The Best Man for the Job

NINE


But Marcus knew that he’d lied. Unwittingly perhaps, but he’d lied nonetheless, because he didn’t think they were doing the right thing at all.

Sitting with Celia in his kitchen and talking it through, he’d been convinced that going along with whatever she wanted was the only course of action he had any right to take.

But the conversation had clearly opened some kind of cupboard in his head into which he’d stuffed everything he’d told himself to block out because she’d left and within minutes his head had filled with everything he’d not allowed himself to think about.

As a result, thoughts had been ricocheting round his brain for the past three days, messy and jumbled, but all pointing to the conclusion that he thought they were making a mistake.

He couldn’t explain it. He shouldn’t want a child. His current lifestyle—which he worked hard at and enjoyed—wasn’t conducive to one. His arguments for terminating the pregnancy had been extremely valid, and God knew all the reasons Celia had put forward were ones he could understand.

Then there was the indisputable fact that he didn’t want to be tied to anyone, least of all someone who had a problem with the way he lived—and what greater tie was there than a child?

And finally there was the deep-rooted fear that history would repeat itself and he wouldn’t make it past his child’s seventeenth birthday, and dread of the possible fallout from that.

Yet all he had to do was see a mental image of him holding his child in his arms and something inside him melted. When the mental image of Celia holding his child in her arms came to him, he melted even more. And as he wasn’t someone who melted, ever, the feeling was both bewildering and alarming.

Rationally he knew that if she had the baby his life—and hers—would become horribly complicated and messy and fraught with tension. There’d be logistics to sort out, all kinds of obstacles to negotiate and endless arguments over decisions that would have to be made.

But none of that seemed to be of much importance.

Instead, whenever he thought about having an actual child he was assailed by memories of his own childhood. The love and attention his parents had lavished on him. The days out. The walks, the trips to the zoo, the beach. The holidays. The happy little unit they’d been before he’d hit adolescence and become a normal moody teenager.

Logically he was aware there must have been tough times and his childhood couldn’t have been hearts and flowers every second, but all his memory chose to focus on were the happy ones.

Logic also told him that his and Celia’s situation was about as far from the situation into which he’d been born as it was possible to get, but that didn’t seem to matter. He wanted to be the kind of father to his child that his father had been to him. He wanted to be the kind of father who lived to see his child grow up. He wanted to be a father full stop. As they emerged from the clinic where they’d just had an appointment with the doctor to whom Celia’s GP had referred her the feeling he had that what they were doing was dreadfully wrong was even stronger.

The sight of all those children’s drawings papering the walls of the waiting room—which seemed so insensitive it had to be deliberate, as if testing the strength of the decision made by the people who’d wait there—had practically torn his heart out.

When they’d gone into the appointment itself and the ultrasound had shown a heartbeat, all he’d been able to think through the fog in his head was that that tiny little fetus was his child. His child. A weird kind of force had slammed into him, something that was instinctive, primal and surely had a lot to do with evolution, making his entire body shake with the strength of it.

And when the doctor had explained the procedure she recommended, his stomach had curdled and his chest had felt as if it had a band around it, squeezing tighter and tighter until he felt as though he could barely breathe. By the time she was through he’d just wanted to drag Celia the hell out of there.

Not that Celia had seemed in any way as affected by the appointment. She’d sat there, a bit pale, yes, but calm and composed, asking questions in a cool voice that suggested she was still as sure as she’d ever been and wasn’t suffering anywhere near the kind of mental turmoil he was.

But what could he do about it?

He’d told her he was fine with the decision she’d made. He’d convinced himself it was the right thing to do, and he still stood by that. With his head, at least, which knew that he had to be fair and not put her in an even more difficult position.

His heart, however, was wondering if he could let her go through with it without at least telling her how he felt. If he could live with himself if he didn’t at least mention it.

With the battle still raging in his head, he held the door to the street open for Celia and then followed her out. He spied a pub across the road and thought that never had he seen a place more welcome.

‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, shoving his hands through his hair as if that might wipe the past half an hour from his memory, ‘but after that I could do with a drink. What do you say?’

