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CHAPTER EIGHT

DINNER wasn’t going well. Charlotte hadn’t anticipated that Greyson would see straight through to her fear of leaving this child all alone in the world should something happen to her. She hadn’t planned on his kisses reducing her to jelly and she certainly hadn’t anticipated that his heated insistence on marriage would wash over her like a panacea, or that the thought of marriage to this man would be so very tempting.

‘Greyson, I thank you for the offer,’ she said raggedly. ‘Truly, I do, but think. You’re talking about a marriage of necessity, not a union based on love. Is that really what you want?’

Greyson remained silent. Such a beautiful man, so hell-bent on doing the right thing by her and this baby, that he couldn’t see through to what he might need, and what he would lose if he insisted on a marriage of convenience.

‘What about your work?’ she continued.

‘If not Borneo this time, you’ll want to go somewhere else down the track. Greyson, you know my feelings on that kind of life.’

‘We’ll compromise,’ he said, in a voice that promised anything but. ‘I don’t have all the answers for you, Charlotte. I have three more months’ work here. After that I had planned on taking on a new project but it doesn’t have to be out of the country. Maybe it’s time I looked to my own backyard and reassessed my future direction. Maybe it’s time you did the same.’

‘I want to finish up at the university and set up a Greenstone Archaeology Foundation,’ she offered. ‘One that finances and manages archaeological projects and gets key people working together. I’d start small. One project at a time. If I can get the right people in place, I’ll be able to work part time from home.’

‘Or anywhere else,’ he said silkily.

‘Is that your idea of compromise? We traipse the world with you?’

‘Of what use is a father to a child if he’s never there? Jesus, Charlotte. What is it you want from me?’ Greyson glared at her, a man trapped.

Trapped because of her.

‘Not marriage,’ she said, and her heart bled for herself and for Greyson, and the baby they’d unwittingly made. ‘Not without love. Something else. Something that love doesn’t necessarily have to play a part in. I’m arranging for my own work to become more flexible so that I can be a hands-on mother. You’ve no idea how relieved I am that you want to be a hands-on father. I’m just saying that there’s no need to rush into marriage. Truly. We have the time and the resources to come up with a solution that doesn’t necessarily involve for ever and ever, amen.’

Greyson closed his eyes, shook his head. Probably wishing himself halfway up the Sepik River. Anywhere but here.

‘My work’s probably going to get a little chaotic over the next few months while I set up a foundation blueprint,’ she began, and Greyson’s eyes snapped open.

‘As long as it’s not a dangerously exhausting plan, I’m all for it,’ he said smoothly. ‘Could you base your foundation headquarters at the Double Bay house?’

‘Yes.’ This was where she wanted this conversation to go. Exactly where she wanted it to go. ‘It’s the logical choice, especially if the baby and I lived there too.’ Tell him what you want, Derek had told her. Not marriage, not without love, but something that might suit them both and allow them to raise a child and still partake of the work they loved. ‘I don’t know that you’ve been around the back of Aurora’s place but the grounds flow all the way down to the harbour. There’s a boat house down there—big enough for a speedboat, nothing more. There’s a jetty and a deepwater mooring there too.’

Charlotte thought she saw a flicker of interest in Greyson’s dark eyes but if he had any thoughts on how that deepwater mooring might best be put to use, he kept them to himself.

‘You’d be welcome there. Living in the house or on your boat. You might not always be there, what with your work and your travels, but you could base there. We could all base there. That’s kind of as far as I’ve gone with the thinking.’

‘It’s sound thinking,’ he murmured. ‘God, Charlotte. You’re going to have to give me some time with this.’

‘Of course.’ Charlotte picked up her mineral water and sipped it through the straw. She looked to the bar. She looked at the artwork on the walls. She’d known this meeting would be a hard one. But she’d seriously underestimated just how hard it would be, or how bad she would feel about being the tool of Greyson’s entrapment. ‘Greyson—I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t,’ he said gruffly. ‘Please, Charlotte. Just … I need some time to think.’

She gave him time. Seconds that felt like hours. Minutes that stretched into eternity.

Much more of this and she was going to start rocking back and forward keening, such was her nervous tension.

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I accept your offer to base myself and my operations at the Double Bay house with you, under one condition.’

‘What’s the condition?’

‘Marry me. Tie up your money and your possessions so I can’t get to them if that’s what you’re worried about, but marry me.’

