Blind-Date Baby (17 page)

As the truth struck home a small pearl of moisture appeared at the corner of his eye. This time together had not been about reconciliation, as he had hoped.

Grace had been saying goodbye.

For the next week, Noah almost buried himself in his study. He didn’t know how to fix what had happened between them. He did, however, know how to fix Karl. So he spent his time doing just that. And, as he did, he started to see what Grace had been talking about. He started to see himself, not Karl.

But now Karl loved his double agent girlfriend with true abandon, was willing to die rather than betray her, even if it meant letting her betray him. And, as he wove all of this into the story, the answers started to come to him.

Just telling Grace would not be enough. He was breaking her heart and sounds and syllables would not mend it. Suddenly, he could see so clearly what Caz had been talking about.

The night before they left for Paris, the plan finally clicked into place in his head. He hadn’t wanted to jump the gun, to try something and send her running away for ever if he got it wrong, but he was also aware that time was running out and that the hourglass was almost empty.

Paris was just as beautiful. Too beautiful, in fact. Last time she’d been here it had all been new and exciting, her relationship with Noah blossoming. Even she hadn’t guessed that in three short months it would all come to an end.

Reminders were everywhere. Places they’d eaten, streets they’d walked down. Noah had even brought them back to the
same hotel, although—thank goodness—they occupied a different suite.

Noah was making it hard to let him go.

Harder since they’d made love that day. Every time he looked at her now, her heart did a silly little skip. One better suited to a fourteen-year-old at the beginning of a relationship. It had no place here as they untangled themselves from each other and prepared to go their separate ways.

Grace lay awake in bed early on their second morning there. Her alarm clock showed it was five-thirty but she refused to believe it.

She wished she had Daisy’s laptop with her so she could see if Marissa and Dani were online. It would be late in San Francisco, but probably only early evening in Sydney.

Hang on a minute. She could use Noah’s laptop. It was sitting in the lounge of their suite, all set up and ready to go. He’d shown her how to use it weeks ago, scoffing at Daisy’s outmoded bit of kit. He’d even offered to buy her a new one, but she’d got used to Daisy’s scruffy pink laptop and it felt homely, comfortably shabby in the midst of all Noah’s high-tech gadgets.

Noah was breathing softly on his side of the bed. He hadn’t even made an attempt to touch her again since they’d last made love. As if he’d silently agreed that they couldn’t top what had happened and should leave it as their last sweet memory of the one thing that had always worked in their relationship.

It was almost a relief not to have to wriggle out of his embrace. Almost. She threw the covers back, slid her feet onto the floor and stood up quietly and carefully. Being an early bird, Noah tended to sleep lightly at this time of the morning and it wouldn’t take much to rouse him to full consciousness. And she didn’t want that. She needed this time on her own.

When she was standing, she crept to the door, walking through the soles of her feet like a dancer. Even she could hardly hear her own footsteps.

Noah’s breathing stopped for a moment and she instantly became a statue. But then he started again and he didn’t sit up or make any sudden movements, so she finally made it to the door and released the breath that had been trapped in her chest.

Noah stared at the wall. He’d woken, having heard Grace—no, it was more as if he’d sensed her—creeping out of the room.

Every second of every day she was moving further and further away from him, retreating into herself. He knew he had to put his plan into action soon. But, at the same time, he didn’t want to manipulate her. When he asked her to stay it truly had to be her choice and not because he’d carefully and silently removed all her other options.

‘Shh!’ Grace clapped her hands over the laptop speaker as it merrily chimed, announcing with some self-satisfaction that it was booting up. She glanced at the bedroom door but no light came on and, after a few seconds, she relaxed.

Her fingers rapped out a familiar pattern on the keyboard as she logged onto Blinddatebrides.com, not even having to think about it. She sent out the invitation:

Nothing happened. Oh, well. She’d known it was a long shot, but she’d been desperately hoping that one of them would be online. She was just about to creep back into the bedroom when the laptop pinged.

Grace stretched her fingers and nodded to herself. Other people might not understand, might say she ought to stick it out for the sake of the baby, but she truly wasn’t being selfish. She couldn’t bring up a child in that kind of emotional atmosphere. It just wasn’t healthy.

She glanced towards the bedroom door.

‘Grace?’

On a complete reflex, Grace snapped the laptop closed and jumped away from it. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it would pogo stick right past her throat and out of her mouth.

‘Noah! You scared the life out of me!’

No trademark sexy smile. No crinkle round the eyes.

‘Sorry.’

She looked at the laptop. ‘I was just…chatting to Marissa—you know, the girl in Australia. A wedding crisis or something…’

Why was she lying? This was stupid.

