AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He smiled and Lucy felt a familiar ripple of yearning, but she felt something deeper too – the painful awareness that she loved this man so much it hurt.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine, Will. Still pregnant.’
His face relaxed visibly.
‘I needed to talk to you, but it’s been a busy day. I came as soon as I could get away.’
‘You should be sitting down.’ He frowned as he looked about the untidy shed. ‘We used to have a chair out here somewhere. Oh, there it is.’
He freed a metal chair from a tangle of tools in the corner and wiped cobwebs and dust from it with a rag. Then he carefully tested the chair’s legs and, finally satisfied, he set it on the concrete floor.
Lucy thanked him with necessary dignity.
She thought, for a moment, that Will would remain standing, towering over her and making her more nervous than ever, but he found a perch on the tractor’s running board.
‘So you’ve had a busy day,’ he said, still wiping the last of the grease from his hands. ‘Have you had time to tell anyone your good news?’
‘Gina called in at lunch time and I told her about the baby. She’s over the moon, of course. I rang my dad, and I spoke to your mother just now. Everyone seems really pleased.’
She dropped her gaze to her hands, clenched, white knuckled, in her lap. ‘But they’re all a little mystified when they realise you’re still going away, Will. Somehow we’re going to have to explain our arrangement to them. They need to understand we won’t be living together as traditional parents.’
She wished she didn’t feel so sick and nervous. Outside, a gust of wind caught a metal door, slamming it against the shed wall.
‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind about going away.’
Lucy’s head snapped up and she stared at him, unsure she could trust what she’d heard.
‘I’ve rung the PNG mining company,’ he said. ‘It’s all arranged. I’m not going.’
‘But I’ve just spoken to your mother and she –’
‘Mum doesn’t know about it yet. My father should be telling her right now.’
‘Oh? I... I see.’
She felt faint. Dizzy.
‘I’ve spent most of the afternoon talking about it with my father and it’s all planned. I’m going to take care of this place, while Dad takes Mum on the trip of a lifetime to Europe.’
Oh... so his reason for staying had nothing to do with her or the baby.
‘Will, your mother will love that. I heard her plying Mattie with questions about Italy at the christening. She’s dying to go overseas.’
The faintest of smiles glimmered in his eyes. ‘And I don’t want to be too far away from you.’
Lucy’s heart leapt like an over-eager puppy, bouncing with too much excitement.
‘I need to keep an eye on you now.’
‘I see.’ Lucy twisted her hands in her lap, hating the realisation that at any minute now she might burst into tears from tension.
‘I want to court you.’
‘Court me?’
Lucy was sure she’d misheard Will, but she saw a flush creep upwards from his shirt collar.