‘No.’ He wasn’t the only one around here with a stubborn streak the size of the pyramids. ‘Not without love.’

‘What makes you think you won’t get that too?’ Greyson at his most formidable, but the chill in his eyes was at odds with his words and a perfect example of what she didn’t want their relationship to be.

‘You won’t love me if I trap you into a life you loathe, Greyson. You’ll hate me.’

He was back to scowling at her. Back to brooding.

‘Three months,’ she bargained desperately. ‘Give us three months, and during that time we live together in the house on the hill and we sort out our work and we try and make space in our lives for this baby and for each other. Surely you can see the sense in that?’

But he shook his head. ‘Half measures don’t suit me, Charlotte. They never have, and truth be told I don’t see much sense in postponing our marriage at all. But …’ his beautiful mouth twisted into a mockery of a smile ‘… in the spirit of compromise, I’ll give you these next three months free of matrimony. With one caveat.’

‘Which is?’ she asked warily.

‘That if we live together, we give it our best shot. No holding back. No behaving like polite strangers. And no separate bedrooms.’

‘That’s three caveats.’

‘No, it’s not.’ His knuckles were white as he reached for his beer. Charlotte wasn’t the only one around here so tense she could snap. ‘It’s just three different ways of saying the same thing.’

Charlotte’s food intake was abysmal but Grey coaxed and connived and eventually she cleared her plate. He put his mind to amiable conversation. He stayed away from topics like parenthood and work commitments because, frankly, he was still processing their earlier conversation about those. He paid for their meal and insisted on walking Charlotte home. He bought her a gelato along the way and Charlotte rolled her eyes and protested that she was too full for ice cream, but she ate nearly half of it and Grey finished off the rest.

He took a fair stab at pretending that the world beneath his feet hadn’t just irrevocably shifted out of his reach.

He kept his hands to himself until he got to Charlotte’s apartment door, and when she unlocked it, and asked where he was parked and whether he wanted to come in, he shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. He’d bargained hard for this very concession: no holding back, no distance between them. He hadn’t bargained on being afraid to take advantage of it.

‘When do you want me to move into the house?’ he asked gruffly. ‘I figure I can get the cat there in a couple of days, weather willing.’

‘I can be there from tomorrow onwards.’ She looked so beautiful standing there in the doorway to her apartment. Hard to believe that such a small frame could contain a will that more than matched his own. ‘I’ll get removalists in at the weekend to pack up and shift all this stuff across.’

‘You won’t keep your apartment as a bolt hole?’

‘No. You wanted all in, remember? If I keep this place I would be tempted to retreat here when the going got tough.’

Charlotte looked nervous. He far preferred her not. ‘Pessimist,’ he murmured. ‘It might not even get tough.’

She sent him a disbelieving glance. He countered with a slow smile. ‘There are benefits to having a man around the house that you haven’t even dreamed of yet,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘We’ll see.’ She leaned against the door, more relaxed than he’d seen her all evening. ‘Do you cook?’

‘Not often, but I hunt and I can gather.’

‘Do you clean?’

‘No, but I do appreciate a tidy house.’

‘Do you iron?’

‘That’s what laundry services are for.’

‘Do you mow?’ she asked silkily.

‘What? And do a groundsman out of his job?’

‘Greyson, you’ve spent the last dozen or so years living out of a suitcase, eating hotel food and answering to no one. You’re not even housebroken. I’d go easy on the promises of domestic bliss if I were you.’

‘If you say so, dear,’ he murmured. ‘Little phrase I picked up from my father. Like it?’

‘Yes, but it’s a little early in the relationship for weary resignation, don’t you think? You need to keep that in reserve.’

‘Noted.’

‘Are you coming in?’ she asked again, so Greyson stepped inside and she closed the door behind him, and he stood there.

All in.

Same priceless painting on the wall. Same wickedly expensive furnishings.

Totally different situation.

‘Coffee?’ she offered.

‘No.’

‘Cognac? Liqueur? Scotch?’

He remembered the Scotch from last time, and the raw and desperate lovemaking that had followed. ‘Absolutely not!’ He needed no encouragement in the raw and desperate department. He was there already. ‘And none for you either.’

Charlotte’s sandals came off. Her eyes had narrowed. ‘Someone’s having a panic attack around here,’ she murmured. ‘And it’s not me.’

