‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, shoving his hands through his hair as if that might wipe the past half an hour from his memory, ‘but after that I could do with a drink. What do you say?’
When she didn’t answer, he stopped. Turned. To see her standing on the pavement looking pale, drawn and miserable.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, which had to be the dumbest question of the century because she obviously wasn’t all right at all.
‘Not really.’ Her voice was rough. Cracked. Filled with despair.
‘What’s wrong?’
Her eyes welled up, her chin began to tremble and she clamped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God,’ she mumbled, and it sounded as if the words were being wrenched from somewhere deep inside her.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his heart hammering with alarm and who knew what else.
‘I’m so sorry, Marcus,’ she said wretchedly, ‘but I don’t think I can go through with it.’
And then, just as he was identifying that something else as hope, relief and a crazy kind of elation, and just as he was thinking that however complicated things were going to be he’d do his damnedest to make sure they’d be all right, she burst into tears.
* * *
Celia barely noticed Marcus taking her arm and making for the garden that filled the middle of the square. She was too busy crying like the baby that up until she’d seen the ultrasound she’d been so convinced she didn’t want and making a complete mess of the handkerchief he’d thrust in her hand with a muffled curse.
He sat her down on a bench, wrapped a warm, solid arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him, murmuring that everything would be all right, and that just made her burst into a fresh bout of weeping.
What was she doing? she wondered desperately as she collapsed against him and sobs racked her body. Why was she crying? She never cried. Not even when she’d graduated top of her year and her father hadn’t bothered to turn up to the ceremony had she shed a tear.
Maybe it was the stress of everything that had happened lately. The exhaustion of working so hard. The terror that she was falling apart and the relief to learn she wasn’t. The shock of finding out she was pregnant. Being utterly convinced she wanted to have an abortion and then being knocked sideways by the thundering sensation that she didn’t. Or maybe it was just her hormones going mental.
Whatever it was she couldn’t seem to stop it. Tears leaked from her eyes, drenching the front of his shirt, her throat was sore and her muscles ached, and while she completely lost it Marcus just sat there calmly holding her, supporting her, comforting her in a way she’d never have expected.
Why wasn’t he running a mile? Surely tears weren’t his thing. Why hadn’t he bundled her in a taxi and sent her home? She must be mortifying him. She was certainly mortifying herself. She’d thought that the night of Lily’s dinner party when he’d come over to her flat, clapped eyes on her and his jaw had dropped in absolute horror was about as low as she could get, but this sank even lower. Her eyes would be puffy, her nose red and her skin blotchy, but that was nothing compared to the fact that by breaking down like this she was being so pathetic, so weak, acting so out of character.
And while the thought of falling apart in front of any man was distressing enough, to do so in Marcus’ arms was enough to crush her completely.
Yet he didn’t seem at all fazed by either her dramatic declaration on the pavement outside the clinic or her subsequent watery collapse. He was coping magnificently.
Surprisingly magnificently actually.
Although maybe it wasn’t all that surprising, because now she thought about it he’d taken everything that had happened over the past week or so totally in his stride. He’d dealt with it all far better than she’d have imagined. Far better than she had, she thought, realising with relief that finally she seemed to be running out of tears.
As the sobs subsided and the tears dried up, she sniffed. Hiccuped. Then drew in a ragged breath. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her mouth muffled by his chest.
‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’ His words rumbled beneath her ear, the vibrations making her shiver.
Fighting the odd urge to snuggle closer, she unclenched her fingers from his shirt and drew back, wincing when she saw the black mascara smudges all over him. ‘I do. I’ve ruined your shirt.’
He removed his arm from her shoulders and gave her a faint smile. ‘I have others.’
His gaze roamed over her face and she went warm beneath his scrutiny. Squirmed a bit because the man was used to being surrounded by women who were gorgeous and heaven only knew what she looked like. A wreck most probably. But she could hardly whip out her mirror to check and rectify the damage. Not when presumably there was an important conversation about to be had. Like—
‘Did you mean what you said back there?’ he asked quietly, and she suddenly felt as if she were sitting on thorns.
Yup, like that.
She pushed her hair back and swallowed in an effort to alleviate the ache in her throat that might have been left over from her crying jag or might be down to the doubts now hammering through her. ‘About not wanting to go through with it?’ she asked, mainly to give her a moment to compose herself.
‘Yes.’
His eyes were dark, his face once again unreadable, but there was an air of tension about him that told her it mattered. Well, of course it did. She’d probably just turned his life upside down, very possibly on the basis of a mere wobble.