LITMIR.BIZ

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bubble of laughter escaped from Megan’s throat. ‘So what’s really up?’

      Her mother bit her lip and looked hurt. ‘I’m not joking, Megan.’

      Megan’s jaw sagged. Her imagination, even in overdrive, had not produced this possible explanation.

      ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Laura rushed on, avoiding eye contact with her open-mouthed daughter. ‘I can’t be; I’m too old. That’s what I said to the doctor when he told me,’ she admitted. ‘But it seems I can be and I am…actually I’m twelve weeks.’

      ‘What does…does…Jean Paul say?’ Does he know?’

      ‘Of course he knows—it’s not like I wouldn’t tell him, is it?’ her mother rebuked gently and wondered at her daughter’s guilt-stricken expression. ‘Actually Jean Paul is being marvellous about it, worried about my health, but everything’s fine, I’m very fit. Marilyn couldn’t have children, you see, and this will be his first so he’s very excited…’

      Megan, her voice shaky, interrupted the flow. It still didn’t seem possible. ‘You’re really pregnant?’

      Her mother nodded. ‘Yes, I’m having a baby.’

      Megan looked at her. ‘Me too, Mum,’ she said with a high laugh that trembled on the brink of hysteria.

      Laura’s eyes widened. She scanned her daughter’s face and Megan nodded. ‘It’s true, I am.’

      ‘Oh, my God!’

      Suddenly mother and daughter were in one another’s arms, tears streaming down their cheeks.

      Later when they were both cried out Laura turned to her daughter. ‘Now let’s get practical. I’m assuming that Luc is the father.’

      ‘Why would you assume that?’

      ‘Really, Megan! He couldn’t take his eyes off you…I’m assuming you had a falling out…?’

      Megan nodded.

      ‘You are going to tell him?’

      ‘I don’t know where he is…he’s not in London.’

      ‘Malcolm will know. I’ll ask him.’

      ‘No,’ Megan replied. ‘I’ll ask.’

      CHAPTER TEN

      UNCLE MALCOLM had been reluctant to tell Megan where Luc was so she had been forced to tell him why she needed to see him.

      ‘So you see I have to tell him, but,’ she hastened to assure him, ‘I’m not going to ask anything of him. It’s my decision to have the baby…’

      ‘Well, obviously you will have the baby.’

      Megan inclined her head slightly in agreement. How obvious it had been had been something that still surprised her. Maybe there was a point with most women, even those like herself who had never even considered motherhood, when your body told you it was the right time.

      Or maybe wanting to bear the child of the man you love has something to do with it…?

      Megan gritted her teeth and ignored the sly voice in her head. ‘And obviously he or she will be my responsibility and mine alone…’

      ‘I expect Luc will want a quiet ceremony…’

      Megan her cheeks still tinged with colour, looked at her uncle with exasperation. This she could do without! She couldn’t afford to start thinking happy families even for one second…it was her duty to stay sane.

      ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I want nothing from Luc.’

      ‘I heard you, but that’s plain silly. A child needs two parents.’

      And a pregnant woman needs the loving father of her baby at her side. But that just isn’t going to happen, Megan, so live with it.

      ‘In a perfect world,’ she agreed. ‘However, lots of women bring up children on their own.’ And she was determined to make sure her child lacked for nothing. Even if Luc didn’t want to take an active part in his child’s life—a definite possibility—she would make sure that he or she felt loved and wanted.

      ‘Lots of women don’t have a choice,’ her uncle rebutted.

      ‘This argument sort of presupposes that Luc is going to ask me to marry him. Not very likely…we hardly know one another.’ Which made the fact she had fallen in love with a man who was virtually a stranger all the more ludicrous.

      ‘There’s plenty of time to get to know someone after you’re married.’

      ‘You have a unique take on marriage, Uncle Malcolm.’

      ‘And I think you’ll find that Luc is actually quite traditional in a lot of ways.’

      And he hates clingy women.

      What man wasn’t going to be horrified to discover that a woman he had had casual sex with once was carrying his child?

      ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter what Luc wants,’ Megan, calm on the outside but a mass of conflicting emotions inside, told her uncle. ‘Because I don’t want to get married.’ Not to a man who didn’t love her, at any rate.

      ‘You’ll change your mind,’ Malcolm predicted confidently before reflecting, ‘I admit I didn’t think so at the time, considering he had writer’s block for the next six months, which threw the schedule all to hell, but it’s turned out lucky under the circumstances that Grace wanted the divorce last year.’ He appeared not to notice the spasm of shock that crossed his niece’s face.

      ‘Luc is married…? But—’ She stopped abruptly, biting her lip so hard she broke the skin. But what, Megan? Why shouldn’t Luc be married? Most men his age are or have been.

      ‘Was,’ Malcolm inserted with a worried look at her pale face. ‘He was married. They married when he was incredibly young, but they’d been apart for years. They’d just never bothered getting a divorce.’

      Megan, who had a thousand questions, had pressed him for details, but Malcolm had infuriatingly clammed up, and advised her to ask Luc himself. And she was really going to do that! Of course you turned up on man’s doorstep and said, Sorry, but I’m having your baby, and then asked him about the woman he actually loved.

      Some things you didn’t need to ask. She was no expert on marriage or divorce but Megan did know that people didn’t forget to get a divorce. It wasn’t the sort of thing that slipped your mind! It didn’t take a genius to work out that couples who didn’t legalise a split didn’t do so because they hadn’t given up yet. Luc and his wife had been leaving the door open for a reconciliation, and from what Malcolm had let slip it had been Luc’s wife Grace who had finally closed that door.

      Luc hadn’t been able to work…Grace…Was this woman, whom Luc obviously still loved, as elegant and graceful as her name? Having discovered a previously untapped streak of masochism in her nature, Megan tortured herself on the trip to Wales imagining what the other woman looked like.

      It was a long and tiring trip. She couldn’t ring to let him know she was coming because Malcolm said he didn’t have a phone at the cottage and always turned his mobile off when he was there. The cottage turned out to be not quite as isolated as her uncle had suggested. It hadn’t been easy to find, though, and the last couple of miles proved the most challenging to her navigational skills.

      After travelling a mile down a single track lane that was surrounded by high hedges that made it impossible to see anything, being suddenly confronted with an incredible view of the stormy sea took Megan’s breath away. She stopped the car and wound down the window to take it all in. The salty tang filled her lungs as she gazed at the scene: white-crested waves crashing onto the pebbly foreshore.

      With a

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