Her Pregnancy Surprise

www.millsandboon.co.uk

By

‘Y
OU
said
what?’

Even the anonymity of the phone could not disguise the natural authority in his most famous client’s voice or, at that moment, the irritation and astonishment that had crept into the distinctive deep tones.

It had been a good idea
not
to have this particular conversation face to face, decided Malcolm, who was starting to feel uncomfortably like a man stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. Yes, the analogy worked—if his sister was the rock, Luc could easily be considered a hard place.

Eyes slightly narrowed, Malcolm summoned an image of the younger man’s startlingly good-looking face. The sharp jutting cheekbones, an aggressively angular jaw a wide, mobile mouth capable of issuing painfully blunt comments, and deep-set eyes. He gave a mental shudder as he considered those penetrating, spookily pale grey eyes. No doubt about it, Luc definitely constituted a hard place…a
very
hard place!

When Malcolm had initially met the first-time author of the sexy action thriller that had landed on his desk, he hadn’t been able to believe his luck. Luc wasn’t only incredibly photogenic, he was articulate and witty. Malcolm’s visions of women snatching the book off the shelves after they’d seen his new client charming the pants off the public on the chat-show circuit were dashed when the guy had calmly announced that he was a writer, not a salesman.

Luc had spelt out his conditions to Malcolm. He wasn’t available for interviews or photo opportunities; in fact he
wanted to remain anonymous. If the books weren’t good enough to sell on their own merits, so be it.

Malcolm’s argument that one unfortunate experience at the hands of the press was not sufficient reason to make a disastrous business decision had not impressed Luc who, never one to take anyone’s word for anything, had had a clause inserted in his contract.

Malcolm injected a note of desperate
bonhomie
into his voice. ‘I was sure you’d love to come for the weekend so I sort of, well, I…I said you would.’

Perversely the silence that greeted his confession was more nerve-shredding than a tirade of angry abuse might be—Luc didn’t get loud when he was mad.

The words ‘soft but deadly’ sprang unbidden into Malcolm’s head.

‘It’ll all be very casual. No need to dress up. Charming woman, my sister—everyone loves her parties.’

Luc squinted up at the wall he had just painted. It really hadn’t looked that
blue
on the label and the room was north facing…too cold. It would have to go.

‘Have you developed a sense of humour, Mal? Or have you gone totally insane?’ The latter explanation seemed much more likely to Luc.

‘I know how you get after you’ve delivered a book.’

‘Relieved…?’

‘A weekend in the country is just what you need,’ pronounced the editor firmly.

‘I live in the country,’ came the deceptively gentle reminder.

‘No, you live in the back of beyond,’ Malcolm corrected with an audible shudder in his beautifully modulated voice. ‘I’m talking about Sussex; they have pavements there.’

The observation made Luc smile, but Malcolm, on the other end of the line, didn’t have the comfort of seeing the warmth it lent his lean, dark features.

‘Only recently someone persuaded me that what I needed
was a place in town…losing touch with reality, someone said, I seem to recall…? Now who was that? Oh, I remember—
you
!’

‘Good company, excellent food…’ Malcolm had a rare talent for selective deafness, which came in handy at moments like this. ‘You like old things, don’t you…? My brother-in-law was a great collector and they tell me the house is Elizabethan in parts, a moat, the whole thing,’ he finished vaguely before producing his winning argument. ‘Ghosts…!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They have a ghost—several, I expect. Never seen them myself, of course, but…people doing psychical research come to look in the cellar and they open to the public on bank holidays so it must be something special.’

At the other end of the line the thought of the landed gentry brought a disdainful sneer to Luc’s face. Personal experience had not given him a rosy view of the families who had once divided the wealth of the country between them. His father had worked on an estate as a forester until the titled owners had decided to turf him out of his tied cottage.

A job and home lost in one fell swoop, and all his dad had done was tug his forelock respectfully when they had explained that tourists were a more cost-effective way to utilise their resources. It was the meekness, the way he had accepted his fate that had filled Luc, then ten, with seething anger.

