‘She has a very rare blood type and the chances of a donor being found in time are slim. Her main...only hope, really, is a compatible blood relative. I’m not compatible—’ It still felt like a kind of failure that she wasn’t able to be the one to save her child’s life.
As soon as she mentioned the blood group he recognised the significance.
‘But I am.’
Lily nodded. ‘It seems likely. I don’t really know about these things but I’m assuming if she didn’t get my blood group she got yours? Though they wouldn’t know for sure until they test you, but... I told him that you’d do it.’ She felt his long fingers tighten on her forearm and looked down, not realising until that moment that he was holding her.
She looked up, wondering uneasily if she had taken too much for granted. Obviously she would do anything for her daughter, but Ben didn’t even know her. He wanted to be involved, but she still couldn’t shake the fear that deep down he might even resent her existence.
‘I probably should have asked you first...’
He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘No, you should not have asked me. You’d do anything for Emmy, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course, I’m her mother.’
‘And I’m her father. So I would do anything for her too.’ Anything... His initial rush of emotions settled into deep relief.
‘The fact that I can do something...’ He spoke with more confidence as he realised he possessed the instincts he had feared were absent in his make-up. ‘Anything...’ He dragged a hand across the surface of his gleaming dark hair and turned to the practicalities. ‘I’ll do it...when...how...?’
‘The doctor said he’ll see you in the morning. It’s a relatively simple procedure. They can do it straight away. There’s some discomfort,’ she warned.
‘Is it so hard for you to believe that I would endure the odd twinge for our daughter?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I suppose,’ she admitted in a flash of shamed honesty, ‘I feel a bit jealous. I wish I could be the one to save her. I know it’s stupid and what matters is that she is saved.’ She closed her eyes and said, ‘But I wasn’t even there for her... I wish I hadn’t gone on that stupid holiday.’
‘Emmy would still be ill.’
Her eyes opened and she nodded. ‘Not rational, I know. I keep thinking about how I felt when I found out I was pregnant.’ He saw an emotion he couldn’t interpret flash in her eyes.
‘You were scared?’
‘I was stupid,’ she retorted, closing her eyes to ease the ache behind them. ‘You know, for weeks I was in denial. I just kept saying, like some sort of total idiot, it can’t happen your first time, but of course it can and it did.’ The words were out before she realised what she had said. Maybe he hadn’t really been listening?
Slowly she opened her eyes and realised straight off that fate had not granted her a reprieve. Ben had heard and his lean face was frozen in a combination of shock and disbelief.
‘First time...?’ he prompted, in a low, dangerous voice while in his head another voice said, No, not possible.
It was simply not possible that the woman he had taken to bed that night had been...no, that was not possible.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her little shrug was fuel to the flame of emotion that was burning him up. The guilt was eating him up from the inside out.
‘My God, it’s true—you were a virgin, weren’t you? I was your first!’ He looked at her as though she were a live grenade someone had dropped in his lap.
‘Only...’ Oh, Lily what is wrong with you? ‘...I’ve been pretty busy since.’
He closed his eyes. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the nerve that was clenching and unclenching beside his mouth.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he groaned as he pushed one hand deep into his thick pelt of dark hair. He opened his eyes. ‘A virgin?’ He felt a fresh slug of guilt leavened with, if he was honest, a degree of arousal. It was a silly male possessive pleasure to know he’d been her first. ‘You didn’t say a word, and why me?’
‘I thought you’d realise and, in case you haven’t noticed, you are obscenely good-looking.’ She’d hoped to lighten the mood but he didn’t even crack a smile. If he looked like this now, she thought with a delicate little shudder, imagine how he’d look if she told him the full truth. Well, that was never going to happen. ‘There’s no need to make a big thing of it. I don’t regret it. She’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. She was a beautiful baby and now...with what’s going on, all that stuff doesn’t matter now.’