When she didn’t answer, he stopped. Turned. To see her standing on the pavement looking pale, drawn and miserable.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, which had to be the dumbest question of the century because she obviously wasn’t all right at all.

‘Not really.’ Her voice was rough. Cracked. Filled with despair.

‘What’s wrong?’

Her eyes welled up, her chin began to tremble and she clamped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God,’ she mumbled, and it sounded as if the words were being wrenched from somewhere deep inside her.


‘What is it?’ he asked, his heart hammering with alarm and who knew what else.

‘I’m so sorry, Marcus,’ she said wretchedly, ‘but I don’t think I can go through with it.’

And then, just as he was identifying that something else as hope, relief and a crazy kind of elation, and just as he was thinking that however complicated things were going to be he’d do his damnedest to make sure they’d be all right, she burst into tears.

* * *

Celia barely noticed Marcus taking her arm and making for the garden that filled the middle of the square. She was too busy crying like the baby that up until she’d seen the ultrasound she’d been so convinced she didn’t want and making a complete mess of the handkerchief he’d thrust in her hand with a muffled curse.

He sat her down on a bench, wrapped a warm, solid arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him, murmuring that everything would be all right, and that just made her burst into a fresh bout of weeping.

What was she doing? she wondered desperately as she collapsed against him and sobs racked her body. Why was she crying? She never cried. Not even when she’d graduated top of her year and her father hadn’t bothered to turn up to the ceremony had she shed a tear.

Maybe it was the stress of everything that had happened lately. The exhaustion of working so hard. The terror that she was falling apart and the relief to learn she wasn’t. The shock of finding out she was pregnant. Being utterly convinced she wanted to have an abortion and then being knocked sideways by the thundering sensation that she didn’t. Or maybe it was just her hormones going mental.

Whatever it was she couldn’t seem to stop it. Tears leaked from her eyes, drenching the front of his shirt, her throat was sore and her muscles ached, and while she completely lost it Marcus just sat there calmly holding her, supporting her, comforting her in a way she’d never have expected.

Why wasn’t he running a mile? Surely tears weren’t his thing. Why hadn’t he bundled her in a taxi and sent her home? She must be mortifying him. She was certainly mortifying herself. She’d thought that the night of Lily’s dinner party when he’d come over to her flat, clapped eyes on her and his jaw had dropped in absolute horror was about as low as she could get, but this sank even lower. Her eyes would be puffy, her nose red and her skin blotchy, but that was nothing compared to the fact that by breaking down like this she was being so pathetic, so weak, acting so out of character.

And while the thought of falling apart in front of any man was distressing enough, to do so in Marcus’ arms was enough to crush her completely.

Yet he didn’t seem at all fazed by either her dramatic declaration on the pavement outside the clinic or her subsequent watery collapse. He was coping magnificently.

Surprisingly magnificently actually.

Although maybe it wasn’t all that surprising, because now she thought about it he’d taken everything that had happened over the past week or so totally in his stride. He’d dealt with it all far better than she’d have imagined. Far better than she had, she thought, realising with relief that finally she seemed to be running out of tears.

As the sobs subsided and the tears dried up, she sniffed. Hiccuped. Then drew in a ragged breath. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her mouth muffled by his chest.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’ His words rumbled beneath her ear, the vibrations making her shiver.

Fighting the odd urge to snuggle closer, she unclenched her fingers from his shirt and drew back, wincing when she saw the black mascara smudges all over him. ‘I do. I’ve ruined your shirt.’

He removed his arm from her shoulders and gave her a faint smile. ‘I have others.’

His gaze roamed over her face and she went warm beneath his scrutiny. Squirmed a bit because the man was used to being surrounded by women who were gorgeous and heaven only knew what she looked like. A wreck most probably. But she could hardly whip out her mirror to check and rectify the damage. Not when presumably there was an important conversation about to be had. Like—

‘Did you mean what you said back there?’ he asked quietly, and she suddenly felt as if she were sitting on thorns.

Yup, like that.

