Innoncent Secretary, Accidentally Pregnant

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE call when it came was unexpected. Luca had won, Emma finally decided. She had her notice typed up and printed off and it sat waiting in her bag for when the right moment presented itself. She simply couldn’t do it any longer.

Evelyn had had her blood test that morning and the bad news that very afternoon. Luca had offered to let her go home, but Evelyn had declined. ‘This will not be the last time,’ he had said to her, as Emma had sat with her arm around Evelyn.

‘Maybe it’s time to see someone else. I have found out about a very good clinic. Their success rate with IVF is high.’ He handed his PA a thick glossy brochure.

‘We can’t afford to go there,’ Evelyn sobbed.

‘I am to be sent the bills,’ Luca said, ‘and this time you will take the time off that you need and rest properly while you wait for the results.’

‘Why would you do this for me?’ Evelyn wailed as Emma wondered the same thing-he could be so nice, so charming, so very, very kind. Ah, but Evelyn was vital to Luca, she thought cynically, the last thing he must privately want was for his esteemed PA to be leaving-but his show of kindness had caught her off guard.

As he always did.

Her throat thickened with tears as he spoke to Evelyn, as she heard again the rare tenderness that she craved from him. ‘Because you do so much for me, because always you have been loyal to me. Because I know that when your baby is here-and it will be here, Evelyn-that even if you come back to work for me part time, or even if you decide to never work again, I will be able to call on you, perhaps to train someone up, perhaps to help for a few days. And more than that, we are friends. I know I can count on you, and you can count on me too.’

When he was nice, there was no one nicer, Emma realised.

No one.

Evelyn was perhaps the one woman he could sustain a relationship with because there was no sex involved, no attraction, just mutual liking and respect.

Emma would kill to have the latter two from him.

Later, sitting at her desk, staring out at the grey autumnal sky that declared summer over, when Luca strode past her desk and to his office and slammed the door behind him, she felt like one of the trees waving in the streets below. Slight, every breeze exposing the bare truth beneath, and she couldn’t do it to herself any longer.

Couldn’t cling on when there was nothing left- couldn’t stave off winter.

She didn’t hate him after all, she only hated his behaviour.

Hated it that he didn’t love her.

And she must remember this, Emma realised, when she told him about the baby.

If she told him.

She let out a slow breath at the immoral choice she was considering taking-denying him the knowledge of the child that she was carrying.

That she would carry until she gave birth to it.

Oh, she would love to be one of those stoic women, one who had never considered the alternatives to giving birth-except she had. Had scoured her magazines for information, had searched on the internet, had made a couple of phone calls-and yet it was Evelyn who had unwittingly halted that thought process. Evelyn’s very real grief at what had just been lost that had reminded Emma of the miracle that had occurred.

That despite precautions, despite a man who wanted nothing more than a short-lived affair, despite a woman who’d had other plans, a life had been created. A life that she would cherish for ever.

It was taking some getting used to, that was all.

She had never felt closer to understanding her mother. She finally understood now how her mother could have felt trapped inside her role of wife and mother. Hopefully, for Emma, that feeling would one day soon be diminished by the overwhelming love she would feel for her child.

Would Luca feel the same?

Tears stung her eyes as she tried to predict his likely reaction-no doubt he would assume she was just after a monthly support cheque or, even worse, a wedding ring.

Well, a loveless marriage wasn’t on her agenda-she was the product of one after all and would never expose her own child to it. So now she just had to tell him, only exactly which piece of information Emma didn’t know yet-that she was leaving for good or that they had created a child together.

And so busy was Emma, wrestling with her decision, that when the call came, although it was not entirely unexpected, it was like a bolt from the blue.