Fatherhood Fever!

by Emma Darcy

  Her sobs quietened and eventually stopped. She lay still, apart from him. The apartness hurt. He wondered if it would ever stop hurting. She didn’t know—never would know—how much she’d meant to him.

  “I wouldn’t have taken you. Not in anger,” he said in justice to himself.

  No reply.

  He forced himself to swing his legs off the bed and stand up. “I guess you’d prefer to be alone.”

  No response to that, either.

  There was nothing left to say.

  Matt quietly collected his travel bag which was kept packed with essentials for business trips, slung a couple of clean shirts over his arm, determinedly denied himself one last look at the woman he’d married with such impetuous faith in their future together, and walked out of the bedroom. He couldn’t bear to be near her anymore. She was too painful a reminder of what was beyond his reach.

  In the living room he picked up his keys and wallet from the telephone table. He was at the door before it occurred to him it might not be a good idea to leave Peta alone in what he could only think of as a traumatised state, even though it seemed to have become her refuge from realities she didn’t want to deal with. He shied away from the thought she might be suicidal. He was the problem. Remove the problem, let her feel free of it and the pressure on her would ease.

  Still...concern for her drove him back to the telephone table. He rang Megan. The two sisters were close. If anyone could do anything for Peta, it would be Megan.

  She answered the call.

  “It’s Matt.” He heaved a sigh to ease the constriction in his chest. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call Peta in half an hour or so. Check that she’s all right.”

  “Why? Aren’t you there?” she asked sharply.

  “I’m about to leave, Megan. She doesn’t want me with her.”

  “Matt, please...hold on.”

  The plea echoed the words she’d spoken when he’d danced with her at the wedding reception... You will hold on to her...no matter what?

  He shook his head over the blind confidence he’d carried this far. Megan must have known what shaky ground he’d embarked on with Peta...known and worried about it, hoping for the best. If the miscarriage hadn’t happened...but it had...and the ground had crumbled... irreparably.

  “There isn’t anything to hold on to, Megan,” he said, acutely aware of the hollow ache inside him.

  “Can’t you...” The half-spoken plea fell into a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Matt. I guess it’s gone too far,” she added sadly. “I did try to pull her out of it.”

  “I know. Thank you. If you’d check on her...”

  “Yes, I’ll do that. Don’t worry. And Matt, for what it’s worth, I think you’re the best guy she could ever have got.”

  His mouth twisted in irony. “Not good enough where it really counted. ’Bye, Megan. I’ll be in touch.”

  He left the apartment and drove off into the night with no clear idea of where to go. The future was a blank to him...a huge black blank...his wife, the family they had planned, their home...all gone. Matt had never felt so lost and alone, not even when his father had died.

  He thought of the baby whom nature had ordained shouldn’t live...his and Peta’s baby...perhaps as wrongly formed as their marriage...though it would have been loved—was loved—by both of them. A dream that wasn’t to be.

  But it had only been part of the dream for him. He’d loved the extra closeness it had brought with Peta...the way her eyes had shone with happiness, including him in their warm glow, the impulsive affection she’d shown when he’d suggested plans that pleased her, even her pleasure in the flowers he’d sent.

  He’d come to believe she did feel he was special... her husband in every sense...and they were building towards what his parents had once shared...a deep and abiding love for each other...

  An understanding of what his mother had felt when his father had died flooded through him. The loss...the pain...the gut-wrenching bereft feeling. He shouldn’t have criticised her for losing interest in life. He hadn’t had the experience to measure her grief. All those years together. He’d only had a taste of it, yet...

  Tears welled into his eyes and blurred his vision. Grown men don’t cry, he told himself, furiously blinking the wetness away. He pulled the car to the side of the road and parked, struggling to regain the composure to drive on. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter.

  He wept.

  The bleeding went on.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE telephone wouldn’t stop buzzing. It nagged and nagged until she was finally driven to reach out and pick up the receiver on the bedside table.

  “Peta?”

