one, well, we’re the ones... Sorry.’

      She laughed, too, and Leo relaxed into his chair as the tension in the air palpably lightened. What was it about her laugh that reached his spine and his heart?

      ‘I’m doing it again, aren’t I?’ He nodded. ‘They count from the first day of your last period, which means today is week nine of the pregnancy even though it’s not been that long since we...met. Which means they’ll want to schedule the scan for around three weeks’ time.’

      ‘I’d like to be there.’

      ‘Me, too.’ They both smiled, and he breathed a sigh of relief, glad that they’d found this common ground at last. Maybe they could do this. Maybe they could find a compromise to make them both happy. And if they did that, what next? What more could there be between them when they weren’t both terrified of what the other craved?

      Rachel drew a column on the piece of paper and wrote the heading Appointments at the top; then clicked through the screen of her phone with one hand and wrote the date in the column with the other. She glanced up at him. ‘Do you want to make a note of the date?’

      Or maybe they couldn’t. ‘What date? You haven’t got an appointment yet.’

      ‘No, but I’m sure they’ll make it that week. You could...’

      ‘Rachel, this is one of those times when you’re going to have to let me make a decision for myself. I’m perfectly capable of keeping in my head the fact that I will have to make some time approximately three weeks from now to attend the scan. It’s not something I’m likely to forget. Just because I’m not doing it your way doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong.’

      She concentrated hard on the page; going over and over one word with her pen until he feared the paper would dissolve. But she didn’t argue with him. The best he could hope for, for now, he supposed.

      ‘Okay, so that’s the appointments sorted for now. What next?’

      ‘I want to have the baby in London.’

      ‘Makes sense, considering you live there.’

      ‘So you’ll have to make arrangements to be up there, if you want to be around when it happens.’ He nodded, able to see the logic in that. He waited, wondering whether she’d want him to make some more definite plans, but she seemed happy—or at least reluctantly willing—to leave it at that for now. Though he did notice the way her pen ripped through the paper slightly as she wrote the next word.

      ‘Fine.’

      ‘Seems to me like we can’t really decide anything to do with dates until you’ve seen a doctor, though,’ Leo said. ‘So how about we leave that for now and move on to another part of the plan? What else is on your list that needs deciding now?’

      When she didn’t reply, he looked up from where his eyes had been following her pen scoring into the paper, to find her sitting with her mouth open and a hesitant look on her face. ‘What?’

      ‘You’re right. We don’t need to decide everything now.’ She started to close the notebook, but Leo reached out and laid a hand across the page, trying not to notice the way that his skin tingled when it accidentally brushed against hers.

      ‘Something’s worrying you. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’ He tried to catch her eye, but she seemed determined not to meet his gaze. An alarm bell, deep in his belly, started ringing. ‘What’s the problem?’

      ‘It’s not a problem. It’s just—ʼ she took a deep breath and spat the words out ‘—I had all this worked out with scenarios, and different options and choices, and now that I’m sitting here at your kitchen table it feels weird.’

      ‘What? Now that I’m a real person and not just an item in your schedule? Now that I get a say?’

      She nodded. ‘I am sorry. For turning up with it all finished and ready to present to you. I didn’t mean to cut you out, to tell you this is the way it has to be. I just had to see for myself how I was going to make this work. And the only way to do that was to work it all out and write it down. I can see how it must have looked, as if I was dictating the whole of the rest of your life to you. But I didn’t mean it that way.’

      Her honesty eased that little knot of tension from his stomach, and he couldn’t tell her how grateful he was for this acknowledgement that maybe she didn’t have it all worked out after all. Funnily, her apology for creating the schedule in the first place made him want to help her with a replacement more than ever; he wanted to do whatever it took to make this work for them, even if it felt like seeing Exit signs being ripped down in front of him. Because what was an escape to him now? Sure, he could run. He could get far away from Rachel, throw money at the situation to keep the lawyers happy and have nothing to do with this woman and her child ever again. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

      And just like that his relaxed feeling was gone. He sat a little straighter in his chair, the tension in his neck and shoulders not allowing him to lounge. There was no escape now. Nothing for it but to plough on, into whatever it was his life held for him. He couldn’t escape the facts: he was going to be a father. This woman, her plans and her notebooks, would be in his life for ever.

      But not every part of his life. Rachel’s presence had become an accepted fact between that Italian lunch and her turning up here. But just because he had her in his life, didn’t mean he couldn’t keep parts of it for himself. Keep part of himself safe. So she would be the mother of his child. He couldn’t change that. But that was all she would be. He would stop these daydreams and night-time fantasies about that night. Forget the feel and taste of her lips and skin. He wouldn’t fall into a relationship with her just because she was carrying his child.

      ‘Let’s just get this over with,’ he said, forcing out the words. ‘We have to talk about it some time, and we’re both here now. What else did you have written down before?’

      ‘Well...there was one part of the plan I had trouble with,’ she admitted. ‘Without knowing your financial position it was difficult to be accurate, so I came up with a number of different scenarios.’

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