Page 26 of A Nine-Month Deal With Her Husband

Ben pushed an agitated hand through his hair, his mouth taut with tension. ‘I can’t give you one, I’m afraid. I know I should say no, but I can’t. I can’t say yes, either.’

‘You need more time to think about it,’ Millie said. She understood that and was perfectly happy to give him all the time he needed. Within reason. She wasn’t going to hang around for ever waiting for an answer. She had a baby to make, a new life to start.

‘I do,’ Ben agreed.

Fair enough. ‘That makes complete sense and I know I can’t expect an immediate answer.’ She’d like one, though. She thought about pushing him for a date, an end point and knew she was pushing her luck.

Rein it in, Piper. It’s not as though you are asking to borrow some sugar or asking him to give you a lift to the airport.

‘How long do you need?’ she asked him.

He lifted his hands, puzzled. ‘I don’t know, Millie.’

She stared at her coffee cup, thinking hard. She’d been mentally prepared to delay getting pregnant until she and Ben were, at the minimum, legally separated. It would take them, at least, eighteen months to get their divorce through the system. Could she delay the baby-making process for half that time, say nine months, the same amount of time she required to grow a baby?

She wasn’t crazy about the delay, but she was willing to wait if it meant there was a chance of having Ben’s baby. She knew him, she trusted him and she wanted her child to carry his genes as well as hers.

‘Do you think you could give me an answer in nine months?’ Millie asked him.

She’d finally, finally, managed to crack his mask of imperturbability and shock, hot and blunt, flew through his eyes. ‘You are prepared to waitthatlong?’

She lifted one shoulder. ‘Yes. You are the only person I would consider entering into a nine-month baby deal.’ She tried to smile, but knew she didn’t succeed. ‘My only request is what I’ve always asked of you, Ben, and that’s for you to be honest. The moment you know whether you will, or won’t, please tell me.’

He nodded, looking more serious than usual. ‘I promise to tell you as soon as I can, Mils. And I promise to continue being honest with you.’

That’s all she could ask. Right, time to move on from this awkward conversation. She was feeling like the one-night stand who’d overstayed her welcome and Ben had work to do. ‘Can you check with Einar whether he managed to get me on a flight back to London?’ she asked him. ‘And do you think the bank will be open today?’

Ben nodded. ‘I don’t see why not. Why?’

‘Well, I’d like to see what’s in the bank deposit box Magnús rented in my name before I leave,’ she told him, looking at the hands that had glided over her body last night. She wanted more of the wonderfulness they’d shared last night, but she couldn’t ask him to take her back to bed. She torpedoed that option when she blurted out her baby-making idea.

Ben pushed his hip into the island and crossed his arms. He was so close she could count each of his individual, dark and stubby eyelashes and could see the faint, white scar on the right side of his jaw underneath his stubble. His big brain was working overtime and she wondered what he was thinking. She sighed. He was probably counting the minutes until he got the crazy woman out of his house.

‘Why don’t you stay?’

Millie blinked, unsure if her hearing was playing tricks on her. ‘Sorry?’ she asked.

‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Here. With me.’ Ben tapped his index finger against his bicep, the only hint he wasn’t as insouciant as he sounded. ‘I’m flying to St Barth’s in two weeks, the afternoon before the gala concert—’

‘I’m not happy about you missing the concert, Jónsson.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to channel Bettina. She also just wanted a minute to take in his words. Ben was asking her to stay. What did that, whatcouldthat, mean?

‘I was hoping to talk you into the speech I’ve been asked to do,’ she added.

‘I’d rather die,’ Ben growled and she wondered if he’d really turned white, or whether it was a trick of the light.

‘You give speeches to hundreds, thousands of people all the time,’ Millie countered. She’d caught a couple of his speeches on social media and she’d been impressed. Benedikt Jónsson, it was said, knew his stuff.

Ben’s expression hardened. ‘That’s business, not personal. I don’tdopersonal.’

His words were bullet hard and the hard light in his eyes suggested she not pursue this now.

‘Spend the next two weeks with me,’ he said, repeating his earlier suggestion. ‘I’ll take some downtime and I’ll hand off some of my responsibilities to my second-in-command, and we can explore Iceland. It’s been years since I’ve been snowshoeing or on a snowmobile.’

It had been even longer for her and she’d always loved Iceland best in winter. It had a stark beauty that took her breath away. Millie desperately wanted to reacquaint herself with this ancient, mystical land, and her first instinct was to shout yes, loudly and with force, but she managed to swallow her response.

‘Why?’ she asked instead. He couldn’t do the speech for her, he didn’t do personal, but he was asking her to stick around. She narrowed her eyes, suspicious. ‘Why are you ditching work to spend time with me?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Part of the reason is that I need to decide on whether to give you a baby and I think I need to know you better, and get to know you as an adult, to make that decision.’

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