He shrugged. ‘You know I don’t mind.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’

‘Well…I’m going for a shower. You carry on.’

But when she opened up the laptop she discovered that closing it had put it on power save and terminated the Internet connection. By the time she’d logged on again, Marissa was nowhere to be found.

It was a couple of hours until breakfast and she and Noah moved around each other like chess pieces, every move designed to keep maximum distance between them. Every move planned ahead.

They didn’t bother with room service like last time. Too personal. It was much better in the hotel dining room where
they could take comfort from the other people filling up the silences. Where they could breathe out.

‘I’ll be out all morning,’ he told her, even though they’d already discussed it. ‘Would you do me a favour?’

‘Of course.’

‘On the laptop…my book…’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘You want me to print it out?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I think I fixed Karl. I’d be really grateful if you’d read it and tell me what you think.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

They were so civilised, weren’t they?

He nodded his goodbye and disappeared out of the restaurant.

So civilised it made her want to scream.

Grace didn’t feel like sightseeing on her own, so she took Noah’s laptop into the terrace café on the roof of the hotel and read his book. At first it seemed to follow the same path, but it was still interesting as, now she had a better idea of the plot, she saw little hints of upcoming problems, had time to appreciate the details.

However, by the time she’d got halfway through she’d forgotten all about being cerebral about it. The plot whizzed along, keeping her hitting the Page Down key pretty quickly, but it was the love story between Karl and Irina that really got her. Where had this come from?

Before, they’d been fine doing all the gun-toting, baddie-busting stuff but, as soon as they’d been alone together they’d gone all two-dimensional. But now…now Noah had a living, breathing love affair on the pages, one that made her gasp and shed a couple of tears.

It was wonderful. The whole book was wonderful.

It was fiendishly clever, exciting, page-turning—all the things he was known for—but it also made her laugh, cry, put her hand over her mouth in horror and snort in anger. In short,
it made her
feel
. If this wasn’t his biggest selling novel yet, she’d eat his laptop.

She was so proud of him. And when he got back she was going to tell him.

On a whim, she picked up the phone and asked for room service.

The hotel suite door loomed before him. Noah stared at it and stroked the smooth surface of the hotel key card that sat in his pocket. Grace was alone in there. With his book. With Karl and Irina. And if she didn’t believe in them, she’d never believe what he had to say. It had been his way of laying the foundations, testing the waters.

He was scared. Good and scared. And it felt good to be scared. His heart tap danced with it. His brain swirled with it. He hated every single sensation, but he welcomed them because he knew what they signalled. He was ready to give Grace what she wanted, what she needed, what she truly deserved. In six months that little baby would be born and he would be the best father in the goddam world, because now he had the tools. He had the heart.

He pulled the key from his pocket and dipped it in the lock.

Grace was waiting for him, sitting on one of the sofas with a chick-lit paperback in her hands. Had she even read his book? Had he left it too late?

She put the book down and stood up. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

Her face turned a slightly darker shade of pink and she looked at the floor.

‘My book—’

‘Your book—’

They both spoke at once and then broke off.

‘You read it?’

Her face softened and she tipped her head to one side. ‘Of course I did. You asked me to.’

Pure Grace. If he’d been thinking straight he’d have known that he didn’t need to ask. That was just how she was. Always giving. She was going to be a wonderful mother to their child. Another wave of feeling crashed in, breaking the fear into pieces and tumbling it like pebbles in the surf. He loved her so much. It was time to show her.

It didn’t matter what she thought of the book. He was going to tell her anyway.

‘Grace, will you come for a walk with me?’

She folded her arms. ‘But I…I ordered champagne.’ She gestured to an ice bucket on a stand that he could have sworn had just appeared from nowhere. Then she smiled. The first one he’d seen in days. ‘To celebrate the book. It really was wonderful—’

He held out his hand. ‘Come for a walk. I need to tell you something…show you something.’

She stared at him for a second, her hand half-raised to meet his, half-ready to tuck back into the crook of her opposite elbow.

‘Okay.’

T
HE
sun was behind the high-pitched roof tops, slanting through the gaps between tall houses. Where the light hit the quays flanking the Seine, the pale grey stone was transformed with a golden, rosy glow. Grace and Noah walked through these pockets of light and shade silently, their hands joined, on the surface looking like any other pair of visiting lovers who’d decided to finally emerge from their hotel room.

Noah tried to keep his shoulders loose, his jaw relaxed but, whenever he didn’t concentrate on doing just that, the muscles just contracted again. This was it. His moment of truth. He thought he was quite possibly going to die.

They’d started walking near Notre Dame, on the right bank, and now they neared the section near the Louvre.

Grace was staring at the river, steadfastly ignoring the birch trees on the bank—almost as if she couldn’t bear to look at them. But he needed her to look at them. He took a deep breath and stopped by the first one.

