It wasn’t in any way an apology. Jake didn’t flinch, even though the harsh, bitter tone of her voice shocked him. “You did bother me—but I assume you don’t want others to know, which is why you keep coming here to groom the horses. You want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Please go,” she muttered, her voice grating him with its raw pain.
He had no idea why he kept pushing after she’d given him an out, but he did. “You should speak to someone if it’s upsetting you for this long. You want me to get your father?”
All vestiges of color drained from her face. He had an absurd impulse to snatch her into his arms, in case she fainted. “No.”
“Andrew or Glenn, then?” He couldn’t leave her like this. Someone ought to be here for her, and she seemed close to her brothers.
“No.” She brushed her damp, tangled hair back from her face. “I just indulged in a weak moment. We all have them. You can leave now with a clean conscience. I’m fine.”
Obviously she wasn’t, but she wanted him to leave her alone—and he would have, but for the warning screaming inside him, don’t walk away.
He circumnavigated the pitchfork lying between them like an impassive gauntlet, and sat down on the hay bale. “Looks like I’m it, then—supposing that you do need to talk to someone.”
How ironic. He’d given her the opening she’d been praying for, at the very moment she was least ready. Was it Murphy’s Law, or what? Slowly, Laila straightened her spine, and forced back the choking ball of fear in her throat; she would not cry in front of him! She had to tell him!
Her mind wiped of everything but two words.
She scrabbled around in her mind for something less dangerous. “You don’t talk like the other jackaroos.” She sat down on the other side of the bale, needing distance from him, needing to think. “You’re obviously an educated man. You haven’t been an Outback worker for very long, have you?”
She saw the half-wry, wary look shutter his eyes. “Long enough.”
“You want me to talk, but you never talk about yourself.” Her head tilted as she surveyed him. “You like being a mystery.”
He shrugged, his face closing off even more. “Nothing to tell.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh, her mind still racing. Tell him, tell him, just say it! “Of course there isn’t. That’s why you hide everything about yourself. You never talk about your life, your family and friends—if you have any. You barely talk to anyone on the station, have never left or had a visitor, yet you’ve been here over a year now.” Her brows lifted in speculation.
He shifted on the hay, as if she’d found the proverbial needle in this bale and kept stabbing him with it. “Do you want to keep asking me questions I won’t answer, or talk about why you were crying? Or will I go away and let you cry in peace?”
She chewed on her lip, knowing he wouldn’t give her another opening.
She dragged in a deep breath, lifted her chin and met his gaze, desperately hiding her fear, hoping against hope he’d react well to the news. “I’m pregnant.”
Did that sound angry? Aggressive? Did I sound stupid? Well, I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman who’s pregnant by a man who doesn’t even like me. Of course I’m stupid.
She closed her eyes for a moment, hoping, praying that he’d see through her attempt at pride and bravado to the terrified young woman inside, needing someone to care, some support—
She unclouded her vision and looked at him again, to gauge his reaction. Unfortunately, for once, it wasn’t hard to interpret. He’d gone so pale she thought he might fall down. He drew in a breath, in obvious shock. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”
Did he even need to ask that? Did he think so little of her? “Do you think your ‘sorry’ and bolting out the door the next morning left me with enough confidence to find another lover?” she asked, weary of dancing around the truth.
A long silence. Then, sounding unsteady, as if someone had walloped him in the head with a baseball bat—well, maybe she had—he said, “That’s why you came to me a few months ago. You were going to tell me then.”
Her jaw clenched. She didn’t need to answer. She barely even knew why she was telling him about the pregnancy now. It wasn’t as if he cared.
Jake knew from her aggression and silence he’d botched it, badly. Seeing the incident in the barn with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, he knew she must have been scared half to death. She’d tried to get him to talk first, so she could be sure it was safe to tell him about the baby…and he’d ripped her hopes to shreds, leaving her with months of fear and loneliness.
Calculating in his head, he knew she must be almost five months pregnant—and judging by the silence on her state, her unwillingness to talk to her family, he was the first to know.
She’d been alone with this for months. He’d let her down, just as he’d let Jenny down. Worse, he’d acted like a world-class jerk. The poor kid had been shouldering this burden alone for five months because he’d driven her away.
Guilt and anguish clobbered him. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sure you’re sorry. Sorry you ever touched me.” She wheeled away, and the vision of Jenny shattered haunted him. This was Laila, and he’d hurt her as well. “Well, stop worrying. I don’t want anything from you. I’ll have him myself, and I’ll bring him up myself.”
“Like blazes you will,” he snarled, surprising himself with the force of his sudden anger. “I have a say in this. This is my child.”
Like an avenging fury she turned back on him, her eyes flashing. “Yes, and I’m his mother, and you don’t even like me. If I can’t take the heat—in other words, your rudeness and arrogance, your coldness—how will a child cope? Do you know how to give the kindness and love he’ll need from his father?” Her hand covered her belly in a protective motion. “I won’t let you hurt my baby.”
The way you hurt me. The words hung in the air, unspoken.
