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.