Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [57]
‘Well, good luck. You’ll damn well need it if you’re going to settle down with that half-wit of an accountant.’
He left the flat, slamming the door shut behind him, and Natalie stared at it for several minutes before getting up and clearing away her plate and glass—reminders of a side to him that she did not want to recall.
She took the next morning off work to go and see her doctor, a boy who looked years younger than herself and did not seem in the slightest bit perturbed that she was unmarried.
‘All seems fine,’ he said, ‘and I needn’t tell you that you can continue working pretty much to the end.’ He ran through the usual routine things, but his words had set her mind reeling off on a new tangent.
Work. Of course, she would have to leave before the pregnancy became noticeable. She could not have Tony revealing to Kane that she was pregnant. That would be a disaster. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
On the spur of the moment she decided to take the remainder of the week off and visit her sister. Selina lived in the country with her husband and children, and could be relied upon to make Natalie forget some of her troubles. She was placid and understanding.
Natalie relaxed there for four days, hugging her secret to herself, waiting for just the right moment to confide, and then departed without having said a word. Her sister was not at all old-fashioned, but somehow Natalie thought that she would be shocked. Pregnancy outside marriage, and a relationship for that matter, would not have shocked her, but the fact that her sister was the one pregnant would have. And right now Natalie couldn’t deal with that sort of reaction.
She returned to London to find that Eric had been calling her persistently at work.
‘I need to see you,’ he told her, when she finally found the time and the energy to return his calls. They arranged to meet at one of the bistros which was close to the Marshall Corporation and which Natalie had grown fond of over the past few years. It was cosy without being claustrophobic and the prices were affordable. Quite a few of the secretaries frequented it because they could enjoy a pleasant evening there without having to take out a bank loan for the privilege.
Eric was waiting when she walked in. She had managed to dash back to the flat to change before meeting him, and was dressed in a very summery, cool apricot dress which nipped in to the waist and then fell to just above her knees. It was one of her most comfortable dresses, and she had chosen it out of a perverse sense of irony. After all, with that tailored waist, it would probably be one of the first things she would have to put into cold storage when her body started expanding.
Eric ordered her a glass of orange juice, only ex-pressing polite surprise that she wasn’t drinking, and then proceeded to peer at her guiltily over the rim of his glass.
‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ he said, once they had covered the preliminary chit-chat.
Natalie looked at him, surprised out of her introspection. She had no idea what this was leading up to and she was curious to find out. Eric looked extremely red-faced and embarrassed and she wondered what on earth he had to confess. Some secret side to him that he felt she ought to know about? She hoped not. She couldn’t handle any complications in someone else’s life. Her own was too complicated as it was.
‘What confession?’ she asked warily.
‘I know we’ve been seeing an awful lot of each
other——’ he cleared his throat and glanced at her ‘—and
I hope you haven’t—I know I’m just being a fool when I say this, but I do hope you haven’t, that you don’t…’
‘I haven’t,’ Natalie reassured him, reading his mind, ‘and I don’t. There was never anything serious between us and that was one reason why being with you was so enjoyable.’ She summoned up a smile, the first genuine one for what seemed like years, and he looked hugely relieved.
‘It’s just that I know that this might be a bit of surprise to you, but I’m going to be married.’
Natalie looked at him, astounded. ‘You sly dog,’ she said