AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘You’re marrying your son’s father,’ he said laconically.
‘A man they don’t know from Adam.’
‘Who’s Adam?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s an expression. I mean, you’re just some guy who...’
‘Yes?’
She flicked her gaze to him and then looked away again. Ridiculously, she felt uncomfortable addressing the truth of what had happened between them. ‘Who got me pregnant and disappeared into thin air.’
She wasn’t looking at him, so didn’t see the way his features tightened as though he’d been slapped. She didn’t see the way a muscle jerked in his jaw and his eyes focused more intently on her face. ‘I presume they think the worst of me.’
She shrugged. ‘Can you blame them?’
‘No.’ The forcefulness of his word had her looking at him once more. ‘If we had a daughter and this was her fate—’
‘My fate wasn’t so bad,’ she said with a small grimace. ‘I got Leo, remember?’
Matthias didn’t acknowledge her comment. ‘If I had known there was even the slightest chance of you having conceived that night, things would have been very different.’
‘Different how?’
‘I wouldn’t have missed a moment of his life,’ he said, the words rich with emotion. Foolish hurt dipped in Frankie’s gut—hurt that it was Leo alone he would have wished to see and support. Hurt that a desire to spend more time with her didn’t enter into it, when she had pined for his touch, for his smile, for months.
‘We can’t change the past,’ she said softly.
‘Nor can we secure the future. But here, in this moment, I promise you, Frankie, this is not how I would have wanted things to be. You shouldn’t have had to do this alone. If I could miraculously turn time backwards and change this, I would. With all of myself, I would...’
She swallowed, looking up at him, and she could feel the truth of his regret, his remorse, his desire to have been a part of this from the beginning.
‘I know.’
He stared at her, long and hard, and though he didn’t speak it was as though his gaze was asking a question of her: did she really understand that? Did she really believe that he was not the kind of man to abandon a young, pregnant woman? Did she know how deeply abhorrent that was to him?
And then, as though he saw her answer, he saw her acceptance of his innocence, he nodded. As though a switch had been flicked, he became a man of action. A king. A ruler. A man without doubt and self-recriminations. ‘I will call your parents and explain.’
Frankie let out a laugh. ‘You’ve never even met my parents!’
His eyes glowed with intent. ‘I am the man you’re going to marry, the man who fathered their grandson, even if I haven’t been any kind of a father to him. I owe it to them to explain my absence, and how I intend to remedy that.’
‘Hang on.’ She laughed again and was surprised to find true amusement spinning through her. His eyes clung to her smile and her heart turned over, sobering her. ‘You’re not...this isn’t...you’re not a character in a Jane Austen novel. Nor am I, for that matter. I don’t need you to go to my dad and ask for permission.’
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. ‘It is a mark of respect.’
‘Respect me,’ she said, ‘and my wishes, and my parents will be okay.’
‘I owe them an explanation...’
‘You owe me an explanation, not them, and you’ve given me one. I understand. I forgive you. They’re nothing to do with this.’
‘It is important to me that your parents understand I had no idea you were pregnant.’
‘They know that,’ she said quietly. ‘What do you think I said to them?’
At this, he was very still, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have painted a picture of him to her family at all. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I told them you were an amazing man, who I couldn’t contact. I told them we didn’t plan to see each other again, and that it wasn’t your fault I couldn’t find you. I told them I’d tried—they knew about the investigator—but, ultimately, they just feel sorry for you. For what you’ve missed. My parents are...’ She swept her eyes shut for a moment, her childhood and reality hitting her hard in that moment. ‘Being parents meant everything to them. The fact you were deprived of that privilege through life’s circumstances is something they were saddened by. Not angry about.’
