Page 30 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
‘I still want you, Violet.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘We get married and no one is going to say that the sex isn’t going to sizzle.’
‘Sizzling sex vanishes after a while. You know that.’ She clicked her tongue but her skin was burning from where he had touched her, and her head was awash with hot memories of their brief, intense time together in Melbourne. ‘Look at what happens when the sizzling sex fizzles out like a burnt-out firecracker, Matt. It’sbye-bye, it’s been good knowing youtime. That’s fine when it’s just another five-minute relationship, but when two people are tied together by marriage, when there’s a child involved, well, the burnt-out firecracker begins to look like a pretty bad idea.’
‘None of my girlfriends happened to be pregnant,’ he fired back.
‘And because I am doesn’t mean that marriage is the only solution, however much hands-on time you would want to have with our child. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get bored when the firecracker burns out.’
Matt’s jaw tightened with frustration. On the surface, what she said made sense. It was true. Sizzling sex always had a tendency to turn to ashes in the blink of an eye, but this wasn’t the same, and he was staggered that she couldn’t see that. That a child being involved made all the difference.A child would make staying power the essence, the sizzling sex a bonus.
She wasn’t just another womanto him—which was, somehow, what she was trying to say. She was the mother of his child... He frowned as thoughts tried to rearrange themselves in his head. More than that, she was...hell!...more than just someone who had shared his bed. Much more.
His thoughts screeched to a stop before they could gather pace and travel down that unexplored road.
‘Marriage is about more than what makes logical sense on a piece of paper. Successful marriages are based on love and a loving background is what a child deserves.’ She looked down. She had a fleeting vision of what it might be like if he really loved her. Perfect.
She raised serious brown eyes to him. ‘I don’t know anything about your background,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked with you for over two years, and I know everything about your take on relationships, but I don’t know anything about your childhood. It’s ironic that I was always the reserved one and yet you now know everything there is to know about me. I saw my dad fetching photos out to show you when he thought my back was turned. Back from hospital, and in the space of a handful of days before you left, he manages to bore you with stories about me and show you pictures of me growing up.’
‘Who said I was bored? He’s a proud dad. He may have been a wild dad who was fond of going off the rails but, one look at the way the two of you interact, and it’s easy to see that you both adore one another. I liked seeing pictures of you as a kid. You looked serious even then. Hair in pigtails, frowning at the camera. All that was missing was a pair of specs. Think that paternal pride counts for nothing?’
‘I never said that!’
‘Think it’s okay to deprive me of that experience because marriage is more than what makes sense on a piece of paper? Do you imagine that I wouldn’t want to have the chance to love my child? To be there for him or her?’
‘You’re twisting my words!’
‘You tell me that part-time parenting is acceptable. Would you be applauding that slice of wisdom if you were the one doing the part-time parenting?’
‘You told me that there was no way you would try and...and...’
‘In an ideal world, there would be no lines drawn in the sand between us, given the situation,’ Matt told her coldly. ‘But the scenario you have in mind has nothing to do with an ideal world.’
‘I’m being realistic.’
‘You’re being selfish.’
‘You’re not even a family man!’ Violet protested heatedly.
No, Matt thought, he wasn’t. Never had been. When you grew up without the warmth of a family unit, when the people you turned to were strangers in an expensive boarding school paid to take the hit, then dreams of cosy sing-songs round the piano with loved ones never even registered on the radar once you reached a certain age.
But here he was, facing the family unit he had never courted. More than anything else, he wanted to make sure that his own flesh and blood didn’tlackthe way he had. He wanted to be the buffer for his child against the slings and arrows of life, which was something he didn’t feel he’d had. He wanted to make sure that the past never repeated itself. The remoteness of his wealthy parents had felt like a wall of ice around him, and there was no way he wasn’t going to do his damnedest to make surehewas there for this child. Being sidelined wasn’t going to work. Neither, he thought with mounting frustration, was trying to strong-arm the stubborn, sexy, mulish woman glaring at him.
‘Don’t push me on this, Violet,’ he rasped, but his eyes drifted down her body and he felt an ache in his groin as memories of their passionate lovemaking surfaced.
Violet sensed some infinitesimal shift in atmosphere and her eyes widened. ‘Matt, I think it’s time I headed back home. I know you mean well, offering to defuse this hand grenade by putting a ring on my finger, but I have no intention of letting you pay such a high price for a situation you didn’t see coming.’
‘Jesus, Violet!’
Time to go, Violet decided. She stood up, but suddenly the world was doing a giddy twirl and the ground no longer felt quite so steady under her feet. She swayed and in one leap Matt was there by her side. When he spoke, his voice was laced with urgency.
‘What’s wrong?’ This as he lifted her off her feet and began carrying her out of the sitting room and towards a bank of rooms sprouting from either side of the wide, wooden-floored corridor. ‘I’m calling a doctor.’
‘No!’ She didn’t bother trying to struggle free. The light-headed feeling was abating, but one look at his face and she could see that he was worried sick.
In an instant, she realised that his marriage proposal wasn’t just the gesture of someone resentfully doing something through a sense of obligation because that was how he had been brought up. No. This was his baby, and he genuinely wanted to be there to see things through from beginning to end, and that gave her pause for thought. His concern might not be forher, but should she deprive him of the opportunity to be a full-time father because she wanted more from him than he could ever give?