She pushed her hair back and swallowed in an effort to alleviate the ache in her throat that might have been left over from her crying jag or might be down to the doubts now hammering through her. ‘About not wanting to go through with it?’ she asked, mainly to give her a moment to compose herself.

‘Yes.’

His eyes were dark, his face once again unreadable, but there was an air of tension about him that told her it mattered. Well, of course it did. She’d probably just turned his life upside down, very possibly on the basis of a mere wobble.

She swallowed, her heart thumping as she tried to unravel the mess in her head. ‘Maybe,’ she said, rubbing her temples. ‘I don’t know.’

She wasn’t lying. She didn’t know, because she couldn’t work it out. What on earth had happened back there? She’d been so sure she had it all figured out. That the course of action she’d started on was the right one.

Logically she thought that still. But emotionally...well, emotionally, she was all over the place, and had been pretty much ever since they’d turned up at the clinic.

She’d sat in that doctor’s office, listening to what she’d said as if hearing the words through a wall of soup, and weirdly and worryingly her resolve had begun to weaken. And then the doctor had done an ultrasound and it had drained away completely.

How could everything she’d spent so long analysing be thrown on its head by one tiny little pulse fluttering at a hundred and sixty beats a minute? It didn’t make any sense.

‘I mean, it was fine when I thought it was just a bundle of cells or something,’ she said, aware that Marcus was waiting for her to explain. ‘But seeing the heartbeat...’ She tailed off because how could she ever even begin to describe the feelings that had pummelled through her, and, in any case, why would he even want her to try?

‘I know,’ he said gruffly.

‘And before that, all those pictures...’

‘I understand.’

‘It set something off inside me. Something instinctive.’ She shrugged as if it were nothing but a minor blip, forced a smile to her face and shoved aside her doubts. ‘But don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll pass.’

It had to, didn’t it? Because she couldn’t change her mind. She’d told him that she thought abortion was for the best and he’d agreed. He’d been quite firm about that. How selfish of her would it be to back out now and land him with the kind of commitment that lasted a lifetime, the kind he clearly didn’t want?

He frowned. ‘You really think so?’

Her throat went tight but she nodded. ‘Of course. I mean, what the hell was I thinking? I can’t have a baby.’

‘Why not?’

Huh?

She stared at him, faintly taken aback. Had he forgotten the conversation they’d had only three days ago? ‘We talked about this, remember?’

‘We talked about why not having a baby was a good idea. We didn’t discuss option number one at all.’

‘No, well, we didn’t need to. We were in agreement.’

‘I have a feeling we still are.’

She blinked, a bit baffled by that. ‘What?’

He looked at her intently, his eyes glinting, his jaw set with a determination she’d never seen before. ‘Tell me why you think you can’t have it.’


‘Because I love my job. I want the partnership. I deserve it. It’s what I’ve been working towards.’ Hadn’t they been through this already?

‘Plenty of other women have children and a demanding job, don’t they?’

‘Of course they do.’

‘So why not you?’

‘It’s not that simple, Marcus,’ she said, wondering how he’d forgotten about all the other reasons they’d come up with for why having this baby would be a bad idea.

‘Isn’t it?’

Exasperation slid through her. What was he trying to do here? Did he want her to change her mind? That didn’t make any sense at all. ‘You know it isn’t.’

‘OK, well, let’s look at it hypothetically.’

‘Hypothetically?’

He nodded. ‘We didn’t discuss it before, but I think we should now.’

‘Isn’t it a bit late?’

He shook his head. ‘Now’s the perfect time,’ he said. ‘So, hypothetically, if you’d decided to go with option one, what would you have planned to do when the baby was born?’

Worryingly and interestingly enough, she didn’t even have to think about it all that hard. ‘I’d have gone back to work,’ she said, her heart beating fast and her head swimming for a second at what that might mean. ‘Possibly hired a nanny. Maybe roped in my dad. He’s been banging on about grandchildren long enough, and he’s about to retire so presumably he’d have been prepared to step up to the plate. And Mum would have helped too, I’m sure. Hypothetically speaking, of course,’ she added hastily, because it was a scenario she could now envisage all too clearly but one that could never happen because Marcus didn’t want it to.

