The Unexpected Baby. Diana Hamilton
to do with using all his emotional and physical energy in his work. He knew the dangers of getting news out of the world’s worst trouble spots. He talked a lot about you, your mother, your home. He was proud of his family. He told me he’d never marry, that such a commitment wouldn’t be wise, or fair, because of the way he earned his living. But he said you would. Some woman to give you children because you wouldn’t want the business to die out with you. Said that women flung themselves at you, couldn’t keep away. But that you were picky. And discreet.’
Too late, she realised exactly what she was doing. And loathed herself for it. She had side-stepped his question and was trying to turn the situation round and become his accuser, letting the implication that he was a calculating user of women hang contentiously on the air between them, pushing them further apart.
And the bleak, most scornful look on his face told her he knew exactly what she was trying to do. And why.
Suddenly, the nausea that had been threatening all morning became an unwelcome, undeniable fact. She shot to her feet, one hand against her mouth, and lurched through the house to the bathroom.
Knowing he had followed her didn’t help a scrap, and when it was over she leant weakly against the tiled wall, the futile wish that she could turn the clock back three months uppermost in her mind.
‘Sweetheart—come here.’ He pulled her into his arms and she rested her throbbing head against the hard, soft-cotton-covered wall of his chest, wishing she could hold onto this moment for ever and knowing that she couldn’t.
The look of compassion, of caring, on his face didn’t help. It made things worse because she didn’t deserve it. And when he said softly, ‘What brought that on? Something you ate? I’ll drive you to the nearest surgery if the sickness carries on,’ she knew she had to tell him now.
Waking before him early this morning, she’d been rooting round at the back of the bathroom cabinet, looking for a fresh tube of toothpaste, when she’d found the pregnancy testing kit she’d bought.
Over the last few days she’d felt strangely nauseous on waking, had suffered one or two inexplicable dizzy spells. Common sense had told her that there were no repercussions from what she and Sam had done, but she’d run the test all the same, just to put her mind at rest.
And now she was going to have to face the consequences.
She pulled out of Jed’s arms, her face white as she told him, ‘I’m pregnant, Jed.’
Despite her ashen face, the dark torment in her eyes, he smiled at her, slowly shaking his head, one brow drifting up towards his hairline. He pulled her back against his body and enfolded her with loving arms. The unresolved question of whether she and his brother had been more than good friends could wait
‘How can you possibly be sure of that, sweetheart? After only one week! It’s a nice thought, but I’m afraid it’s got to be something you ate!’
For a time she allowed herself the luxury of being held, waiting for her heartbeats to slow down to normal, for her aching head to stop whirling with stupid regrets. They’d discussed starting a family and decided there was no reason to wait. They both wanted children. Which was going to make what she had to tell him so much worse.
When she finally placed her hands against the powerful muscles of his chest and eased herself away from the haven of his embrace, she felt calm. Empty. She was about to tell him something he probably wouldn’t want to live with, to kill his love, which was the most precious thing she had. She had to do it quickly and cleanly. The agony was too great to be prolonged.
‘It’s true, Jed. I did the test this morning.’ She saw the look of disbelief on his face and knew he was about to tell her she’d got it wrong, misread the instructions. She forestalled him quickly, her voice thin because of the effort it took to control it. ‘By my calculations, almost three months.’
And then she watched as his eyes froze over. ‘Three months ago I hadn’t met you, and the first time we had sex was on our wedding night,’ he stated grimly, his lips thin and bloodless. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me, my dear wife, who it was who fathered the child you’re carrying?’
His cold sarcasm hurt her more than anything that had ever happened to her in her entire life. She could have handled anger, insults, even physical violence—anything that sprang from powerful emotional trauma. This icy sarcasm, almost amounting to cynical indifference, was worse than if he’d stabbed a rusty blade into her heart.
What she had feared had happened. He had already gone away from her emotionally, relegating the magic of their lovemaking to mere having sex.
And he was waiting for her answer, his eyes dark and bleak, his mouth tight against his teeth. She gathered up the last vestiges of her strength, exhaled a shuddering sigh.
‘Sam.’
CHAPTER TWO
HE STRODE away, his shoulders hard and high and rigid. Elena couldn’t move. Her feet felt as if they’d been welded to the cool marble floor tiles, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her quivering body.
Only when she heard the sound of the car he’d hired to bring them from the airport was she shocked into movement. Her flying feet scattered rugs as she ran to the front of the house, tugging open the sturdy front door, racing through the courtyard and out onto the stony track.
He couldn’t leave her like this, run out on her, with nothing said, nothing explained—never mind resolved! But the cloud of dust, the noise of the rapidly receding engine told her that he could. And had.
Her first instinct was to get her own car out of the barn and follow him. But he would hate that. Even if she caught up with him nothing would be achieved. He had taken what he obviously felt he needed; time alone to sort his head out.
If only he had given her enough time to explain, to tell him the whole truth. He would still be hurting... But not this much.
Pushing her fist against her teeth, to stop herself throwing her head back and howling her pain to the burning bowl of the sky, she ran to a rocky outcrop, uncaring of the sharp edges cutting into the soles of her bare feet, and watched until the cloud of dust disappeared on the valley floor. Then walked slowly back to the house, defeated, wretched.
Jed would come back in his own good time, and all she could do was wait. But for the first time ever she could find no comfort in her beautiful home, the symbol of her fabulous success. Lovingly recreated from what had been little more than a near derelict shell, her home, her gardens, her slice of Andalucian mountainside, had previously reinforced her belief in herself, in the financial and emotional independence she’d made for herself.
As she’d confided in Sam, on what had turned out to be his last night in Spain, ‘When I left my husband ten years ago and came out to Cadiz, I had nothing—not even my self-respect, because Liam had taken that away. I worked in bars and lived in a miserable oneroom flat and took to writing in what spare time I had as a way of forgetting. Luckily, it paid off, and what had begun as therapy became my whole existence.’
The wine had been flowing freely on that dark February evening, and she’d lighted a fire in the great stone-hooded hearth, because the evenings were chilly in the hills. Sam’s mood had been strangely reflective, almost sombre, the atmosphere—that of long-standing easy friendship—conducive to soul-baring.
‘And now, because my books took off in a big way, I have everything. A successful career and pride in my work, a beautiful home in a lovely part of the world, a wonderful circle of friends—more financial security than I ever dreamed of having. Everything except a child, and sometimes that hurts. I guess I hear my biological clock chiming out yet another passing hour. But as I have no intention of ever marrying again...’
She shrugged wryly, sipping her wine to deaden the ache of her empty womb, her empty arms. Liam had adamantly refused to contemplate fatherhood. He’d wanted a glamorous wife on his arm, not a worn-out rag of a woman, stuck at home tied to a bunch of grizzling kids.