She was still hugging her when she heard her name.
‘Bella? I’d like a word, if you wouldn’t mind.’
* * *
He had intended talking to Bella as soon as she’d arrived this morning, but he’d mistimed it. Instead, Oliver had overheard the last thing his mother had said, and what he was planning to say to Bella no longer seemed like a good idea.
How could he offer to marry her and do the best by his child when it would now seem as if he was only doing what would please his mother the most? A vaguely disquieting memory was surfacing with a vengeance now. When he’d thought that Bella was the person who had upset Lady Dorothy so much by producing the pink track pants for her to wear, he’d been prepared to go and tear strips off her to defend his mother. And he’d been embarrassed at the thought that he might seem like some kind of mummy’s boy.
Offering to marry her now, after hearing those words about the impending grandchild, could very well be seen as doing exactly what his mother wanted so badly. What she might have told him to do because it was the ‘right thing’.
Or, worse, simply as doing the ‘right thing’ because he was pompous and stuffy and… boringly predictable. The absolute opposite of everything Bella was.
By the time he’d led her into the far more formal drawing room, Oliver felt like he was back on that damned merry-go-round. The first words that burst from his mouth when he had closed the door and turned to face Bella were certainly not what he’d planned to say.
‘How thehelldid this happen, Bella?’
Bella just looked at him, her eyes huge and scared and so very, very blue. Her hair was in a loose ponytail this morning and some shorter curls had escaped to frame her face. She was breathing fast and he could see the soft skin at the top of her breasts rising and falling.
What a stupid, stupid question. He knew exactly how it had happened. And, God help him, if he had the opportunity to relive the circumstances that had caused them to be standing here like this, he would probably be unable to resist the temptation.
He’d never wanted any woman the way hestillwanted Bella Graham. Oliver closed his eyes, struggling for control. ‘You told me you were on the Pill.’
‘No. I said I was safe. I was talking about STDs. I’d been tested ages ago. I never slept around. I knew I?—’
‘I asked if you were on the Pill,’ Oliver cut in. ‘You knew you weren’t and yet you let me think that the issue of an unwanted pregnancy wasn’t a problem.’
‘I didn’t think it was. I had a morning-after pill available.’
‘And you took it?’
‘Of course I took it.’
There was a spark of something like real anger in Bella’s eyes now. Did she think that he was suggesting she’d planned this all along, to get his name and his fortune? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, and there was something in her face now that actually made him more suspicious.
Guilt. It had to be.
‘What?’ he snapped. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Bella?’
‘It was… um… a bit past its use-by date. I didn’t think it would matter.’
She was looking stricken now. A guilty child knowing she’d done something really bad.
But it was so like her, wasn’t it? Slap-dash. Seizing the moment and not worrying about something that was unlikely to happen that might trip her up. Trusting her instincts, which, he had to admit, were often exactly the right things to trust.
Like the approach she’d taken with his mother. If it hadn’t been for Bella’s often outrageous disregard for convention and consequences, his mother might still be in a hospital bed, too depressed to consider attempting rehabilitation. Oliver would never forget the sight of those bright pink track pants stuffed into the rubbish bin. Even now, he could feel his lips wanting to curl upwards.
‘I know it was irresponsible,’ Bella was saying now. ‘And I’m sorry.’
Oliver was sorry too. Sorry that he’d started this conversation in such an angry and negative fashion. What his mother wanted had nothing to do with this but how was Bella to know that at some point during the long and sleepless night he’d just suffered, he’d realised that hewantedto marry her?
That this pregnancy might be a blessing in disguise. The prod he needed to get past all the… stuffiness he’d surrounded himself with for so many years as he did the ‘right thing’ and avoided painful emotional involvements.
Maybe the thing that had tipped the balance was knowing that if he didn’t marry her, she would disappear.
He understood now why she’d been so quiet and unusually well behaved in the last few weeks. She’d known about the pregnancy. Part of her had gone AWOL then and he’d been haunted by it, hadn’t he? Constantly thinking about her when he was supposed to be focused on his work. Knowing that something wasn’t right.
Missingher.
