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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHE PULLED THE coffee table back to give him room to stretch his legs, and put a cup of herbal tea in front of him, sitting down at the far end of the sofa. Honey for sweetness. Biscuits, in case the need for calories threatened to make either of them cranky. Soothing lighting and a couple of candles in the fireplace, just in case Greg decided that their future together was a matter of romance, not business.
‘So. You said you’d been thinking.’ His eyes were dark, unreadable in the flickering light.
‘I have. You want to hear it?’
‘Always, Jess.’
Promising start. Now the difficult part. The only way that she could do this was to try to divorce herself from the heady feelings of love and the terrifying dread of loss that came with all of her dealings with Greg. ‘This baby… You… ’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is your child. I know that we took precautions… ’
‘Precautions fail, Jess. I never doubted for one minute that the child is mine.’
‘Not even a minute?’ They’d always used condoms. Sometimes a little hurried, their minds always on other things, but they’d been careful. Jess had thought they were being responsible.
‘No. I won’t say that I didn’t think about it, but… ’ he waved away any doubts that he may have had, as if they were nothing ‘… I trust you. There’s no percentage failure rate on that.’
Warmth swelled in her chest, and Jess found herself smiling. ‘Thank you. That’s a really nice thing to say.’ This was going better than she’d dared hope.
‘So what else?’ He leaned back on the sofa, as if he had all the time in the world. So different from usual. The way he might have been all the time if no one had thought to create Shaw Industries, or laptops, or email accounts.
She was trembling. The only way she knew how to do this was to pitch straight in. ‘You have a right to a relationship with your child and I won’t deny you that.’
‘Okay.’ A hint of suspicion crept across his face. ‘Were you thinking about trying?’
‘No!’ She’d lost her way already in the maze of possibilities and emotions. ‘Of course not. I didn’t mean that at all. That’s what I want too. I’m just trying to say that I won’t ask anything from you that you don’t want to give.’
‘Understood.’ He was obviously suspending judgement until he had the full story.
‘And for Rosa and Ted, too. If they want an involvement… I mean, they have a right to a loving relationship with their grandchild. I’ll do all I can to make sure that happens.’ Jess could think about how she was going to accomplish that later.
He seemed to loosen up a little. ‘Thanks. I think I can speak for them both in saying that they’ll really welcome that. And that they’ll really appreciate the fact that you thought to suggest it.’
‘Well, those family recipes are too good to waste.’ She grinned at him, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
Greg chuckled. ‘Consider that done.’
‘That’s great.’ They were getting somewhere.
‘And how do you feel about me, then?’
His face was grave again. He’d picked up on the one thing that Jess couldn’t make sense of, and asked the one question that she couldn’t answer. Her imagination seemed only to stretch to two at a time. She and Greg. She and the baby. Three was a difficult and unmanageable number.
‘How do you feel?’
He turned his dark gaze on her. As soft as silk and as demanding as any woman could ever want. ‘I’ll answer, even if you won’t. This is my child too, and I want to be a proper father. I have the resources to give our child everything.’
What was that feeling of panic doing, quivering in her stomach? Wasn’t that what every mother wanted to hear? ‘I don’t need your money, Greg. I’ve always provided for myself and nothing’s changed. When I said that I’d welcome your involvement, I meant some of your time. Your love.’ Maybe she’d gone a bit too far there. ‘For the baby, I mean.’
‘Not for you?’ His eyes dared her to say yes.
‘It’s not me we’re talking about here.’
He let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. ‘What happened to being honest about how we feel, Jess? Are you going to tell me that you’re sleeping with me but that you don’t expect me to care about you? It’s all just for kicks, is it?’
She couldn’t break that faith. The trust that showed in his eyes and that she felt in her heart when he made love to her. ‘You know it’s more than that, Greg.’ Of course he did. She could see it in his face right now. ‘Although I don’t discount the kicks. They’re pretty good, too.’
‘You’ve got a point. Why don’t you come over here?’
