The Unexpected Baby

‘Because I’d begun to feel nauseous in the morning! I believed pregnancy was out of the question, but did the test just to make doubly sure!’ she shot back at him, her temper rising. How could a man who’d said he’d love her till the day he died refuse to properly hear her side of the story, refuse point-blank to believe a word she said?

Her shoulders rigid, she bunched her hands into fists at her sides and told him, her voice grinding out the slow words, ‘Sam and I were never lovers.’

‘No? One-night stand, was it? Don’t try to tell me he forced himself on you. Sam wasn’t like that. It was more likely to be the other way around. From my experience during this last week your appetite for sex is pretty well insatiable.’

Bitterness was stamped all over his harsh features, and it held his spine in a rigid line as he walked out of the room. In that moment she hated him.

She had never hated anyone before, not even Liam. She had despised him, but never hated him. The savage emotion consumed her. She paced the terracotta tiles, her arms wrapped around her slender body, holding herself together in case she should explode with the hot rage that flared and flamed inside her.

How dared he treat her as if she were trash? Accuse her of such monstrous things? And where had the man she loved more than her life disappeared to? Had he ever really existed, or had he been mere wishfulfilment, a figment of her imagination? The man who had just walked out on her was a cold-hearted, arrogant, egotistical monster!

He could forget his ‘non-negotiable’ decision of a sham marriage. She would accept no part of it Did he think he had a God-given right to dish out orders, arrogantly decide how she would live out the rest of her life?

Did he really think she would stay legally tied to a man who thought so badly of her? Did he imagine, for one moment, that she’d unquestioningly suffer the misery such a vile arrangement would bring her?

As far as she was concerned their marriage was over in every way there was. She had no intention of returning to England with him, living a lie. She was perfectly capable of looking after her child on her own—that had been the original intention, after all.

Her child did not need a father figure, especially one as all-fired intransigent, bloody-minded and arrogant as Jed Nolan!

First thing in the morning she would tell him to pack his bags, get out of her home. She never wanted to have to see him again.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE didn’t get the opportunity to ask him to leave. He’d already done it.

The sun had only just begun to gild the flanks of the rugged hills with new-day light when she left her solitary bed and dragged herself downstairs after a monumentally miserable and sleepless night.

Which bedroom Jed had used she had no idea, and didn’t care, she told herself as she secured the belt of the robe she’d thrown on more tightly around her narrow waist. As soon as he surfaced she would ask him to leave, announce that she’d be in touch, through her solicitor, some time in the future. Let him know that he wasn’t the only one who could make decisions and hurl them around like concrete slabs.

If he wasn’t prepared to listen to her, to believe her, then their relationship wasn’t worth keeping—certainly not the acrimonious, desolately empty relationship he had in mind. Better by far to make a clean break.

Making for the kitchen for the coffee she suddenly dramatically needed, she saw his note the moment she pushed open the door. A scrap of paper on the polished pine table top. It didn’t say a lot, just a scrawl of distinctive black handwriting. ‘I’ll be in Seville for the next three weeks. I’ll collect you for our return journey.’

The hell you will! Elena scrunched the paper up and hurled it at the wall. Frustrated by his disappearance, before she could tell him she had no intention of meekly tugging her forelock and submitting to his orders, she felt her blood pressure hit the roof.

She didn’t even know which hotel he’d be using in Seville. She couldn’t get in touch and remind him that she was perfectly capable of making the decisions that would affect the rest of her life, that no way would she be returning to England, simpering and smiling and pretending to be deliriously happy. No way!

Hot tears flooded her eyes. Had she been secretly hoping that Jed would have come to his senses this morning, found enough trust in her to believe her story? If so, she’d been a fool. Well, no more.

She’d just have to sit out the next three weeks with the rage festering away inside her, and—Suddenly the now all too familiar morning sickness struck, and twenty wretched minutes later she was standing under a warm shower, patting her still flat tummy and murmuring wryly, ‘You’re certainly giving Mummy a hard time, Troublebunch!’

Even as the tender smile curved her lips her eyes filled with tears again. Tears for Sam, who would never know he’d left a child behind, for herself, and for Jed, who had lost something wonderful that could never be retrieved.

Warm needles of water washed the tears away, and she dried herself, wrapped her long hair in a towel, dressed in cotton shorts and a halter-neck top and told herself they were the last tears she would shed for any of them.

Life went on.

She had her child to look forward to, and she would love it to distraction and give him or her the happiest life any child could want Now that she was marginally calmer she could see that, in a way, it was a blessing that Jed had taken off. That action alone told her that he’d never truly loved her. If he had. he’d have trusted her, believed her, asked for more details. It had also saved her from a demeaning slanging match, from allowing all her hurt to pour out and hit him right between the eyes.