  She dragged in a deep breath. An effort was needed to stop the pestering. “Megan, I don’t want to talk. I’ve taken a sleeping tablet and I’d like to sleep. Please...”

  “Just one tablet?”

  “Yes,” she snapped, exasperated by the sisterly concern. “Goodnight.”

  She crashed the receiver onto its cradle and resettled herself in the bed, her back turned to the empty side, stubbornly intent on doing her utmost to block it out of her mind. She wanted—needed—oblivion for a while. Tomorrow she would think about what had happened tonight. It was too hard, too confusing, too awful to come to grips with it now.

  Cheat!

  She shut her eyes tight and willed the tormenting word to stop its relentless beat on her brain.

  Cheat...cheat...cheat...

  It wasn’t true...it wasn’t! She’d met him more than halfway in everything. Until...

  He just didn’t understand how much having the baby meant to her...how devastating it was to have her body reject what she most wanted. It had nothing to do with Giorgio. Nothing!

  Her arms automatically cradled her stomach. The empty place inside her ached and ached. She couldn’t have borne to have sex with Matt, feeling him where she’d lost the baby. It wasn’t fair of him to expect it of her... wasn’t fair... The wedding ring on her finger didn’t mean he could take her without her consent, even though he might think she had bargained that way...no sex without the ring.

  Cheat...

  No...no...

  It didn’t work if it wasn’t mutual. At least he had realised it and let her go, left her alone, alone to the emptiness she couldn’t bear and couldn’t fill.

  She rocked herself in anguish, rocked herself to sleep, and clung to sleep, even through a shifting blur of troubling dreams where everything she reached for moved out of reach and dwindled away into nothing.

  Then there was a bell ringing, piercing and persistent, forcing her to swim groggily to the surface of consciousness. Daylight hit her eyes. She quickly closed them again. Tomorrow had come and she still didn’t want to face it.

  Cheat...

  She writhed as the hateful word slithered out again.

  The ringing sound was the doorbell. Desperate enough to grab at any distraction, Peta hauled herself out of bed, pushed her arms into her dressing gown, and tottered out to the door, wrapping the edges of the gown around her, tying the belt, running her fingers through her hair. One thing was certain. It wouldn’t be Matt. He’d use his key.

  She opened the door, carelessly resigned to dealing with someone. Except the someone was Megan who pushed straight past her into the apartment without so much as a by-your-leave. She was alone, no baby Patrick in tow, for which Peta was grateful, though she wondered who was minding him.

  “Are you taking to sleeping through the day as well as the night?” Megan sniped, bristling with every sign of being on the warpath.

  Peta sighed, wishing her sister had stayed away. “What time is it?”

  “Time you came to your senses.”

  “Oh, don’t start...”

  “I’ll do more than start. I’m through with your sensibilities, Peta. You’ve crucified a decent man and I’m going to nail you to the wall for it if it’s the last thing I do!” She shot her a scathing up and down glance. “I’ll grant you a cup
of coffee first. And believe me, that’s sisterly love!”

  She’d whirled into the kitchen before Peta got her breath back from the fast and furious attack. Crucified? The evocative word sent a shiver down her spine. She swiftly assured herself Megan was exaggerating the situation, as she always did when she was upset. Matt must have called her, though surely he wouldn’t have confided the awful nastiness of last night’s scene.

  Cheat...

  She shuddered and hurried after her sister, finding her tipping fresh grains into the coffee-maker. “I don’t know what Matt told you...”

  “He called me out of concern for you, Peta.” Her eyes flashed contempt. “You, who haven’t given him one smidgeon of concern since you miscarried. As though it wasn’t his baby, too.”

  It whipped up a hot flood of guilt and shame. She’d been so immersed in her own grief, she hadn’t seen his, and he must have felt it, wanting a baby as much as she did. He’d said as much last night. She should have responded. The leaden weight in her heart had been too heavy to shift.

