to let him help her bring up her child? Marry him? Apprehension coupled with excitement didn’t do much to ease the painful banging in her head.
If she didn’t, she reflected, and she decided to go it alone, there was no way that her child would go without seeing its father at regular intervals; Seth would demand that, of course, and she wouldn’t try and stop him seeing his child—no matter how much it might hurt her to have to face him on a personal level from time to time, because she didn’t think she would be able to carry on working with him after this. Her child would never want for anything financially. But was that enough?
She remembered how it had felt growing up. Her grandparents had been wonderful, had given her everything she could have wanted. But, guiltily, sometimes she had missed the fun and activities that her school friends seemed to have with their parents—particularly their fathers—younger, more energetic adults who could get involved in a game of tennis with them, or chase after them before scooping them high into the air shrieking with laughter, as fathers always seemed to be able to do. Fathers who were always there and didn’t disappear for months, or even years, on end. She had missed having a birth mother, of course, but she had missed her father more than she could ever put into words, because she had known he was around somewhere. Just not with her. And that had hurt more than she had ever dared to let herself accept.
She thought of the little family she had noticed on the way up here. Two children. Two parents. A happy balance. She owed her child that much, didn’t she? And if—fingers crossed—this little one growing inside her went to its full term, was born safely…
Fear threatened to rise like a dark spectre, but she fought it back. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself think about that now, for the same reason she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Seth what had happened before. It was a part of her life that she wasn’t particularly proud of and she had paid for it dearly—then pressed it so far to the back of her mind that it was as though that girl she had been and everything that had happened to her had happened to someone else. It wouldn’t help her or him in any way, she reasoned with a kind of muddled logic, to dig it all up now.
So with the muted tones of Seth’s voice conducting business over the phone in the other room, and the elusive scent of him surrounding her in his personal bedding, she made her decision, safe in the knowledge that whatever his feelings towards her he would always be there to love and support his child. And that was all that mattered, she told herself resolutely. Wasn’t it?
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