He had lost the formal suit and was wearing a black leather jacket that hung open to reveal a contour-clinging top tucked into the belted waistline of black jeans that emphasised the length of his legs and hinted at the muscularity of his powerful thighs.
The overall effect was darkly dangerous and sinfully sexy without lessening his natural air of authority. Without turning her head to look Lily knew that the young nurse who appeared from the office was having her own appraising moment.
‘You’re here.’ She bit her lip, stating the obvious. Their eyes clashed, but, other than the tension visible in the taut lines of his face, she struggled to read anything from his expression.
‘So far so good, apparently. They’re set to take the bone marrow this afternoon.’ He had anticipated it would be more complicated, but all they needed apparently was a sterile environment and a local anaesthetic.
The smile that lit up her face made him uneasy.
‘There is a long way to go,’ he cautioned and saw her smile wobble. He stifled the urge to say something that would bring it back—there was no point being unrealistic.
If he’d had any doubts about the gravity of this situation, his daughter’s doctor had dispelled them. The man had not made promises, but if he had Ben would have treated such reassurances with extreme scepticism.
The doctor in charge of his father’s case had promised that he would be home by the weekend. Jack Warrender had never seen the weekend, dying of undiagnosed meningitis with only his teenage son at his bedside. His wife had been out of the room taking the inevitable important call.
When she had returned the only emotion to cross her features had been discomfort. ‘You’re too old to cry, Ben. Be a man... Have you seen my gloves anywhere?’
Ben had always believed until that day that, even though his mother put her career ahead of everything else, she did care for them. That belief died along with his father.
‘Did he say anything?’ his mother had asked Ben at the funeral, as though the thought had just occurred to her. ‘Your father? Before he died?’
‘No,’ Ben had lied. Not to save her, but because he didn’t want to repeat the dying words his father had whispered...
‘Marriage is a prison sentence, boy. A prison sentence. Don’t do it.’
It remained the only advice his father had ever given him.
Lily closed her eyes briefly and let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Good.’ Sometimes words really weren’t adequate.
It wasn’t until she opened her eyes and followed the direction of his gaze that she realised she was literally wringing her hands.
She tucked them self-consciously behind her back while his attention switched to the young nurse who, with a pretty smile, explained the entire hand-washing and gowning-up routine to him.
‘And if there’s anything you need...’ she touched the identity badge pinned to the lapel of her dress, her smile loosing several hundred watts of brilliance, and her manner became visibly more professional as she turned her head to include Lily ‘... I’ll be in the office until one-thirty.’
Together they walked to Emmy’s room in taut silence, both locked in their own thoughts.
‘This is it.’ She paused outside her daughter’s room and turned to face him, tilting her head back. Crazily, even at a time like this, she felt the strong tug of attraction between them and was ashamed of her response to his raw maleness.
‘Are you ready?’
The question produced a hard look and a long pause.
‘You can change your mind if you want to.’ Lily struggled to keep her voice free from inflection as she went to close the half-open door—this had to be his choice.
Ben leaned across her, his hand covering hers. ‘I’m ready.’
Lily fought the weird compulsion to leave her hand where it was under his. Instead she pulled it free, put her head around the door, and nodded. Elizabeth, who was sitting at the bedside of the sleeping child, got to her feet.
Lily pushed away the mental image of her mum launching a verbal attack on Ben and crossed her fingers—she was doing that a lot lately. There had been little time for her mum to adjust to the knowledge that Ben was her granddaughter’s father.
Lily hadn’t known how to break it gently so she’d just blurted it out. ‘Emmy’s father is a probable match. It’s Ben...Ben Warrender.’
After the initial stunned moments of shock, her mum had been angry and full of questions.
The former had been aimed at Ben, the latter at Lily.
‘The choice was mine, Mum. I decided it would be better if he didn’t know.’
‘You mean you didn’t even tell him you were pregnant?’
She had read the shocked condemnation in her mother’s eyes, a look she’d imagined would be duplicated by strangers who got a whiff of the scandalous story. Lily didn’t care what strangers thought of her, but it had hurt a lot to have her mum look at her with such disappointment.
‘It wasn’t that simple. There were...other factors.’ Such as he’d split from his fiancée rather than give her a family.
‘A man deserves to know he has a child, no matter what he’s done.’
Lily had no idea what terrible things her mum had been imagining Ben had done. She’d chewed her lip in anguish. Having the disapproval shift her way had been, in many ways, easier. The last thing she needed was her mum being antagonistic to Ben.
‘He really didn’t do anything bad... I’m sorry I told you like this, Mum. You’ve had a shock. He has too.’
Elizabeth had shaken her head. ‘I just don’t understand why you did this, Lily. Surely your sister told you that you should—’
‘Lara doesn’t know either. Nobody knew.’
‘You didn’t even tell Lara? But you tell each other everything!’
Lily had shaken her head sadly. ‘When we were children,’ she’d said quietly. ‘We don’t confide the way we once did.’ It saddened her that there was more distance than simple miles between them now. She missed the closeness.
Would they ever be close again?
She’d straightened her shoulders. This was her problem, not Lara’s. ‘The important thing is it looks like he is a match for Emmy and he’s willing to be a donor.’
‘Of course he’s willing to be a donor, he’s her father. If the man dared say no, you just give me five minutes with him.’
The continuing belligerence in her mother’s attitude had dismayed Lily—she had enough eggshells to walk on without having to act a peacemaker between Ben and her mum.
‘He won’t. He’s having further tests this morning and then he’ll be... He wants to meet her.’
Her mum had sat down on a chair with a bump. ‘I suppose he does,’ she’d said faintly. She’d lifted a hand to her head. ‘She looks like him, those eyes... Why on earth didn’t I see it before?’
‘I’m not Lara.’ Her twin was the one that men looked at when she walked into a room. When they were together sometimes Lily felt invisible. It wasn’t about looks, it was about confidence and personality and, yes...sensuality.
Her mother had frowned. ‘What a strange thing to say, Lily. Whatever do you mean?’ Her eyes had widened. ‘Your sister didn’t date him too?’
The mental image of her twin with Ben had been so real and the accompanying stab of shameful jealousy so strong that it had taken her a moment to react. ‘No, of course not, I just meant you weren’t looking for that connection—why