AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His eyes were very, very dark. ‘Is that what you want? To bring the baby up on your own and have nothing to do with me?’
‘No,’ she said tiredly. ‘Of course I don’t want that. We’d make arrangements for access. I’d never keep the baby from you. Your family will be very much part of this baby’s life.’
‘My family, but not me.’
‘You’re three hours away, Brad. In London. It’s not a workable situation for a relationship, living that far apart.’ She blew out a breath. ‘And that’s something else we haven’t discussed.’ Where they’d live, if they tried to make a second go of their marriage. There was so very much to think about, and she wasn’t sure she could do this. ‘I don’t expect you to leave London and come back here.’
‘My career’s in London.’ He paused. ‘But I could retrain. I could teach chemistry in secondary school. The education authority is crying out for science teachers.’
‘You’d hate every second of it. You love the lab—you always have, and you always will. I could see you working with undergraduates, maybe, but only in a job where you got to do a big chunk of research as well. I won’t ask you to give that up.’
His expression was very serious. ‘And you love your job here. Not just the job, the place. And your family’s here. I can’t ask you to give that up.’
She shook her head in sheer frustration. ‘I can’t see any way to compromise, Brad. If we’re to be together, one of us has to move and uproot everything.’
‘So what’s your solution?’ he asked.
Not moving to London. Not being isolated with a small baby, hours away from her family and with Brad working ridiculous hours at the lab so she and their child would barely see him.
‘I don’t know.’ She swallowed miserably. ‘I thought tonight we were going to talk about things. About what we want.’
‘Then let’s do that. What do you want, Abby?’
Him. And the baby. And her business. Everything.
Which was greedy.
She couldn’t have it all.
And if she told him what she really wanted... He’d already offered to retrain as a school teacher and move back here, two things she knew he’d hate. How could she ask him to do that? It would only make him miserable, and in the end he’d grow to resent her and the baby. Their marriage would crumble again, only this time there’d be someone else hurt by the fallout.
She couldn’t see any way out of it.
She was about to tell him so when his phone shrilled.
To her surprise, he ignored it.
‘Brad, that might be important.’
‘Then whoever it is will either leave a message or ring back,’ he said.
His phone went again, and this time he glanced at the screen before rejecting the call.
‘Who was it?’ she asked.
‘Sunetra.’
His number two at the lab. She frowned. ‘Brad, it’s eight o’clock at night. That’s not a normal time to ring someone about work. So it must be important.’
‘You’re more important than work.’
That made her feel slightly better, but if she’d had a call about work at this time of the evening she’d know there was a problem and she’d want to act on it. ‘Call her back,’ she said.
He sighed, but did so; though Abigail couldn’t tell from his side of the conversation if there was a problem or what Sunetra wanted from him.
When he ended the conversation, he looked at her. ‘The reason it’s late is because Sunetra was staying on to wait for some results in the lab. It seems we might have had a bit of a breakthrough and she wanted to let me know.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ But he didn’t look as excited about it as she’d expected. ‘I’m going to ring my boss and tell him I need to stay here for a bit longer.’
She shook her head. ‘Brad, it sounds as if your team needs you there. You can’t let them down. You have a responsibility to them—just as I have a responsibility to my team.’
‘I know, but I don’t want to let you down, Abby.’
He was clearly torn between his duty to work and his duty to her. But he hadn’t mentioned a word about his feelings towards her, just about his responsibilities. So she’d make this easy for him.
