her cheeks still tinged with colour, looked at her uncle with exasperation. This she could do without! She couldn’t afford to start thinking happy families even for one second…it was her duty to stay sane.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I want nothing from Luc.’
‘I heard you, but that’s plain silly. A child needs two parents.’
And a pregnant woman needs the loving father of her baby at her side. But that just isn’t going to happen, Megan, so live with it.
‘In a perfect world,’ she agreed. ‘However, lots of women bring up children on their own.’ And she was determined to make sure her child lacked for nothing. Even if Luc didn’t want to take an active part in his child’s life—a definite possibility—she would make sure that he or she felt loved and wanted.
‘Lots of women don’t have a choice,’ her uncle rebutted.
‘This argument sort of presupposes that Luc is going to ask me to marry him. Not very likely…we hardly know one another.’ Which made the fact she had fallen in love with a man who was virtually a stranger all the more ludicrous.
‘There’s plenty of time to get to know someone after you’re married.’
‘You have a unique take on marriage, Uncle Malcolm.’
‘And I think you’ll find that Luc is actually quite traditional in a lot of ways.’
And he hates clingy women.
What man wasn’t going to be horrified to discover that a woman he had had casual sex with once was carrying his child?
‘Well, it doesn’t really matter what Luc wants,’ Megan, calm on the outside but a mass of conflicting emotions inside, told her uncle. ‘Because I don’t want to get married.’ Not to a man who didn’t love her, at any rate.
‘You’ll change your mind,’ Malcolm predicted confidently before reflecting, ‘I admit I didn’t think so at the time, considering he had writer’s block for the next six months, which threw the schedule all to hell, but it’s turned out lucky under the circumstances that Grace wanted the divorce last year.’ He appeared not to notice the spasm of shock that crossed his niece’s face.
‘Luc is married…? But—’ She stopped abruptly, biting her lip so hard she broke the skin. But what, Megan? Why shouldn’t Luc be married? Most men his age are or have been.
‘Was,’ Malcolm inserted with a worried look at her pale face. ‘He was married. They married when he was incredibly young, but they’d been apart for years. They’d just never bothered getting a divorce.’
Megan, who had a thousand questions, had pressed him for details, but Malcolm had infuriatingly clammed up, and advised her to ask Luc himself. And she was really going to do that! Of course you turned up on man’s doorstep and said, Sorry, but I’m having your baby, and then asked him about the woman he actually loved.
Some things you didn’t need to ask. She was no expert on marriage or divorce but Megan did know that people didn’t forget to get a divorce. It wasn’t the sort of thing that slipped your mind! It didn’t take a genius to work out that couples who didn’t legalise a split didn’t do so because they hadn’t given up yet. Luc and his wife had been leaving the door open for a reconciliation, and from what Malcolm had let slip it had been Luc’s wife Grace who had finally closed that door.
Luc hadn’t been able to work…Grace…Was this woman, whom Luc obviously still loved, as elegant and graceful as her name? Having discovered a previously untapped streak of masochism in her nature, Megan tortured herself on the trip to Wales imagining what the other woman looked like.
It was a long and tiring trip. She couldn’t ring to let him know she was coming because Malcolm said he didn’t have a phone at the cottage and always turned his mobile off when he was there. The cottage turned out to be not quite as isolated as her uncle had suggested. It hadn’t been easy to find, though, and the last couple of miles proved the most challenging to her navigational skills.
After travelling a mile down a single track lane that was surrounded by high hedges that made it impossible to see anything, being suddenly confronted with an incredible view of the stormy sea took Megan’s breath away. She stopped the car and wound down the window to take it all in. The salty tang filled her lungs as she gazed at the scene: white-crested waves crashing onto the pebbly foreshore.
With a sigh Megan turned off the ignition; there was no point putting off the inevitable.
Cautiously—the track was full of potholes—she negotiated the path down the steep slope that led to the solitary habitation. The cottage, set on a rocky outcrop of higher ground, was situated just above the rocky seashore. The high tide lapped up against a low wall, which appeared to be the only defence against the sea. The low whitewashed building was not large, but its walls looked sturdy enough to withstand the worst the harsh elements could throw at it. It looked old enough to have been doing just that for a couple of hundred years at least.
A mud-spattered four-wheel drive Megan immediately recognised stood on a small level area in front of the cheerily red-painted front door.
Megan turned off the engine and pressed her hand flat to her chest. When your heart felt as if it were trying to escape from your chest it probably was not a good time to recall stories about apparently healthy people who dropped dead from undiagnosed heart complaints.
Maybe I should rethink this plan…? Maybe I should drop it altogether.
Calm down, Megan, you know exactly what you’re going to say. ‘Just a courtesy call—I’m going to have your baby.’
Oh, dear…! Considering she had been working on the intro for the last three hundred miles, that could do with some work.
She felt physically sick as she lifted the door knocker and let it fall. When nobody replied she walked around the building peering in the windows. There was no evidence of life. Was this a sign? Was some higher authority telling her she should go home? There did seem something awfully confrontational about rolling up on a man’s doorstep and telling him you were carrying his child.
Megan wasn’t a confrontational person by nature.
Sure, a letter was impersonal, but was impersonal such a bad idea in this instance? The impersonal method actually had a lot to recommend it—a letter was much neater and there would be much less opportunity for her to make a total fool of herself and do something embarrassing like burst into tears.
After a brief struggle with herself, Megan decided to give it another half-hour and then return to the village she had passed through a few miles back and see if they had a room for the night. Even if she didn’t see Luc she was in no condition to drive back home tonight.
Sitting in the car, she felt stiff and cold; within five minutes she lost all feeling in her extremities. Rubbing her hands together, she turned on the engine. The warmth blasted out by the heater going full throttle and the music on the radio had a predictably soporific effect.
Megan was gently dozing off when the door of the car was wrenched open without warning. It stayed open as, hands pressed on the roof, Luc bent down until he was on eye level with Megan. She thought she had committed every detail, every impossibly symmetrical detail of his face to memory, but now his dark, hard-edged face was within