Gently now. Let it come to her slowly.

‘Have you seen all these carvings on the trees?’

She nodded. ‘Mmm,’ she said in a faraway voice, still watching the waves slap against their stone barriers.

‘I would imagine that if someone took the time to leave
a message, then the person it was for must mean a great deal to them.’

Now she looked with dull eyes. He stood back. Hoping. Wishing. Praying she’d notice.

Her eyes ran over the bark of the tree and then she sighed and started to turn away. Noah’s heart plummeted. But she took one last look and something caught her attention.

‘Up there, at the top. What is that?’

He shrugged.

‘I didn’t notice that before. It’s new, carved in a circle round the tree, above all the other messages…’

He followed her eyes, willing her to start reading.

‘It’s more than just something like
M + D
, isn’t it? It’s words. It says something.’

Noah held his breath. It said everything.

Grace circled the tree, frowning, then she began to read.
‘She is more than her name
—What on earth does that mean? Is that supposed to be romantic?’

He didn’t say anything, just put his hands in his pockets and started walking towards the next tree, hoping she’d take the hint. She did. But she kept frowning and looking back at the first tree. His poor quivering heart began to steady itself.

They reached the next one and, just as he’d known she would, she stopped and inspected this one without any prompting.

‘There’s more…listen!
Free and unearned favour
. This just gets weirder and weirder.’

Now she walked more quickly to the next tree, he walked behind her, trying to regulate his breathing.

‘And, despite my current fame…’

She ran back to him, her eyes now bright and alert, totally caught up in the puzzle.

‘Noah, it’s…Wait. I’ve just got to—’

She didn’t finish her sentence, but ran back to the first tree, circled it, ran to the second, did the same…

‘It’s a poem!’ she said when she’d joined him again. ‘Come on. There must be more.’

Good. She liked the poem. Well, a sonnet—of sorts. Clumsy and inelegant by Shakespeare’s standards, but he had it on good authority that it came straight from the author’s heart, and that had to count for something, didn’t it? Finally, he’d come up with a way of
showing
her. Caz had been right. Love was more than words, but words were the best tool at his disposal, so he’d hoped he’d found a way to make them count.

He caught her up at the next tree.

‘Read it,’ she said, smiling.

He didn’t need to look at the scratchings in the bark. In the last few days, while Grace had been sleeping heavily, he’d spent the few hours before dawn shaping them into what he wanted to say. But he played along with her. For now.

He took a deep breath.
‘I am humbled to have known her.’
The words sounded strange in his ears. He’d never said them out loud before and it was a bit like going out in public in just his underwear.

Grace sighed. ‘It’s so beautiful. I wonder if there will be a name at the end, a clue to who wrote it.’

He shrugged again. No. No name. Not his, anyway. But there was a clue.

He was scared of the clue.

Once she’d read it, his life would split in one of two ways—one heaven, one hell. And only she could decide.

She jogged from tree to tree, calling out the lines, chattering about what it meant, pondering the mystery. Noah tried to keep his façade calm and collected, but it was difficult without his glass shell. Everything kept floating to the surface and he had to shove it down again, saying,
Wait. Not yet.

Three more trees to go. Was it possible for a man of his age and build to just pass out? Grace came back and grabbed his hand, dragging him on.

‘
Joined with me, she makes my soul complete.
Only two more trees now. This must be near the end!’

Oh, that her smile would stay, that the joy in her eyes would not flicker out when she reached the last tree.

‘And I will die if I cannot always look upon her face.’
Tears sprang to her eyes and she clapped a hand to her chest. ‘Oh, my word…’

No. His words. His heart. For her to accept or reject.

Before she reached the last tree, Noah let go of her hand and stopped as she ran ahead, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he could no longer hear the river. She circled the last silver birch in the row. This time, her mouth moved but no sound came out.

She looked at him and he thought he would melt away into nothing.

He walked towards her and, without looking at the tree, completed the sonnet. ‘She is my love, my heart…’ here his voice thickened so much it cracked ‘…my only Grace.’

So many emotions flickered over her face, he didn’t have time to read them. She marched back to him and grabbed his upper arms, her fingers shaking as they dug into his muscles.

‘Why?’ she said, almost angry. ‘Why did you write that?’

Then the fierceness evaporated and she looked into his eyes. He looked straight into hers. Confusion, hope, fear and desperation all swirled and mingled there. It was as if he were looking right into her heart. He did his best to drop his own shutters and let her see his. Her eyes flicked rapidly right to left as if she were trying to read him, as if she was scared of what he might be saying. And then the tears fell, her mouth crumpled. She nodded.

