a plane to propose to her and I...I get a joke? She bit down on her quivering lip and thought, I don’t want dramatic gestures. I want one little word—love.
‘I hope you do, Lily.’
She stared, her eyes widening as she searched his face for any sign of deceit. ‘You’re not serious!’ But she could see he was and she felt scared, excited and appalled all at the same time. ‘Why?’
There was only one answer that, to her mind, was a reason for contemplating marriage—it wasn’t the one he gave.
‘I don’t want my daughter to be brought up by another man.’ Keep the woman you love close and the woman you want to convince you love her closer... He thought in all modesty that it worked better than the original he had shamelessly borrowed from.
This comment reduced her excitement levels and brought her crashing down to earth with a bang. ‘You’ve nothing to prove to me, Ben.’ She thought she was concealing her terrible disappointment pretty well. ‘You’re a good father.’
His brows knitted as he struggled to follow her line of argument and understand the odd flatness in her voice. ‘I’m not trying to prove anything.’
She pasted on a smile. ‘We’ve gone way beyond that. The last few weeks you’ve been a rock.’
He gritted his teeth over his frustration at her response. ‘I don’t want to be a rock. I want to be your husband.’
‘No,’ she contradicted. ‘You want to be Emmy’s dad, you want to do the right thing and please your grandfather.’ Say you love me... I’d take a lie, just say it please!
‘What the hell has my grandfather got to do with it?’
‘Are you trying to tell me he doesn’t want you to make an honest woman of me? Tell him you asked and I said no—he can’t blame you for that. Marriage is tough even when people love one another,’ she said, thinking of her twin again, this time not with envy as Lara’s marriage was going through a bad...maybe terminal patch. ‘Without it...?’
She gave another shrug, wondering if his silence meant he was secretly relieved that she had refused. Not that he was showing it—he still seemed pretty tense.
‘I’m glad you’re in Emmy’s life and no matter who I might meet in the future that will not affect your relationship with Emmy. It’s a sweet idea, but no.’
‘Sweet...?’ he echoed, thinking that he would dismember any man who so much as looked at her.
She nodded. ‘Insane, but sweet,’ she said sadly.
‘What about last night?’
She felt her tight control slip a notch and increased the voltage of her smile to compensate. ‘Last night was... We’ve both been living with a lot of stress lately.’
Ironically, if she hadn’t been so passionately in love with him she might have considered his proposal, but feeling the way she did it was impossible. A non-starter. She couldn’t settle for less...she couldn’t live a lie... It would be like dying a little more each day.
‘Look, I know I’ve kind of sprung this on you but after last night there didn’t seem any point waiting.’
Because I’m gagging for it, she thought, keeping her lips firmly clamped over the humiliating thought.
‘All I’m asking is you keep an open mind. The fact is we find ourselves doing things we didn’t think we would all the time. I never thought I’d be a father but I am and it’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.’
Her anger slipped away as his simple sincerity brought a lump to her throat. ‘And you’re really great at it, and I realise that this is because of Emmy, you think that this is right for her but—’
‘Let me be honest.’
Lily could count the number of times on one hand that those words were followed by something that made her feel good—it turned out this time was no exception.
‘I felt as you do, that marriage as a piece of paper was irrelevant.’
Lily stared at him, astonished. Was that what he had heard her say?
‘You were engaged to be married when you slept with me the first time.’
His brows lifted as he struggled to decide if the jealousy he detected in her voice was wishful thinking or actually there. ‘I really wasn’t.’
‘How would she feel if you get married?’
‘Caro!’ he exclaimed, looking astonished. ‘What the hell has it got to do with her?’
Lily lowered her lashes. ‘You’re still best friends.’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Who says?’
Lily’s chin lifted. ‘She does, in the dedication of her new bestseller.’
One of the nurses on the ward had come on duty with a signed copy that she had shown around. The photo on the fly leaf, according to her, did not do the blonde cookery writer justice.
‘That was her idea of a joke. Caro and I were once an item. We were not engaged. That was just a publicity stunt—she was launching a new career. As for best friends, Caro and I have not been in contact since we split up, though she did send me a copy of her new book. She really is a great cook. If we’d got married I’d be the size of a tank by now.’
He glanced down and patted his muscle-toned belly. Lily stared at it too, struggling to imagine a blurring of the lines of his hard, lean body and failing.
‘She is history. I am a man with a family—I want to be a man with a family. So?’
‘You don’t have to marry me to be a family. Emmy is your family.’
Ben fought the impulse to drag her into his arms and kiss her into submission. ‘I don’t want to be a weekend father.’
‘You can see Emmy whenever you want,’ she said, feeling like a hypocrite as she thought, It means I can see you.
‘Do you really want to share out the important events in our daughter’s life—you get Christmas, I get Easter?’ He saw her expression and drove his point home.
‘I don’t know, Ben—’ Couldn’t he see she wanted love, not practicality?
He cut across her, sensing a weakening of her resolve.
‘That’s what trial runs are for—turning the don’t knows into do knows.’
I do know I love you, she thought bleakly.
‘Look, when Emily Rose is home you’ll be here—whether I have sleepover rights or I cook the breakfast is your call totally. But look at it this way—what have you got to lose?’ I have everything to lose, he thought, smiling as he waited, every nerve fibre in his body tense for her reply.
