Her Boss's Baby Plan. Jessica Hart

guessed he was in his late thirties. He was intelligent, competent, solvent, and even not bad-looking—if you liked the dour, steely type, that was. Apparently straight, and nothing obviously kinky about him. Of course he had a girlfriend.

      ‘We were together for years,’ Lewis was saying, ‘but she used to get very fed up when Savannah turned up drunk when we had friends round, or rang me in the middle of the night.’

      Past tense. Phew! Martha relaxed, only to remember that if she hadn’t been disappointed there was no reason to feel relieved, was there?

      Unaware of Martha’s convoluted mental exertions, Lewis was brooding about his sister. ‘I’m sure Helen’s right,’ he said. ‘I probably do encourage Savannah to depend on me too much, but in spite of all that money she hasn’t had an easy time of things. Yes, she’s been spoilt, but she’s very insecure and I can’t just turn her away when she needs help, can I? She can behave appallingly sometimes, but when it comes down to it she’s still my little sister—’

      He broke off suddenly. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded.

      ‘I’m just thinking that it’s a shame that you don’t have any children,’ said Martha, appalled to find herself blushing slightly. She hadn’t meant to stare at him like that. ‘Not many men have such a strong sense of family. Don’t you want a family of your own?’

      ‘No,’ he said, his face hardening. ‘Savannah’s been quite enough family to deal with, thank you.’

      ‘It would be different if you had your own children.’

      He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. There’s too much grief when things go wrong.’

      ‘And so much happiness when they go right,’ countered Martha.

      ‘You said yourself that having a baby is hard work and you spend most of your time exhausted.’

      ‘Yes, but I also said that it was worth it. And I’ve been trying to manage on my own. It wouldn’t be like that for you.’

      ‘That’s what Helen used to say. “It won’t be like that for us.”’ Lewis shook his head. ‘I didn’t see why it should be different for us.’

      ‘You’re…um…not together any more, then?’ asked Martha.

      ‘No.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘Helen and I had what I thought was an ideal relationship. She’s a beautiful, smart, very talented lady.’

      Oh, good, thought Martha. The ex from hell.

      Although what was it to her, after all? Martha scowled down into her glass of water. Water! What was wrong with her? She had been the ultimate party girl once, the queen of champagne sippers.

      ‘We were together a long time,’ Lewis was saying. ‘I travel a lot, and she was busy training as a barrister.’

      Excellent, a barrister! So Helen was not just beautiful and smart but a serious person. Not the kind of woman who stood around sipping champagne, then.

      Oblivious to Martha’s mental running commentary, Lewis was still telling her about his relationship. ‘We both had our own lives, but we enjoyed the time we spent together and everything was perfect until one day she woke up with her hormones in overdrive.’

      His mouth turned down at the edges, remembering. ‘That’s when she started lobbying for a baby. It wasn’t about getting married for Helen. She just wanted a child. “This is the right time,” she kept saying.’

      ‘Well, maybe it was for her,’ said Martha, beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy for Helen. She might have been intimidatingly clever and beautiful, but she obviously hadn’t got very far with Lewis.

      ‘It wasn’t the right time for her career,’ he said astringently. ‘She’d worked incredibly hard and had just qualified. She should have been thinking about getting experience, not babies. I couldn’t believe that she would even consider chucking it all in.’