by Fiona Harper
Alex swallowed. ‘Girls…this is…um… Jennie.’
‘Hello,’ Mollie said, and then returned to what she was doing. Toni just smiled again, wiped her hands, then opened one of the kitchen cupboards and took out a cafetière.
It hadn’t escaped Jennie’s attention that Alex had been economical with the introductions, mentioning names but leaving their marital relationship out of the equation, and it gave her an unexpected boost. She wasn’t the only one to chicken out of coming clean to the family, then. And the knowledge helped her feel less wrong-footed by the whole situation. For all Alex’s high-handedness about her reluctance to spill the beans to her relatives, he’d done exactly the same thing, meaning he was just as wary about the future as she was.
Despite Alex’s impatient fidgeting, Toni was making the coffee at a leisurely pace and Jennie decided to distract herself from the strange undercurrents circling beneath this charming scene of domesticity by taking an interest in Mollie’s cookery while Toni told Alex something about not being able to have Sunday lunch at her house because one of her boys had chickenpox and she didn’t want Mollie to get it.
‘What are you making?’ Jennie said, and sat down in the empty chair next to the little girl.
Mollie didn’t answer for a second, too intent on mashing a lump out of the cake mix.
‘Muffins,’ she said without looking up at Jennie. She carried on mixing until Toni retrieved the bowl and motioned for Mollie to put crinkly paper cases into a deep-holed baking tin.
Well, every family had its quirks, and it looked as if she was going to have to get used to Alex’s side’s silence and cryptic looks. But surely little girls weren’t supposed to follow that pattern? Weren’t they supposed to chatter on to anybody, given the chance? She certainly had. Her nanny had always complained they couldn’t leave the house without Jennie giving at least five people her life story and treating them to an impromptu dance recital.
But what did she know, anyway? She didn’t run into many children in her line of work. Most of her parties involved cocktails and expensive goodie bags, not jelly and ice cream.
Toni declared the coffee ready and Jennie turned to find Alex staring at her, a new and unreadable expression in his eyes.
She raised her eyebrows. What?
Just like the little girl beside her had done, he took his time answering, all the while watching her intently, and then something changed—clicked—as if he’d made a decision of some kind.
‘Shall we?’ he said as he took the tray Toni offered him and motioned towards the kitchen door with it.
‘Of course.’ She looked over her shoulder as they left the room. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said.
Toni just nodded.
And then Jennie was following Alex down the wide hallway, full of black and white prints, and into his study. He placed the tray on his spotless glass desk. She didn’t wait to be asked, just sat herself in one of the comfy armchairs that framed the fireplace and waited while Alex poured the coffee and handed her a cup.
He sat opposite her in an identical chair and sipped his coffee, watching her, wearing that same expression he’d had in the kitchen. Eventually, she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. She put her cup down on a side table and knotted her fingers before resting her hands on her knees.
‘So… Alex.’
He looked totally impassive, calm. Just the tiniest flicker of his eyelashes at her words betrayed him.
There’d been too much heavy silence on the car journey and she couldn’t bear more of it now, so she took a breath and dived in. ‘What do you want, Alex? From me? For us? Where do we go from here?’
He leaned down and placed his coffee cup on the cold hearth. ‘I know I hurt you,’ he said, and paused for a while. She could see him processing it all, could almost hear the words inside his head. ‘I didn’t mean to. I assumed too much.’
She nodded. Hadn’t she done the same? She’d assumed Alex’s leaving was the same kind of leaving she’d had to deal with all her life. The kind of leaving where people disappeared and you had to make them want to come back, and even then it was no good sometimes. Sometimes they just left a hole that was never filled, no matter how much sparkly stuff you disguised it with.
She looked him in the eye. There’d been so much she’d wanted to say to him, so much she’d wanted to spit and yell at him, but suddenly she understood the beauty of his silence. As they sat staring at each other, she knew they both understood they’d acted short-sightedly. Maybe because they’d both assumed they’d known each other when they hadn’t.
Did that mean they could start building a future again, or did it mean they were so incompatible they never would?
The fear of being second place had kept her from knowing that Alex had spoken the truth when he’d left her in Paris. She didn’t know what or why, but it was suddenly clear to her that he wouldn’t have left her alone if there’d been any other way, and he would have come for her. Had come for her. Not on her timescale, obviously, but that wasn’t the way that Alex worked. He was a man who kept his promises, but she didn’t have much experience with that kind of man, only with men who intended to keep their promises but somehow something more important came up in the meantime.