When she next saw Jed she would be able to tell him of her own decisions, calmly and rationally. She was intelligent enough to know that no amount of rage could alter anything. He despised her now; all the love had gone and nothing she could do or say would bring it back. That was a fact. Hard to face, but not impossible.

She could handle the hurt; she’d managed before and would manage again. Certainly the way Liam had hurt her had been a mere pinprick compared to this. But then she’d had nothing, just a mother who’d wrung her hands and wailed, prophesied heaven alone knew what horrors if she insisted on skipping the country with little more than the clothes she stood up in.

But from having nothing and no one she’d made a good life for herself. At least this time round she had a successful career to fall back on, and was carrying the child she’d begun to need so desperately.

So, on the whole, she reasoned, wondering if she could manage a glass of water and a slice of dry toast without upsetting her unborn baby, everything balanced out and she could hack it.

She wasn’t at all sure about that one week later, when Jed arrived with his mother.

She hadn’t been able to think about starting a new book, and hadn’t responded to the faxes from her agent which had come chattering through over the last couple of days—apologising for interrupting her honeymoon, but apparently excited over some awards ceremony to be held in London. She hadn’t been interested. One day she’d have to read through them properly, absorb what her agent was trying to tell her and respond. But not now. Not yet.

She’d driven down to the village and told Pilar to take two more weeks’ leave, and then had sought the solitude she so desperately needed in the hot few acres of Spanish earth that was her garden.

She was weeding amongst the massed clumps of sweet-smelling carnations that bordered one of the twisting paved paths when she heard the car. Brushing her hands down the sides of her cotton skirt, she stood up and walked towards the house, resenting the intrusion. Resenting it to the point of internal explosion when she saw Jed handing his mother from the car.

She couldn’t imagine what either of them was doing here, or what she could possibly say to them—especially Catherine Nolan, who was one of the nicest women to draw breath.

Wearing a pale blue linen suit, the older woman looked less stressed out than the grieving mother she’d come to know during the two weeks she’d stayed in Netherhaye, the family home in rural Hertfordshire. Though she had perked up enormously for the quiet wedding, bossing the caterers and florists around, making sure the small reception back at Netherhaye was as perfect as it could possibly be.

‘Elena!’ Catherine beamed as she became aware of her daughter-in-law’s approach. ‘How good of you to agree to let me come—only for a few days, I promise. I won’t intrude longer than that!’

So Jed hadn’t told his mother of the complications that had rendered their marriage null and void. Catherine wouldn’t be looking like a plump, slightly flustered, happy mother hen if he had. But then he wouldn’t, of course, she reminded herself, doing her best to find a smile of sorts. Hadn’t duping his parent into believing everything was blissful been one of his two main priorities?

‘It’s lovely to see you.’ She bent to receive Catherine’s kiss and didn’t look at Jed. He was removing luggage from the boot, just a shadowy presence in the background, and that was the way he had to stay if she was to hold onto her sanity, swallow back the scalding renewal of the pain and rage she’d talked herself into believing was over and done with. ‘I’m sure you’re ready for a drink.’

‘Oh, I’d love one. It’s quite a drive from Jerez airport, isn’t it? But such lovely countryside—oh, what a gorgeous courtyard—all those lilies! And will you just look at those geraniums? They never get that huge at home!’

Barely hearing the spate of compliments on her home, Elena led the older woman into the cool, airy sitting room and watched her plop down into a deep comfy armchair with an audible sigh of relief.

‘Bliss! Now I can take my shoes off.’

‘And I can fetch you that drink.’

Elena escaped into the kitchen. She saw Jed toting luggage up the stairs, clenched her jaw and ignored him, closing the kitchen door behind her firmly. She could have gone after him and demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing, bringing his mother here when their marriage, so recently begun, was well and truly over, leading the poor deluded woman to believe that she, Elena, had agreed to this visit

But she didn’t. She simply wanted to hide. During the past week she had talked herself into believing she could handle the irretrievable shocking breakdown, that when she saw him again it wouldn’t hurt because sensibly, being an intelligent adult and not a soppy child, and because she’d done it once before, she knew how to cut her losses and go on.

But it did hurt. It hurt like hell.

She reached for two wine glasses and a bottle of white Rioja from the fridge; she needed the stiffening, even if Catherine didn’t.

Catherine did. ‘How deliciously cold. It hits the spot! Isn’t Jed joining us?’

‘He’s taking your cases up.’ And taking an inordinate amount of time about it, she thought edgily, doing her best to sound relaxed—though why should she bother, when Catherine would learn, sooner rather than later, that her new daughter-in-law was shortly to become an ex?

While Catherine chattered about her flight out, Elena, wine in hand, perched on the arm of one of the chairs and wondered whether to break the news now. Catherine would have to know, because following Jed’s orders and pretending the marriage was fine when it wasn’t was something she was not prepared to do.

