The Bridesmaid's Best Man. Barbara Hannay

she’d been wondering if she’d expected too much of Mark Winchester. After all, they hardly knew each other, and they’d said their goodbyes six weeks ago, had gone their separate ways. She’d tried to forget him, and it had almost worked.

      Liar.

      Sophie hugged her knees and sighed into the darkness. She could still picture Mark in perfect detail, could see his eyes—dark, rich brown and curiously penetrating. She remembered exactly how tall and broad-shouldered he was, could picture his bronzed skin, the sheen on his dark-brown hair, his slightly crooked nose, the no-nonsense squareness of his jaw.

      She remembered the way he’d looked at her when they’d been dancing at the wedding, the quiet hunger that had sent fierce chills chasing through her.

      And, of course, she remembered everything that had happened later…the warm touch of his fingers, the heady magic of his lips on her bare skin. She felt a flash of heat flooding her, trembled all over, inside and out—just as she had on that fateful night when they’d been best man and bridesmaid.

      There was a soft knock outside. ‘Are you in there, Sophie?’

      Her best friend’s slim silhouette appeared at the doorway.

      ‘Oh, Emma, thank goodness it’s you.’

      Emma was the only other person she’d told about the baby. Jumping to her feet, Sophie kissed her. ‘I didn’t expect you to come here tonight. Haven’t you and Tim got better things to do?’

      ‘Not when my best friend’s in trouble,’ Emma said, giving her a hug.

      Sophie turned on a lamp, and its glow illuminated the neat orderliness of the room, so different now that it was a guest room. Luckily none of the guests downstairs was using it this evening, and she closed the door.

      Cautiously, Emma asked, ‘Have you called Mark?’

      ‘Yes.’ Sophie let out a sigh. ‘But it was pretty disappointing. The line was bad, and we didn’t really get to discuss anything important.’

      ‘But how did he take the news?’

      ‘I’m not really sure. He was rather stunned, of course.’

      ‘Of course,’ Emma agreed with a small smile. She sat on the edge of the single bed, kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs up, just as she had when they’d been children. ‘It would have been a bolt from the blue, poor man.’

      ‘Yes.’ Sophie slumped back into the window seat, reliving her dog-awful shock yesterday when the doctor had told her that the tightness in her breasts and the tiredness that had haunted her for the past fortnight had been caused by pregnancy. She’d known she’d missed a period, but she’d been so sure there had to be another explanation, and had been embarrassed beyond belief.

      In the twenty-first century, an educated girl was expected to avoid this kind of pitfall. She cringed inwardly, could hear her father’s lecture already.

      Oh, help.

      ‘Cheer up, Sox.’

      Hearing her childhood nickname, Sophie smiled and quickly shoved thoughts of her parents aside. She would deal with them later. Much later.

      She sighed again, heavily. ‘I suppose I was crazy to insist on talking to Mark while he’s out in the middle of nowhere, and now I’m going to have to wait another whole week until he gets home and I can speak to him. But I can’t think, can’t work out what to do about…about anything until I’ve had a chance to talk to him properly.’

      ‘What are you hoping for?’

      Unable to give a straight answer, Sophie twisted the locket Emma had given her as a bridesmaid’s present.

      ‘That he’ll ask you to marry him?’ Emma suggested gently.

      ‘Good heavens, no.’ She might have been silly enough to get pregnant, but she wasn’t so naïve that she believed in fairy tales.

      ‘It’s not the easiest option, is it?’

      ‘To marry a man I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours?’ Sophie regarded her friend with a sharply raised eyebrow. ‘It wouldn’t be very smart, would it?’ She gave an annoyed little shrug, and tried to ignore a stab of jealousy. Emma was newly married and blissfully happy with Tim, and not pregnant.

      ‘Just the same,’ she added quickly. ‘I need to know how Mark feels about—well—about everything.’ Her lower lip trembled as she remembered just how deeply she’d been smitten by him that night. Stop it.

      ‘For example,’ she said quickly, ‘if Mark’s going to demand visitation rights there’ll be steep air-fares to negotiate.’

      Emma slipped from the bed and squeezed onto the window seat, wrapping an arm around Sophie’s hunched shoulders. ‘It’ll work out. You’ll feel better once you’re able to have a proper talk with Mark, when he gets back from this—’ She frowned. ‘What did you say he was doing exactly?’

      Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘Rounding up cattle. But apparently they call it “mustering” in Australia. He seems to be way out in the very centre of the Outback somewhere.’

      Emma’s upper lip curled with poorly restrained amusement. ‘It’s hard to imagine Mark Winchester doing the whole cowboy thing in all that heat and dust, isn’t it? I mean, he was so wonderfully dashing when he was best man at the wedding. Even I managed to drag my eyes away from Tim long enough to notice how tall, dark and handsome Mark was. And beautifully groomed.’

      ‘Yes,’ Sophie agreed with another sigh. ‘That was the problem. He was far too dashing and handsome. He had such a presence. I wouldn’t be in this pickle now if he hadn’t been quite so eye-catching.’

      ‘Or if Oliver wasn’t such a pig,’ Emma added darkly.

      Sophie’s jaw dropped as she stared at her friend. ‘Did you guess?’

      ‘That you started flirting madly with Mark to show Oliver Pembleton that he hadn’t hurt you?’

      Miserably, Sophie nodded.

      ‘It wasn’t hard to figure out, Sox. I know you’re not normally a flirt. But I can’t blame you for giving it a go at the wedding. Mark was attractive enough to make any girl flutter her eyelashes. And the way Oliver pranced around in front of you with his ghastly new fiancée was insufferable.’

      Sophie nodded and felt a momentary sense of comfort that a good friend like Emma understood just how humiliated she’d felt when Oliver had turned up, with his glamorous heiress wearing the sapphire-and-diamond ring originally intended for her.

      Practically everyone at the wedding had known she was Oliver’s reject. Most had tried not to look sorry for her, but she’d felt their sympathy. It had been smothering. Suffocating. Had sent her a little crazy.

      Her good friend let out a huff of annoyance. ‘I’m still furious with my mother for letting Oliver come to the wedding. When he broke off with you he should have been axed from the invitation list, but somehow he wangled his way in, plus a fresh invite for her, as well.’

      ‘The thing is,’ said Sophie, not wanting to dwell on what might have been, ‘getting back at Oliver isn’t exactly a suitable excuse for getting pregnant. I mean, it’s not something I can explain to my parents, is it? Or to my child in the future, for that matter.’

      She wasn’t sure she could explain to anyone exactly how getting back at Oliver had morphed into getting pregnant with Mark.

      But, deep inside, she knew. Her heart could pinpoint the precise moment she’d looked into Mark Winchester’s dark eyes and the chatter in her head about Oliver had stopped, and she’d been drawn radically into the present. She’d been suddenly and completely captivated by the magnetic allure of the tall, rangy Australian. It had been like coming out of a deep sleep to find her senses truly awakened for the very first time.

      As she’d danced