He kept looking into her eyes and freed his arms so he could touch her face, wipe her tears with the pads of his thumbs. And then he lowered his lips to hers and the kiss they shared was hot and sweet and perfect. It wasn’t just their lips
meeting, fusing. Something happened—a new feeling he’d never experienced before and suspected he never would again. It was as if, in the back of his head, he heard a clunk, a click, and everything in the world slotted into its right place. He and Grace might have been married for three months, but now they were joined.

‘I love you,’ he whispered against her lips, and she just began to cry again.

The only thing better than a honeymoon in Paris was a second honeymoon in Paris, Grace decided as she lay in Noah’s arms the day after they returned from their extended trip. It had been fabulous. Even better than the first one. And not many women got to boast about two honeymoons in Paris within a few months. And with such a man. She sighed and looked at him. He’d changed so much and she was horribly proud of him. She had no doubt now that he would be a wonderful father.

He was her soulmate. He was a different fit to Rob, but still it worked. She didn’t understand how there could be two people who could match her so completely, especially when they were two very different men. But then love wasn’t static. It could cope, she reckoned.

It was six o’clock and she was wide awake. Unusually for Noah, he was not. Thankfully, the morning sickness was much improved and she was happy lying in bed watching Noah breathe and feeling the weight of the arm draped across her midriff. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help trailing her fingers across his arm, feeling the soft hair there.

Suddenly, he sniffed and twitched. He opened his eyes, dozy and unfocused at first, but then he saw her and a huge sexy smile broke across his face.

‘Good morning, Mrs Frost.’

She smiled back. ‘Good morning, Mr Frost.’

Then he dived under the sheet and kissed the slight round
of her tummy. ‘Good morning, Little Frost.’ Then he reappeared and kissed her on the nose. ‘I love you, Grace.’

‘I love you too, Noah. My Noah.’ She ran her fingers through his hair as she gave him an indulgent look. ‘You must have said that a thousand times in the last week. I get it now. You can stop if you like.’

He looked wounded. ‘Never! If I only say it nine hundred and ninety-nine times in the next week, you have permission to slap me.’

‘I’ll keep count,’ she said, giggling.

‘You’d better.’

They dragged themselves out of bed and down into the kitchen. Grace had a yearning for a full English breakfast now the morning sickness seemed to have waned almost completely. And, as Noah cooked, they discussed the future of the book shop with its attached patisserie, an easy flow from one to the other. If she hadn’t been so angry the first time she’d seen it, she’d have realised what a wonderful idea it was.

Grace jumped up to sit on the counter and watched Noah fry her eggs. ‘Daisy is thrilled at the idea of helping out while she studies and Caz has been moaning she needs something to keep her occupied. She also felt really bad about laying off all the old Coffee Bean staff and she’s begging me to consider re-hiring them. Between all of us, I reckon we can make it work.’

Later that morning the doorbell rang and Noah answered it, then returned to the kitchen, where Grace was sitting, with a small square package in his hand.

‘What’s that?’ she asked and walked over to look at it.

‘Don’t know.’ He turned it over and read the return address. ‘It’s addressed to me from an Internet company based in Devon. Ceramics or something.’ He shook his head.

‘It’s not
another
thing for the baby, is it?’

Noah had been filling the nursery with books and toys and all sorts of strange gadgets with alarming speed. She really
must encourage him to get on with the third draft of his book. That would keep him out of trouble and curb the Internet shopping spree.

‘No. Or nothing I’ve bought.’

She narrowed her eyes, but he stared back at her, the picture of innocence.

‘We’ll see,’ she said, holding out her hand. He gave the package to her and she peeled back the parcel tape and looked inside. Something—an irregular something—was rolled in bubble wrap. And there was a piece of paper. She put the box on the kitchen table and pulled the scrap out.

‘It’s a message from…Daisy,’ she said, one eyebrow shooting heavenwards. ‘It’s definitely for you. Listen…

She passed the scrap of printed paper to Noah, who examined it.

‘It’s just a short message she must have typed in on the website when she ordered the…whatever it is.’

‘I think you’d better open it.’

Noah shrugged and pulled the box across the table to him. Then he removed the
thing
and started to unwrap it. As he revealed what it was, Grace began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘Oh, that girl! She’s priceless!’

It was so funny. Noah was just staring at it, completely lost for words.

It was an electric-blue mug with the words ‘Hot Papa’ written on it in navy glitter. She took it from him and placed it on the shelf next to her pink mug.

Finally, Noah began to chuckle. ‘A matching pair. But…
Hot Papa
?’

Grace walked over to him and looped her arms around his
neck. ‘She’s not wrong, you know,’ she said. And then she drew him into a lingering kiss and let him show her just how right his stepdaughter had been.