‘I’m bringing this up because I’m about to meet him for the first time and you still fancy him.’
She took a couple of deep breaths, until she was sure she could speak impassively. ‘He is quite attractive.’
Laura rolled her eyes. ‘He got you home from that party. I’m willing to put money on him being pretty special.’
Okay, so she was crazy to think she could pull the wool over her best friend’s eyes. ‘He’s gorgeous, all right. I freely admit that he’s gorgeous. But that wasn’t why...’ She trailed off, not wanting to incriminate herself by admitting to anything other than the most carnal feelings about Leo.
She glanced at her phone again, wondering what was taking him so long. All he had to do was show up. How hard could it be? So hard that the last time they’d had a scan appointment he’d called with a barrelful of excuses and then missed the first look at their baby.
With ten minutes to go before their previous appointment, she’d hit redial again and again. Voicemail. It had gone straight through to his messages ever since Leo had lost signal as he’d passed through a tunnel the last time he’d called. Two hours before. He couldn’t have still been in that tunnel, so there was no reason for it not to have rung. She had tried to fight her anger down—it hadn’t been Leo’s fault that floods had closed all the train lines from the south-west. That the motorways had been clogged. That trees had been blown down and were blocking roads. But none of that changed the fact that she had needed him, and he hadn’t been there. She needed a partner, her co-parent. She’d been excited for weeks about the scan, counting down the days until she would get a first glimpse of her baby. But in those past few hours since Leo had called with the news about the trains, all she’d been able to think about were her fears—what if the stick had lied to her, and she wasn’t pregnant after all? What if they saw there was something wrong with the baby, if there wasn’t a heartbeat? What if she had to face bad news without him?
She had hit redial again—and still there had been no response.
Checking the time as she’d hung up, she had taken a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She had to do this one on her own. Not that she’d had a choice; those last few hours had taught her something she should have faced long before then. She couldn’t rely on Leo. It didn’t matter how enthusiastic he was about the pregnancy, how good his intentions had been, she had to rely on herself, and no one else.
She’d gone into the ultrasound room alone and upset. The first glimpse of her baby should have filled her with complete joy, and it had; it was magical, emotional. But she hadn’t been able to help but feel the loss of Leo by her side. When he’d finally arrived, Leo had promised her that he’d tried everything humanly possible to get there, but now, with less than five minutes to go until she was meant to meet him for their second scan, she was becoming nervous. What if he let her down again? What would she do if she couldn’t trust him to be there when she—when they—needed him?
This time she’d asked Laura to come with her, to give her the support she knew she couldn’t rely on Leo for.
‘Oh, now, this is interesting.’ Laura dragged her thoughts back to their conversation. ‘This is new. If you didn’t take him home because you were mad for his body, then this is something else entirely. I thought you told me that it was a moment of lust, not to be repeated.’
‘It was!’
‘No.’ Rachel waited as Laura took a long sip of her coffee, and could practically see the words flying behind her eyes as she picked through them carefully, analysing, choosing an angle. ‘You just said, or didn’t say, that isn’t true. So, what was it about him that caught your eye, other than his “quite attractive” looks? I know you, remember, and I know you don’t make decisions like that at the drop of a hat.’
Rachel thought back to that night—the way Leo had teased her and made her laugh, made her relax. Fooled her into thinking that just for a night she could change her plan with no repercussions.
‘He made me laugh; we were having a good time. I didn’t expect—’
‘For him to start baking in your oven.’
Rachel coughed as her coffee made a bid for escape through her nose.
‘Thank you. Beautifully put.’
‘Seriously, though.’ Laura placed her coffee carefully on the table and held her gaze with a shrewd look. ‘Are you sure that “just friends” is really the answer? You like him.’ She held up a firm hand to stop Rachel’s blustering protests. ‘You can deny it all you want and I still won’t believe you. And you have no reason to think that he doesn’t like you, either. But you’re not going to even explore what there is between you?’
‘The baby—’
‘Is the perfect excuse to give it a go, not run from it. So what is it that scares you about him?’
She stared into her drink for a long minute, trying to capture everything that Leo made her feel. The exhilaration of that night, the glimpse of a more relaxed life, the freedom when he made her laugh. The terror of everything she knew, understood and believed about her future suddenly being ripped away. ‘Be honest with me. Do you think there’s something...not right...about the way I like a plan, a schedule?’
Laura didn’t drop her shrewd expression, though her eyes softened. ‘Yes. Truthfully, I don’t think it’s healthy how anxious you are without one. And if you’re starting to see that, too, perhaps now is a good time to be thinking about making changes. I hate to break this to you, darling, but there’s no hiding from chaos now. You’re going to have to find a way to—’
‘No.’ Rachel choked the word out of instinct, her gut revolting at the thought of that inevitability. And then felt instantly bad for snapping at her friend. ‘Yes. I’m going to try. But the baby’s enough chaos. Leo’s just too much, and I can’t trust him to be there when I need him.’
‘You really are nervous.’ Laura smiled, giving no hint that she was offended by her best friend snapping at her. ‘It’s cute. I don’t think I’ve seen you nervous before.’
‘I’m not nervous.’
‘So the father of your child, the man you found literally irresistible five months ago, is going to show up in this coffee shop in ten minutes’ time, and you’re not even slightly nervous? Rubbish.’
* * *
Leo raced across the pavement, determined to get to Rachel before the second hand hit twelve, to prove to her that he could be the partner, and the parent, that she needed him to be. He’d barely seen her since the last scan. A couple of lunches in London, that was all, the last time just a coffee when he’d been in the city to meet with Will about the Julia House sculpture.
She claimed she hadn’t been able to get a weekend off since that first time she’d been down in Dorset. But he knew the real reason, that she was still angry and upset that he’d missed that scan. And of course he could understand that. But he’d tried everything he could to get there on time. He’d hired a car when all the trains were cancelled. He’d waded through floodwater when the car had got caught in a soaked back lane and had conked out. He’d begged and bartered for lifts into the city, and when he’d finally made it, fourteen hours after leaving his house, he’d apologised until his voice was hoarse and she’d told him to stop. He just wanted to make things right, which, despite her assurances the last time he saw her, he knew they weren’t.
He swung open the door to the coffee shop, and there she was. Her hair shiny and straight around her shoulders, a mug clasped in her hand, and, framed by her propped elbows, a neat little bump. His breath stopped at the sight of her. And then he saw that she wasn’t alone, and his heart sank.
‘Hi,’