She wouldn’tlethim be. That was why she had got the hell out of his hotel room before it could happen. But he was the father of her baby. And, while Harper’s feelings could be ignored and denied or filed away, their baby could not be so easily dismissed. Marli was a living, breathing entity—a little human they had created together.
‘What about you?’ Jack asked. ‘Are you happy to be a mother?’
Harper nibbled at her lower lip for a moment. ‘I guess I’m a bit like you. I didn’t plan to be a parent. I didn’t yearn for it like my friends do. I’ve always been career-focused.’ Her shoulders slumped on another sigh. ‘What if I’m not a good mother? What if I mess up her life or something? It’s not like I had the best role models for parents. My father didn’t want me at all and my mother checked out when it all got too much for her. WhenIgot too much for her.’
Jack’s warm, strong hands came down on her shoulders, anchoring her. ‘You blame yourself? You were only a child. It wasn’t your fault she died the way she did.’
Harper lowered her gaze to the open neck of his shirt, where she could see the sprinkling of dark hair that covered his broad chest. ‘It was my fault. I didn’t get home from school at the usual time.’ She released a ragged breath and continued, ‘I found a stray kitten on my way home. I stopped to play with it. I lost track of time. I got home and...and, well, I found her on the sofa with an empty bottle of pills and an empty bottle of wine next to her. I called an ambulance but she couldn’t be resuscitated.’
‘Oh, Harper...’ His arms wrapped around her and he brought her closer to his chest in a hug. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. It sounds like your mother had some pretty complex issues that had nothing to do with you.’
‘But theywereto do with me,’ Harper insisted, wishing it was otherwise, but in her heart, she knew she was to blame for everything. She pushed out of his embrace to look up at him through the glitter of sudden tears. ‘If I hadn’t been conceived, my mother might have realised in time the mistake it was to get involved with a married man. If I hadn’t been born, my mother might have had the life of happiness and fulfilment she had envisaged as a romantic young girl. She might have found someone who would love her the way she deserved to be loved, someone who had wanted to raise a family and grow old with her. Someone who wouldn’t lie and make promises he had no intention of keeping. But instead, she died a lonely death in a run-down flat at the wrong end of town. How is that not my fault?’ She brushed at her eyes with an impatient hand, her chest tight with barely suppressed emotion. Emotion she normally controlled so well. Emotion she normally didn’t allow herself to feel. ‘Sorry. It’s not like me to get so emotional.’
‘Harper, you’ve just had a baby,’ Jack said, taking her by the hands in a gentle but supportive hold. ‘Your emotions, let alone your hormones, are all over the place.’
Harper looked into his concerned midnight-blue gaze and wondered if his emotions were in anything like the turmoil hers were. Like her, he had become a parent without warning, without preparation, without planning. ‘We come from two different worlds, Jack. You come from a life of privilege. I’ve come from poverty. How can we possibly raise a child together?’
‘We both love our little girl. That’s the most important thing right now. Becoming a family for Marli’s sake.’
It sounded so tempting. So very dangerously tempting. Her daughter would have everything Harper had not. Marli would not grow up wanting things she could not have, dreaming of adventures she would never get to experience. She would have everything money could buy. She would have two parents who loved her. Two parents who wanted the best for her.
But what would Harper have?
A husband who had only married her because he wanted to help raise his child. Not because he loved Harper for herself. A convenient marriage was not in her game plan. Any marriage, for that matter. Any relationship that would compromise her ability to make her creative mark on the world was out of the question.
Except...there was Marli to consider now...
Her daughter already had more love and commitment from her father in the first day of her life than Harper had ever received from hers in her whole lifetime. Although Marli’s arrival had been a shock to Jack—as it had been to Harper—he hadn’t shirked from his responsibilities. He hadn’t even insisted on a paternity test. He had been all in from the moment he heard she was about to have his child. If Harper refused to marry him, it would certainly make it harder for him to be fully present in Marli’s life. Did she want her little girl to have a part-time dad? Better than no dad at all, but still...
Harper slipped her hands out of his hold and gave him a wry look. ‘You don’t give up without a heck of a fight, do you?’
His flash of a grin did mortal damage to her determination to resist his outrageous proposal. ‘When I want something, I do everything in my power to get it.’
And wasn’t that the heart of Harper’s problem in a crinkly, uncrackable nutshell? Jack Livingstone had way more power than she did. Way, way more.
And he was ruthless enough to use it.
CHAPTER FIVE
HARPERMOVEDTOthe bed where Jack had left the shopping bags. She began to take the items out and laid them out, but her forehead was creased in a frown as if none of what she was seeing pleased her.
‘What? You don’t like what I got?’ Jack asked. ‘The shop assistant helped me with the sizing. And Marli will grow into anything that’s a bit big.’
Harper held up the little pink onesie, the first thing he had selected in the shop. ‘You bought a lot of pink things.’
‘Yes, well, isn’t that what you dress baby girls in?’
She glanced at him over her shoulder, then turned back to pick up yet another pink outfit. ‘Girls can wear other colours, even blue. It would look good with her skin tone and her eyes.’ Which he was ridiculously proud to note were his skin tone and eye colour.
‘But won’t people think she’s a boy?’
Harper turned to face him, her expression now unreadable except for a hard glitter in her eyes. ‘Would you have preferred a boy?’
Jack whooshed out a breath, not sure where this was leading. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever thought about, to be honest. I never saw myself becoming a father. But to have a healthy child of either sex is surely something to be grateful for? And even if she wasn’t healthy, I would still want to be there for her.’
Harper turned back and folded the velour outfit and placed it on the bed next to the pink beribboned teddy bear he’d bought. ‘I think we should press pause on the marriage conversation until I get my head around being a mother. There’s a lot to get used to...and with my hormones all over the place, I don’t think this is a good time to make such a momentous decision.’
On one level, Jack could see the sense in what she was saying. Emotionally driven decisions were often the ones people regretted in the long run. That was why he never made them. Never got emotionally invested. He kept his emotions out of all business decisions, but he was determined to marry the mother of his child. He could not countenance any other option. ‘Okay, we’ll leave it for now. But I want your answer after we come back from Paris.’