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“Fliss...” He couldn’t seem to find words.
She was so touched, she welled up. Her heart grew so big in her chest, it hurt. This was what she had wanted from him. “I know, right?”
His mouth opened, but he only shook his head helplessly and looked back to the screen.
He was still quiet when they were in the car. She waited until they were in the air to ask tentatively, “Are you all right?”
“Not really.” He rarely drank these days, mostly in solidarity to her teetotalling, but he sipped a double scotch before saying, “I just found out we’re having a baby.”
Fliss couldn’t help chuckling. “My bad. I should have told you sooner.”
“It wasn’t a person until today. It was a date on a calendar that I needed to keep clear. It was decisions about furniture and words that Legal needed to write into some documents.”
She took his hand in both her own, able to sympathize with his shock because it had taken time for her, too.
He wove his fingers with hers, staring at their joined hands.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it was easier to think of your pregnancy as a project with an outcome, not the creation of another human,” he admitted in a very quiet voice. “Now it’s someone I have to worry about. Someone who becomes me. He—” He slid her a look. “Did you think it was a boy?”
They had told the tech they didn’t want to know the sex, but Fliss rolled her eyes at how obvious it had been.
“I mean, I’ll support whatever gender they feel they are, but yeah. For now, I’ll focus on the blue pages in the naming book, not the pink ones. But what do you mean the baby becomes you?”
“Caught in the middle.” His thumb rubbed the back of her hand with a little too much abrasiveness to be comfortable.
“I won’t use him against you,” she vowed. “I know that’s hard for you to believe, but I won’t.”
He nodded absently, gaze fixed on the middle distance.
“You don’t have to be like your dad, you know. The company doesn’t have to be your sole focus. You can make other choices.”
You can love your family. Love us. Love me.
She didn’t say it. She was a little put out with herself for thinking it. For yearning for it. They were in a very good place. She didn’t want to want more from him.
But she did. Because she was falling in love with him.
“I know,” he murmured and brought her hand up to kiss the back of it.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything more than that.
They were served a meal soon after, and she moved into the stateroom when she finished, wanting a nap before they landed, but her heart was still panging with yearning.
Fliss didn’t know how Saint managed the time change so easily. He rose to shower a few hours after they arrived, whispering that she should continue sleeping. It felt like the middle of the night, so she did exactly that. Granted, Saint wasn’t growing a whole other human, but despite her nap on the flight, she was exhausted and thankful for the lazy day where she only had to meet with the estate agent for an hour in the afternoon.
They had dinner with some of his London executives that evening. They were photographed going into the restaurant, but she was used to the attention now. Aside from dressing strategically to promote fellow designers, she ignored the cameras and shouting.
The next day, Saint arranged a car to take her to Nottingham to visit with Mrs. Bhamra. This was for Fliss, since he was busy working all day. They would have a proper dinner with the woman and her family later in the week so Saint could meet everyone.
Fliss picked up a text from Saint as she was leaving the hotel.
I asked the driver to bring you to me on your way out of the city.
At the office? Why?
You’ll see.
A few minutes later, the car pulled into a posh square in Knightsbridge. Saint waited outside a beautiful town house.
