Page 4 of The Baby Behind Their Marriage Merger

Jude turned his mouth into her hand and kissed her palm, his tongue coming out to touch her skin. She tensed and closed her eyes, and the intensity of his touch reached her newly painted, pretty toes. If he could make her feel so much with one small kiss, what would happen if he kissed her properly, if she allowed him access to every part of her?

Jude held her head in his hand and his eyes held hers as he lowered his head, bending his knees a little so that he could touch her mouth with his lips. She’d expected hard and fast, but she got gentle and slow, a ‘hello, I’d like to know more’ kiss. She held his strong wrists as his lips explored hers, nibbling here, sliding there. She sighed and his tongue slipped into the small opening. Her tongue met his and two universes collided and merged.

Suddenly there was only the air he could give her, his tongue feeding her hot, dark kisses. Pleasure spun her away, and she sighed when his hand came to rest on her bare lower back, his fingers flirting with the top of her butt. He pulled her into him, and her breasts pushed against his chest, her stomach resting against a fantastically long and hard erection.

Heat, desire, need and want ripped through her, as fast and unexpected as a hidden current in a sluggish river.

He groaned, palmed her breast and found her nipple with his thumb, eliciting another moan from her. He wrenched his mouth off hers and dropped hot kisses on her jaw and down her throat, sucking gently on the ball of her bare shoulder.

‘I want you,’ he muttered, his voice low and guttural. ‘I wanted you when I saw you this afternoon. I want you now. Let me take you to bed.’

This washertime; this washernight. The night where she could be Addi, where she could be free. Free from responsibility, free to be herself. To feel, experience...

She stood on her tiptoes and dragged her mouth across Jude’s. ‘Yes, please.’

CHAPTER TWO

ADDISTAREDATthe small window showing two blue lines and felt her heart go into freefall. Unable to believe what she was seeing, she picked up another test from the top of the toilet’s cistern and peered down into that window. A flashing ‘pregnant’ pulsed in it. The third test also showed two blue lines.

There was no doubt that she was pregnant.

Addi sat down abruptly on the closed toilet seat and dropped her head between her legs, trying to get air into her suddenly too-small lungs.Pregnant?How? What? Well, the how she knew: she and Jude Fisher had made love twice—three times—eight weeks ago and somehow, despite her having been on the pill and he having worn a condom, one of his boys had met one of her girls.

She could explain the pill failing; she’d had a dose of antibiotics that week, and it was said that they could impair the efficacy of the contraceptive. But Jude had used condoms. They’d done everything right, everything they could to prevent a pregnancy, but here she was, a mummy-to-be.

How had that happened? And why had it happened toher?

Addi felt her stomach knot and her throat constrict. Standing up, she whirled around and flipped up the seat. She dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and heaved.

After rinsing out her mouth and splashing her face with water, Addi lifted her eyes to look at her reflection in the mirror. Two blue stripes ran under her eyes and her face looked blotchy, her lips chapped. Her eyes were bloodshot from spending too many hours looking at her computer screen and she’d lost weight, something she couldn’t afford to do.

Addi gripped the sides of the basin and stared down at the plug, panic rolling over her in an insidious tide. She couldn’t be pregnant, she didn’t want to be pregnant—it wasn’t in her five-or ten-year plan. It wasn’t in her life plan at all.

And, God, how was she going to explain to Lex that she was pregnant via a one-night stand? They’d promised each other, promised themselves, they’d take precautions not to bring any unwanted children into their lives. They wouldnotfollow in their mother’s five-kids-by-five-different-men footsteps. They’d be responsible, they’d be clever.

She’d failed on all counts.

And failure wasn’t something she did, wasn’t something she tolerated.

This wassoJoelle, Addi thought, cursing herself—falling pregnant by a sexy guy who’d rocked her world, taking pleasure in a random encounter, was something her feckless mother would have done. Addi hated herself for giving in to temptation and sleeping with Fisher. Her mother was the sensual, impetuous one, prepared to put her pleasure over common sense, but Addi was not. She was the one who trailed behind her mother and picked up the messes she made. She was the one who’d rolled up her sleeves and gone to work, despite her broken heart, when Joelle had left two half-sisters for them to raise.

Addi stared at her shoes, fighting the tidal wave of anger threatening to consume her. Hadn’t she been handed enough, forced to deal with more than most? She’d been born to the most irresponsible woman on the planet and she and her half-sister Lex had been lugged from house to house, room to room, depending on whom Joelle could seduce enough for them to take her two kids and her in. They’d missed meals and school, and their childhoods had been tumultuous. When Addi had been five or six, Joelle had married Tom and given birth to Storm, another half-sister. The years spent with Tom had been the happiest of her life, secure and stable.

Although she’d been so young, she understood that, easily bored, Joelle wasn’t cut out for monogamy. When her mother told them they’d be moving on without Storm, who would stay with Tom, Addi had felt devastated but she hadn’t been surprised.

Nothing good lasted for ever...sometimes it didn’t even last three years.

The next years had been a blur, with too many faces and too many houses, and life had only made sense again when Joelle left them with her aunt Kate when Addi had been seventeen. The irascible old lady had given them their second dose of stability and, when she’d died, she’d left her house to Lex and her and a small insurance policy, enough for one of them to go to university. She and Lex had come up with a plan: Addi would go to university and get her degree in as short a time as possible. Lex would go out to work and her income, with the rooms they let to other female students, would pay for their living expenses. When Addi got a job, she would pay for Lex to attend uni.

She’d landed a fantastic job, Lex had enrolled at university and Addi had started planning her wedding to the love of her life, the man she’d met during her first year at university. Dean had been educated, successful and ambitious, and when she’d moved out of their house and into his luxury Camps Bay flat, the plan had been that Lex would rent the additional room in the cottage to provide her with an income while she studied for her degree.

Addi had had everything under control, planned and perfect. The wedding reception was to have been smaller than Dean had liked, but Lex and Storm were to have been her bridesmaids and Tom, her ex-stepfather, was to give her away. Believing that nothing could go wrong, she’d even sent a Save The Date card to Joelle and asked her whether she thought she might attend the wedding.

Ten days after Addi had sent the email invitation, Joelle had flown back to Cape Town from Thailand, accompanied by two half-sisters she and Lex hadn’t known they had. Joelle had asked Lex and her to look after them for the weekend and that was the last time any of Joelle’s girls had seen their mother.

She’d gained two half-sisters and lost her fiancé. Despite Dean having tried to make it work—she had to give him that—Nixi and Snow weren’t what he had signed up for and he hadn’t wanted to share her, his home, or his life with two little girls. She’d asked him to postpone their wedding for a year, maybe two, to give them time to wrap their heads around her life changes—love couldn’t fade that quickly, could it?—but he’d called it quits, blithely informing her he didn’t love her enough...

That he probably didn’t love her at all.

---