First Comes Baby...: The Loner's Guarded Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

clenched around her mug. They gave off nothing but a great big blank.
    She glanced at Ben. He lounged in the armchair opposite, staring at his cake and gulping coffee. She wanted to shake him too.
    She thumped her mug and cake plate down on the coffee table and pasted her brightest smile to her face. She utterly refused to do blank . ‘While it’s lovely to see you both, I get the impression this isn’t a social visit. You said there’s something you wanted to tell us?’
    ‘That’s correct, Megan.’
    Her father’s name was Lawrence Samuel Parrish. If they didn’t call him Mr Parrish—people, that was, colleagues and acquaintances—they called him Laurie. She stared at him and couldn’t find even a glimpse of the happy-go-lucky ease that ‘Laurie’ suggested. Did he resent the familiarity of that casual moniker?
    It wasn’t the kind of question she could ever ask. They didn’t have that kind of a relationship. In fact, when you got right down to brass tacks, she and her father didn’t have any kind of relationship worth speaking of.
    Her father didn’t continue. Elsie didn’t take up where he left off. In fact the older woman seemed to be studying the ceiling light fixture. Meg glanced up too, but as far as she could tell there didn’t seem to be anything amiss—no ancient cobwebs or dust, and it didn’t appear to be in imminent danger of dropping on their heads.
    ‘Well!’ She clapped her hands and then rubbed them together. ‘We’re positively agog with excitement—aren’t we, Ben?’
    He started. ‘We are?’
    If she’d been closer she’d have kicked him. ‘Yes, of course we are.’
    Not.
    Hmm... Actually, maybe a bit. This visit really was unprecedented. It was just that this ritual of her doing her best to brisk them up and them steadfastly resisting had become old hat. And suddenly she felt too tired for it.
    She stared at Laurie and Elsie. They stared back, but said nothing. With a shrug she picked up her mug again, settled back in her easy chair and took a sip. She turned to Ben to start a conversation. Any conversation.
    ‘Which part of the world have you been jaunting around this time?’
    He turned so his body was angled towards her, effectively excluding the older couple. ‘On safari in Africa.’
    ‘Lions and elephants?’
    ‘More than you could count.’
    ‘Elsie and I are getting married.’
    Meg sprayed the space between her and Ben with coffee. Ben returned the favour. Elsie promptly rose and took their mugs from them as they coughed and coughed. Her father handed them paper napkins. It was the most animated she’d ever seen them. But then they sat side-by-side on the sofa again, as stiff and formal as before.
    Meg’s coughing eased. She knew she should excuse herself for such disgusting manners, but she didn’t. For once she asked what was uppermost in her mind. ‘Are you serious?’
    Her father remained wooden. ‘Yes.’
    That was it. A single yes. No explanation. No declaration of love. Nothing.
    She glanced at Ben. He was staring at them as if he’d never seen them before. He was staring at them with a kind of fascinated horror, as if they were a car wreck he couldn’t drag his gaze from.
    She inched forward on her seat, doing all she could to catch first her father’s and then Elsie’s eyes. ‘I don’t mean to be impertinent, but... why ?’
    ‘That is impertinent.’ Her father’s chin lifted. ‘And none of your business.’
    ‘If it’s not my business then I don’t know who else’s it is,’ she shot back, surprising herself. Normally she was the keeper of the peace, the smoother-over of awkward moments, doing all she could to make things easy for this pair who, it suddenly occurred to her, had never exactly made things easy for either her or Ben.
    ‘I told you they wouldn’t approve!’ Elsie said.
    ‘Oh, it’s not that I don’t approve,’ Meg managed.
    ‘I don’t,’ Ben growled.
    She stared at him. ‘Yeah, but you don’t approve of