Then, at last, Jake looked at her, really looked, and saw what he hadn’t wanted to see before—the delicate hollows beneath her eyes, the fragility so clear to see in the clenched fists and trembling mouth.
Had he hurt her so badly that day, or was it carrying the burden of her secret so long that had changed her so much?
Either way, it still meant this was his fault. He had to fix it.
“I never said I don’t like you,” he began—but her snort was eloquent testimony of her disbelief. How did he tell her, it’s myself I hate? There was no way she’d believe it—not without hearing the truth.
The truth he’d never tell anyone.
“So that’s why you came home?” he asked, for the sake of saying something, anything. God knows he had to find a way to connect to her.
“I’ve been throwing up, and sleeping a lot.” That nonchalant shrug came again: a defence mechanism any fool could see through. She was terrified, but refused to break down in front of him. “I knew I wouldn’t pass. I can’t finish university next year, because I’ll have the baby at the start of term. I won’t ask anyone to take him for me while I study.”
Feeling as if she was shutting a door in his face before he’d even knocked on it, he reminded her of his part in this. “You can ask me.”
Her withering glance told him what she thought of his offer.
He tried again. “If you do want to go back, you can hire a nanny in Bathurst—”
“Right. With the family money, is that it? It’s all easy for me.” Her eyes flashed. “No, thanks. I’ll do what I’ve done the past seven years. Manage on my own.”
Jake felt his brows lift. Not one word of this choice gossip had reached him during his year at Wallaby Station. “Good for you.”
But he’d obviously hit a raw nerve with her; her eyes still flashed hot with fury. “All these years, people called me the Princess, thinking I took Dar’s money—but they’re wrong.” She stood before him, her hands on her hips and a brow raised in a question she already knew the answer to. �
��Why do you think I haven’t finished my course at twenty-six?”
He felt the burning fill his cheeks at a question they both knew was mere rhetoric. She knew what he’d thought. Party time for the Princess. A two-year stint in Europe, maybe—taking time out to play, to enjoy her youth, and of course she’d use Daddy’s money to get around.
“Why don’t you tell me why?” he asked, to get her to open up. She had to be able to talk to someone—anyone could see she was almost collapsing under her burdens.
But she pulled herself together, lifting her chin and facing him with quiet dignity. “How I manage my life is not your concern.”
“Of course it’s my concern,” he grated. “I’m responsible for the—” he scrabbled around in his mind—what was another word for mess? “—dilemma you’re in.”
“You weren’t exactly alone that night,” she reminded him, but with a touch of acid in her voice. “I told you, this is my responsibility. I don’t need you to control my life.”
She was blocking him out. Why had she told him at all if she didn’t want his help? He felt as if he was beating his head against the stall. What did she want from him—a declaration of love and an engagement ring he’d been hiding in his pocket? He barely knew her—and she didn’t know him at all.
It was time they tried to find out something about each other—no, it was time he tried.
“Do you want the baby?” He felt awkward asking, but he had to start somewhere.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug, still defiant. “Of course I want the baby, even if I’m not married—but that’s normal these days, right?”
He knew better than to believe her blithe attitude. Pregnant and unmarried was a real curveball for the conservative Robbins clan. Brian Robbins’s only daughter should have had the fairy-tale wedding with all the trimmings long behind her before the requisite heir came.
Laila deserved the wedding and trappings before the heir. She’d done nothing but give to him—and he’d done nothing at all. Nothing.
He’d be expected to do the right thing by her, as soon as her state became known…and almost to his shock, he wanted that, too. His father had done the right thing by his mother, and because of that, he, Jake, had had a brother and sister, a home at Burrabilla, a heritage—a life outside the stifling city with a single mother struggling to make things work on her own.
His child deserved no less. He and Laila ought to be a family for the child’s sake, raising him or her in a united way. And Laila would need his help to raise the child, finish her course and work—all the things he knew she’d struggle to do alone.
But knowing Brian Robbins, he’d be expected to present himself as a worthy partner for Brian’s precious girl—which meant returning to his real identity. Brian would insist that he call his family, to have them all down for the engagement party—and he’d want Jake’s real name and financial status before the engagement could even happen.
It seemed he was about to be exposed for the fraud he was. Only an uncaring father wouldn’t care that Jenny and Annabel died because he hadn’t taken enough care of them—and Brian Robbins adored Laila. He’d probably toss Jake’s sorry butt off Wallaby faster than he could say “weekend visitation rights.”
Yeah, Laila had certainly hitched her star to the wrong wagon. She’d lost the life she’d planned and worked for during the past seven years, because of him.
Suddenly he wanted to heave his guts. This was a night-mare—and none of it was Laila’s fault. She’d thought him an ordinary man when she’d come to him, and he’d grabbed at her like a starving man faced with a sudden banquet. Lost in the past, he’d been desperate for human comfort, for touch—desperate for her—and now she was stuck with the consequences.
Well, she wouldn’t be alone. He’d been the one to ruin her, but he’d be damned if he’d leave her alone to face the life he’d given her.
The words came past the boulder of shame and guilt lodged in his throat. The betrayal of Jenny’s memory once again. “We’ll get married as soon as possible.”
