Blind-Date Baby (13 page)

Grace walked down the High Street in the clear fresh sunshine that only came with a gentle English summer’s day. It was too nice to spend the morning cooped up in little boutiques, looking for ever more cocktail dresses to wear to Noah’s writing bashes, so she kept walking and made for the common. The wind was blowing the long grass flat, first this direction and then that. She chose one of the paths of short grass that had probably marked the common for hundreds of years and followed it.

The school holidays were still a couple of weeks away and it was relatively quiet, with only the playground a source of noise. She chose a bench on the far side of the common, with a view of the pretty little church, far enough away from both the Tiger’s Head pub and the playground to be quiet and to have very little traffic. The sun was just peeping over the tops of the houses, sending vanilla rays to warm everything, and she just sat back and closed her eyes, drinking it in.

Despite the practically idyllic surroundings, tears gathered beneath her lids and pushed their way between her lashes to
trickle down her cheeks. She smudged them away with her palms. Damn this PMT. It wasn’t helping things at all, it really wasn’t.

Since relaxing seemed to be beyond her, she decided to look in her diary and check when this hormone-induced dementia was likely to be relieved. She pulled the little book out of her handbag on the seat beside her and flicked through the pages until she found the current week. Then she went back a week and stared at that page. No, that couldn’t be right. And then she flipped back another week.

According to her diary, she was—she counted the days with her finger, flipping over onto the current page—thirteen days late.

Late. And not one or two days—thirteen!

Still, she’d never been like clockwork. It was probably just stress. There’d been times when she’d been so stressed that her cycle had gone completely out of whack. However, in recent years, she’d never had a reason to worry that it had been anything
but
stress.

Stop being so overdramatic! There weren’t any other symptoms—such as the overwhelming urge for anything starchy like she’d had when she’d been expecting Daisy. This was just panic talking. Any time now, her period would start and she’d laugh at herself for even considering that…

She flipped back to the pages to when she’d been in Paris. Okay, so that would have been slap-bang in the middle of her cycle, but it didn’t mean anything. They’d been careful. Okay, considering she’d been very
careless
with her heart, careful probably wasn’t a good word to use in connection with Noah, but they’d used protection. She was just worrying over nothing.

Grace put the diary back in her bag and stood up. There was a late-opening chemist three doors down from The Coffee Bean. No, where The Coffee Bean had once been. She’d just pop in. Not that she really needed to. It was just that, with ev
erything else in her life at the moment, she really didn’t need one more thing to keep her tossing and turning at night.

Grace sneaked into the kitchen late that night, Daisy’s laptop under her arm. Noah had dozed off in front of a war film on telly. She logged onto Blinddatebrides.com and sent up a prayer that, even though it wasn’t their usual day to chat, Dani and Marissa would be online.

Grace looked at the little header she normally glossed over and laughed out loud. Blinddatebrides.com, indeed! Not only had she found a groom, but she’d come away from one of their set-ups with a little more than she’d bargained for.

She sent an email SOS out to the girls and waited.

Grace inhaled, breathed out and waited. By the time she was just starting to run out of oxygen, there was a ping from the laptop.

A second ping announced Dani’s arrival.

Grace looked down at her stomach. There was another thing that would be getting bigger shortly. Here goes, she thought.

Once again, she’d stunned them into silence. If there were awards for that kind of thing, Grace was sure she’d get a medal.

Grace stared at the home pregnancy test she’d propped up by the laptop screen, just to make sure she hadn’t been seeing things. Tests had moved on quite a lot since she’d last taken one and now they were practically idiot-proof, no faint little blue or pink lines to count, just a big digital screen reading: PREGNANT. It might as well have added,
You, Dummy!
The pregnancy tests might be idiot-proof, but the people who needed them obviously weren’t. Why else would a forty-year-old woman have got herself into a situation better suited to a reckless teenager?

Grace sagged. She had no idea if Noah had ever had any thoughts about becoming a parent. They’d both just assumed it wouldn’t be part of the package. And that had been fine with her, but now—even though Dani was right, she was scared witless—part of her was desperate to make it part of the package and hope that Noah would agree. Maybe a baby would help. He couldn’t help but break out of his cold, tight little shell with a son or a daughter to love.

God bless Marissa and Dani. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps her dreams could come true.

But then reality slapped her round the face and made her sit up.

Dreams. She’d just got used to thinking about having some of those. A new career. Time to herself. They were just going to have to go on hold for another eighteen years or so. If she wasn’t so confused about how to tell Noah, about what to tell Noah, she’d be in fits of laughter. Oh, the irony of it—the empty-nester who’d finally gathered up the courage to find her wings suddenly had another chick to hatch.

