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With Cade Landry’s child.
The blood rushed out of her head to pound in her heart. Cade asked a string of pragmatic, surprisingly measured questions.But she couldn’t hear them...because all she could hear were the clear, unequivocal thoughts in her head. Thoughts she never would have expected in these circumstances, but were there nonetheless.
How this happened, why it happened—or how impossible this situation is—doesn’t matter. All I know is that this is my child. As well as Cade’s. And I want to have it.
But how did that even work? When she had never considered becoming a mother until this precise moment...and had no confidence whatsoever she would be a good one?
Cade sat across from Charlotte in the limo as they headed out of the Midtown tunnel en route to JFK.
He’d made an executive decision to fly straight to San Francisco—and told his assistant to arrange to have Charlotte’s luggage collected from the hotel on the High Line. They needed time to regroup and take stock without having to deal with any press attention.
Charlotte hadn’t objected. But then, she hadn’t said much of anything at all.
She was staring out the window of the car now, but he doubted she was seeing the buildings of downtown Brooklyn. She looked shell-shocked. He knew the feeling.
A baby. A child.Hischild.
He had no idea how to process the news they’d just been dealt by the doctor. And he had no doubt at all she was struggling to process it too, given that her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap the knuckles had whitened.
It felt as if they had entered an alternative reality. And there was no way to get back to normality ever again. The one thinghe could process, though, was a fierce sense of protectiveness—towards both Charlotte and the child.
Weird on one level. Because he had never thought of becoming a father. But not that weird on another. Hadn’t he spent his whole life building a legacy he could be proud of? Why had it never occurred to him until now that it would mean nothing if he had no one to pass his business on to?
But as he watched Charlotte—trying to gauge her reaction—he knew this wasn’t a child yet. It wasn’t even a baby. It was simply a pregnancy. And for him to feel so protective already—to be envisioning Charlotte’s slender body heavy with his baby—was premature. What if she didn’t wish to keep his child?
He cleared his throat. Her head jerked round and her gaze met his, her expression that of someone who had been woken from a trance.
‘How does your stomach feel?’ he asked. The doctor had given him a ton of advice about the morning sickness because he’d quizzed the guy while Charlotte had sat beside him in silence.
She placed a hand on her stomach, her throat contracting as she swallowed. ‘Okay, I guess.’
It bothered him that he couldn’t gauge her reaction, because all he could see was shock.
One of his greatest assets in business was his ability to read people and act accordingly to get what he wanted. Not being able to figure out how she felt about the pregnancy was a problem, forcing him to break cover.
‘How doyoufeel? About having this baby?’
She stared. Her bottom lip started to tremble. She bit into it.
‘I want to have it,’ she said at last. The relief he felt was palpable. Then she added, ‘But I’m also absolutely terrified.’
He could see her fear was genuine, and wondered where it came from. But before he could ask her about it, she said, ‘And you? How doyoufeel?’
‘Shocked,’ he admitted. ‘But also kind of thrilled.’
Her eyes widened, her pale skin flushing. Clearly she hadn’t expected that answer.
‘Really? Youwantto become a dad?’ she said, sounding incredulous. ‘I thought you’d try and pressure me into having a termination.’
He should have been insulted...but he let the knee-jerk reaction go. Because she was right about one thing. He hadn’t actually thought of becoming adad, per se.
The baby,hisbaby, represented a legacy to him first and foremost—a part of himself which was even now growing inside her womb. Strictly speaking it wasn’t the thought of becoming a father, but rather that fierce sense of possession and vindication—at the thought of Charlotte not only having his child but also nurturing it, the way his mother had never nurtured him—which thrilled him.
But before he started examining his own reaction, he wanted to examine hers. Their current situation wasn’t ideal. If they were going to negotiate this bombshell, they would need to work together. So it might be good to find out, when she had decided he was a total jerk?
‘Why would you think I’d do something like that?’ he asked.
‘Because...’ She huffed. ‘Well, you’reyou.’
