* * *
She didn’t know how long they’d sat there. All she’d been aware of was the tension in him, the rigidly controlled breathing, the reflexive stroke of his thumb against her shoulder.
What was he thinking? He hadn’t said anything, and she had no idea what was going on in his head. As she’d rather cruelly pointed out that morning—was that all? It seemed a lifetime ago—they only knew each other in the biblical sense. Not nearly well enough to read his mind.
She shifted, easing away from him, and his arm dropped from her shoulder as she disentangled herself and stood up, pacing to the window and staring out, arms wrapped tight around her waist, holding herself together.
At some point during the evening it had started to rain, and she watched the water dribbling down the rippled Victorian glass and wondered how to break the agonising silence that stretched between them.
‘So what now?’ he asked, his voice a little rough, gritty with emotion as he broke the silence for her.
Now? ‘I have no idea,’ she said woodenly. ‘I’m still coming to terms with it. I haven’t really had time to think.’
‘Does anyone else know?’
‘Only Annie Shackleton.’
‘The woman I’m covering for?’
She nodded. ‘She sort of guessed. It was the coffee thing. I usually drink gallons of it and I can’t bear it now. She said it as a joke, but it turned out not to be so funny.’
Understatement of the century.
She heard him move, saw his reflection in the window as he crossed the room and stood beside and behind her. His hands were rammed in his back pockets, his posture defensive. ‘So what do you want to do? You said you can’t do it—was that just fear talking, or do you really mean it?’
She couldn’t see his eyes, and she realised she needed to, so she turned and looked up at him and then wished she hadn’t, because she could see the faint sheen of unshed tears, and there was a muscle jumping in his jaw, as if he was hanging by a thread.
She reached up a hand and touched his face, and he flinched and turned his head away. Her hand fell back to her side and she bit her lip.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked, her voice sounding hollow to her ears.
He gave a soft huff of something that wasn’t quite laughter and turned back to her, his eyes dry now and oddly devoid of emotion.
‘You really want to know? I want you to evaporate, never to have existed. I want that I hadn’t gone into that pub, that you hadn’t come in, that I hadn’t talked to you, taken you for dinner, taken you back to my hotel and spent the night getting biblical with you. But I can’t have what I want. I can only have what is, and what is is that you’re pregnant with my child, and like it or not—and I’m guessing neither of us do—we’re going to have a baby. So I will do what I have to do. I’ll stand by you, and I’ll be a part of my child’s life for ever, because I don’t have a choice.
‘I can’t walk away, I can’t live the rest of my life pretending this hasn’t happened, and although I can’t stop you having a termination if that’s what you really want, I’ll do everything in my power to try and convince you not to. I’ll even bring it up on my own, if that’s what it takes, but I will do the right thing, by you and by my child.’
Kate stared at him in astonishment. ‘You’d do that? Bring the baby up on your own?’
‘Of course—and so would you, if you had any decency.’
She felt panic fill her at the thought, an overwhelming dread that swamped her. She reached behind and gripped the window frame, propping herself against it for support.
‘Sam, I—I couldn’t. I have no idea how to look after a child. How to mother one. I don’t even know what a mother is!’ she said, her voice rising in panic. ‘What if I failed? What if I did something dreadful and damaged the child for life? What if one day I realised I just couldn’t do it and walked away and left her there—what then? What would happen to that child?’
‘I would be there,’ he said firmly. ‘Always. Every day. And you wouldn’t fail—’
‘How do you know that? You can’t know that. And when I do, the damage—do you know what it’s like when your mother walks away? Leaves you, five years old, in the care of total strangers? Just—leaves you?’
* * *
She’s talking about herself. Dear God—
‘Kate...’
He reached for her, drew her shaking body into his arms, cradled her against his chest. The tight band around it loosened, easing as he held her, the contact somehow freeing him from the grip of helplessness that had taken hold of him when she’d told him he was going to be a father.
Because he wasn’t helpless now. He didn’t want this, but he could do it, and he would do it, because that was who he was. OK, he’d broken rules, but never the important ones until now, and at the end of the day he’d always known his duty and carried it out without question. And he knew his duty now.
‘We’ll be OK,’ he told her. ‘Somehow, we’ll find a way. I’ll look after you—’
‘I don’t need looking after!’ she protested, pushing away from him. ‘It’s not me I’m worried about! It’s the baby! I can’t let anything bad happen to it—’
‘And nor can I. So we’ll look after it together—’
‘How? You’re only here for a few months, a year at the most, and then you’ll be gone. You’ll leave me—’
‘I won’t leave you.’
‘They all say that, but they all do, in the end. Everybody leaves me—’
‘But I won’t. I won’t leave you, Kate. I’ll take you both with me, if I have to, if I can’t find a job locally. We’ll go somewhere you’re happy to be, and we’ll manage.’
She looked at him as if he was insane. ‘You’re talking as if we’d be married!’ she said, and he felt the shapeless dread settle in a solid lump in his chest.
‘Maybe we should be,’ he said carefully, and to his surprise she just laughed and turned back to the window, staring out into the night.
