Page 39 of Consequences of Their Wedding Charade
It was nearly midnight by the time she finally curled up in bed and it was a long time before she actually managed to fall asleep.
William was chatting in the background. The kitchen was aromatic. Smells wafting of a full English lunch with all the trimmings. Lounging on the kitchen chair, one eye on the time because Jess would be arriving at midday, Curtis sipped his wine and half listened to what his godfather was saying. There was no need to give undivided attention because he knew the gist of the conversation and the reason he knew was because William had been stuck in the same groove ever since breakfast.
He swerved between utter joy at the prospect of his godson and Jess finally getting where he had hoped they’d get for a long time and dark warning words about him not taking advantage of one of the nicest girls on the planet.
Curtis had more or less been obliged to respond in a series of non-committal murmurs that neither encouraged nor discouraged but he was immeasurably glad that Jess had come up with the idea of maintaining a pretence of sorts for a short while.
She’d read the situation perfectly and he knew that she’d been swayed by what he’d told her, the confession he’d never thought would ever leave his lips.
A confession he did not regret having made, astonishingly.
Had all that hurt he’d carried around like a dead weight for all his life been somehow diffused the minute he’d confided in her? He certainly felt weightless now. In the telling, he had shed the demons that had plagued him, although, and he knew this with gut certainty, she was absolutely the only one he would ever have told.
Trust.
He trusted her.
He trusted her—he enjoyed her company—and, in more ways than one,they weregoodfor one another. He couldn’t understand why those things weren’t enough to sway her, to make her see what he wanted her to see!
He’d told her about his past. He could never love. His heart was cold but that didn’t mean that all of him was buried under ice. Affection, surely, ranked as high as love. Strip away the high-minded, exalted, overrated emotional insecurity of love and what you found was that the relationships that lasted could fall back on good old affection.
So far was she from Caitlin, with her manipulative drive to get him, whatever the means, that he knew he should be overjoyed, but he wished there was some way he could get to Jess, get her to see his point of view, get her to marry him for the sake of their unborn child.
He was lost in introspection when the doorbell rang, and he leapt to go to the door even as William was putting lids on pans and wiping his hands on his apron.
‘Stay here,’ Curtis told him. He smiled but tension was snaking a path through him. ‘That lamb isn’t going to roast itself without some TLC...’
‘Son, are you okay? You’ve been very quiet this morning.’
Caught on the back foot, Curtis shuffled and raked his fingers through his hair and glanced at his godfather. ‘There’s something...’
‘Somethingwhat?’ William’s shrewd blue eyes were suddenly sharp and very focused.
‘Something Jess and I need to talk to you about...’
‘Don’t tell me anything you think I might not want to hear,’ William countered sharply.
Another piercing ring of the doorbell saved him from any further elaboration and on his way to open the door Curtis decided that coming clean about the pregnancy was the best way forward. What would be the point of a great elephant in the room, sitting between them at the dining table for the duration of lunch?
‘Jess.’ He swung open the door and drew in a sharp breath. In the shock of the unexpected the day before, his libido had taken a back seat. Now it came back in a hot rush as he stared at her, dressed in her usual thick padded coat with a yellow and black woollen hat pulled over her head and some faded jeans and sensible wellies visible under the coat. The least sexy outfit on the planet and yet the heat that surged in him could have melted steel. Involuntarily, his eyes zoomed to her belly before he quickly averted them.
‘You look amazed,’ she returned, but her smile was tentative. ‘Did you think I might have bailed?’
‘I’ve told William that we have something to say to him.’
‘Already?’ Her eyes widened in sudden alarm and she chewed her lip anxiously.
‘It’s going to have to be done, so why not immediately?’
‘I guess...’
‘You’re scared?’
‘I don’t like lying.’
‘This was your idea,’ he pointed out, then added with grudging honesty, ‘not that I’m not grateful.’ He stood aside so that she could brush past him but they remained in the hallway, facing one another. ‘He’s...on a high with this news of our sudden romance.’ He grimaced. ‘Admitting the truth at this juncture would have been a little...’
‘Terrifying?’
