‘Then it would be the finance people dealing with it, not the director,’ she pointed out logically. ‘No, it’s something else, Sam. Something much worse. I think it must be the embryos.’
Her smoky green eyes were still glazed with tears, her lashes clumped, but she sucked in a breath and her chin came up, and he laid a hand on her shoulder and tried to smile. ‘Why don’t we find out?’ he said again, more gently, turning her towards the entrance, but she hesitated, and he could feel her trembling.
‘Sam, I can’t do this on my own.’ ‘Then I’ll come with you. They can’t stop me.’ He felt her hand grope for his, and he threaded his fingers through hers and gave a quick squeeze. ‘Ready?’ She nodded, tightening her grip. ‘OK. Let’s get some answers.’
She felt shocked.
Shocked and curiously light-headed.
She shook her head to clear it as Sam ushered her out of the building into the spring sunshine. Odd, it had been cloudy before, and now it was glorious. How ironic, when her world had been turned upside down.
‘So—what now?’ she asked, looking up at him for guidance and grateful for the feel of his hand, warm and supportive in the small of her back.
‘Well, I don’t know about you but I could do with a nice, strong coffee.’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were strangely expressionless, and she suddenly realised she didn’t know him at all. Didn’t know what he was thinking, how he was feeling—which under the circumstances wasn’t surprising, because she wasn’t sure what she was thinking, either.
She tried to smile back, but her lips felt stiff and uncooperative and her eyes were prickling. ‘Me, too. I haven’t had coffee for months but suddenly I feel the need.’
‘One car or two?’
‘Two. I’ll go straight on from there.’ And it would give her the next few minutes alone to draw breath. ‘The usual place?’
She nodded, and got into her car, following him on autopilot, curiously detached. It all seemed unreal, as if it was happening to someone else—until she felt the baby move, and then reality hit home and her eyes filled. ‘Oh, James, I’m sorry,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I tried so hard for you. I really tried.’
She felt something thin and fragile tear inside her, the last tenuous link to the man she’d loved with all her heart, and she closed her eyes briefly as she pulled up beside Sam, giving her grief a moment. It was a gentle grief, a quiet sorrow now, and it was her constant companion. She was used to it.
‘OK?’
Was she? Probably not, but she smiled up at Sam and got out of the car and let him usher her in. They’d gone, as usual, to the riverfront café they’d all frequented in the past. Before, she’d always had fruit tea. This time, settling into a chair opposite Sam, she had a frothy mocha with a chocolate flake to dunk, and a sticky Danish pastry, also laced with chocolate.
Comfort food.
And, boy, did she need it. Those few minutes in the car had given her breathing space but they’d done nothing to change the truth. A truth neither of them had come up with. A truth that changed everything.
She looked up and met his impenetrable slate-blue gaze, and wondered if her child would inherit those exquisite and remarkable eyes.
It was a different sort of mix-up entirely, something that had never crossed Sam’s mind.
Something that should never have happened, an accident which he’d always taken positive steps to avoid in his personal life for very good reasons, and which he’d trusted the clinic to be equally careful of, but it seemed they’d failed, because this woman sitting opposite him—this very lovely, warm and gentle woman—was pregnant with his child, and she wasn’t going to be handing it over to Emily and Andrew, as he’d feared, because it wasn’t Emily’s baby. It was Emelia’s. And his.
Our child.
He looked away, his eyes carefully avoiding the smooth, pretty curve containing a bomb that was about to blow his life apart. His child was growing inside her body—a body he’d had to force himself to ignore on every one of the occasions they’d met in the past eighteen months. Very few occasions. Hardly any, really. Just enough for her to get right under his skin and haunt his dreams…
His eyes dropped to the gentle but unmistakeable swell of their baby, and something elemental kicked him in the gut, just as it had when he’d held her. Almost as if he’d known—
Damn. He couldn’t do this. Not again. And it wasn’t how it was meant to be. It was supposed to be quick and clean and straightforward. His brother couldn’t have children. This had been something he could do, a way to give them a desperately wanted child which he could legitimately love at a distance and have no further responsibility towards except in the role of uncle.
Tidy. Clean. Simple.
Yeah, right.
And then this. Some administrative anomaly that had totally changed all the rules.
He yanked his eyes away from the evidence and put his own feelings aside for now. He’d deal with them later, alone. For now he had to think of her, the woman carrying not her husband’s child, but the child of a comparative stranger. And that wasn’t going to be any easier for her than it was for him, he realised. Probably a damn sight harder. They said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but to lose twice? Because she was losing James again, in a way, her dream replaced with a living nightmare, and that was just downright cruel.
He met her eyes, the muted green smudged slightly with tears of pain and bewilderment, and his heart ached for her. ‘I’m so sorry, Emelia.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not your fault.’
His voice was gruff. ‘I know, but—thinking it had worked, thinking all this time you were having his baby, and then to be told it isn’t—you must be just gutted.’
She felt the familiar grief amongst this new rash of emotions, but also guilt, because the man who was the father of her child was sitting opposite her and even now, with the shock of this revelation, she realised she was aware of him with every cell of her body, as she’d been aware of him every time they’d met.
She tried to speak logically, to find something sensible to say to this man when James seemed so long ago and all she could think about now was Sam’s baby growing inside her womb—
Stick to the facts!
‘Sam, really, it’s OK,’ she said eventually. ‘I never really expected it to work. The sperm quality wasn’t good, James and I knew that from the beginning. It was always going to be a long shot if we tried it, and I know it sounds stupid but I was astonished when I found I was pregnant because I never really expected it to happen, so in many ways maybe it’s for the best.’
‘The best?’
Not from where he was looking at it, but maybe she had a different perspective altogether. She shrugged, her slender shoulders lifting in a gesture almost of defeat, and he had a crazy urge to gather her up in his arms and tell her it was all right, she didn’t have to be brave, it was OK to be angry and sad and confused. But then she spoke, and it seemed she wasn’t being brave at all, she was being honest.
‘It’s been harder than I thought. My in-laws were starting to suffocate me. They were completely taking over, as if it was their baby,’ she told him, realising in surprise that, despite the sadness she felt that she wasn’t carrying his child, for the first time since James’ death she felt free.
Free of the suffocating and controlling interference of Julia and Brian, free of the obligation to share her life with them for the sake of their grandchild. She hadn’t realised how much she’d started to resent it, but now, it was as if