Noah woke the next morning to find Grace stroking his thigh, a naughty little smile on her face. He grinned back at her. This was better. In recent weeks Grace had been less and less like herself, and the last few days she’d been positively testy. Whatever had been bothering her was obviously dealt with.

He didn’t mind forgoing his morning run for a little bit of exercise with Grace, not one little bit.

Afterwards, when they were wrapped round each other and he was starting to doze, she lifted her head from his chest and looked at him.

‘Are you happy, Noah?’

He nodded. Yes, he was. Not just in the afterglow of great sex, but with his life generally. There’d been a few hiccups at the beginning of their marriage—teething problems, he supposed—but now it looked as if things were back on track.

She sat up a little so she could focus on his face properly and he rolled over a little to face her. She licked her lower lip and then stuck her thumbnail in her mouth. After nibbling it
for a few seconds, a tiny frown deepening between her eyebrows, she pulled it out again.

‘I have some news,’ she finally said.

His eyebrows raised. ‘Good news or bad news?’

‘Um…Depends very much on how you feel about it.’

‘Well, why don’t you tell me what it is and I will tell you how I feel about it?’ he said in a voice as smooth as clotted cream.

‘You’ll tell me how you really feel?’

‘Yes.’ Or at least he’d tell her what he thought. That would just have to do.

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m pregnant.’

The world seemed to freeze for a second and, when it got going again, he was sure it was revolving in the wrong direction.

‘I’m sorry?’

Grace pulled the sheet up over her chest and held it with clenched fists. ‘We’re going to have a baby. I’m pregnant.’

A baby? How was that…? When had they…?

‘But…how could you be? We used—’

Grace lost her forlorn expression and became a bit more like the sassy woman he’d gone on a blind date with. ‘Only ninety-eight per cent effective. It says so on the box.’

‘But…’

‘You said you were going to tell me how you feel.’

He blinked. Something instinctive rushed through Noah. Something primal, fierce and protective. But he didn’t know what to call it. And it terrified the life out of him. She didn’t really want to know that, did she? That he was feeling strange things—especially fear. That wouldn’t help at all.

And that wasn’t actually what she’d been asking. She’d be cross with him if he was brutally honest. Just like Sara always had been. Damn these women and their subtexts.

He got out of bed and put on his robe, tying the knot just a little too tightly for comfort. So he retied it, looser this time. He needed to process this, to understand this strange tug
inside him. Anchoring it in something real, in facts and figures, might help.

‘Do you know when we got…erm…?’

‘Pregnant is the word you’re looking for, Noah.’

Grace gathered the sheet around her and stood up too. That was the first time she’d done that. She’d never bothered hiding her body from him before, not even right at the beginning.

‘Paris, I think. What difference does it make?’

Somehow it helped to know, to analyse. To work out where the turning point had been, the moment at which everything had changed, even if he hadn’t realised it at the time. It was the way he looked at his characters, understood what was happening to them. Perhaps it would help him to understand what he was feeling, this new thing that made his eyes prickle and his heart pump. Was he going to cry? He never cried.

A look of exquisite pain passed across Grace’s features.

‘Come here,’ he said, opening his arms.

Grace looked wary but she shuffled over to him, the sheet tangling in her feet, and let him hold her. He could feel her breath moist against his chest.

‘Don’t worry.’ He smoothed her hair with the flat of his hand, long strokes that travelled down her shoulders and onto her back. ‘We can deal with this. We’ll work through this.’

And then he laid a kiss on the top of her head and stepped back.

‘I need to…I think I’ll…I’m going for a run.’

We’ll work through this?

Grace stared at the bedroom door with her mouth open. He’d made it sound as if this was a problem with their taxes or a lost passport. She’d told him they were going to have a baby and he’d gone for a run? Unbelievable!

She sat down on the edge of the bed and folded the sheet around her.

What a difference from when she’d told Rob they were expecting Daisy. It had been only days before their first wedding anniversary, and Rob had whooped with joy when she’d told him. He’d picked her up and swung her round, only to stop and place her on the sofa as if she were delicate porcelain. He’d apologised a dozen times and kissed her twenty more before phoning everyone he knew to brag.

Grace twisted the sheet between her fists. What was it with her new husband? What was he afraid of? That she’d have less time for him? Was he jealous? She just didn’t get it.

Her hands wandered to her stomach. Not exactly flat, but as flat as a woman her age was likely to have. Almost twenty years would separate her two children, but she was as connected now to the tiny life inside her that was only a bundle of promise as she was to the one outside her who was fulfilling that promise by exploring her potential. And it was an even greater joy finding out this time, because she knew all the wonderful times waiting for her in the future.