LITMIR.BIZ

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you couldn’t be prepared for.

      ‘She’s very ill—ʼ

      She sniffed, visibly fighting for control, and Ben smothered a wave of protective concern that made him want to take her in his arms again. He was conscious that in her emotionally vulnerable state even small gestures could be misinterpreted, taken for something they were not.

      He might be a bastard but he was at least an honest one. He’d never raised a woman’s expectations in his life.

      ‘Very ill, it’s a...her blood. The doctor explained, but her best hope is a bone-marrow transplant.’

      There was hope.

      Listening, Ben knew how a man in a very long very black tunnel felt when a light appeared. He had a dozen questions but he closed his mouth, stifled his impatience and instead prompted gently.

      ‘That’s good.’

      Her face told him there was a but coming.

      ‘She has a very rare blood type and the chances of a donor being found in time are slim. Her main...only hope, really, is a compatible blood relative. I’m not compatible—’ It still felt like a kind of failure that she wasn’t able to be the one to save her child’s life.

      As soon as she mentioned the blood group he recognised the significance.

      ‘But I am.’

      Lily nodded. ‘It seems likely. I don’t really know about these things but I’m assuming if she didn’t get my blood group she got yours? Though they wouldn’t know for sure until they test you, but... I told him that you’d do it.’ She felt his long fingers tighten on her forearm and looked down, not realising until that moment that he was holding her.

      She looked up, wondering uneasily if she had taken too much for granted. Obviously she would do anything for her daughter, but Ben didn’t even know her. He wanted to be involved, but she still couldn’t shake the fear that deep down he might even resent her existence.

      ‘I probably should have asked you first...’

      He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘No, you should not have asked me. You’d do anything for Emmy, wouldn’t you?’

      ‘Of course, I’m her mother.’

      ‘And I’m her father. So I would do anything for her too.’ Anything... His initial rush of emotions settled into deep relief.

      ‘The fact that I can do something...’ He spoke with more confidence as he realised he possessed the instincts he had feared were absent in his make-up. ‘Anything...’ He dragged a hand across the surface of his gleaming dark hair and turned to the practicalities. ‘I’ll do it...when...how...?’

      ‘The doctor said he’ll see you in the morning. It’s a relatively simple procedure. They can do it straight away. There’s some discomfort,’ she warned.

      ‘Is it so hard for you to believe that I would endure the odd twinge for our daughter?’

      She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I suppose,’ she admitted in a flash of shamed honesty, ‘I feel a bit jealous. I wish I could be the one to save her. I know it’s stupid and what matters is that she is saved.’ She closed her eyes and said, ‘But I wasn’t even there for her... I wish I hadn’t gone on that stupid holiday.’

      ‘Emmy would still be ill.’

      Her eyes opened and she nodded. ‘Not rational, I know. I keep thinking about how I felt when I found out I was pregnant.’ He saw an emotion he couldn’t interpret flash in her eyes.

      ‘You were scared?’

      ‘I was stupid,’ she retorted, closing her eyes to ease the ache behind them. ‘You know, for weeks I was in denial. I just kept saying, like some sort of total idiot, it can’t happen your first time, but of course it can and it did.’ The words were out before she realised what she had said. Maybe he hadn’t really been listening?

      Slowly she opened her eyes and realised straight off that fate had not granted her a reprieve. Ben had heard and his lean face was frozen in a combination of shock and disbelief.

      ‘First time...?’ he prompted, in a low, dangerous voice while in his head another voice said, No, not possible.

      It was simply not possible that the woman he had taken to bed that night had been...no, that was not possible.

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her little shrug was fuel to the flame of emotion that was burning him up. The guilt was eating him up from the inside out.

      ‘My God, it’s true—you were a virgin, weren’t you? I was your first!’ He looked at her as though she were a live grenade someone had dropped in his lap.

      ‘Only...’ Oh, Lily what is wrong with you? ‘...I’ve been pretty busy since.’

      He closed his eyes. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the nerve that was clenching and unclenching beside his mouth.

      ‘I don’t believe it,’ he groaned as he pushed one hand deep into his thick pelt of dark hair. He opened his eyes. ‘A virgin?’ He felt a fresh slug of guilt leavened with, if he was honest, a degree of arousal. It was a silly male possessive pleasure to know he’d been her first. ‘You didn’t say a word, and why me?’

      ‘I thought you’d realise and, in case you haven’t noticed, you are obscenely good-looking.’ She’d hoped to lighten the mood but he didn’t even crack a smile. If he looked like this now, she thought with a delicate little shudder, imagine how he’d look if she told him the full truth. Well, that was never going to happen. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing of it. I don’t regret it. She’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. She was a beautiful baby and now...with what’s going on, all that stuff doesn’t matter now.’

      Before he could respond the phone in her pocket began to vibrate—her own, not the one that Ben had given her. The sound of it was audible in the silence that had fallen.

      Her hand was shaking as she reached into her bag then glanced at the screen. What she saw made her body stiffen. ‘Sorry, it’s the hospital. I have to check this.’ She turned her face to the window to hide her expression as she replied. ‘Yes, this is Lily Gray.’

      She listened to the voice on the other end before giving a deep sigh of relief. ‘That’s marvellous, thank you so much, thank you.’

      She turned, smiling, and responded to his arched brow with a shake of her head. ‘Sorry, it’s good news. It was the hospital to say there is a match on the register—a perfect match, they said, for Emmy. They are trying to contact him so it’s possible you won’t need to do anything.’ She frowned. Ben was not listening. He was scrolling through his own phone—perhaps he didn’t understand the significance of what she was saying. ‘Apparently this person is someone who lives here in England. They warned me the odds were incredibly remote that they would find a match. If he agrees—’

      Ben slid his phone back into his pocket. ‘They’ve contacted him and he does agree.’

      She looked at him, her blank look fading as he held up his phone and said softly, ‘I’ve just been contacted.’

      ‘You’re on the bone-marrow register?’

      ‘For a couple of years. A friend’s wife needed a bone-marrow transplant so I got tested.’

      ‘Did she get it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      His face told her nothing but she knew, she felt a cold clutch in her belly but ignored it. Emily was going to be all right. She’d make it all right.

      ‘She didn’t survive, did she...?’ The impotent rage and ice-cold fear warring within her fought for an angry release. ‘You can say it, you know.’ Hearing the shrill note of irrational accusation in her voice, Lily took a steadying breath and dug

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