‘I’m not panicking.’ It was more of a cold sweat and it had nothing to do with the enormity of the changes he was about to make to his life. No, he was far too busy sweating the small stuff. Like that for all his expertise in the area of biological interactions, he didn’t know the first thing about making love to a pregnant woman.

‘Are you going to sit down?’ she murmured.

‘Probably not.’ Not the lounge. Probably best to avoid the lounge. God, his nerves were shot. He crossed to the window and stared out at the view.

Charlotte crossed to the sidebar and poured a hefty belt of Scotch into a glass and brought it over to him, and placed it in his hand. ‘Drink,’ she said gently. ‘You don’t want to ruin all your fine and heroic rhetoric by going into shock.’

Greyson grimaced, but he put the glass to his lips and drank it down in one long swallow.

‘Oh, the envy,’ she murmured, and he smiled a little at that but his eyes remained guarded. A woman looking for joy in their depths would be disappointed. A woman looking to Greyson to hold her and make everything feel all right—if only for a little while—was disappointed too.

‘Are you scared?’ he asked gruffly.

Such a simple question from a deeply complex man.

‘Terrified,’ she whispered, and exposed her soul and all its flaws completely. ‘Absolutely terrified.’

And then his arms came around her, strong and infinitely gentle. His lips were gentle too, and his taste was one she’d tried hard to forget. ‘It’s okay,’ he murmured, as he slid his hands through her hair and cradled her head to his chest. ‘It’s going to be okay. I promise.’

Charlotte wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that her baby would have a father to look to, and that she wasn’t alone in this. She wanted badly to believe that Greyson was here for her now and here he would stay. That he would domesticate easily and be content. That she would find the home and the family she’d been searching for all her life.

She desperately wanted to believe all those things.

But she could not.

Two days later, Greyson moored his cat at Charlotte’s jetty in Sydney Harbour. His view of the Bridge, Circular Quay, and the Opera House was one to make angels weep. The turmoil Charlotte’s steadfast refusal to marry him had instilled in him would have made Satan crow.

Grey knew the value of family. Of marriage, solid and binding. Hell, Charlotte only had to look to herself to see how insecure not being part of a family unit made a child feel. So why wouldn’t she just do the right thing and marry him?

So what if he hadn’t lived a regular life for a while? He’d grown up in a house, gone to school in the suburbs, he knew how it worked. He knew how to mow lawns and unpack groceries and take out the garbage. He knew how to peg out washing and clean a bathroom—his mother had seen to that, bless her iron-willed soul.

He could do this.

And then there were the things Grey didn’t know how to do, he admitted reluctantly.

Like how to convince a stubborn woman that marriage was the only option for him and that love would come easier to both of them once a commitment had been made.

And how to make love to a woman with his baby in her belly, which was something he hadn’t done yet but would, soon, just as soon as he got over his fear of doing something wrong.

By bedtime that night, Greyson was a mess and Charlotte was no better. They sat in the informal living room, watching the late-night weather together in silence. Charlotte, sitting on the couch with her legs tucked up beneath her, Greyson commanding one of the man-sized single chairs. Greyson cloaked his nervousness in stillness. Charlotte tried to do the same but her eyes followed his every movement, watchful and wary, and she jumped at every unexpected sound. Damn near drove him nuts with her quick smile and panicked eyes. Terrified—just like him—of what they’d begun.

‘I might have to bed down on the catamaran tonight,’ he said after the weather report had finished and he’d got to his feet. ‘I really should make sure of the mooring this first night. Wouldn’t want her to drift away on the tide.’

‘No. No, of course not,’ said Charlotte quickly, and stood as well. ‘That would be bad.’

Charlotte nodded. Greyson nodded too. A festival of nodding, followed by a long and excrutiating silence.

‘Can I get you any bedding?’ Charlotte’s words came out rushed and nervous. ‘Blankets. Pillows. Stuff like that?’

‘No. No, I have everything I need.’

‘Of course.’

More silence. Pregnant woman nodding.

‘So … goodnight?’ said Charlotte finally. Did she look relieved that they wouldn’t be sharing a bed? Hard to tell beneath the panic.

‘Yeah, I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll come up before you go to work. We can do newspapers. Or breakfast. Something.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Charlotte. ‘So … goodnight?’

‘Night,’ he muttered, and cursed himself for his fears and his awkwardness as he turned on his heel and fled.

Maybe Charlotte was right. Maybe these new living arrangements would take some getting used to. Maybe Charlotte’s notion of easing their way into each other’s lives hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.

