Lucky Stars (14 page)

“Well, since we don’t know
if
it’s your child, that’s unnecessary,” Lila shot back.

“It’s mine,” Jack said with soft meaning and watched the women exchange nervous glances.

“We thought,” Rachel started but when Jack’s eyes cut to her, she stopped. He watched her swallow then she pressed on, “We thought it was only fair you knew. Belle doesn’t want anything, not your money or anything. She didn’t even want you to know she was carrying your child. But she’s keeping it and it’s yours too and we thought it was only fair,” she finished but when Jack didn’t speak she continued. “Please don’t make us regret this gesture.”

Belle, Jack noted, was very like her mother.

This did not make him waiver mainly because Belle was pregnant with his child and fully intended to keep it from him.

And that was not going to happen.

“I’ll want to speak to her,” he repeated.

“Damn it, man!” Lila burst out.

“Either you arrange it or my solicitors will,” Jack warned. “And I don’t think you want solicitors involved.”

Lila made an angry noise but it was again Rachel who captured Jack’s attention.

“Why?” Rachel asked softly, her voice trembling with an emotion he couldn’t quite read. Hurt or anger, he wasn’t sure. “She doesn’t want to see you. Why put her through this?”

“It’s my child,” was all Jack said to explain which he thought was quite enough.

“I beg to differ. It’s
Belle’s
child too, not just yours,” Lila snapped.

“Then Belle and I, as the child’s mother and father, will speak like civilised people about what will happen during its gestation, birth and continued existence.”

“Oh
lordy
,” Rachel muttered.

“It’s
gestation?
” Lila breathed in a furious whisper.

“I’ll choose the obstetrician, the best, who will see to Belle’s care while the baby’s developing. I’ll choose the hospital, the best, so I can be assured of a successful outcome during delivery. And Belle and I’ll discuss what arrangements will be made after its birth.”

“Belle’s already got an obstetrician,” Rachel noted.

Jack’s eyes cut to Rachel. “Unless he’s the best, Belle will have another one.”

“
She
is lovely and Belle likes her,” Lila informed him.

Jack moved from the door and walked to his desk while saying, “This isn’t something we’re discussing. It’s something I’ll discuss with Belle.” He paused, put his phone and pen on the desk and turned, leaning a thigh against the side, his hand on the top. “Or my solicitors will discuss it with hers.”

“I knew by the way you and your brother behaved you were a bastard but
nobody
is
this
much of a bastard,” Lila snapped then clamped her mouth shut when Jack’s lethal gaze sliced to her.

“This conversation is over,” Jack announced.

“Please don’t do this,” Rachel begged and Lila shot her a furious look but Rachel ignored it. “Belle’s under enough stress as it is.”

“Then I suggest you encourage her to speak with me,” Jack replied instantly regardless of the fact that he felt more than a vague sense of disquiet at Rachel’s earnest words. “Tell her Saturday afternoon, three o’clock at The Point.”

“
If
she decides to come, and that’s a big ‘if’,” Lila proclaimed, “then we’ll be with her.”

Jack extended his head and murmured, “By all means.”

Rachel and Lila glanced at each other before Lila declared, “I do
not
have a good feeling about this and usually my feelings are
spot on
.”

Jack didn’t comment.

Neither did Rachel.

The two women stood staring at him, perhaps hoping he’d relent.

He didn’t.

Lila put her hand to the doorknob saying, “We’ve done enough damage to
Bellerina
. Let’s go, Rachel, before we do any more.”

“This wasn’t my idea,” Rachel replied.

“Well, it wasn’t mine,” Lila retorted.

“If I remember correctly, it was,” Rachel said.

They kept squabbling as Lila led the way out but Jack saw Rachel turn at the door and call, “We’ll see you Saturday.”

Then Rachel closed the door behind them.

Jack stared at it.

Belle Abbot was pregnant with his child.

One of the three indisputably magnificent times he fucked her (Jack knew he couldn’t put that down to romantic idiocy), he’d made her pregnant.

Belle, thin and wan, if the pictures in the paper were anything to go by, had been pregnant with his child for three months.

And she wasn’t going to tell him.

She was going to keep his child from him.

If her mother and grandmother hadn’t intervened, he might never have learned not only that he was going to be a father but that his child existed on the planet.

On this thought, it took an extreme effort of will not to pick up the expensive phone Yasmin had given him and throw it across the room.

Instead, he picked up the desk phone and dialled Olive’s extension.

He put it to his ear and when she answered, he said, “Get me everything you can on Belle Abbot. I want her home address, phone numbers, e-mail and work address by the end of the day. You have two weeks to compile a complete history.”

“What’s going on?” Olive asked in his ear but he didn’t reply.

He put the phone down, put Belle and her family out of his mind and went back to his meeting.

Chapter Six

All Freaking Day Long Sickness

Belle

As her mother drove Belle’s car, Belle watched The Point get closer and closer.

She felt like throwing up.

This was not unusual. For the past six weeks she’d been throwing up a lot.

Morning Sickness was a misnomer. All Freaking Day Long Sickness was more like it.

She hoped she got through this, whatever it was, with James without vomiting on some priceless rug.

That would be beyond humiliating. Not that he could humiliate her any more than he already had, both privately and very, very publicly.

Still, she hoped it didn’t happen.

It had been three days but Belle was still angry with her Mom and Gram.

She could not
believe
they’d gone to see James.

