One-Night Pregnancy by Lindsay Armstrong

is, and that’s enough for me.’
    A long, fraught pause developed as he digested this. She couldn’t read his expression, but she saw that nerve flickering in his jaw and knew what it boded—Adam Beaumont at his most controlled and harsh.
    ‘You’re not its only parent,’ he said.
    She shrugged. ‘I may not be, but I’m its crucial parent at the moment, and to my mind that gives me the right to call the shots.’
    As she said it tears ran down her cheeks, and she licked their saltiness from her lips and wondered why she should be crying when she felt so angry. It came toher that all her anger and hurt had boiled over at last—anger that he could have loved her and walked away from her; hurt that he could have believed she would spread rumours about him because it was in her blood, inherited from her father, or because she was silly and thoughtless.
    He had also automatically assumed she would pursue him if she ever discovered he was who he was, so he’d let her go on thinking he was just a run-of-the-mill guy who was wary of any attachment…
    She licked her lips and dashed at her eyes. ‘You see, Adam Beaumont, not only am I its crucial parent, but I know you don’t want me. You don’t trust me, you couldn’t have made it clearer. So I’ve made my own plans. You can stay and listen to them or you can walk away again, but this baby is my affair and will be quite safe with me.’
    ‘Why?’
    The one word seemed to echo around the room.
    ‘What do you mean?’ she asked at last.
    ‘Why do you even want it if you hold such a list of grievances against me?’
    Bridget put her hands on her belly. ‘Because it’s part of me,’ she said, quietly but quite definitely. ‘And because it’s part of you—the part that made me feel as I’d never felt before. I know now that was not the whole you and never could be, but on that one night it was special to me,’ she said with painful honesty.
    ‘Sit down,’ he said, and gestured to the settee.
    ‘Look, this is my apartment,’ she flashed back. ‘Ican invite you to sit down if I want to, but you can’t order me around!’
    He grimaced. ‘Would it be possible for both of us to sit down and discuss this rationally?’
    She hesitated.
    ‘Perhaps we could even have a cup of coffee—?’
    ‘Don’t mention coffee,’ Bridget broke in with a shudder. ‘It’s what set me off yesterday morning.’
    ‘Tea, then?’
    ‘Black tea would be nice,’ she said slowly, and moved towards the kitchen.
    ‘I’d offer to make it, but I wouldn’t want to upset you.’
    ‘Sit down.’ Bridget pointed to the dining table.
    ‘And shut up?’ he offered softly.
    She had to smile—the most fleeting of smiles, gone almost before it was formed, but somehow the tension between them was reduced.
    ‘So tell me about these plans,’ he said when she’d made the tea.
    ‘I thought I’d keep working for a while,’ she said. ‘But it’s been dawning on me slowly that I may have taken up journalism as a tribute to my father’s memory rather than because it was something I was passionate about. So to leave it is not going to be devastating.’
    She nibbled a dry biscuit and went on. ‘Naturally I would like to have a career, but until one recommends itself to me, and while I’m pregnant and then looking after a new baby, I intend to start painting again.’
    She pointed to one of her pictures on the wall, a claret-red cluster of frangipani blooms on a heritagegreenbackground, and told him about the offer that had been made to her. ‘I think it would be a rather perfect occupation for the time being—and I’m actually looking forward to it. Financially I’m fairly secure in any event, until the baby is about two. Then I will need to earn somehow or other.’
    Adam Beaumont sipped his tea. ‘I take it you’ve thought all this out in the context of me not knowing about the baby?’
    ‘Well, yes,’ she conceded.
    ‘And now?’
    Their gazes clashed.
    ‘I…’ Bridget