Page 33 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

Millie nodded, feeling the heat of his bare hand through the wool. He radiated warmth and she immediately felt warmer as they headed for the park. As they approached the park, whispers of déjà vu fluttered inside her and she was certain she’d visited here with her mum when she was very small. Candy canes and twinkling Christmas lights provided light to the cleared path, but snow covered the ground, small hills and the branches of trees.

‘I think I only ever came here in summer,’ Millie told Ben. ‘It looks like an enchanted garden, doesn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘There are lots of lava formations that are blanketed in moss, so it’s easy to convince kids, and adults, that elves live here. My dad insisted the hidden folk were real.’

Millie looked up at him, surprised. ‘I think that’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned your dad,’ she said. ‘You don’t talk much about your family.’

He looked away. ‘You know the basics, English mother, Icelandic father. I went to boarding school in the UK. I spent a couple of school holidays with him.’

‘No siblings?’

‘No.’ So they were both only children of only children. And Millie knew it was a lonely way to grow up.

She’d like to know much more than the basics of his past. And because he opened the door, she strolled on through. ‘What was he like?’

‘Stoic and direct, a big believer in the Icelandic philosophy ofþetta reddast.’

‘Everything will work out,’ Millie murmured.

Ben rocked his hand from side to side. ‘Sort of, but not quite,’ he replied. ‘It’s less starry-eyed optimism and more the idea that you sometimes have to make the best of things, just work through it.’ He gestured to the banks of snow.

‘Take the recent blizzard for example. It’s not the first, it won’t be the last and it wasn’t nearly the worst the country has seen. We’ve got volcanoes and glaciers and we have to live in this hostile environment and make it work for us. We accept that sometimes life does work out and sometimes it doesn’t, but you have to try.’

‘And that’s how you built up PR Reliance,’ Millie said. ‘But you took it from a small national concern to an international empire.’

‘That’s my English mother’s bull-headed determination. If you tell me I can’t do something, then I will.’

‘Are you more English than Icelandic?’ Millie asked him, intrigued.

Ben looked down at her. ‘What do you think?’

She took some time to sort through her thoughts, before answering him. ‘You are very blunt, so you are Icelandic in that. You’re punctual, that’s English because Icelandic people are not. I know that you are a huge believer in equality and that’s very Icelandic. But I think you are very English in your outlook on relationships.’

He stopped walking to look down at her. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, I want a baby, as you know.’

‘You might’ve mentioned it once or twice,’ Ben replied, a little drily.

She narrowed her eyes to fake-scowl at him. ‘Anyway... Iceland has one of the highest birth rates in Europe and there are young women everywhere with babies and who are pregnant. Some are in relationships, some aren’t. But Icelanders have this idea that babies are always welcome and there isn’t angst around blended families. Yet you are—’ She hesitated, unsure of how to put this into words.

‘I’m what?’ he prompted her.

‘I think the English part of you is hesitating—if you were fully Icelandic, I’d probably be pregnant by now.’

‘I appreciate your confidence in my baby-making skills,’ Ben murmured.

But he didn’t contradict her and that was interesting. ‘So you don’t subscribe to the-more-the-merrier idea of kids? Orþetta reddastwhen it comes to having kids?’

He took her hand, tucked it into his elbow and they started walking again. ‘No, I don’t.’

Right, don’t overwhelm me with information, Jónsson.

Millie started to tell him he didn’t need to be involved in the raising of the baby, but held her words back. Two weeks ago, she thought she wanted to be a single mum, but now she wasn’t sure. She now wanted more from Ben, as a lover and as a father.

‘It’s unlike you not to take the opportunity to try to convince me to give you a child, Mils,’ Ben commented.

She scrunched up her nose and hoped he didn’t notice. She wasn’t sure what to say—her heart wanted to beg him to love her, to create a family with her, and to plan a life together—but she knew he would run a mile if she suggested any of the above. Ben didn’t do commitment, he’d told her that. More than once. And at some point, she had to let that sink in, take it onboard.

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