He had resolved on the spot that he would never bow and scrape to anyone. This resolve had been hardened into grim resolution as he had watched the defeated droop of his father’s shoulders become permanent over the months that had followed.

He had been more adaptable than his father, who had struggled to fit in the large industrial town they had moved
to. It hadn’t been an accident that he’d lost the country burr that had made him the obvious target of bullies in the inner-city school.

Luc was a survivor.

Malcolm continued. ‘Gilbert left my sister pots of money. Do you shoot, Luc?’

‘Shoot?’
Luc ejaculated in a tone of disgust. ‘What is this—
Gosford Park
?’

‘I meant clays,’ Malcolm hastened to explain amiably.

‘The only thing I shoot are editors who accept invitations on my behalf.’ A spasm of curiosity crossed his handsome face. ‘I’m interested—you knew I wouldn’t agree, so why on earth did you say I would?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t like it, but I just heard myself saying it.’ Impossible of course to make someone like Luc understand. ‘You don’t know my sister,’ Malcolm added darkly. ‘When she wants something she’s relentless, like a dripping tap.’

‘Sounds like a delightful hostess,’ Luc interjected drily.

‘She’s an enormous fan of yours. You’d be treated like royalty, I swear.’

‘I have no desire to be treated as royalty and I would be a major disappointment as a house guest…’

‘As a favour to me…?’ his editor cajoled.

‘She can have an autographed copy of my next book.’

‘She already has one, your signature is really
very
easy to fake.’

Malcolm decided that Luc’s reluctant laugh was a sign the younger man was mellowing and pressed his advantage.

‘Laura’s been on at me for ages about you. Now, with Megan being thirty next month, and the lawyer chap breaking his leg last minute…’ A huge sigh reverberated down the line.

‘Who or what is Megan?’

‘My niece, lovely girl…not married.’

An expression of amused comprehension crossed Luc’s lean face. ‘Am I invited because your sister is looking for a mug to partner her daughter?’

‘Megan is a lovely girl,’ Malcolm protested. ‘Great personality. Takes after her father in the looks department, of course, but you can’t have everything.’

Luc listened in growing amusement to the flow of confidences…from the moment he had walked into Malcolm’s office he had
wanted
to dislike the other man. He represented everything Luc despised, from his accent to his privileged background. Yet Malcolm also possessed charm, he was basically a very likeable guy and, as Luc had learnt, despite his vague attitude, no pushover when it came to business.

‘Do all the members of your family live in a previous century?’

Malcolm Hall’s voice took on an ill-used quality as he responded to this incredulous query. ‘Well, really, Lucas, I don’t think it’s much to ask considering what I’ve done for you. You really can be selfish, do you know that?’ he complained.

Luc didn’t resent the observation; he considered it was essentially true. He didn’t enjoy money for its own sake, but he did enjoy the freedom it gave him. He considered himself a lucky man that doing what he enjoyed enabled him to live life on his terms.

It hadn’t felt like it at the time, but with hindsight Luc recognised that losing his business the way he had had been one of the best things that had happened to him. If it hadn’t been for his embezzling ex-partner he would never have shut himself in a room and worked for three weeks solid on the novel he had always
meant
to finish.

‘I suppose I could tell Laura you have flu…’

‘You can tell
Laura
anything you like, so long as it isn’t I’d love to come to her party.’ He liked Malcolm but that
didn’t mean he had the slightest intention of enduring a weekend being nice to people he had nothing whatever in common with.

It hadn’t required enormous powers of deduction to discover where he lived, just a sneaky look in her uncle’s address book.

Lucas Patrick, the best-selling author of a string of commercial and critically acclaimed novels, resided in the penthouse apartment of a warehouse conversion beside the river, the one that had won a whole bunch of awards the previous year. It was an address that didn’t appear on the flyleaf of his numerous novels, but then neither did a suitably moody-looking black-and-white snapshot of the author.

Was the man genuinely allergic to publicity or was it a clever marketing ploy? Megan was not sure, but what was indisputable was that his point-blank refusal to promote his books had boosted his sales and turned him into an enigmatic hero-type figure not unlike the one that featured in his books. And Uncle Malcolm had been no help; the only thing he had let slip was that his most famous client was single and young.