On day two of Greyson’s incarceration at the mansion, he banished the crow on his shoulder to the farthest tree and started taking stock of the house and where he might fit in it. He needed an office, spacious and light filled, and he didn’t think the second-floor sewing room would mind. The day came and went as treasures were found and ruthlessly vacuum sealed and boxed for storage. Greyson worked solidly and made hardly a dint when it came to the contents of that room. He was sorting and bagging yet another monstrous pile of brightly coloured cottons when Charlotte walked into the room, looking tired and not altogether pleased to see him. Or maybe it was just the chaos he’d created that offended her.

‘Busy day?’ she said from the doorway.

‘No.’

‘Don’t you have papers to write?’ she asked next.

‘Yes.’

‘But you’ve decided to take up patchwork quilting instead?’

‘No, I’m stealing office space and banishing your godmother from the premises. I’m sure she was a wonderful woman, not to mention all the way eccentric and richer than Croesus, but I can’t live with her. And while we’re on topic, I’m not sure I can live with being a kept man, either. Somewhere along the line I expect to contribute towards this household’s upkeep. I don’t know how but it’s something we need to talk about.’

Charlotte leaned against the doorway, and crossed her arms in front of her, all neat and tidy, as if she’d stepped straight out of Businesswoman’s Vogue. It didn’t escape Grey’s notice that she looked completely at home in the luxurious surroundings. He really didn’t know if such surrounds were ever going to suit him.

‘You know, somewhere among all those dreamed-of benefits of having a man about the house was a dream where he greeted me cordially when I came home from work, asked me how my day had gone, listened when I told him, and maybe even poured me an icy cold hand-squeezed apple juice and soda with a dash of lime,’ said Charlotte sweetly.

‘What was he wearing?’ asked Greyson.

‘Not a lot.’

Grey peeled off his T-shirt and dropped it to the sofa, perfectly willing to oblige. ‘That better?’

‘Well, it’s a start.’

Grey looked around at the chaos he’d created with his emptying of cupboards and drawers. All that storage space, and every inch of it crammed full. ‘It’s a work in progress. And I’m guessing you probably had a bad day at the office. You’ve got that look.’

‘I either got fired or I resigned,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Depends who you ask.’

‘You don’t need them anyway.’ Grey abandoned the cottons in favour of closing the gap between them. ‘And I guarantee they’re going to regret losing you.’

‘I’m beginning to appreciate your appeal,’ she said with a smile that was way too small for her.

‘Wait till you try my hand-squeezed apple juice with soda and lime.’ He drew closer, and, gathering courage, traced his fingers down her arm until he reached her hand. Such a fine and delicate hand, and he was careful as he threaded his fingers through hers, stepped past her and tugged her gently towards the hallway. Touching Charlotte settled him in a way that he hadn’t been settled all day.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Charlotte, but she followed willingly in his wake, and her fingers had curled around his, and that was something.

‘Kitchen to get you a drink and something to eat.’

‘You mean milk and cookies?’

‘Do we have milk and cookies?’ he asked, glancing back at her. He’d rummaged around in the commercial-sized kitchen at lunchtime. The cupboards had been mostly bare.

‘No,’ she said with the hint of a smile.

Something to do tomorrow, then. Shop.

‘You were right about Aurora,’ said Charlotte when they were halfway down the first-floor stairs. ‘She could be a little eccentric. She never actually did any patchwork quilting that I recall. She just liked buying the materials. And I really don’t know what to do with a lot of her collections. I was thinking of donating them to a university or a museum, although clearly not the university I no longer work for. Colour me a woman scorned.’

‘Make them the property of the Greenstone Foundation, get a curator in to put together a touring collection, and send it around the galleries,’ Grey offered by way of a solution. ‘It’ll promote your foundation, preserve Aurora’s name, and get it out of your hair.’

‘Your hair,’ she said.

‘That too.’

They’d reached the kitchen. Grey sat her on a stool and, reluctantly forgoing the touch of her hand, he set about fixing her a soda and lime, no apples. He served it with an unrepentant smile. ‘You have to imagine the apples. I’m assuming this won’t be too hard for you, given what you’re capable of imagining.’

‘Gil would have flung himself into the harbour and swum its length to get me apples for this juice,’ Charlotte told him loftily.

‘Yes, but then he’d have been hit by a paddle steamer on his way back and sliced up into apple-flavoured fish bait,’ countered Grey. ‘Gil had no sense of his own mortality.’

