‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
Right. So not sex. Obviously. Stupid of her. Why would she even have thought it when he showed absolutely no interest in her like that? Damn those scorchingly hot dreams she’d been having about him.
‘What would happen if either of us met someone else?’ she asked, thinking that, while she couldn’t imagine ever doing so herself, Finn was gorgeous and a billionaire and presumably had women flinging themselves at him left, right and centre. She’d seen zero evidence of it to date, but that could well change once things settled down.
‘We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it,’ he said, which wasn’t exactly a denial. ‘Think about it, Georgie. What do you have to lose?’
The hint of arrogance and condescension in Finn’s voice annoyed her even more than the tiny irrational stab of jealousy she felt at the thought of him with another woman, but actually none of this was about her, was it? This was about Josh. Too much of his short life had been taken up with her illness and she owed it to him to make amends. Goodness knew she hadn’t been the best of mothers. In fact, she must have been among the worst.
Surely he’d be better off with two parents together. Didn’t the statistics suggest precisely that? The inconvenient and all-consuming attraction she felt for Finn would fade to a manageable level eventually. It already had done a bit. Look at the way the shock of his suggestion had rid her of her ridiculous embarrassment around him.
And they were hardly strangers any more. She’d even go so far as to say that they had a weird kind of connection that had nothing to do with Josh, an odd sense of recognition that made her think ‘oh, that’s right, it’s you’, which she’d felt the night they’d met, and which hit her with increasing regularity now.
And really, how bad would such a situation be for her? she thought, on one hand barely able to believe that she was even considering Finn’s preposterous suggestion yet on the other totally seeing the sense of it. They got on well enough. And he was right. She would have the stable family unit she’d always yearned for, along with the security that Finn could provide.
If they were joined in partnership he wouldn’t be able to just get up and leave, would he? Should she have a relapse he wouldn’t abandon Josh, and therefore he wouldn’t abandon her. They’d be safe. He’d told her she’d always have his support, which she believed, and she wasn’t going to get anything like it anywhere else. She wasn’t exactly an attractive prospect and it wasn’t as if there was anyone else waiting in the wings.
Ultimately, despite his arrogance and condescension, Finn had a point. She really did have nothing to lose. In fact, she had everything to gain, and so, to ensure the best future for Josh in particular, it really was a no-brainer.
‘All right,’ she said with a brief nod. ‘If it’s a civil partnership you want, it’s a civil par
tnership you shall have.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE CEREMONY TOOK place in a register office a stone’s throw from Finn’s hotel a week later, the usual lengthy bureaucracy associated with such an event magically disappearing the moment he produced an enormous cheque, which only went to demonstrate yet again that once he wanted something he didn’t stop until he got it.
The arrangements hadn’t been complicated in any case. Georgie had only wanted Carla there, and, apart from their son, Finn had no relations. His mother had been hit by a bus when he was ten, he’d told her, his father had died of terminal cancer around three months ago, and he had no siblings. He was as alone in this world as she was, and when she’d discovered this she’d had the fanciful notion that by hitching her wagon to his she might be rescuing him as much as he’d rescued her.
Faintly unsettled by that thought and unwilling to acknowledge what the accompanying squeeze of her heart might mean, Georgie had joked that it was going to be a small ceremony, and indeed it was. She wore a knee-length ivory dress and matching coat. Finn had on a dark suit that fitted as if made for him, which it probably was, and a snowy white shirt open at the collar that drew attention to the firmness of his jaw and strong planes of his face.
She didn’t know quite why they’d dressed up. There was nothing remotely weddingy or romantic about either the venue or the occasion. But that didn’t douse the flicker of warmth that uncurled deep within her when they stood together with a thankfully beautifully behaved Josh in Finn’s arms while Mrs Gardiner, who’d doubled up as the second witness, took the photo she’d insisted on taking after they’d all signed the register. Nor did it stop her noticing how smoulderingly hot her new... What? Not husband... So partner...? How smoulderingly hot he looked and how delicious he smelled close up.
Not that any of that mattered, any more than the weird idea that the ceremony was somehow special did. She’d get over that nonsense. Nothing had changed. And, while the way Finn made her physically feel was going to continue to be hard to ignore, it wasn’t impossible. She was made of stern stuff. If she could get through the insanely tough initial stages of post-partum psychosis, she could handle this inconvenient attraction, however insistent. It wasn’t as if there was any other option when how she felt was so clearly one-sided. She was hardly going to throw herself at him and suggest a repeat of that wild night they’d spent together. Heaven forbid. His likely rejection would be mortifying.
However, for the sake of their son, she and Finn could be perfectly civil and mature about all of this, and she, at least, intended to start with the lunch they were about to embark upon to mark the occasion. Carla had gone straight back to work after the ceremony and Mrs Gardiner had taken Josh back to the apartment for his customary nap, which left her and Finn in one of the many restaurants in his company’s portfolio, together and on their own for the first time in weeks.
‘What shall we toast to?’ she asked, once they’d sat down at their table and a bottle of champagne had been delivered and poured.
Finn arched one dark eyebrow. ‘Is there any need to toast anything?’
‘I think so... Ooh, I know. How about to no longer being alone?’
He didn’t say anything, merely carried on looking at her steadily, his gaze unwavering and unfathomable, and for one horrible moment she thought she’d got it all wrong. But just as she was beginning to feel a bit of a fool sitting there with her hand outstretched, he touched his glass to hers and gave her the faintest of smiles before lifting the glass to his lips and tipping half of its contents down his throat.
‘So why didn’t you want any of your friends to be a witness?’ she said, taking a sip of her own drink and for some reason feeling ridiculously pleased that she hadn’t got it wrong after all. ‘Come to think of it, do you have any friends?’ She hadn’t heard any mention of any.
‘Of course I do,’ he said, setting his glass down and twirling the stem between his fingers and thumb. ‘One of them’s on honeymoon, and it didn’t seem worth bothering any of the others for something that was merely a formality.’
Oh. Right. Well. That told her. Just as well she hadn’t been harbouring any ideas of their civil partnership being anything other than purely practical.
‘Do they know about me and Josh?’ she asked, slightly distracted by the mesmerising movement of his fingers, as so often happened whenever she looked at his hands.
‘If they do it’ll have been via the press.’
So he wasn’t exactly shouting the news of their union from the rooftops. Which was fine. There was absolutely no reason why he should, she told herself, lifting her gaze and getting a grip. ‘Will I ever meet any of them?’