At the offer that sounded ungracious and panicked even to him, life flared in her. “How noble of you—but don’t bother. I won’t go on a lifelong guilt-trip with you. I made the bad decision to sleep with you. You’re not responsible for me, or the baby.”
Yeah, right. If she didn’t want him to feel responsible for her pregnancy she shouldn’t have told him, because he’d already sped past the earlier signpost of You Did This To Her Street, and was hurtling down the road to Damnation Alley.
Marriage was the only way to make things right for her, and for their child.
He tipped up her chin with gentle fingers, trying like crazy to ignore the feel of her skin under his hand—yeah, the sweet, silky cream he remembered. Peaches and cream…
He voiced what he’d suspected five months ago when he was bolting from her bed and saw the look on her face: about eight hours too late to recognize the hidden insecurity behind the radiance of her smile. “Somebody else hurt you, didn’t they? Before me.”
She shrugged. “No need to make a sob story out of it. I must have bad genetics for attraction to go through this twice.”
Jake felt his eyes burning into hers—but her gaze bored straight back. She’d only had two men in her life—and good God, she counted their disaster as one time. She’d been that inexperienced? “Did I hurt you more than that guy did?” he asked grimly.
She closed her eyes for a moment before offering a tired smile, twisted with a bitterness he’d never seen inside her before. “He hung around for a few weeks, but took off after another rich girl when he realized I wasn’t going to buy him a ticket for the Robbins gravy train.” Her nostrils flared and her smile turned defiant again. “You cut and ran out on me after one night, but at least you were honest about not wanting me.”
Put like that, he sounded as big a jerk as her first lover.
You were a jerk.
All the worst names for a man he’d ever learned during his lifetime in the Outback came to mind, but he repressed them. He had work to do—harder work than riding any fence. After all he’d done to make her run in the opposite direction, he now had to bring her around. He’d get Laila to marry him. He had to make things right for her, not just for the baby.
“Don’t tell me, you’re thinking of ways and means to bring a wedding about,” she mocked sweetly, walking straight into his thoughts and scattering them. “Relax, Jake. I only want acknowledgment that you’re the father. And if he ever wants to meet you—”
Despite her insulting tone, he knew what she was really saying: she was offering him an easy out. All he need do at this point was walk away, and keep in touch—if he was the kind of loser who didn’t care about what he’d done to her life.
But even if his stomach didn’t churn at the thought of walking away from Laila and his child, if he didn’t feel sick to his guts at the thought of deserting her to her fate, he knew she, Laila, would haunt him for the rest of his life…just as Jen haunted him still.
“No,” he croaked. “I won’t leave it like this. I’m responsible for this mess—”
Her whole body stiffened; her eyes flashed. “I am not a mess, and neither is my baby.”
He wanted to whack his head against the side of the stall. Could he make things any worse? “I didn’t say you were a mess, or the baby—just the situation we’re in.”
“You’re not in anything.” Laila got to her feet, her face mutinous. “You made your feelings clear—and I will not marry a man who feels forced to it for the sake of a child he thinks of as a mess. I want a man who loves me and is happy about our child!”
“What did you expect? We barely know each other.” She was heading out by the time he was halfway through the sentence, but he was at the stall gate before she reached it, and held her arm to stop her. “Don’t storm off like a kid. This is serious. We need to talk.”
She sighed. “I can’t exactly escape this, you know. I just need a break from that dark, c
old face of yours.”
“Seems to me you’re the one with attitude right now,” he muttered.
Her face, fierce and cold as she’d just claimed his to be, stared into his. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have an attitude, given your own.”
Put like that, he couldn’t think of one.
“You will marry me,” he muttered. “If you hate me now, we can—”
“No.” Her voice was utterly filled with conviction. “Don’t offer me a marriage in name only. My friend Danielle’s parents did that, and for as long as she can remember they’ve hated each other. They buy separate groceries, use the kitchen at different times and never talk except to snipe at each other. But neither one will leave the house, or be the one to walk out. Even since she moved out, they won’t divorce for her sake. They’ve wrecked their lives, and screwed her up so badly she doesn’t trust any man, but they ‘did the right thing.’ That isn’t going to happen to my child. I won’t have him grow up as scarred and untrusting as poor Danni!”
How could he possibly answer that? How did she have the ability to read his thoughts, to be able to show up every flaw in his arguments? “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“It’s already going that way. You haven’t said my name once since I said the fatal words ‘I’m pregnant.’ In fact, you haven’t said my name since you bolted from the bed that morning.” Tears hovered in her eyes, hanging stubbornly on her lashes, but she wouldn’t let them spill; she was far too angry for that. “I refuse to be a problem, waiting passively for you to solve.”
He closed his eyes. “What do you want from me, Laila?” Her name croaked out of him like a protest.
She turned away. “See? You can’t even say my name without sounding like you hate it.”
Frustrated by her turning his attack to defence, he growled, “Will you give me a chance here? You’ve had months to come to terms with this. I’ve had barely ten minutes.”
That stopped her. Her eyes searched his face, with a little puckered frown between her brows. “All right,” she said slowly. “What do you want?”
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