Page 44 of When She Loved Me
“You want to talk? Now?”
“It seemed to me this conversation required the benefit of complete privacy.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers and met her guarded gaze evenly. “I can give you something you want.”
Nicole was quite sure her eyes must appear as huge saucers inside her face, and she hated that her voice was wobbly when she replied. “You have nothing I want, Trevor. Please leave.”
“Hear me out.” He moved around the side of the bed, startling her by sitting on its edge, very close to her that she scooted a bit away from him. Casually he lifted a hand to touch her hair, letting it glide through his fingers, seemingly unaware of her shoulders tensing. Very bluntly, he said, “I need an heir, Nicki.”
She stammered through two attempts to speak before her words were coherent. “Trevor I have told you that I would prefer to have no relationship with you—”
“But wouldn’t you rather have a baby?” He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. And then when she said nothing more, he said evenly, “There needn’t be love between a couple to create a child.”
“I know that,” she said weakly. He needn’t have reminded her that he harbored no love for her.
But finally, she had her answer—this is why he’d come now to Lesser House. It hadn’t after all, anything to do with her, really. It hadn’t been love or even hope that had driven him here. As always, all his decisions were made with the estate and the title as his first priority.
Leven. Always Leven.
Oh, but it was too much, Nicole thought. This couldn’t be happening. A baby. Her very own little person to love. Trevor’s baby.
Their baby.
She was very afraid of the temptation he’d placed before her. A baby in itself was a mighty persuasion. But at the moment, the making of the baby was what frightened her most. For so long, she’d managed to put this very yearning from her mind. But it had never left her completely, as proven by his kiss in the library. Until that moment, any memory of his kiss or his touch had served only as a sometimes antidote to her loneliness.
“What exactly are you asking?” She thought she should have everything clarified before she considered it further, before her hopes were raised, or subsequently dashed.
“I am asking for the opportunity to plant my seed inside you. To beget an heir.”
She swallowed visibly. “And if it doesn’t work?” She worried the blankets between nervous fingers, but her eyes remained fixed on him, trying to read him, ever an impossible feat.
Trevor cleared his throat. “To be frank, it normally does not happen on the first attempt. It sometimes takes several or many occasions.”
Nicole drew in a deep breath, exhaled and then bit her bottom lip in consternation. She lifted her hands, pressed her fingers into her eyebrows and forehead. She needed to think without him watching her. A baby seemed to be the main takeaway—a child she could shower with love. She lowered her hands and raised her eyes to him again. “You would live here while you made these... attempts?”
“Yes,” he said and then a boyish grin lightened his beautiful features. “It would make the coupling easier.”
“And if I...did conceive?” Now her eyes only considered her hands upon the bed linens, but her stomach churned, not altogether unpleasantly.
“Then there would be no further need for coupling.” After a small space of a second, he added in a husky voice, “Unless we both decided to continue.”
“To make another baby?”
“Or for other reasons,” he said, his hand once again near her hair, his fingers pulling gently at the locks, as if to test its softness. Nicole closed her eyes against this trauma. She decided to disregard his last remark.Other reasonsmight encompass many things. She was afraid to imagine what power he could hold over her. Immediately her mind shifted back to that kiss in the library.Adamantly, she struck the thought completely. She would not revisit that now. Not the way he’d made her feel.
But a baby. Her very own baby. Oh, but, “Would you take the child from me then, to raise in London?”
He was convincingly taken aback by this question. “Nicki, I would never take your child from you.”
Another minute passed, in which time he continued to twirl the long strand of her hair around his deft fingers while Nicole battled intensely within, wrestling with good ideas versus dangerous ones, and considering silly things such as angels and demons, wondering which Trevor might prove to be if she agreed to this absurdly unprecedented scheme.
But still...a baby.
She cleared her throat. “How—how would we go about this?”
“I would come to you as a husband does a wife,” he said simply.
“You would live here. But you would still keep generally to your own rooms? And you would leave still, after the Harvest Ball? Nothing would change?”
“Unless you wanted it to, Nicki,” he said, his voice, intentionally or not, seductive, caressing her. He took her chin lightly in his grasp and turned her to face him. She dared to meet his eyes, almost shaken by the smoldering desire she saw there. “Do you want to make a baby, Nicki?”
