because she loved him when every conversation they had seemed to end like this? When it was only on a physical level that the two of them seemed to find any compatibility at all?
‘Here.’
She turned to find Nick holding out the ring box from last night.
Her expression darkened as she looked at it. ‘I told you—I don’t want it,’ she said forcefully. Not even to convince her parents of their relationship could she wear that—that insult of a ring!
Nick sighed heavily. ‘Will you just take the damned box, Hebe? So that I can use both hands to drive?’ He rasped his impatience with her stubbornness.
She took the box gingerly from his fingers.
‘Don’t just look at it—open it!’ Nick bit out irritably.
She gave him another frowning glance before opening it. Inside was a thin gold band supporting a medium-sized yellow stone surrounded by six smaller diamonds…
‘It’s a yellow sapphire,’ Nick told her abruptly. ‘The colour reminded me of your eyes.’
Tears instantly stung those eyes. Something else she had discovered about pregnancy was that tears came all too easily. In fact, emotions altogether came all too easily.
This ring was delicately beautiful—exactly the sort of ring she would have picked herself, given the choice.
And Nick had chosen a yellow sapphire because it matched the colour of her eyes.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she told him breathlessly.
‘Then put it on,’ he encouraged.
She took the ring from the box and slid it onto the third finger of her left hand. It was a perfect fit.
She looked up at him shyly. ‘Did you manage to get your money back on the other one?’
‘I didn’t even try,’ he drawled ruefully. ‘I’m keeping it for our tenth wedding anniversary. Or the birth of our fourth child—whichever comes first!’
Fourth child…?
Nick spoke about this marriage as if it would be a permanency rather than an expediency.
Something until this moment Hebe hadn’t thought he meant it to be at all.
‘It really is a lovely ring, Nick. Thank you,’ she told him softly.
‘You’re actually going to accept this one?’ He frowned.
‘Of course.’ Her voice was huskier than ever.
‘Hey, you aren’t crying, are you…?’ he prompted uncertainly a couple of seconds later, when he obviously heard the sob she had tried so hard to suppress.
She was crying. The threatening tears had finally cascaded hotly down her cheeks. They were impossible to control, it seemed.
Nick was going to think she was an idiot, an emotional fool—crying over a ring.
But it wasn’t just about the ring.
It was everything. The enormity of her pregnancy. Nick’s insistence that she marry him. The uncertainty of what their future together might bring.
Apart from the four children Nick seemed to have planned!
Nick took another hard glance at her before pulling the car over to the side of the country road they were travelling along, putting it in neutral before turning fully in his seat to look at her. ‘I guess we can make it three children if the idea of four scares you this much!’ he chided, and he took her in his arms.
His teasing just seemed to make her cry all the harder.
Was he ever going to do or say something that didn’t reduce this woman to anger or tears? When she was like this, she looked so vulnerable, and all he could think about was protecting her.
He didn’t remember Sally being this emotional—not even when she had been expecting Luke…
‘You aren’t going to convince your parents of anything except that I beat you, if we turn up at their place with you looking all red and blotchy from crying,’ he drawled.
He was rewarded by a choked laugh as Hebe raised her face to look at him.
Looking decidedly unred and unblotchy, her face was still beautiful in spite of her tears. Nick felt as if he could drown in those misty golden eyes.
But drowning in her beautiful eyes would do him no damned good at all, he told himself firmly, before releasing her to move back behind the wheel and restart the engine, his expression grimly set as he began the last ten miles or so of their journey.
Keep your eye on the ball, Nick, he taunted himself.
Hebe wasn’t marrying him because she loved him. This wasn’t a love-match at all. She was expecting his baby, and in return she would want certain things from him. That was it.
Fifteen minutes later, when he met Hebe’s parents he learnt exactly why she had been so concerned about their reaction to the two of them.
Henry Johnson was a tall, thin, slightly stooped figure—a retired history professor at Cambridge University, no less—and his wife Jean was the sort of round, homely woman whose husband and child were her whole world, who had made a home for them that was as warm and welcoming as she was herself.
There was no way this couple would ever understand the sort of marriage that he and Hebe were going to have!
‘Oh, darling Hebe, how wonderful!’ her mother said tearfully when Hebe showed her the engagement ring.
Her father gave her a bear hug. ‘You might have brought Nick home to meet us earlier than this,’ he chided, but affectionately rather than in genuine rebuke. ‘The owner of the Cavendish Gallery, no less,’ he added, slightly dazed.
‘My fault, sir,’ Nick assured him as the two men shook hands. ‘It’s all happened so quickly. Hebe just knocked me off my feet the first time I saw her!’ Literally, as he remembered it!
Henry nodded, as if he perfectly understood how that could happen to a man where his beautiful daughter was concerned.
They were a little older than Nick had expected—both of them in their sixties, he would guess. That meant Henry and Jean must have been in their late thirties when they’d adopted Hebe. Nick wondered why they had left it so late to decide that was what they were going to do.
The ubiquitous English answer to any occasion, a cup of tea, soon appeared—though Henry was profusely apologetic that they didn’t have any champagne to toast the happy couple with.
Nick saw Hebe flinch at the description. So much for his assurances that he would behave as if they were a happy couple; Hebe looked as if she was about to burst out with the truth at any moment, and damn the consequences…
‘Tea is fine, sir,’ he assured the older man as he took his cup and saucer. ‘Hebe can’t drink