In all their crazy schemes, that was the craziest.

She had no idea what they were thinking (then again, she never did).

Six weeks ago, after finding out she was pregnant and allowing herself a week of temporary insanity (intensified by the lessening, but still present, media scrutiny), Belle had decided to keep the baby.

She was thirty-five and she was never, but
never
, going to get in another relationship even under torture. She’d die before she let
another man
muck up her life. So she decided this would be her only chance.
Unless she was artificially inseminated.
Or she adopted which would be difficult as she was single and although currently wildly famous (not for all good reasons), she wasn’t wildly rich and successful, like a pop star or an actress who could mosey down to Africa with her army of attorneys and have her pick of children on whom she could lavish her attention.

She’d gone home to tell her family and, like an idiot, in a misguided attempt at acquiring moral (and other) support, she’d brought them back.

She should have never done that.

She knew better.

Therefore for the first time in her life (or, since she’d become involved with Miles,
then
James), she had no idea what
she
was thinking.

With her behaviour of the last three plus months, she seriously needed to get her head examined.

Like today, letting her Mom (her Gram was staunchly against it) talk her into going to talk with James.

She knew she should just hire a solicitor and plan, fight, hope and do anything else she had to do to bring about the best for her child.

But no.

There she was in her car, her mother driving and The Point was looming huge and daunting in front of them.

She just hoped she didn’t look as bad as she felt.

She’d decided to wear jeans because she didn’t want to make it look as if she cared overly much about her appearance when seeing James again. Then she’d decided to wear slightly faded but not excessively faded jeans because she didn’t want James to think she was being in his face with her casual attire.

She’d paired this with a white camisole over which she wore a very feminine blouse she’d designed herself.
White.
Nearly see-through.
Delicate pin-tucks at the front.
Girlie gathered cap sleeves with a tiny ruffle at the edges. Buttons opened enough to show some cleavage but not enough cleavage to make her look like the hussy she felt she was the last time she’d visited The Point.
 

She’d put on a pair of silver ballet toe flats. Carried a big,
poochy
, black, expensive designer handbag that she’d purchased in a wild flight of fancy at duty free shopping on her way home to tell her family she was pregnant (this, she excused as still being in the throes of temporary insanity). And, last, she’d donned a black belt with enormous, square, silver rivets in it.

She’d worn silver hoops in her ears, a dozen silver bangles at her wrist and put her hair in a ponytail at the back of her head because James told her he liked her hair down.
That
she knew was being in his face but she didn’t think it was obvious so she cut herself some slack.

She looked like an innocent rock ‘n’ roll virgin.

Albeit a pregnant one.

She sat as her mother park the car at the base of the sweeping, wide, stone stairwell that led to the arched, fifteen-foot tall, studded, wooden double doors.

Belle felt a wave of nausea and swallowed it down.

Her grandmother, sitting in the backseat, leaned forward and rested her hand on Belle’s shoulder. “You okay,
Bellerina
?”

No, she was definitely not okay.

But she didn’t admit that.

“Let’s just get this done,” Belle muttered instead, threw open her door and stepped out.

No sooner had she done this than one of the double doors swung open and Joy, wearing an elegant, blue dress the likes of which one would don to meet The Queen, came flying out.

She was wearing the brooch Belle had given her.

“Belle!” she cried, rushing down the steps, throwing her arms wide and Belle braced just as Joy reached her and gave her a warm, friendly hug. “Oh darling, I’m so pleased to hear your and Jack’s news. So, so, so, so, so, so,
so
pleased,” she chanted, her arms still tight around Belle and Joy was swinging her side to side with abandoned delight.

Joy moved a bit away but held Belle by the forearms so she could look into Belle’s eyes with a friendly smile.

As if the last time Belle saw her, Belle wasn’t dashing out of her house in humiliation after loudly fighting with
both
her sons because she’d been dating one and slept with the other.

As if, for a month after that, Belle’s sordid relationship with her sons hadn’t been written about in detail (not all of them correct, but they were correct enough) in every newspaper on three continents (maybe seven, Belle had no friends in South America, Asia, Africa or Antarctica so who knew).

Joy gave Belle’s arms a squeeze and repeated on a whisper, “So pleased.” Then her head jerked around and she shrieked, “My
God!
You are
not
Belle’s mother!” And she rushed to Rachel and embraced her too.

“Is James Bennett adopted?” Gram asked,
sotto voce
, in Belle’s ear and Belle choked back a wave of hysterical laughter.

This was not hard to do. While swallowing her laughter, she saw movement at the door and her mirth and hysteria died.

She looked up and there stood James, arms crossed on his chest, legs set wide. He was wearing jeans and an
untucked
, tailored, black shirt. He was looking even more beautiful than she remembered him and she thought she’d remembered every single detail of him in glaring clarity but, apparently, she had not.

His eyes were on her and she felt the trill go up her spine as her belly did a flip that had nothing to do with nausea.

Quickly she turned her eyes away and watched Joy introduce herself to Gram with another welcoming hug.

Then Joy disengaged from Gram and linked arms with Belle, leading her up the steps.

“I’ve ordered high tea and we’ve made sure we have plenty for dinner if you all decide to stay which I think would be lovely,” Joy wittered on as she firmly guided Belle up the steps even though Belle tried very hard to drag her feet.

They nearly made it to the top and Belle didn’t look up but she saw James’s thighs, hips then stomach and none of them moved out of the way of the door.