He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, staring straight ahead. ‘And where would I have figured in all this?’

‘You wouldn’t have figured at all. Unless you’d wanted to. Which you wouldn’t have because you don’t even want a baby.’

‘Don’t I?’

Her heart squeezed but she ignored it. ‘No.’

‘Assume I do. For the hypothesis.’

Why was he doing this? she wondered, feeling uncharacteristically flustered. Was he making sure she’d thought through everything before going ahead? Or was it something else?

‘OK, fine,’ she said, her brain too frazzled to be able to work it through, ‘but I don’t see it would make any difference, because how could you help?’

‘I could look after the baby when you go back to work.’

She stared at him in surprise. ‘You?’

‘Why not? My time is my own at the moment so it would make perfect sense.’

‘What about your projects?’

‘I can work on them from home.’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t quite know what to make of that. ‘Have you ever changed a nappy?’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘Have you?’

‘Well, no,’ she conceded. ‘But what about when the baby’s six weeks old or something and has been crying non-stop all night and you realise just what you’ve taken on? Would you still want to stick around then?’ And if he didn’t, what would that mean for her career?

‘Of course. Once I start something I don’t give up.’

Except when it came to relationships, she thought, but before she could say anything, he added, ‘And there’s no way I’d give up on my child.’

‘But wouldn’t you mind?’

‘What about?’

‘About what other people might think if you stayed at home looking after a baby while I went back to work, for a start.’

‘I don’t give a crap what other people think.’

Which was admirable, but now it struck her that somewhere along the line this conversation had become less theoretical and more real so she steeled herself and said, ‘But what does any of this matter? It’s all totally irrelevant. Hypothetical.’

‘Right.’ He drew his legs back, sat bolt upright and swivelled so he was facing her, his jaw tight and his eyes practically burning into hers. ‘But what if it wasn’t?’

Her heart skipped a beat and her breath caught. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What if I said I’d changed my mind too?’

‘I haven’t changed—’ She stopped. Stared at him. ‘What?’

‘You heard.’

‘Have you changed your mind?’

He nodded. ‘I have.’

‘You want this baby?’

‘I do.’

She reeled. ‘But how? Why? You said you weren’t fatherhood material and never would be.’

‘I know I did.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing happened. I just wasn’t being entirely honest when I agreed with you that we should go for option number three.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Guilt, mainly.’

She stared at him. ‘Guilt?’

‘It’s my fault you’re pregnant.’

Her heart stumbled for a second. ‘That’s very noble of you, Marcus,’ she said with small smile, ‘but it does take two to tango. And we were careful. No one’s to blame. It’s just one of those things life likes to throw at you to really screw up your plans.’

‘No, it really is. I opened the condom packet with my teeth. I think I might have ripped it.’

It was a possibility, she supposed, but, ‘You don’t know that you did.’

‘Do you have a better explanation?’

‘It could have been anything.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said resolutely. ‘My condom, my application, my fault.’

For a moment she didn’t know what to say. ‘That’s mad,’ she managed eventually. ‘None of this is anyone’s fault.’

He shrugged. ‘I should have been more careful. It’s no excuse, but I wasn’t thinking all that straight at the time.’

‘No. Well, who was?’ said Celia, going warm at the memory.

‘Anyway, because of the guilt I decided that I’d go along with whatever you decided.’

With some difficulty she dragged herself back from the memory of that afternoon. ‘So you lied?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Not exactly,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I simply didn’t allow myself to think about what I wanted in case you wanted something different.’

Nothing simple about that, she thought, as she waded through it all. ‘So given that,’ she said, only about eighty per cent certain she got what he meant because the realisation that had she not said anything he’d have let her go through with it despite wanting the opposite was too much to handle right now, ‘how do I know that your change of heart now doesn’t simply reflect mine?’

Not much point in denying that she had had a change of heart any more, was there? Not when just the thought of holding her child made her heart practically burst from her chest.

‘Because I’ve been having doubts for days.’

‘So you think we should have this baby.’

‘Yes.’