‘You’re crazy,’ she said, but her voice had a little shake in it and he could see the tears trickling down her cheeks.
‘Maybe. Or maybe I’m just being honest. We need to be together to do this, and maybe that’s the best way.’
She lifted a hand and swiped the tears away. ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself. You don’t know me, Sam. I’m impossible to live with.’
He gave a short, mirthless chuckle. ‘I’ve been in the army for years, Kate. Believe me, I can live with anyone.’
Anyone except Kerry, the only person I want to live with...
He slammed the door on his grief and reached out a hand, laying it gently on her shoulder. ‘Baby steps, Kate. Why don’t we start by getting to know each other, hmm?’
She shrugged his hand off her shoulder. ‘It’s not that easy—’
‘Why not? How do you know? You don’t know, and nor do I. But we had fun that night, Kate. It wasn’t just about the sex. We talked, and we laughed—and it felt real. It felt good.’
So good they’d ended up in bed for a night he still, even now, couldn’t get out of his head. The night that had resulted in this baby.
He put his hand back on her shoulder. ‘We have to try. At the very least, we have to try.’
He felt the muscles in her shoulder bunch, then relax as the fight went out of her. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘One week. I’ll give it one week, and if I don’t think I can do it...’
‘Then we’ll talk again,’ he promised, vowing that there was no way they’d get to that point. If pregnancy hadn’t been on his radar earlier, it was now, and there was no way on God’s earth he was going to let her do anything to harm their child. He’d just have to make it work.
But—one week? How the hell could he turn this around in a week? His stomach growled, drag
ging him back to the here and now, and he rammed his hands into his pockets.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Eaten?’ She shook her head. ‘No. I’m not hungry.’
‘You have to eat—’
‘The baby’s fine!’ she snapped, spinning round and glaring at him, and he arched a brow.
‘I’m not worried about the baby, I’m thinking about you. You’ve been working all day, the flat smells of furniture polish and bleach so I know you’ve been cleaning it ever since you came home, and I haven’t eaten either. So—takeaway, or go and find somewhere to eat?’
She looked at the window. ‘We’ll get soaked.’
‘No, we won’t. The car’s right outside and we’ll go somewhere with parking.’
‘Isn’t Connie going to be expecting you for supper?’
‘No. I told them I’d make my own arrangements.’
For an age she stood there, staring out at the rain streaming down the windowpane, and then she nodded.
‘OK. But I’m paying for myself.’
He opened his mouth to argue, shut it again and held her coat for her. She took it, resisting even that gesture, and shrugged into it. ‘Come on, then, if we must.’
He took her to the Chinese restaurant on the front, partly because he knew she liked it and partly because he knew it wasn’t expensive and he had a feeling he’d lose if he tried to argue with her about the bill.
‘This is where we started,’ she said bleakly as they were shown to the same table, and he found a smile for her. It wasn’t much of one, but it was a start, and frankly it felt like a miracle that he could smile at all.
‘So it is,’ he murmured, and took her hand, running his thumb over the back of it in a soothing sweep. ‘It’ll be OK, Kate,’ he told her softly. ‘We’ll make it OK.’
He just wished he could see how.
* * *
By mutual agreement, they didn’t tell anyone.
Annie knew, of course, but she didn’t know who the father was, and Kate didn’t tell her. It didn’t seem appropriate, really, to share any more than she already had about a baby whose fate hung in the balance.
The days ticked by, but they didn’t work together, not after that first day. James, she imagined, was keeping them apart because Sam was, as he’d put it, ‘emotionally broken’.
How? Why?
She found herself more and more curious about that, about what had broken him so badly that the news of her pregnancy had almost reduced him to tears. Because he wasn’t a crying man, she was sure of that. He’d been in the army for years, he’d said. Men in the army didn’t shed tears lightly.
So—what had happened? Or who?
But it never seemed like a good time to ask something so sensitive, and so they carried on, passing in the corridors, their shifts barely coinciding, and in the evenings he came to her flat and they talked about anything but the baby and her childhood and whatever it was that had broken him, and the days ticked by.
They took it in turns to cook and she learned that he was a good cook, way more house-trained than she was, that he ate whatever was put in front of him and thanked her for cooking it—even though sometimes it was a bit hit and miss.
And he didn’t touch her.
Didn’t brush against her, didn’t kiss her cheek or pat her shoulder or give her a hug or squeeze her hand—nothing. And sometimes, just when she thought he might be going to reach out for her, his eyes went blank and he looked away.
Until she tripped on the stairs.
It was Friday night, and for once they’d finished their shifts at the same time. He’d given her a lift home, picking up a takeaway on the way home, and as she was running up the stairs ahead of him she caught her toe on the worn carpet and fell.
‘Ouch—dammit!’ She sat down on the stairs, cradling her wrist, flexing it warily, and he hunkered down beside her.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said, flexing it again, but it made her gasp and she felt his warm, firm hands take her arm and feel carefully, thoroughly down the bones in her forearm to her wrist.