If, when he went public, the writer turned out in the end to have middle-aged spread or a receding hairline there were going to be a lot of disappointed fans out there, her own mother included! she thought with a wry smile. Megan hoped he was presentable—it would make her idea a lot easier to pull off.

She paused, her finger hovering above the appropriate button, seized by last minute doubts about what she was doing. Last night this had seemed a truly inspired idea. In the cold light of day she didn’t feel quite so confident that she was doing the right thing…she was even starting to wonder if it might not be a little crazy…?

But then desperate circumstances, she reminded herself, called for desperate measures!

What was the worst that could happen…?

Nothing as bad as what was going to happen if she didn’t take some drastic action. Last Easter’s efforts were still indelibly etched in Megan’s mind. It had been totally excruciating and obvious to everybody but the hostess herself that the investment banker she had invited for the weekend as a potential husband for her spinster daughter was gay.

Megan loved her mother dearly, in fact she would have been the perfect parent if it weren’t for her unswerving devotion to marrying off Megan!

Laura Semple had a simple philosophy—no woman could be happy without a man.

The conversation they had had over breakfast that very morning was more or less the same one they’d been having ever since Megan had decided not to marry the ever-so-suitable Brian four years earlier. Brian, who had turned out to be, not caring and protective in a charming, old-fashioned way, but a fully-fledged, possessive control freak who wanted her to account for every minute of her day and who got jealous when she talked to another man—
any
man.

Megan considered herself to have had a lucky escape, a view not shared by her mother.

‘Of course I’m proud of what you’ve achieved, darling, but you can’t tell me you’re happy…not
really
happy.’

‘
You
don’t have a man, Mum.’

‘That,’ Laura rebutted firmly, ‘is not the same thing at all. I’ll never love a man the way I did your father.’

Megan saw the tears in her mother’s eyes before she turned her head.

‘There are lots of different loves.’ Her own throat thickened with emotion as she gently squeezed her mother’s hand. ‘And actually I am happy.’

Her claim met with polite but open scepticism.

‘I
promise
you, Mum, I’m perfectly content.’

‘“Content” is a very middle-aged word, Megan,’ her mother disapproved with a sigh.

‘Maybe I’m one of those people that are born middle-aged…?’

‘Oh, I know you put a brave face on it,’ Laura continued, ignoring this flippant interjection. ‘But, no matter what they say, no woman is totally fulfilled without a man.’

Megan bit her tongue and carried on smiling, past experience had taught her it was a waste of breath to argue this particular point.

‘In your case a strong man I think,’ Laura mused. ‘One who isn’t intimidated by your brains. Now
Lucas Patrick
doesn’t sound to me like a man who is likely to lack confidence. The way he coped when his plane went down in the Andes…’

‘That was his hero. He writes
fiction,
Mother,’ Megan reminded her parent. ‘He doesn’t spend his life scaling impregnable peaks, busting international drug cartels or fighting off beautiful women who want to ravish him.’

‘I am perfectly able to distinguish fact from fiction,’ her mother retorted with dignity. ‘But your uncle says he’s scrupulous about his research and he
never
asks his hero to do anything he hasn’t himself.’

‘I seriously doubt if that includes crash-landing a plane and walking away without a scratch,’ Megan muttered under her breath, then added in a louder voice, ‘And the fact is you wouldn’t know him from the man who delivers the milk. He’ll probably turn out to be a regular anorak.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘And why on earth is he coming to one of your country weekends…?’

‘I was a man short and your uncle Malcolm is his publisher; he’s coming along with him. Well, he
was
—it turns out your uncle can’t make it, but he says that Lucas is looking forward enormously to meeting us.’

‘So you’ve only Uncle Malcolm’s word that he’s coming…?’ In her experience, to stop his sister nagging her uncle would promise literally anything. ‘Was Uncle Malcolm sober at the time…?’

‘Don’t be rude,’ Laura reprimanded. ‘And if you possess a skirt, pack it for the weekend, dear, do. You have very pretty legs—in fact you really are a very pretty girl, or would be if you took a little more effort. First impressions
do
count, Megan.’