One-Night Pregnancy by Lindsay Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

but she hadn’t had a cast-in-concrete conviction that she was a loner, had she? Moreover, shortly before it had happened, she had thought she was going to die. Had that accounted somewhat for her willingness in his arms?
    But most of all, in these three weeks, she’d felt lonelyand sad. She couldn’t believe she could miss someone so much when she’d only known him so briefly, but she did.
    She sniffed a couple of times, then told herself not to be weak and weepy, and turned her attention to the newspaper again.
    She reread the article, but there was not a lot to be gleaned from it. It was simply speculation, really, to the effect that there could be moves afoot on the Beaumont board, plus some of the company’s impressive mining achievements.
    It also detailed some of Adam Beaumont’s achievements outside the field of mining, and in their own way they were impressive. He was obviously a billionaire in his own right.
    So what was it really about, this article? she wondered. It did detail that Adam was not a major shareholder in Beaumonts, whereas Henry was. And how did that line up with what she knew? The fact that Adam had sworn revenge against his brother and was looking for a lever to unseat him?
    She shook her head, a little mystified. She stared at the photo of Adam Beaumont and suffered an intensely physical moment. It was as if she were right back in his arms, with that chiselled mouth resting on hers, his hands on her body thrilling and delighting her.
    What a pity there was never any future for us, she thought, and blinked away a solitary tear. It was no good telling herself again not to be weak and weepy, because the fact remained there seemed to have been awoken within her a chilly, lonely little feeling shecouldn’t dispel, and—she stopped and frowned—a strange little echo she couldn’t place.
    Of course there was also the fear that she might have fallen pregnant continually at the back of her mind. A state which came under the heading of consequences , no doubt, she thought dryly. Statistically, she had decided—the time of the month, it only happening once—it was unlikely. Although she was realistic enough to know it was a statistic not to be relied upon.
    But now there was a new feeling added to all her woes, she realised as she laid her head back and stared unseeingly across the room. And it centred around the fact that he’d allowed her to think he was ordinary when in fact he was a billionaire.
    What difference does it make? she wondered.
    She sat up suddenly. It makes me feel like a golddigger, or as if that would have been his automatic assumption as soon as I found out! she answered herself.
    And that outraged her, she found. Although a little niggling thought came to her—perhaps that was the way a lot of women reacted when they discovered who he was? Perhaps that had added to his cynicism about women?
    She heaved a huge sigh and deliberately folded up the paper so his picture was inside, not visible. She forced herself to concentrate on her upcoming weekend. She, several others and a party of disabled children were spending the weekend on a farm. It was going to be arduous, and she would give it her all. She would not allow Adam Beaumont to intrude. And her period would come in the natural course of events when it was due, on Sunday.
    But her period didn’t come in the natural course of events, and by the following Sunday it still hadn’t.
    It would be fair to say that Bridget had held out until the last moment in her belief that her cycle had gone a bit haywire, but when a home pregnancy test proved positive she had to face the cold, hard truth.
    She was pregnant after a one-night stand with a man she barely knew—a man who had told her unequivocally that he wasn’t for her…
    It was a shattering thought.
    Two days after she had made the discovery there was a crisis in the newsroom.
    Megan Winslow, who was doing the news on her own because Peter Haliday, her co-presenter, had the