‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. I have so much help over there already that there probably won’t be room in the shop for all of us.’
Xander didn’t look happy. ‘Then you stay here and man the shop and I’ll go in your place.’
‘I really should be there to see if anything can be saved or advise on what I want doing.’
‘OK, but don’t overdo it and don’t lift anything heavy. I’ll be over in my break to help out for an hour or so.’
Immy nodded. ‘I’ll be careful.’
She went over to join the fray but Belinda seemed to have it all in hand as she directed people to start grabbing as much waste as they could and dump it in the skip. She watched for a moment as all of her hard work, dedication and love started getting stripped out of the shop.
She took a deep breath and went in to help.
Xander was just about to leave his flat to go over and help Immy with the sweet shop. Max had come over and was going to watch Etta for an hour or so. They were downstairs finishing up in the shop with Judy before they closed for a few hours. The doorbell rang, making him curse. Who was this now? He walked over to the intercom and answered it.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Logan.’
Xander pressed the buzzer to let him up. He and Archer had been over at the sweet shop helping for a few hours so Xander presumed Logan wanted to talk about that. Xander heard his brother come up the stairs and a few seconds later he arrived in the hall.
‘Come on in for a second, I’m just about to head over there myself,’ Xander said. Going back into the lounge, he stripped out of his clean t-shirt and pulled on an old one he used for painting or dirty work.
Logan followed him in. ‘I just wanted a quick word while Immy isn’t here.’
Xander frowned.
‘I think you should ask Immy to do a paternity test.’
‘What?’
‘I think you need to be one hundred percent sure that the baby is yours before you commit to anything with Immy.’
Anger filled Xander. ‘I am one hundred percent sure because Immy told me I was the only man she’d been with and I trust her, completely.’
‘You trusted Brook, and look at how that turned out.’
‘When you say, look how that turned out, do you mean being father to a brilliant, amazing little girl? Because I wouldn’t change that for the world.’
‘You would never have married Brook if you didn’t think the baby was yours. Your life would have been very different.’
‘Again, I wouldn’t have changed it. Etta is my entire world. I wish I’d known Brook’s feelings about Etta before or that Brook was having an affair throughout our entire marriage so I could have divorced her and taken full custody so it never got to the point that it did. But I cannot imagine my life without Etta in it and I don’t care if she isn’t mine biologically, I love her. I can never ever regret marrying Brook because she gave meEtta and she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Closely followed by meeting Immy.’
‘She’s three months pregnant. Three months ago was Christmas, you weren’t even together then.’
‘Oh we were very much together on Christmas Day night – quite passionately, as I remember. Oh and we were very much together a few days before that in the back of her shop. So it could be either of those times.’
Logan stared at him in surprise but he recovered quickly. ‘And you didn’t bother to use a condom?’
‘Oh we definitely used protection.’
‘So it’s very unlikely the baby is yours.’
‘Condoms are not a hundred percent effective. You could say it’s unlikely I could get her pregnant wearing one but it’s not impossible.’
‘That’s why you should get the test, for your own peace of mind.’
‘You mean for yours. My mind is perfectly at peace with this. I’m going to be a dad again. I can’t tell you how excited I am about that.’