Charlotte allowed her smile to widen.

‘So how much notice do you have to give the university that you’re finishing up?’ he asked, getting back to the issue at hand.

‘Two weeks, one of which can be taken as leave. I’m tempted to take two of my colleagues with me. Millie, who you’ve met. And Derek, who you haven’t met yet. I’ve a mind to make Derek the foundation’s second in command and put him in charge of the digs. Derek’s useful and he knows how to lead. He thought Gil was an idiot too.’

‘Did he now?’ said Grey darkly. ‘Maybe we’ll bond.’

‘Of course, chances are Derek still thinks you’re Gil,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘Unless Millie’s told him otherwise. Millie knows you’re you. You being the stranger whose office she procured. I’m pretty sure she’d have mentioned you to Derek by now. Derek and Millie being an item. I’m assuming they talk between themselves.’

‘Never assume,’ said Grey. ‘You wouldn’t rather employ two people who weren’t an item?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘Acquiring and managing employees will be a new experience for me. Any thoughts you have on that will be most appreciated. The plan is to catch on fast.’

‘And not wear yourself out.’

‘And work from home,’ said Charlotte. ‘This home. Which is why I’m thinking we should do a walk through now and make sure we’re thinking similarly when it comes to which rooms to allocate to what.’

‘Eyes off my sewing room,’ said Grey.

‘Keep your sewing room,’ countered Charlotte. ‘But I am thinking of turning over the ground-floor eastern wing of the house to foundation business. What do you think?’

‘Tell me what you want shifted and I’ll shift it,’ said Grey.

‘You are useful.’

‘Never doubt it.’

They walked through the house, making plans and talking big until at last they reached the part of the house where all the bedrooms were and there they fell silent.

‘You said you wanted to share a bedroom,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘And a bed.’

‘Yep.’ Grey shoved his hands in his pockets and stared into a massive bedroom with more floor space than the average house. The bed looked huge too, but there was only one of them, which was also what he’d intended, but the more he looked at it, the greater his apprehension about making love to a pregnant Charlotte grew. ‘That’s what I said.’

‘Any further reflections on that?’

‘Plenty.’

‘Anything we need to discuss?’

‘Probably.’

‘You slept on the boat last night,’ she said tentatively. ‘Was it because you didn’t want to sleep with me?’

‘Charlotte—’ How to explain his hesitation without sounding like an idiot? ‘It’s not you. It’s just—’ Apparently there was no way of saying this without sounding like an idiot. ‘I’ve never made love to a pregnant woman before,’ he admitted gruffly. ‘I’m not a small man. You’re pregnant. Fragile. What if I hurt you? What if I hurt the baby?’

‘Is that what you’re worried about?’ Charlotte looked amused. Relieved.

‘It’s not all I’m worried about, no, but at the moment that’s what tops the list. And don’t look at me like that. It’s a valid concern.’

Charlotte smiled. Charlotte walked his way until she stood directly in front of him. She took his hand and placed it on her still-flat belly, her hand atop his. Greyson’s heart hammered once and settled to an unsteady rhythm. Impending fatherhood was going to take some getting used to.

‘Our baby is well protected,’ she murmured. ‘Our baby’s mother has no intention of spending another night like the last one. Worrying like crazy about all the things she’s taken away from you, and wishing you were there beside her so she could at least give something back. Our baby’s mother has no intention of denying herself the pleasure of your embrace. In point of fact, she’s thinking she should probably address those concerns of yours right now.’

‘How?’

‘Directly.’ Her hand atop his as she encouraged him to slide it higher, past her waist and on to the generous curve of her breast. ‘She wants you to stop worrying about nothing. She needs to know she still pleases you in this regard.’

‘Charlotte—’

‘Greyson.’

One name a plea for mercy. The other full of rich amusement and gentle reassurance.

The future mother of Grey’s child unbuttoned her blouse with her free hand. Slid it aside to reveal a lacy lavender half-cup bra. Beneath it lay flesh, warm and beckoning. Grey stroked the edge where lace met skin with his fingertips. He leaned forward and gently pressed a kiss to Charlotte’s lips.

Charlotte responded as she’d always responded. Generously. Wantonly. Threatening his control and bringing him to instant aching arousal. Her next kiss slid deeper and promised all that he wanted and more.

