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‘Hi,’ Elspeth said as she approached his table.
Her smile was wary and it made his forehead crease again. She was the one who had asked to meet him, so why was she looking so guarded? So very much as if she didn’t think being here was a good idea any more than he did?
He stood to kiss her on the cheek—a polite habit, he told himself, rather than anything meaningful. The hand that he dropped to her shoulder met firm, tense muscle, and he realised that she was really nervous.
‘Have a seat,’ he said. ‘What do you want to drink?’
‘I’ll have tea. Thanks.’
He could see her looking around the richly decorated interior of the hotel lounge as he summoned the waiter with a glance and wondered whether he’d made a mistake, choosing somewhere so intimate. But he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation in a crowded restaurant or bustling coffee bar. Though that would have had its advantages... He’d have loved a reason to step away from her right now and catch his breath.
The sight of her had brought memories flooding back, and he wanted some space to remind himself that it didn’t matter that she was beautiful. It didn’t matter that she was funny. It didn’t even matter that they had killer chemistry together. What mattered was that he couldn’t trust himself around her, and he had to make sure that she knew this wasn’t going to go anywhere.
He ordered her tea, and a fresh drink for himself. Something to do with his hands. To keep them distracted. To try and forget the memory of the delicate bones of her wrists trapped between his fingers.
‘Thanks for meeting me,’ Elspeth said eventually, gazing at a point somewhere past his left shoulder.
Alarm bells started ringing. There was definitely more to this meeting than he understood, and he didn’t like it.
‘What’s going on, Elspeth?’ he asked, his voice brusquer than he had intended. But he couldn’t regret it. He had to know what she wanted from him because his body was growing increasingly tense, and the suspicion that this conversation was going somewhere he wasn’t going to like was becoming impossible to ignore.
Elspeth took a deep breath, and—finally—looked him straight in the eye. Her face was set defiantly, as if she were expecting a fight, and a shiver travelled the length of Fraser’s spine. A flash-forward—a presentiment, perhaps. An acknowledgement that, whatever it was that had put that expression on her face, he wasn’t going to like it.
‘I’m pregnant.’
The words hit Fraser like a bus, rendering him mute and paralysed. He sat in silence for long, still moments, letting the words reverberate through his ears, his brain. The full meaning of them fell upon him slowly, gradually. Like being crushed to death under a pile of small rocks. Each one was so insignificant that you didn’t feel the difference, but collectively they stole his breath and would break his body.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
He didn’t know why. She wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t sure. The look on her face told him that she was sure. And he wasn’t going to insult her by asking if he was the father—she wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.
‘I’m sorry. Of course you’re sure.’
But this couldn’t be happening. He didn’t want this. He’d seen the danger of giving in to romantic feelings. His mother had married the man she loved and then found herself turfed out and having to start her life again more than a decade and a half later. His father had given in to those feelings a second time, destroyed his family in the process—and with what to show for it? Two ex-wives and a son who hated him.
Fraser had decided a long time ago that that sort of commitment—the family and marriage sort—wasn’t something he was interested in. It couldn’t possibly be worth the heartache for everyone involved. Okay, so when he looked ahead maybe he did see a couple of kids in his life, in between the dogs and the lambs and the horses. But that didn’t mean they were a realistic part of the picture, because they didn’t come on their own. The thought of committing to any woman was completely off the cards. And to this woman—someone who had already caused him too many sleepless nights—it was impossible.
The commitment of raising a child was an unimaginable complication—how could it not be? He was happy with his life the way it was. With a string of casual attachments and the distant thought that one day, when his father was dead, he would return to his family estate and finally do the job he had spent his whole life waiting and working for. Put into practice all the preparations he had been making in the meantime, developing property and managing estates all over Scotland and being responsible for the lives of the people who lived and worked on them.
His father had always impressed upon him as a child that his money and his title came with responsibilities, and he was determined to be worthy of that privilege. In the years since he had left Ballanross he had been training to take up that position. Learning how to make land profitable; investing the small trust he had inherited from his grandfather and turning it into a fortune. Watching this fall and rise of the property market and ensuring that he was on the right side of it, amassing the cash and the property that had gone some way to filling the hole in his life that the loss of the estate had left.
He’d not been able to return home for fifteen years. His father had made it clear that he wasn’t welcome in his home or in his life. Even after his dad’s second marriage had broken down, when it had turned out that leaving his wife and the mother of his child wasn’t the cure for a midlife crisis that he had expected it to be, Fraser had not gone back. How could he when his father had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want him in his life?
So he had taken the heartbreaking decision to wait until the land was his before he returned.
But if he had a child... That would change everything. Because that child had every right to know its inheritance. Its place in the world. On their land. How could he deny him or her that?
‘Are you going to say anything?’ Elspeth asked, breaking into his thoughts at last.
He met her gaze and saw that it had hardened even further—he hadn’t thought that was possible. But he could understand why. He’d barely said a word since she’d dropped her bombshell. He needed time to take this in. Surely she could understand that.
‘I’m sorry. I’m in shock,’ he said. Following that up with the first thing that had popped into his head. ‘We were careful...’
‘Not careful enough, it seems.’
Her voice was like ice, cutting into him, and he knew that it had been the wrong thing to say. He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know.
Fraser shook his head. He’d never expected to be so unlucky. Nor had Elspeth, from the look on her face.