  Megan clicked the grain-holder into place and switched the coffee-maker on with angry snaps. “I never thought I’d say this about my own sister...” She turned, her eyes stabbing home the point. “...But you’re a blind, self-centred bitch, Peta.”

  Shock punched her heart. She opened her mouth to protest but Megan swept on.

  “To take Matt’s love and do what you did to him...treating him as nothing...turning your back on him...disregarding his...”

  “Now hold on a moment!” Peta shot back at her, stung into defending herself. “Matt never once said he loved me.”

  “No, I daresay he didn’t.” Megan’s chin lifted, defying the negative claim. “He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t lay that on you because you told him you didn’t love him. And you’ve rubbed that in these past few weeks, haven’t you? Rubbed it in so far you left him nothing to hold on to.”

  The heat in her cheeks was scorching but Peta hung grimly on to her defence. “Love never entered into our marriage,” she insisted vehemently. “From the very beginning...”

  “Matt was head over heels in love with you, Peta,” Megan cut in with pitying scorn in her eyes. “That was obvious to the whole family at Patrick’s christening. Ask them. Ask any guest who attended your wedding. Only you were blind to it. Only you...”

  “No, you’re wrong,” she cried, frantically resisting the charge. “He was physically attracted to me, yes. And he wanted a family...”

  “With you. Because it was you,” Megan pushed relentlessly.

  “No.” Peta shook her head vehemently. “Because he was ready.”

  “He loved you,” Megan bored on, unshaken in her conviction. “He adored you. You were always the focus of his attention, caring about what would please you, what you wanted, doing everything he could to make you happy.” She paused, shaking her head at the stupidity of not seeing. “Add it up, Peta. That’s not lust. It’s love in capital letters.”

  It was the kind of man Matt was, Peta wildly reasoned. He treated his mother the same way. The realisation struck... He loved his mother.

  “And I’ll bet my boots he thought if he gave you all your dreams, you’d come to love him,” Megan went on. “But the first dream got broken and you showed him he was worth nothing to you, didn’t you, Peta?”

  She rubbed at her throbbing temples. She hadn’t meant to hurt Matt. It was just...she couldn’t...

  “Never mind all he did to help you.” Megan’s voice kept beating at her with sickening force. “Never mind his need to share what you were both feeling and to move on from it, his need for the togetherness he thought he’d get in your marriage. He not only lost his child, you took away everything you’d promised him, as well.”

  Cheat...

  “Matt poured out his love for you these past few weeks, Peta. It was obvious to both me and Mum he was desperate for you to be with him again instead of off in a world of your own. I don’t know what went on between you last night, but I can guess. You must have ripped out the last shred of hope Matt had of ever reaching into your heart. And even then...even then...he cared about you...calling me so I’d check on you, to make sure you were all right.”

  She hadn’t heard his desperation. Not really. It had floated past her. Yet the words he’d punched so angrily at her...his violent actions...

  “You still want to pretend he didn’t love you?” Megan mocked savagely.

  “I...he never said...” Any coherent thought was lost. She lifted her hands in an agitated attempt to ward off more accusations. Her head was pounding with snatches of memories. Matt had said it...in many ways. She simply hadn’t taken it in.

  The last night of their honeymoon... I don’t care to have roses banned from our life... It didn’t feel like a convenience to me... and last night... I married you for you. She hadn’t let those words mean what they had meant. She’d let them pass, attaching them to Matt’s pride if anything, not love.

  The coffee-maker pinged.

  “You’d better sit down before you fall down,” Megan coolly advised. “I’ll bring your coffee.”

  Yes, she did feel faint. She drifted into the living room. The plates with the remnants of the dinner Matt had cooked were still sitting on the table, food congealed on them. She gripped the back of her chair, staring at the mess on her plate, knowing she’d made a much worse mess of the commitment she’d given to Matt.

  If you want a divorce, just say so.

  She’d said it so carelessly, numbly. While he...