‘But we don’t like each other,’ she said, knowing she was grasping at straws but trying to buy some time to absorb the enormity of where the conversation was heading.

His eyes glittered. Darkened. ‘Don’t we?’

Celia shivered at the heat that flared in his eyes but ignored it because the situation was complicated enough without adding chemistry into the mix.


‘We live miles apart.’

‘So move in with me.’

She gaped at him. On what level would that be a good idea? ‘No.’

‘Then how about into the house next door to me?’

‘What?’

‘I own it. I rent it out, but I can give the tenants notice and you can move in. Rent-free.’

‘No way.’

‘All right. Pay the rent. I don’t mind. But it would be convenient, don’t you think?’

‘You’ve given this some thought.’

‘None at all,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I’m doing this very much on the hoof. But we have resources. Lots of them. The obstacles aren’t insurmountable.’

He was formidable, she thought with a shiver. Determined and assertive and just a little bit overwhelming. Which was odd because a couple of months ago these weren’t words she’d have used to describe him, although presumably he wouldn’t have created a business worth millions if he hadn’t been.

The combination was also very attractive, and she wished she could go back to thinking him laid-back, shallow and debauched because somehow those characteristics seemed a whole lot safer than the ones she’d seen in recent days.

With not a small amount of formidable determination of her own she pushed aside the realisation that she found him way more attractive now than she ever had before and concentrated on the conversation.

‘I have a place of my own,’ she pointed out, telling herself that just because what he suggested made frighteningly good sense it didn’t mean she was ready to abandon her highly valued independence just yet.

‘You have a pristine flat up four flights of stairs and there isn’t a lift. Think about it.’

She did, and at the vision of herself struggling up them with a pushchair could see his point, not that she was going to admit it because the speed with which things were going if she did she could well find herself moved in to his house next door by the end of the week. ‘How did you get to be so practical?’

‘I always have been. You just haven’t noticed.’

Seemed she hadn’t noticed quite a bit. ‘You’re not going to suggest we get married or anything, are you?’ she said, with the arch of an eyebrow and the hint of a grin.

He froze, a look of horror flashing across his face. ‘Do you want me to?’

‘God, no,’ said Celia with a shudder, although part of her wondered what he’d have done if she’d said yes. ‘My parents only married because my mother was pregnant with Dan and look what happened there. And despite the mess they made of things, and the effect it could have had on us, Dan and I have turned out pretty much OK, I think.’

The tension eased from his body and he shot her a quick smile. ‘You turned out more than OK.’

‘Nevertheless,’ she said, going warm and knowing that annoyingly it had little to do with the heat of the midday sun, ‘if we have this child you do know it would tie us together for ever, don’t you?’

‘Only in one respect. We’d still be free to pursue our own interests.’

No need to ask what those interests would be, she thought a bit waspishly as those photos of scantily clad Sardinians flashed into her head and the heat inside her faded. ‘It would seriously cramp your style.’ Not to mention hers, because, even though she didn’t have much of one at the moment, at some point in the future she’d like to meet someone who didn’t think of marriage as a fate worse than death.

‘That’s my problem to worry about.’ He shifted on the bench, and as she caught a trace of his scent she tried not to inhale deeply.

‘With the issue my parents have family parties would be a nightmare.’

‘But manageable.’

‘Do you have an answer for everything?’

‘Not everything.’

‘But most things.’

He gave her the glimmer of a smile. ‘Do you have any other arguments to put forward?’

‘No,’ she said a little dazedly as she thought about it. ‘I appear to have run out.’

‘And?’

She tilted her head and stared at him, noting the dark intensity of his eyes, the set of his jaw, and wondering about both. ‘You really want this, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘For the same reasons you do.’

Hmm. She doubted that, but she was hardly going to probe further. If she did then she’d have to go into her reasons, which she suspected went a lot deeper than the effect of a wall of paintings and an ultrasound.

But whatever his reasons, and however surreal today had been, however they were going to figure it all out, she knew what she wanted beyond the shadow of a doubt. And so, with her heart hammering, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Then I guess we’re going to be parents.’