Free Bound by a Baby Bump (Harlequin Romance Large Print) by Ellie Darkins

longer, gathering her thoughts, and fighting down the swell of tears that seemed to be climbing her throat. She couldn’t account for them, couldn’t reason why the croak of his voice made hers swell with sympathy.
    ‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned off the tap and slumped back against the sink, relief washing through her. ‘I shouldn’t have made those plans without you.’
    ‘And I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m genuinely sorry. But there are some things we need to talk about if we’re going to make this work. I know you like to have everything all worked out, but I can’t do that.’
    ‘So what am I meant to do? Just wait and see if you turn up at my office again?’ She tried to laugh, to pretend she could live like that, but it sounded hollow even to her.
    ‘Would that be so bad? I’d make sure I was there when you—when the baby—needed me. Does everything need to be planned months in advance?’
    Her spine straightened again; Leo’s presence was seemingly anathema to serenity. ‘And is that what I should tell my doctor? Oh, I’ll definitely come along at some point. An appointment? No. I’ll just arrive when I’m ready.’
    ‘And what about the baby—is he allowed to arrive when he’s ready, or are you going to hold him to whatever due date the doctors pull out of the air? I hope for his sake he isn’t late.’
    She was about to snap back, when her train of thought faltered and her voice failed. ‘Wait, he?’ she asked, with the beginnings of a smile tweaking her lips. ‘Who says it’s a boy?’
    His face softened, and for the first time she saw the hard expression around his eyes ease, and his usual humorous glint return. She found she was relieved to see it, had been worried for a few moments that she and the baby had caused its disappearance to become permanent. It had been his determination to make her laugh that had drawn them together that first night, and she was worried that without that humour between them the very foundations they were working on were unsteady.
    ‘I don’t know. In my head, when I think about how things will be, I just always see a boy.’
    ‘You’ve thought about it?’
    His eyes bugged.
    ‘Have I thought about it? What else am I meant to think about? Have you thought about anything else?’
    ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘So what do you?’
    He raised an eyebrow by way of a question. ‘What do I...?’
    ‘What do you think, when you think about it?’
    He crossed to the table and dropped into a seat, reaching for his abandoned cup of coffee. A smile was creeping across her face at the sight of the hint of a grin on his. He thought about their baby. The knowledge glowed inside her. ‘I don’t know. Just flashes of things, I suppose.’
    ‘Good things?’
    ‘Mostly.’ They shared a long look, mutual happiness turning both their mouths up like a mirror. But they couldn’t leave it there. If they wanted this to work, they had to dig deeper than that. Learn to trust one another.
    ‘And the bad?’ she asked.
    ‘This.’ He motioned towards her colour-coded papers. ‘This is pretty much every bad thing I’ve imagined since Wednesday afternoon. I want you to know, Rachel, that I’m here for you and for the baby. But I will not do this entirely on your terms. We’re
both
going to have to compromise.’
    ‘And the first thing that’s got to go is any attempt at a plan?’ She couldn’t help her defensiveness—he was threatening the only thing that was keeping her in any way connected to sanity.
    ‘This plan? Yes. We didn’t discuss a single thing before you made it. Of course it has to go.’
    She felt a wave of nausea as she realised what he was saying. Every plan she had made in the past few days. All the words and the numbers and the tidy tick-boxes that had soothed her mind—were going to be thrown out. Already panic was making the edges of her thoughts fuzzy, and that wave of nausea was starting to feel more like a tsunami. With a