Page 34 of Prognosis Irreconcilable Differences

Everything careened to a stop around her. Her breathing, her pulse, her vision. Even the air currents ground to halt mid-swirl. Jacqui wondered if this was what it felt like to have a stroke. She gave a hesitant laugh.

‘I’m serious.’ And he was. It had taken him a while to figure it out, but now he had he didn’t want to waste any more time. He didn’t know the logistics of it all — he just knew he didn’t want to see her walk away in a few weeks. ‘What do you think?’

What did she think? Oh, God! She must have really rattled him today. ‘I think you’re letting great sex sweep you away into nostalgia land.’

He rolled up onto his elbow. ‘It isn’t about the sex.’

‘And,’ she continued, ignoring him, hoping that she sounded calm above a pulse that was thrumming so loudly through her ears she couldn’t even hear herself speak, ‘when you feel you’re missing something it’s only natural to want to reclaim something that worked for so long.’

‘It can work again. We just need to commit.’

Jacqui rolled her eyes. Typical Y-chromosome, can-do attitude. Some things just didn’t work—no matter how much you wanted them to. ‘You can’t give me what I want.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I can.’

Jacqui looked up into his face, shadowed by the night, softening the arrogance of his statement. She raised her hand to gently cup his jaw. ‘Nate, you don’t even know what I want.’

She wasn’t sure she knew any more.

‘Yes, I do.’

Jacqui’s heart was banging madly in her chest. ‘Really? What is it, Nate? What do I want?’

‘The same thing you’ve always wanted, Jacq. A baby. I can give you a baby.’

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Jacqui drummed herfingers on the steering wheel as her hire car ate up the miles to Serendipity the next morning. She was so angry with Nathan it sat like a molten shard of hot metal in her chest, burning like acid, cutting like diamond.

She hadn’t even been able to lie with him after his preposterous announcement — had fled to the guestroom, visions of a beach baby with pudgy arms and a strawberry-blonde fringe snapping at her heels.

I can give you a baby.

Just like that. As if he could walk into his lab and engineer one for her. Which was exactly, of course, what he could do. But how dared he use a baby as a commodity? A bargaining chip. Waggling it in front of her nose like a carrot.

Yes, discovering her infertility, knowing she’d never hold her own baby, had been one of her greatest laments, but she wasn’t about to let him manipulate her or the life of an innocent child for his own advantage. To plug some hole in his barren billionaire existence!

But, as angry as she was with Nathan, she was angrier with herself. Because driving in the opposite direction, driving away from him, hurt more. More than the insult of last night. It was time to face facts.

She’d fallen for him all over again.

Banging her fist against the horn a few times in sheer frustration she muttered, ‘Stupid! Stupid! Stupid.’

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and she bit her lip to beat them away. She would not shed tears over the stupidest thing she’d ever done. She deserved to be miserable for getting herself into this predicament again.

Although, if she was going for total honesty, she had to admit that she’d never really stopped loving him in the first place.

She’d wanted to.

Wanted to so much she’d convinced herself it was so.

Oh, sure, if anyone had asked her if she still loved him she would have told them yes. But in that genteel, familiar way one might reserve for a comfy old jumper or a childhood teddy bear. Not this vibrant, alive, hell-this-is-going-to-hurt kind of way.

But spending time with him, falling prey to the same old chemistry, catching glimpses of the uni student she’d fallen in love with, had freed the full-throttle version from the vault she’d triple-locked it in all those years ago.

She groaned out loud. How could she? Not only fall for her ex, but fall for the grown-up version who was even further removed from her and what she wanted and needed and believed in than he’d been the first time round.

A man who had offered her a baby in exchange for her... company. No words of love or family. Just a cut-and-dried deal for a commodity he’d suddenly decided only she could provide.

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