‘Does that hurt?’ he asked, but she was so mesmerised by the warmth of his touch that she could hardly feel anything else.
‘No. It’s OK now—just a bit hyperextended, I think. It’ll be fine.’
‘You need ice on it—’
‘No ice.’
He picked up her bag and the post she’d dropped and scattered all over the stairs, shooed her up the last half-flight and raided the little freezer compartment in her fridge. ‘Peas—they’ll do. Got a sandwich bag?’
She gave up any hope of independence and pointed. ‘In the drawer.’
Five minutes later she was sitting on the sofa with her arm resting on a cushion, a small bag of peas wrapped in a tea towel perched on her wrist, a loaded plate in her lap and a steaming mug of tea by her side.
‘If you’ve put sugar in that I’ll kill you,’ she said mildly, and he chuckled.
‘I don’t think you’re suffering from shock.’
She sighed. ‘No. Just terminal clumsiness and stupidity.’
‘Actually the carpet’s worn on that tread.’
‘Sam, it’s been worn since I moved in three years ago. It’s hardly a novelty.’
He grunted, plonked himself down beside her, adjusted the peas on her wrist and picked up his own tea. Not coffee. In deference to her nausea, he didn’t drink it if she was around, which, did he but know it, earned him a shedload of brownie points.
‘Can you manage to eat that?’
‘What are you going to do, feed me? Of course I can manage.’
‘Just asking,’ he said, sounding mock-aggrieved, and she chuckled and picked up her fork with the uninjured hand.
‘Don’t worry, Sam. I won’t starve. It’s not in my nature.’
He grunted and dug into his food, then took the plates out and came back and sat down, her letters in his hand.
‘Want me to open your post for you?’
She felt herself stiffen. ‘Why would you do that?’ she asked, suddenly wary, and as if he realised he rolled his eyes.
‘To save your wrist? I wasn’t going to read it—just open it and give it to you, but that’s fine, go ahead and struggle one-handed,’ he said, and dumped it on her lap, but it slid to the floor at her feet.
She stared down at it lying there, feeling silly now for making a fuss. ‘Sorry. I just have issues with boundaries.’
‘A controlling ex?’ he asked, and she laughed bitterly.
‘No. Just a boy who didn’t respect my privacy and went out of his way to make my life difficult.’ A boy who’d hated and resented her and ruined the only decent chance at a family life she’d ever had...
He nodded, then picked the post up again and handed it to her. ‘Don’t worry, your boundaries are safe with me. I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself.’
She handed it back—as an olive branch? Maybe. ‘I’m sorry. Would you?’
And then she instantly regretted it, because the first one out of the envelopes was her ultrasound appointment, and it was so obviously an appointment letter that he couldn’t help but notice.
‘My twelve-week scan,’ she said, because to say nothing wasn’t an option. ‘I saw the midwife on Tuesday. She said it would be soon.’
There was a second of silence before he spoke. ‘Can I come?’
Her hesitation was longer than his, her fear almost suffocating her because she knew once she’d had the scan it would all become so real that there would be no hiding from it. ‘I don’t know...’
‘That’s fine. Just let me know when you’ve worked it out. I’d like to, if I may, but I fully appreciate it’s your decision.’
Did he? She had a feeling the
words were choking him, but there was nothing she could do about that. She wasn’t at all convinced she wanted him there. She didn’t want to be there, either, but she had no choice. He, on the other hand...
‘Is this just so you know how old it is, so you can rule yourself out as the father?’ she asked, suddenly uncertain of his motives, but his hissed expletive set her straight.
‘I thought you’d know me better than that by now?’ he growled.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said sadly, ‘and you don’t know me, either, but you’re talking about us living together and bringing up a baby, and all the while we’re dancing round each other at arm’s length and avoiding any kind of contact and it just feels so cold and remote and unemotional and I just can’t read you when you’re keeping such a distance. I don’t know who the hell you are, Sam, so how can I know if I can trust you?’
‘I was just giving you space,’ he said quietly, after her words had hung in the air for an age.
‘Me, or you?’
‘Both, maybe,’ he admitted, and she searched his eyes.
‘Maybe I don’t want space.’
His breath hissed out in a sharp sigh.
‘Kate, don’t say that. It’s hard enough keeping my distance as it is. That’s why I’ve been holding you at arm’s length, because I don’t trust myself around you, at least not until we know where we stand. We really don’t need to add the confusion of a physical relationship to this equation, it’s complicated enough.’
She sighed. ‘I know, and I do understand that, but it just seems so—lonely,’ she said plaintively, despising her weakness but sick to death of the endless distance between them.
But then he gave a quiet sigh and buckled. ‘Come here,’ he said softly, and taking the letter out of her hand, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and eased her up against his side.
She could feel the solid warmth of his body, smell the scent of his skin and a trace of the aftershave that had haunted her all week, bringing back so many memories of the night they’d met, and she wanted to burrow into him and stay there.
‘This doesn’t change anything,’ he murmured, the sound rumbling through his chest.
Their Meant-to-Be Baby Page 5