‘I should have known something was amiss when even the scrape of a bath towel made my breasts tighten and ache for your mouth on them,’ she whispered. ‘I thought I was just remembering you. Reliving the things you did to me and the things I did to you. Do you remember the things I did to you, Greyson?’

‘Charlotte, have mercy,’ he muttered, even as he slid her shirt from her shoulders. Her hair came down next and he slid his fingers through the tresses, glorying in its abundance and the silky-soft feel of it. Slow down, he wanted to say. Slow down so that I can too. So I can do this right and stay in control. But he didn’t say any of that, just cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again and when she wound her arms around his neck, and when her eyes were suitably passion-glazed, he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.

‘You’ll have to stop that,’ she murmured as he laid her gently on the bed and eased down beside her, careful where he put his weight, careful of everything.

‘Stop what?’

‘Thinking. Measuring. Assessing. I don’t want careful from you, Greyson. Not in this.’

‘Then what do you want?’ he said as he lowered his head to her breast and pressed an open-mouth kiss to the curve of it. He tugged her bra aside and found her nipple next and this time the homage he paid her was a little more urgent. Charlotte strained against him, urging him to more so he gave her more and she whimpered her approval. ‘Tell me what you want.’

‘Everything.’

Sleeping arrangements sorted to mutual and blissful satisfaction, Charlotte turned her mind to turning part of Aurora’s Double Bay home into Greenstone Foundation HQ. Millie accepted the admin position Charlotte offered her. Derek accepted the Project Manager’s position. Generous wages plus voting positions for them both on the foundation’s board of directors. The latter being Greyson’s suggestion; his thoughts being that if she had to have a board of directors, better to have at least some people on it who were responsible for the work and who could speak for it.

Charlotte thought it a good idea. Greyson had a great many good ideas when it came to the running of the foundation. He could be very supportive, could Greyson.

And then, with his next breath he could hit her with a question she had no idea how to answer. Like, ‘When do you want to tell my family that you’re pregnant?’ They were still in discussion over that one.

‘Not yet,’ she said, dreading the thought of sharing her baby news with Greyson’s family and watching Olivia’s eyes ice over.

‘When?’

‘After the first trimester. Wouldn’t want them getting all joyous and then not have this baby come to pass.’

Grey looked at her with those eyes that sometimes saw clear through to her soul, ignoring her not-so-honest prediction of a joyful response and cutting straight to the heart of her fears.

‘You think they won’t be pleased.’

‘I think they have a right to their opinions,’ said Charlotte carefully. ‘I think—under the circumstances—that they could probably be forgiven for wishing that you’d never set eyes on me.’

‘They’ll come round,’ said Greyson firmly. ‘Charlotte, give them a chance.’

‘I will. And I know we have to tell them, and we will tell them. Soon. Just not yet.’

‘Then how about we invite my mother to join us for lunch this week? Not here. Somewhere neutral. Just my mother. No baby talk. Just a straight letting her get to know you.’

He hadn’t forgotten their conversation about how to introduce a woman to his family, bless him. But the thought of meeting Olivia again, and doing her best to impress, and potentially having Olivia remain singularly unimpressed, gave Charlotte pause.

‘Where does she think you’re living these days?’ asked Charlotte, and this time it was Greyson’s turn to look discomfited. ‘She still thinks you’re living on the cat, here in the harbour somewhere, doesn’t she?’

‘Probably.’ Greyson eyed her steadily. ‘I’ve no objection to telling her that we’re living together. I can do it today.’

‘Okay,’ said Charlotte faintly. ‘Maybe we should start with that.’

‘And the invitation for her to join us for lunch?’

‘Is a good idea.’ The man was just full of good ideas. ‘I know that. Olive branch and all that. Fresh start. No Sarah there to give your mother conflicting loyalties. Does your mother still see Sarah on occasion, do you think?’

‘I believe they get together for coffee every now and again.’

Great. Just great.

‘Charlotte, Sarah’s out of the picture.’

‘Because of the baby,’ said Charlotte, feeling very, very small.

‘Because of many things,’ said Greyson gently. ‘None of which are related to you.’

‘She’s still going to think I’ve trapped you when she finds out about the baby.’

‘Charlotte, I’m not trapped.’

Yes, he was. He just didn’t know it yet. Trapped into fatherhood, but at least she’d spared him from being bound to her by marriage. That much, she could give him and would give him if he didn’t come to love her the way she was fast learning to love him. ‘You’re a rare and beautiful man, Greyson Tyler. I couldn’t have wished for a better father for this child.’