Of course she could do with the money. The mortgage on the house her mother had left her wasn’t big, but she would need some kind of income in the coming months to meet the repayments and bills and keep her in groceries. Not to mention if she wanted to replace the furniture Shayne had taken with him any time soon.
Why had she made such a big deal of his offer?
Because of the way he’d framed it? As if she were some gold-digger out to make what she could by selling his own baby to him? Or because she was just sick of men expecting her to do what they wanted?
Maybe both.
He stole a glance at her profile, noticing her frown and the teeth worrying her lip again. She’d be worried about her stolen purse and how she was going to get by without the measly twenty bucks it contained, though to her twenty dollars probably seemed like a fortune.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been so hard on her.
Maybe she was genuine.
Yeah, sure, and maybe this whole thing was one bad dream.
After all, hadn’t she asked him what he was offering? What was that if not an admission of guilt?
His teeth ground together, gnawing on the problem, still not satisfied. So why had it taken so much effort on his part to get her to bite? What was her angle? She had to have one.
Because it was clear she would need money. The child in her womb should not go wanting for the next six months of its life merely because she was too proud or too foolish to accept his help. If she didn’t want to ask for it, he would make her take it.
The Mercedes ate up the bitumen as it headed westwards past Parramatta on the long straight highway that he’d once known so well.
With every passing kilometre, his gut twisted tighter. With every passing kilometre, it felt as if the intervening years were peeling away. And with every landmark he recognised, it felt as if the past was sucking him further and further back, into a life he’d long thought forgotten. The highway was upgraded, the buildings more modern, but still the memories piled upon him until it felt as if he were drowning underneath them.
They passed the cheap second-hand car lot where he’d bought his first set of wheels. Even now, cosseted in the luxury of his Mercedes E-class Coupe, it was impossible not to remember the excitement of the youth who had scraped together the deposit on his first car.
It had been riddled with rust, had a dodgy clutch cable and faulty lights but that car had signalled he was going places. And he had. Twelve months later he had moved on, never to return.
Not that he’d had any reason to. His grandparents had gone. His mother had gone. He’d left the past behind, neatly packaged in a box marked Do Not Open.
He mentally shoved the box aside lest he further disturb its dusty contents and stole another glance at the woman alongside him. She sat tense as a bowstring with her hands firmly clutched around the straps of her bag, as if she might somehow still protect the purse that was no longer there.
With her face angled away, he could just see the tilt of her nose, the high line of her cheekbones and the curve of her lips. And from this angle it occurred to him that she was almost pretty, in a sad, neglected kind of way. Or maybe she had been pretty once, but it had prematurely slipped away under a baking western suburbs sun and the constant battle to survive. But he’d be damned if he was going to let her merely survive for the next six months.
‘I think we both know you’re going to need my help with this baby.’
He was looking straight ahead, changing lanes in preparation for the turn he knew was coming up soon but still he was aware of the exact moment her eyes fell on him. Somehow he could feel their cool blue gaze washing over his skin.
‘I know. I’m sorry. You’re right.’
The simple declaration was the first surprise. The fact that she didn’t argue the second. But it was the apology that surprised him even more, especially given the way he’d assumed the worst of her from the start.
‘I want this child,’ he said, his voice lacking the heat that had been the hallmark of their earlier meeting but threaded with a steel-plated determination that surprised even him as he ground out the words. ‘And I will not see you go without while you do this.’
In his peripheral vision he picked up her quaking nod. But it was more the sigh of acceptance he sensed that told him what she thought before she spoke. ‘I’m so glad you want this baby.’