The Girl He'd Overlooked (19 page)

Everything in that warm glance he had given her made her heart soar but acceptance of the fact that he didn’t love her was so deeply embedded that she was cautious of letting herself get wrapped up in silly dreams.

He could read her mind. The second the consultant had left, he settled her comfortably back on the sofa, tucking the cushions around her and tutting when she told him that she wasn’t an invalid.

‘I’m not sure I can believe you in any matters to do with health when you decided to keep those giddy spells to yourself,’ he chided, and Jennifer half sat up and drew him towards her.

‘And I’m not sure I can believe what you said before…’

‘I could tell that that was playing on your mind.’ He
sighed and pulled one of the chairs towards the sofa and sat on it, taking her hand in his. ‘And I don’t blame you. I know I made it clear from the start that I wasn’t into long-term relationships and I had the history to prove it. My life was my work and I couldn’t foresee a time when any woman would take precedence over that. I never realised how big a part you played until you left. I had become accustomed to having you there.’

‘I know,’ Jennifer said ruefully. ‘I always felt like the girl in the background you could relax with but never really looked at. I just saw a procession of gorgeous little blondes and it didn’t do anything for my confidence levels. And then I got my degree, got that job in Paris… and best of all, you asked me out to dinner. I thought it was a date. A proper date. I thought you’d finally woken up to the fact that I wasn’t a kid any more. I was a woman. I was so excited.’

‘And then I knocked you back.’

‘I should have known that nothing had changed when you ordered cake and ice cream as a surprise, with a sparkler on top.’

‘I’d do the same thing now,’ James told her with a slow smile that made her toes curl. ‘You love cake and ice cream and I love that about you. I didn’t knock you back because of how you looked.’

‘It felt that way to me,’ Jennifer confessed.

‘You were on the brink of going places. When you kissed me, I felt like a jaded old cynic taking advantage of someone young and vital and innocent. You had stars in your eyes. I honestly thought that you deserved better, but it was hard. I’d never touched you before. I was so turned on… We should have had all this out in the open a long time ago.’

‘I couldn’t. You were right about me. I was very innocent
and very young. I wasn’t mature enough to handle a discussion about it. I just knew that it felt like the ultimate rejection and I ran away.’ She sighed and looked at him tenderly. ‘I thought I’d built a new life for myself in Paris and, in a way, I had.’

‘You’re not kidding. I had the shock of my life when I saw you again at the cottage. You weren’t the same girl who’d made a sweet pass at me four years before. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.’

‘Because I had changed my outward appearance…’

‘That’s what I thought,’ James confessed ruefully. ‘I wasn’t into the business of exploring my motivations. One and one seemed to add up to two and I took it from there. I never stopped to ask myself how it was that you were the most satisfying lover I’d ever had.’

‘Was I? Really?’ Jennifer shamelessly prodded him encouragingly and he favoured her with one of those brilliant smiles that could literally make her tummy do somersaults.

‘You’re fishing.’

‘I know. But can you blame me? I spent years daydreaming about you and then just when I thought I’d mastered it, we meet again and I discover that I’ve always been daydreaming about you. When we finally became lovers… it was the most wonderfully perfect thing in the world.’ She thought back to the moment the bubble had burst. ‘I never thought for a second that I would get pregnant and the really weird thing was that it was the fault of my condom, the condom I’d bought four years ago…’

‘To use with me?’ James looked at her in astonishment. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘No, I’m not. I hung onto it for so long that it went past its sell-by date. Actually, I think drowning in salt water and being bashed about in my bag can’t have helped prolong its useful life.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

‘When I found out, I had to face up to the truth, which was that you found the sex amazing and you liked me because we’d known each other for such a long time, but you didn’t
love
me.’

‘The whole business of love was something I hadn’t got my head around. I just knew that you turned up holding a bombshell in one hand and a Dear John letter in the other and I couldn’t seem to find a way of getting through to you. When I proposed to you, I didn’t pause to think that you might actually turn me down.’

‘If I’d known…’

‘Shall I confess something?’

‘What?’

‘This house was never renovated to be rented or sold on.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It came to my attention because it had been out of action for a while. It must have slipped through the net somewhere along the line but, the second I saw it, I knew I wanted it for you and that was long before I found out that you were pregnant. God, I was a fool. I should have known from the very second I started thinking about you and houses in the same breath that I had fallen in love with you. In fact, I was going to tell you about it when you broke the news.’

Pure delight lit up Jennifer’s face and she flung her arms around his neck and pulled him towards her.

‘I thought when you dropped all talk about getting married that you were relieved to have been let off the hook… Most men would have been if they found themselves landed with an unwanted pregnancy…’

‘Relieved to have been let off the hook?’ James laughed and stroked her hair. ‘All I could think was that you wanted
out, you wanted to be free to find this perfect guy of yours and all I could think was that I needed to put a stop to that, needed to show you that
I
was that perfect guy… I knew that the thought of marriage had sent you into a tailspin. You didn’t want to marry me and I wasn’t going to try and force your hand and risk you pulling back completely.’

‘But I
did
want to marry you. You don’t know how much. I just didn’t want to be married for the wrong reasons. I hated the thought that you would put a ring on my finger because you couldn’t see any other way round the situation. I didn’t want to be your lifelong obligation.’

‘So now I’m asking you to be the lifelong love of my life. Will you marry me…?’

The wedding was a quiet affair, with family and friends, and, after the scare with the pregnancy, baby Emily was born without any fuss at all. She was plump and pink, with a mop of dark hair, and for both Jennifer and James it was love at first sight.

For a commitment-shy guy determined never to be tamed, James was home promptly every evening. It was very important to delegate, he told her—delegation ensured that employees were kept on their toes and it motivated them in their careers, and if he had taken to working from home now and again, then it was simply because modern technology made it so simple, virtually mandatory in fact.

She would have to get used to having him under her feet because, he further informed her, he was tiring of the concrete jungle. It was no place to bring up all the children he planned on them having. It was a cut-throat world and, besides, there was just so much money a man could use in a lifetime and, that being the case, why waste time
pursuing more when there were so many other, more rewarding things to do with one’s time?

And there was no doubt what those other things were.

Jennifer teased him about the man he had become and she knew that she would spend a lifetime ensuring that the happiness he gave her was returned to him a thousandfold…

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2012
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.
Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Cathy Williams 2012

ISBN: 978-1-408-97431-5