  Another shudder ran through her. She gripped the chair more tightly as she painfully acknowledged the truth Megan had shot at her. She had been blind and self-centred where Matt was concerned. His bringing up Giorgio... He’d given her every sign and she hadn’t seen.

  “Oh, great!” Megan snapped in disgust, seeing the state of the table. She plonked down the coffee mugs she’d brought in and whipped away the soiled dinner plates. “You can sit down now,” she tossed at Peta on her way back to the kitchen.

  She sat. There was no fight left in her.

  Megan returned and settled at the table, all brisk determination to set the record straight. “I’ve run out of sympathy for you, Peta,” she started again. “You’re not the only woman who’s suffered a miscarriage. You were lucky it happened at six weeks.”

  Peta flinched. Lucky?

  “Some women carry their babies much longer before losing them. Even up to six months...”

  “Don’t! Don’t go on...with that,” she pleaded brokenly.

  “I can imagine the disappointment but at least it happened quickly,” Megan said more gently. “And the doctor said there was no reason why you shouldn’t try again.”

  Peta shut her mind to the argument. Everything within her recoiled from trying again. It felt wrong. Even if Matt could forgive her the hurts she’d inflicted... no, she couldn’t do it.

  Megan kept on talking at her.

  Peta sat in pained silence, waiting for her to run down. Eventually she did, having nailed all the nails she’d come to hammer into her sister’s conscience. She’d done a good job of it, Peta thought with sad and bitter irony. Too good. There was no going back from here. It wasn’t a marriage of convenience anymore, not with Matt’s love involved.

  “You’ve driven Matt away from you,” Megan concluded. “If you want to get him back—and you’d be a fool not to—you’ve got to give him a reason to...”

  “No,” she cut in, meeting her sister’s eyes with firm decision.

  Megan leaned forward in earnest. “Peta, you won’t find a better man.”

  “It’s no good,” she answered bleakly. “I’d keep on hurting him. And I don’t want to.”

  “If you just...”

  “No. Go home, Megan. You’ve done what you came to do.”

  “But, Peta, if you let him go...”

  “As I am right now, he’s better off without me.” She couldn’t even satisfy him in bed. The lust they had shared wasn’
t in her anymore. “I won’t lie to Matt. He’d know anyway.” She stood up, feeling a draining sense of futility. “Please... I would like you to leave now.”

  Megan was frowning heavily. “You mean...all I’ve said doesn’t make any difference to you?” she cried in frustration.

  “You’ve made me see...what I was too blind to see. And I wish it could be different. But it isn’t.”

  She stepped away, finishing the conversation by moving through the living room to the entrance hallway, giving Megan little choice but to follow. She did. Peta held the door open for her. Megan paused, still frowning.

  “What will you do now?” she queried worriedly.

  “Have a shower, get dressed, have something to eat, go for a ride on my bike.”

  The frown deepened. “Where?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Peta managed a crooked smile. “Maybe I’ll find myself along the way.”

  “I care about you.” It was a burst of concern.

  “It’s all right, Megan,” she assured her sister softly. “Thanks for coming. Thanks for saying all you’ve said. It did make me see.”

  Megan looked as if the stuffing had been knocked out of her. She heaved a long, ragged sigh then tried to fix some resolution. “Call me. Let me know you’re all right.”

  “I will,” Peta promised.

  It was little enough but Megan took it and left, accepting there was no more to be done with all the will in the world.

  Peta shut the door and leaned back against it, completely spent. Matt had shut this door on her last night. She’d driven him away and no matter how empty her life felt, she could not go to him, not to use him as she had, ill-using him in the end.

  She knew how it felt to be cheated in love.

  She wouldn’t do it to him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MATT finished his breakfast and cleaned up, impatient to be gone, out of his apartment and on his way to work. He felt a constant, miserable sense of emptiness here, with Peta gone. The apartment was still as functional a place as it had ever been, handy for everything, but stripped of her belongings, her feminine bits and pieces, her perfume, her presence...it was a painful reminder of what he didn’t have.