Baby's On The Way!: Bound by a Baby Bump / Expecting the Prince's Baby / The Pregnant Witness. Rebecca Winters

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      ‘I still don’t see what this has to do with the plan you presented this morning,’ Leo said. His voice was soft, and his hand twitched in the sand, as if he wanted to reach for her. For a moment, she wished that he would. That he would thread his fingers with hers. Somehow she thought that it might be easier, to draw on his strength, to face her past together. Ridiculous, she told herself. They had only known each other a few weeks. Had really spent only a few waking hours together. There was no reason she should feel stronger just for having him there. But she couldn’t deny how that twitch of his hand had affected her, how much she wished for the contact.

      ‘I’ll get to it, I will. It’s just all tied up with everything else. I don’t know how to tell you just that, if you see what I mean.’ She turned to look at him and he nodded. ‘I was still in school, they at least thought that I could be safe there, but I could see how much I was missing. I was losing touch with my friends, having to go straight home every night while they were meeting in parks and shopping centres and fast-food places. I was lonely, and I knew that things couldn’t carry on as they were, with me speaking to no one outside school but my parents. So I negotiated a system. I would be allowed out with my classmates and friends if I provided my parents with a schedule of where I would be and when. They would have the landline numbers of anywhere I would be so that they could call and check I was really there. I had a mobile as well, of course, so that they could always get hold of me.

      ‘If I was going out at the weekend, I’d plot out exactly what I’d be doing and when, give the itinerary to my parents, and then stick to it like my life depended on it. If they called and I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, I knew that all hell could break loose. It wasn’t just that they’d ground me—I knew that they would be terrified. And much as I didn’t agree with the way they were wrapping me in cotton wool, I knew that they were only doing it because they loved me. Everything they did was because they were terrified of me getting hurt and they only wanted the best for me. I would never do anything that would upset them. They’d been through enough. Or felt that they had, at least. I didn’t want to add to it.’

      ‘So how long did it take?’

      She looked at Leo in confusion.

      ‘How long did what take?’

      ‘Until it rubbed off. Until you started to believe that the schedule kept you safe, the same way your parents did.’

      She started a little, surprised that he’d understood so clearly.

      ‘Well, my friends all thought it was a little odd, that I had to be where I had to be and exactly on time. But when I was living at home, it wasn’t easy to see where my parents’ need ended and mine started. It wasn’t until I went to university full of ideas of living on the edge, of being spontaneous and pleasing no one but myself, that I realised that I needed the schedule as much as they had.’

      ‘Leaving home. I guess that was hard on you all.’

      ‘It was. Painfully so. I had no idea before I left just how hard it would be. I’d known all along that it would be for them. But I could also see how strong the apron strings were, how they would get harder to break as I got older. So I managed to convince them that I had to have a normal life. And I was eighteen—there was nothing much they could do about it anyway. I think perhaps they worried that if they didn’t let me go, I’d take myself off and they might lose contact with me. If I went with their blessing, I was more likely to keep in touch.’

      ‘So how was it?’ Leo’s voice was still low, gentle, but probing. Encouraging her to share, leaving her nowhere to hide her secrets.

      She let out a long, slow breath as she remembered those first few weeks, when she’d clung to her class schedule and the fresher’s week itinerary as if they were a lifeline.

      ‘Hard. Really hard. I didn’t know anyone, and my teen years had been pretty sheltered. The only way I knew how to cope with the confusion, the novelty of it all, was to make a plan and stick to it. So I mapped out the weeks and the months. Looked ahead to the career that I wanted and the life that I wanted, and started filling in the days in my calendar. Fast forward a decade or so, and here I am, right on track. Or was, until...’

      ‘Until you met me.’

      She nodded, but something about the familiar intimacy in his voice, the hint of remembered laughter, made her smile.

      ‘So your first instinct was to make a new plan. You need it.’

      ‘I...I do,’ she admitted. ‘It seemed the only way to make sense of this whole situation. But seeing it through your eyes, it’s clear I need it a little too much, that there are times when going with the flow or being more flexible can have their place. But it’s not something I can just turn off. And trust me, I’ve never felt more like I need a plan than I have this week.’

      ‘So we’ll work something out together. Enough of a plan for you to feel comfortable and enough flexibility that it doesn’t feel like a prison to me.’ His voice sounded rough, low, and she looked up to catch the concern on his face, mixed with a distance she hadn’t felt from him before. He shook his head, and when he looked back at her his expression was lighter, sunnier.

      ‘When do we start?’

      He laughed, and leant back on his arms, one of them nudging slightly behind her back. ‘How about not right this minute? If we say we’ll make a start today, is that enough of a plan for now?’

      ‘It’ll do.’ She grinned.

      ‘Good, because I’m starving, and I’m guessing after your spell in the bathroom you could use a big portion of fish and chips. What do you say?’

      ‘I say you’re a mind-reader. Where’s good?’

      Leo pushed to his feet and reached down to help her up. As she felt her hand disappear between his huge, roughened palms, her body shuddered. Pulled to her feet, she realised that—without her heels—Leo towered over her. He’d pulled her up to him, and now she was probably standing a little too close. She should take a step back, she thought. But seeing Leo here, there was something hypnotising about it. Until now, she’d only ever seen him in her world: her party, her flat, her work. Here, by his home, surrounded by the beach and the sea that he loved so much, it added an extra dimension of sexy. It brought out the gold shining in his hair, made his slightly wind-chapped cheeks more attractive, like a good wine bringing out the flavours in food.

      The wind had caught her hair, and was playing it around her temples, tickling at her face. She was reaching up to tame it when Leo caught it and tucked it behind her ear. His hand rested there, and for a moment Rachel was more than tempted to turn her face into his palm, to press her skin against his, to re-find the pleasure of that night. But she held her breath and stepped away. There was too much at risk; she could get too hurt. They needed to be friends and there was no surer way to ruin a friendship than a disastrous romance.

      His eyes lingered on hers for a moment as she moved back, and his expression told her he knew exactly what she had felt between them just now, told her exactly what had been on offer, had she wanted it. And that he knew she’d deliberately stepped back from it.

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