She was trying to decide whether she should dress it up some way, and how, or whether she should come straight out with it when Catherine stopped her thought processes stone-dead.

‘I have to tell you—your marriage to my son was one of the happiest occasions of my life, Elena. It didn’t make up for losing Sam, nothing could ever do that, but it helped enormously—helped ease the dreadful grief and gave me something good to think about. Since I lost their father, all I’ve ever wanted is happiness for my boys.’

She looked so earnest, her eyes rather too moist, tears not far away, because she was still trying to come to terms with the worst thing that could happen to a woman: the loss of her child. Elena felt her stomach give a sickening lurch. She didn’t want to hear any more, but short of walking out of the room she couldn’t avoid it.

‘Like any mother, I wanted my boys settled with a good woman, happily married with children of their own. I’d begun to despair of it ever happening.’ She gave Elena a soft, shaky smile. ‘Sam—well, he was like a will o’ the wisp, impossible to pin down or keep in a settled place, and Jed—well, he was too settled, too much a workaholic bachelor, wedded to the business. But when Jed invited you to stay at Netherhaye, after the funeral, it was like a blessing. Just to watch the two of you gave me joy—and hope for the future. I could see what had happened, any fool could. I watched the pair of you holding your feelings back—not only because to hurl yourselves into each other’s arms might have seemed crass, in view of the circumstances, but because you were obviously making sure you got to know each other before you made any commitment. Though of course Jed and I already felt we knew you very well, through what Sam had told us.

‘Knowing that my one remaining son had found the perfect love at last was the only thing that kept me going through those dark days. So when he phoned a few days ago, to check I was all right on my own, I asked if I could come on a short visit. I hadn’t meant to,’ she said earnestly, ‘it just came out. I know you’re on your honeymoon, but I suppose I needed to see you both to restore my faith in God, to remind myself He can dish out the good as well as the hard to bear.’

Her smile was now so loving and peaceful it made Elena’s heart bleed. How could she spill out the truth and ruin this good woman’s precarious contentment? Plunge her back into the dark abyss of grief where there was no glimmer of consolation to be found?

Jed had decided on the pretence of marital bliss because he had known what the truth would do to his grieving parent, and Elena could understand that, sympathise. His harsh dictates, so coldly spelled out for her, became more the reasoned decisions of a man who knew his duty.

He would hate the idea of putting on a front as much as she did, but felt, because of the tragic circumstances, that it was the only right thing to do.

She didn’t want to understand, and heaven knew she didn’t want to sympathise. She wanted to cut Jed right out of her life, never see or hear of him again, carry on with the long haul of forgetting the pain, the terrible slicing pain of seeing his precious love turn to hatred.

Not knowing what to say, she refilled Catherine’s glass and took a gulp of her own as yet untouched wine, and Jed said from the doorway, ‘Should you be drinking that?’

The sound of that cool voice with undertones of condemnation made her heart clench, especially when the penny dropped and she realised why he had asked that question. Alcohol and pregnancy didn’t mix. Sam’s baby was another of his priorities, another duty of care.

‘Don’t be so stuffy! It’s almost suppertime. We’re not hitting the sauce before breakfast! Come and join us.’ Not knowing his reason for the criticism, Catherine turned to her son, raising her glass, proud maternal love in her eyes.

Putting her own glass down on a side table, aware that her hands were shaking, that every darn thing inside her was shaking, Elena risked an under-lash look at her husband.

He sauntered casually into the room, with a smile for his mother, hands stuffed into the pockets of his close-fitting dark trousers, the silk of his white shirt falling in fluid folds from his wide shoulders.

Yet there was strain there, there in the deepening of the lines that bracketed his beautiful, passionate male mouth, the tell-tale pallor beneath the olive tones of his skin. The past week had been tough on him, too.

But it was all entirely his own fault. She quelled the momentary surge of compassion. If he had given her the basic human right of being heard. If he’d given her the opportunity to tell him about the clinic treatment then he would have believed her when she’d told him that she and Sam had never been lovers.

‘Now, you two...’ Catherine beamed at them both indiscriminately, and Elena wondered if her mother-in-law was so blinded by what she wanted to believe that she couldn’t sense something was wrong. ‘I didn’t invite myself here just to play gooseberry. There’s something I need to discuss with you both. I could have said it on the phone, or written, but I wanted to see you...’

As the older woman’s voice trailed uncertainly away Elena knew her present contentment was a fragile thing, with dark grief lurking beneath the surface of her courage, waiting for the opportunity to reclaim her.

‘We’re delighted you came,’ Jed put in swiftly, briefly squeezing his mother’s plump shoulder as he walked past to stand by Elena. ‘We haven’t done any sightseeing at all, so your being here gives us the ideal opportunity—we can do it together. I know Elena’s anxious to show us her favourite places.’

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