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

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СКАЧАТЬ a grown man. No one can make you go back to school.’

      He snatched his hand back, frustrated that after explaining the parts of his past that still caused the occasional nightmare, she could brush it off with ‘you don’t have to go back to school’.

      ‘But I had to go back then.’ The words burst out of him, just short of a roar. He’d had to go back time after time, year after year. Stuck in that place every day with the boys who hated him. Who thought up new and different ways to torture him.

      ‘Couldn’t you have left?’

      ‘You think I didn’t want that? Even when I eventually told my father what was going on he didn’t take it seriously. The bullies closed ranks when my parents spoke to the school. Told the headmaster that the bruises were from rugby. Or that I’d started a fight. They were so convincing. All the teachers fell for it. Sometimes even I found myself wondering if I was imagining it all. If I was going mad.

      ‘I was trapped. Every morning I’d wake up in that dorm, and knew how my torture would pan out for the day. Taunts in the bathroom during break. Starving at lunch, too scared to risk the dinner hall. A few kicks in the changing rooms after games, somewhere it wouldn’t show when I was dressed. And at night, I was locked in with them.

      ‘The days the school knew where I would be and when, they would know, too. And ever since—I’ve needed a way out. The thought of being trapped—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘It terrifies me, Rachel.’

      ‘You think I trapped you?’ Her voice was flat and sad, more disappointed than angry.

      ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Whether you did or not, it doesn’t change the fact that—’

      ‘That you want to escape and you can’t.’

      He rubbed his head in his hands, fighting against the fear to find the logic in his argument. ‘I don’t even know if I want to escape. What I would want if I wasn’t...’

      ‘Stuck.’

      He nodded. ‘You probably think I’m a complete jerk for telling you all this.’ He felt like one. For admitting all the reasons he was terrified of what their lives were going to become.

      She shook her head, though her expression was grim. ‘I don’t. I’m glad you told me how you feel. You can’t help thinking the way that you do. I just wish it were...different.’

      He reached past her to pluck a small piece of driftwood from the sand. The light played on it as he turned it over, and he kept his eyes focused on that, rather than meeting Rachel’s gaze.

      ‘How did you cope—at school?’

      He looked across at her now, surprised she wanted to know more after what he’d just told her.

      ‘I spent a lot of time at the beach.’

      ‘Surfing? Swimming?’

      ‘Some of the time. I was lucky in a way— the school was only a couple of miles from the coast, so I was able to spend a lot of time there. When I had to be on campus, I escaped to the art studio.’ She looked at him in surprise. For some reason, he enjoyed that, throwing off her preconceptions of him. He was even able to crack a smile at her gaping expression.

      ‘The art studio?’

      ‘Yes—I’m an artist, didn’t I mention that?’

      ‘An artist.’ She said the word as if it were something alien, obviously not believing him. He nodded, still playing with the driftwood as he took in her dropped jaw, her hands indignantly planted in the sand either side of her. ‘You’re an artist.’

      A laugh escaped him, surprising him as much as her. ‘I’m sure I mentioned it before.’

      ‘And I’m certain that you didn’t. What sort of artist?’ She still hadn’t wiped the incredulity from her face and he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed that she found the idea of his occupation, vocation—whatever you wanted to call it—so laughable.

      ‘A successful one, thankfully. That’s what I wanted to show you this afternoon—my studio’s down here rather than up on the cliff.’

      ‘Right.’ She drew the syllable out, as she examined his face, looking for hints of his artistic temperament perhaps. ‘And the beachcombing, where does that fit into this?’

      He breathed a sigh of relief that they were back on safer conversational ground. That she’d listened to his painful story, offered support, but moved on when he needed to. And his work he could talk about for hours. ‘It’s one of my favourite ways to find inspiration for my work and materials for the house. I’ve incorporated a lot of driftwood in the build. It’s an ecologically sound way of working.’

      ‘But doesn’t it leave you at the mercy of the tides, or the water gods, or whatever force it is that throws up driftwood onto beaches? Wouldn’t it just be easy to order the whole lot at once? I’m sure that there are suppliers with good green credentials.’

      ‘I could do, I suppose, but I’m happy just taking opportunities as they arise. You never know what you’re going to find. Like the floorboards for the living room. They just turned up in a reclamation yard. I could have bought brand-new timber last week and would have missed out on all that gorgeous character.’

      ‘Yes, but you would have had a floor for a week by now.’

      He threw her a grin and nudged her with his shoulder. ‘What is it, princess? Upset that the place wasn’t perfect for you?’

      ‘Oh, don’t give me “princess”. I just think that while your way of doing things sounds lovely, in theory, when you have no real responsibilities, sometimes practical matters have to take a higher priority. Like a roof that doesn’t leak. And a floor beyond the front door.’ Not in the mood to joke about the house, then, he surmised.

      ‘Well, then, I count myself lucky that you don’t get a say in how I renovate my house.’

      He stared her down, daring her to argue with him, so that he could remind her again that he would not be tied down by her. She might be carrying his baby, but that didn’t mean that she could come down here and start telling him how to live his life, any more than he would dream of going up to London and telling her how to live hers.

      She didn’t take the bait. Instead she stood and started brushing sand from her jeans, and then walked back to the cliff path. He watched her for a few moments; then jogged to catch her up.

      ‘Wait, I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me. If you still want to, I’d like to show you the studio.’

      She paused and glanced up at the house. Then looked back at him and softened. ‘I’d like to see it. I can’t believe I didn’t know you’re an artist. You didn’t finish telling me how that happened.’

      He started down the twisting path that led along the bottom of the cliff to his studio and workshop, wondering whether he could talk about his introduction to the world of art without reliving more of the pain he’d suffered at that time. He’d try, for her, for them.

      ‘I told you I used to hide out in the art studio... None of the other boys seemed too keen to СКАЧАТЬ