LITMIR.BIZ

      And in the meantime he was allowing her to carry on living in her little rented hovel.

      Now that she was pregnant Susie realised just how awful a place it was. As a young, single person, she could weather all the drawbacks, but when she thought of bringing a newborn to the place she shuddered.

      In the end she flitted between her parents’ house in Yorkshire and her London apartment. They had taken the news better than she had hoped—and, after what Sergio had said to her about misreading some of their reactions in the past, putting her own personal spin on situations that only existed in her head, she was accepting of that. She didn’t try to probe behind what they said, looking for hidden depths and meanings that weren’t there. She didn’t try to open up any cans of worms.

      Besides, she didn’t seem to have the luxury of time on her hands to question and analyse and jump to conclusions.

      She was busy looking for somewhere else to live and finding nothing. Busy trying to work out how her life was going to pan out with Sergio as a permanent part of it, but without the solid bond of marriage to glue them together. Trying to come to terms with the choices she had made because they were good choices.

      He spoke to her every day, and usually several times. He insisted on visiting her at her place and made absolutely no move to try and coerce her into moving in with him. He respected her decision to take herself off to Yorkshire at a moment’s notice. If he resented her decision not to tell her parents that he had proposed, then he hid it well. He was a man who wasn’t emotionally involved—just doing the right thing because he had no choice.

      And he kept his distance.

      For the past seven weeks—ever since she had broken the news to him—he had not made any effort to touch her…except occasionally, in passing, the brush of his hand on her arm, his finger wiping something from the side of her mouth…little passing touches that sent her blood pressure into orbit and made her realise, with something bordering on utter misery, that she was the only one affected.

      She didn’t even know what he did and with whom when she wasn’t around—when she was in Yorkshire, or back in her dingy flat trying to get her head round doing the illustrations for a job for which she had now been commissioned.

      And of course she couldn’t ask, could she? She had taken their relationship to the level of business and he had fallen in. He was doing just what she had told him was acceptable—contributing financially and, frankly, being morally supportive—taking her out for the occasional meal, and once actually cooking something for her at her flat when she hadn’t felt like eating out. It had been a charade of domesticity that had cut her to the quick.

      She had laid down her boundaries and he was simply respecting them.

      So asking him if he was seeing anyone was totally out of the question.

      But she wondered. He no longer wanted her. That physical urgency had disappeared. She thought that her changing body probably didn’t help.

      She was still wondering now, as she stepped off the train onto a packed platform bustling with tourists and people going who knew where?

      Spring had morphed into a lovely summer. Having had no morning sickness to speak off, she was now finding the hotter weather more difficult to deal with. She felt tired most of the time. Her breasts had shot up by two whole sizes and she hadn’t been exactly flat-chested to start with.

      She had turned into a beach ball.

      Suddenly demoralised, she dragged her pull-along case through the crowds, bumping into people and vaguely apologising while her thoughts whirled between Sergio and what he was doing, and with whom, and how she would react when she found out.

      The glare of the sun was strong outside and she shaded her eyes for a few seconds, getting her bearings, pleased that she had decided to opt for a taxi rather than the Underground. She felt exhausted. Her parents, who now seemed to be around all the time, where before they had always been jetting off to some glamour spot or another, had fussed around her, trying their best to feed her up.

      ‘First grandchild for the Thornton line!’ Susie had heard her mother trill merrily down the line when she had been talking to her sister, Kate.

      She was still away in her own little world, dragging her feet to the taxi rank, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and spun round, to find herself looking straight into Sergio’s dark sunglasses.

      All at once her heart began to beat wildly and her body did all those things she was always telling it not to do whenever she was with him. Her pulses raced, her mouth went dry, her nervous system threatened to go into meltdown.

      ‘What are you doing here?’

      ‘I’ve come to collect you.’ He nodded to where Stanley was parked illegally by the kerb and simultaneously removed her bag from her clutches. ‘At least you’ve listened to me and decided against battling on the Underground, but I still think you should let Stanley drive you up when you want to visit your parents.’

      She smelled of the sun and the countryside. He occasionally suspected that it was a smell he had become accustomed to because it seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

      ‘I might be pregnant but I can still travel very well by myself. Besides, it’s more convenient to get there on the train.’

      When she had first discovered that she was pregnant and contemplated how he might react to the news she had foreseen a lot of things—but she hadn’t foreseen that he would rein in his natural need to control everything, to be the winner in the game…that he would bend to what she wanted.

      He was considerate and he was nice. And the nicer he was, the more churlish she felt, and she had to stifle the inappropriate thought that she didn’t want nice, she wanted passionate.

      He was being nice now, and all she wanted was to fling herself at him and feel those sexy, sensuous lips on her, feel his hands on her body. She missed that so much.

      She stole a sidelong look at his clean, strong, chiselled profile and the sweep of raven-black hair combed away from his face. The sunglasses were still on and she couldn’t read the expression on his face.

      She brushed past him, settling herself into the back seat of the car, and began chatting to Stanley, with whom she had struck up a pleasant friendship over the time she had known him. His two loves in life were cars and baking, and he began telling her about a new recipe he had tried for ciabatta bread.

      ‘Pipe down, Stanley,’ Sergio ordered. ‘How many times…?’

      ‘There’s some folk who are actually interested in what I have to say…sir!’

      Sergio sighed heavily and his eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t prolong the conversation, instead smartly shutting the glass partition so that they were enclosed in a private cocoon in the back of the car.

      ‘That was very rude.’ Susie sat back and closed her eyes to block him out, but she was keenly aware of him with every pore in her body.

      ‘Stanley would be shocked if I was ever anything but. As a matter of fact there’s a reason why I showed up here to collect you, Susie.’

      She turned to look at him, suddenly nervous. ‘What is it?’

      Was he about to tell her that she had been replaced? That he was seeing someone else but not to worry, because he would still make sure she was financially taken care of…still make sure that he kept showing up to offer her support…because she was, after all, carrying his child.

      A fact

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