Lucien’s question earlier that day as to who would care for her baby should something happen to her came back to plague her again. She yanked the strap of her rucksack tighter on her shoulder, her sports-trainer footsteps falling silently on the cobbled street. What if her depression did return? Not that he knew anything about her past illness.
A tight, tight, tight cord lashed itself around her throat.
How would she care for her baby if it did come back?
That’s not going to happen. I’m strong now.
She passed a noisy popular fusion restaurant and looked away from the smiling and animated couples and large groups of friends dining there. They all seemed so carefree.
In her final year at university she had been sucked deeper and deeper into depression. Not that she had understood any of that at the time.
At first it had just been a feeling of being overwhelmed by her workload, her looming exams and the self-imposed pressure of achieving a first-class degree. Unable to concentrate, constantly tired, her mind swamped by a sense of hopelessness. She’d kept it hidden for months. Not wanting to be thought of as weak. Feeling a complete failure. Not wanting to be a burden to anyone. Eventually she had told her boyfriend Dan and best friend Angie. And had somehow managed to drag herself through her final exams.
On the night of her final exam she had told Dan once again that she was too tired to go out. To her relief, for once he hadn’t become quietly irritated with her. But later she had changed her mind. Hoping that now that the exams were over just maybe she would be herself again.
With that glimmer of hope sustaining her, she had made her way to the riverside pub. And had found Dan and Angie in the beer garden. Kissing. Intimately. Lovers intimately.
Dan had been the first to see her. He had broken away and approached her with a guilty but almost relieved look on his face. Within minutes she had learned that they had been dating for weeks. And it was over between herself and Dan.
She had gone home to her parents that night. Broken. And had spent the following year slowly dragging herself out of the swamp of depression.
In the years since, she had wrapped up all the memories of that year into a tiny capsule that sat deep within her. Knowing that she needed to mind herself, protect herself against the depression returning. And she did that by telling herself that she was strong, protecting herself in relationships, and guarding herself against men who might hurt her again.
She passed an upmarket burger restaurant and walked on by. But a few steps on she came to a stop and turned around.
She needed a milkshake.
Twenty minutes later, she turned right onto Kipling Street, sucking hard on the thick sweet vanilla mixture, fears at bay for now, just glad to see her apartment block further down the street and the prospect of watching escapism TV for an hour.
The drink straw dropped from her mouth.
And her shock was much too quickly superseded by the hot heat of embarrassment and soul-destroying attraction.
Leaning against the door of this dark saloon, Lucien was talking on his phone. Earthy, menacing, sexy.
He hadn’t seen her yet.
She pushed away the impulse to run away and instead put the milkshake carton in a nearby bin, tidied the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail, grimaced down at her purple and blue leggings and dark navy sweatshirt, and tightened her grip on her rucksack handle.
He became aware of her when she was twenty paces away. He continued to talk on the phone but he watched her intently. Every. Single. Step. Of. The. Way. Green eyes narrowed, lazily travelling down her body and back up again.
He was tieless, top button undone, his shirt sleeves rolled up. His dark brown hair was cut tightly into his scalp at the side, the top a little longer and curling slightly, adding to his air of menace. The powerful strength of his fighter body was clear in his muscular forearms, the broad width of his shoulders, the long length of his legs, planted wide apart.
Lucien didn’t look like the other suave CEOs that swarmed London. Instead he looked like a dock worker from Marseille who modelled and took part in mixed martial arts in his spare time.
She hated how attracted she was to him.
She hated how her body melted just seeing him, the tight longing that pulled hard within her.
She hated the physical hunger that froze her brain and all logic.
Destructive, crushing chemistry.
She came to a stop a few steps away from him and he finished his call.
They stared at each other and she raised an eyebrow. Determined not to be the first to talk. To ask him why he was here. To say that she thought he was away on business for the next fortnight.
His gaze dropped down along her body again. And stopped on her stomach. Heat blasted through her at the intimacy, protectiveness, ownership of his look.
Her heart thudded in her chest.
He was the father of her child.
They would be bound for ever.
A thought that was mystifying, incredible, terrifying.
She cleared her throat loudly and dropped her rucksack down in front of her, to swing against her legs. Her arms now shielded her belly.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
She wanted to say no. This morning had been way more difficult than she had ever anticipated. In perhaps complete naivety she had thought Lucien would be shocked but accepting of her plans for the future. He wasn’t father material, after all. She had sat at her desk all day thinking about what he had said. And come to the realisation that she needed to reassure him of her ability to care for their baby.
He gestured down the street. ‘We can talk in a café on the High Street.’
‘The smell of coffee makes me nauseous.’ She hesitated for a moment as the lines around his eyes tightened. In concern or dislike at another reminder of her pregnancy? With a sense of inevitability and a need to get this over and done with, she added, ‘We can talk in my apartment.’
Lucien said something quickly to his driver and then she led the way into the 1960s redbrick block.
Inside the foyer, he reached for her rucksack. ‘I’ll carry your bag.’ For a brief moment their fingers met. Their gazes clashed and all of the intimacy, the intensity, the closeness of their night together rushed back.
She yanked her hand away and, not welcoming the prospect of being stuck in the tight confines of the lift with him, led him to the stairwell instead.
Walking alongside him up the stairs, she asked, ‘What explanation did you give Human Resources for wanting my address?’
He looked at her with a hint of bemusement. ‘The HR director has enough sense not to ask.’ Then his features fixed back into their usual hard shrewdness. ‘I also spoke to Simon. He made no mention of your resignation.’
They had reached the third floor and she paused on the stairwell and answered, not quite able to meet his eye. ‘I didn’t resign... I’ll do so tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
His now dispassionate tone, so in contrast to the heat of his gaze in the foyer, his lack of understanding of how her life was being turned upside down and his insistence on questioning everything she needed to do had her answer crossly. ‘Simon was busy, and frankly I couldn’t face it...not after this morning. I couldn’t take another difficult conversation today.’ She paused, and as the true realisation of what she was giving up hit home she grabbed her rucksack off him. ‘I love my job. I’ve worked so hard over the years to get to this position.’ A lump suddenly formed in her throat. She knew of her reputation