Tall, Dark... Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

blue line through the middle of it too.

      She was definitely, positively pregnant.

      With Nick Cavendish’s baby.

      A baby he certainly didn’t want.

      Did she?

      She had never given much thought to having a baby of her own. Or, at least, if she had, it had been as part of and a progression of a loving marriage.

      Not the result of a single night spent in Nick Cavendish’s arms!

      Now what did she do?

      She was pregnant. She had the spark of a tiny new life growing inside her. Her very own son or daughter. But it wasn’t just hers. It was Nick’s son or daughter, too!

      And therein lay the problem. It was obvious from what Nick had said earlier that he believed she had deliberately got herself pregnant in order to trap him in some way.

      What—?

      ‘Hebe? Are you okay?’ A soft knock on the bathroom door accompanied Nick’s pressing query.

      She straightened and looked apprehensively at the door, wondering how she was supposed to go out there and tell Nick that she was expecting his baby after all.

      She could lie, of course. That was always an option. She could tell him that the result was negative—

      But he wouldn’t believe her, and would no doubt insist on being present when he made her do yet another test!

      Because he knew, somehow he already knew, that she was pregnant.

      ‘Hebe?’ he prompted more urgently.

      She drew in a deep breath, chewing her top lip before answering him. ‘Go away,’ she finally managed to groan.

      There was silence on the other side of the door for several seconds, and then Nick rattled the door handle impatiently. ‘Open the door, Hebe,’ he ordered steadily.

      ‘I said go away!’ she muttered.

      ‘No way,’ he answered determinedly. ‘Either you open the damned door, Hebe, or you stand back out of the way while I kick it down,’ he instructed evenly.

      He was going to kick the bathroom door down? She moved out of the way, just in case.

      ‘That’s harassment, Nick,’ she told him frowningly.

      ‘Your choice.’ The shrug could be heard in his voice.

      ‘I’m pregnant—okay!’ she shouted through the locked door. ‘You were right all the time and I was wrong. Because I’m pregnant!’ Her voice broke slightly as saying the words brought alive the enormity of what was happening to her.

      No matter what Nick might choose to think, she was not going to ask him for help. Accepting any assistance from him after the things he had implied earlier was not an option. Although she had no idea how she was going to manage to support herself and the baby, either. Even if Nick let her keep her job at the gallery, she would only be able to work until the seventh month or so. Her parents would want to help, she felt sure. But was it fair to ask them? After all, they had adopted her and given her so much—how could she now ask them to help her in single-motherhood? That would just—

      She didn’t have any time for further thought or worry as the bathroom door crashed back on its hinges, the lock having splintered away from the frame as Nick kicked it.

      She stared up at him dazedly as he stood in the doorway. ‘You actually broke the door down,’ she murmured incredulously as she stood up to examine the damage.

      He shrugged, his expression grim. ‘I told you that I would if you didn’t unlock it.’

      Yes, but—He couldn’t just go around breaking up her apartment! What was her flatmate Gina going to say, when she came home from work later and saw the damage Nick had done to the door?

      ‘You had no right to do that.’ She gasped her indignation. ‘No need—’

      ‘I had every need, damn it,’ he grated harshly. ‘You wouldn’t open the door.’ He shrugged unapologetically. ‘I couldn’t tell what you were doing in here.’

      She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘It’s a bathroom, Nick; what could I possibly have been doing?’

      ‘I had no way of knowing, did I? With that door between us,’ he came back hardly. ‘So a word of warning, Hebe,’ he added tautly. ‘Don’t ever put a locked door between us again!’

      Hebe just continued to stare at him. Had the whole world gone mad? Her world, at least!

      Hebe didn’t want to listen to him any more. She couldn’t think with him glaring at her like that. His eyes were no longer filled with the shadowy pain of the past but full of accusation now instead. And that accusation was directed at her. Because he believed she had deliberately set out to get pregnant that night they’d spent together!

      She didn’t even look at him as she brushed past him to go back into the sitting room. It all looked so normal, exactly as she had left it this morning, with the bright autumn colours that she and Gina had had so much fun decorating with, her pot plants in the window, the early-evening sun shining through the almost floor to ceiling windows.

      Only she had changed then, for she wasn’t the same person who had left the apartment early this morning to go to work as usual.

      She was pregnant. With Nick Cavendish’s child. And that meant her life would never be back to what she thought of as normal ever again.

      ‘Well?’ She turned back to him challengingly. ‘When are you going to start accusing me again of being a gold-digger? Of deliberately getting myself pregnant so that I can get my hands on all that lovely Cavendish money? Because you do think that’s what I’ve done, don’t you, Nick?’ she scorned disgustedly.

      Nick continued to look at her through narrowed lids. Yes, as he had driven to the chemist, bought the pregnancy test and driven back to his apartment only to find her gone, that was exactly what he had thought Hebe had done.

      And he still did. Nothing had changed his belief about that.

      It just didn’t matter any more. No, damn it, it mattered—but not to the ultimate outcome. Because Hebe was having his baby. His baby. And, whatever she might have thought would result from this, this child was going to be his as well as hers.

      ‘Don’t bother to answer that,’ she dismissed disgustedly. ‘I know that’s what you think. Well, do you want to know what I think?’ Her eyes flashed like molten gold.

      Nick felt some of his own anger draining out of him as he took in all her outraged indignation. She really was a beautiful young woman. A woman who would be even more beautiful as her pregnancy developed. Nick knew from when Sally had been expecting Luke that pregnant women seemed to take on a beauty all their own, glowing from the inside rather than out.

      A glowingly pregnant Hebe was going to be a sight to behold.

      ‘Yes,’ he answered briskly, moving to one of the armchairs to sit down and look up at her. ‘I would be very interested to hear what you think.’

      ‘I’ll bet!’ Hebe scorned. ‘You don’t seem to have taken too much notice of what I’ve had to say so far!’ She looked pointedly at the shattered bathroom door.

      Couldn’t she see that was because he had been in shock himself? Because he couldn’t believe—hadn’t dared to hope—despite what he had said to the contrary, that Hebe really could be pregnant with their child.

      He had loved being a father to Luke, and had been devastated when his son had died so tragically, so suddenly. He had felt totally bereft. Now, it seemed, he was to be given a second chance at fatherhood. With Hebe. He had never thought about having another child after Luke, but now the opportunity had presented itself he found he wanted this baby more than anything else in the