Her father had always promised they’d go to the park next weekend. But there’d always been a meeting, a round of golf with an important contact, a trip to Belgium, or Frankfurt or Rome. So, to Jennie, promises weren’t something she could hold in her hands, knowing they were solid…real. Promises were misty things. Left to their own devices, they didn’t deliver the goods. She had to chase them, catch them, pin them down until they became concrete.
And thoughts of his promise to return to her led to thoughts of other promises—ones they’d exchanged and marked with rings. She hadn’t thought to check, but she looked now and saw the gold band she’d placed on his finger still there. Her heart did an Olympic standard triple flip.
He’d kept his ring on.
She hadn’t noticed it last night, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there. Or had he replaced it this morning? She really wasn’t sure. Almost instinctively, she reached for the charm bracelet on her right wrist, felt for the matching band hanging from it, disguised by all the other glittering things catching the light and flashing it around.
Everything that had been fogged with confusion for the last few weeks suddenly became clear. Frighteningly so.
Alex would never let go of any promise lightly; he’d cling on doggedly, sometimes to the point of stupidity. Loyalty was important to him. So now she had to ask herself whether or not she wanted his loyalty, whether she wanted him to keep the promises he’d made to her.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said, drowning out the one ringing in her head.
Let him say the right things, she silently pleaded. Let him make it easier for me. I can’t jump into this abyss again if he’s not with me. It would be too cold, and far too lonely.
But Alex didn’t say anything. He walked towards her until he was within touching distance. Jennie felt herself start to shake, little quivers beginning in her knees that vibrated up her spine. He was giving her that deep, hooded look that had always done this to her, even though, most of the time, she didn’t have a clue what was going on inside his head.
And then he reached forward and touched her face. His fingertips were so soft, so gentle, as they explored her cheekbone. It had always astounded her that a man who seemed to have himself so tightly leashed could be quite so tender, that he could express just a little of what he felt without it bursting out of him like water destroying a dam.
Her eyelids closed. Surely she should flinch from his touch? Surely she shouldn’t sway towards him, the breath held in her lungs? She felt him come closer. The fingers of his other hand slid through her hair to the back of her neck and he gently pulled her closer. She didn’t even try to resist. Just placed her palms on his chest. Not because she wanted to shove him away, but just becau
se she suddenly couldn’t last another moment without touching him.
The kiss started off as slow and soft as his first touch, but it wasn’t tentative or testing. Alex wanted this as much as she did. Probably more so, because his actions were always so sure and confident, based on iron-clad decisions that had been made after extensive research and pondering. She, however, hadn’t really even made a conscious decision to fall back into Alex’s arms and into his life. Right now, in this moment, it just felt right.
The kiss didn’t stay soft and graceful for long. They still had it—that intoxicating chemistry that had knocked them both sideways the first time they’d met—and Alex’s hands were soon around her waist, clamping her to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, meeting him, urging him.
And then he lifted her and for a second she was suspended in his arms, before her bottom met the slightly cool, smooth glass of his desk. She hooked a calf around the back of his knees, keeping him pressed up against her, and her fingers searched for the top button of his shirt.
Alex made a sound that was part laugh, part moan and dipped his head lower to kiss her neck. Jennie gave up with the shirt buttons after just two or three, frustrated by her own clumsiness. It was too slow. She needed to feel his warm skin under her fingertips. Nothing else mattered.
She grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked it out from the back of his jeans, but froze when the door handle creaked.
Suddenly Alex was two feet away, doing up his buttons with as much success as she’d had in undoing them, and Jennie was sliding off the desk. Her feet had just hit the carpet when the door opened. She ran a hand through her hair, half pulled out of her ponytail, as Mollie’s dark head appeared.
‘Muffins ready,’ she announced solemnly, not even blinking at Alex’s unusually untidy appearance.
Alex flashed a look at Jennie, who felt herself blush. While it was perfectly okay—expected, even—for newly-weds to behave in the manner they’d been, she’d forgotten entirely that they weren’t alone in the house, that maybe there was a better place, or time, for what they’d been about to get up to.
‘I’m just…um…talking with Jennie,’ he said.
The tips of Jennie’s ears burned. As far as she remembered, they’d only managed a couple of sentences each before things had gone astray.
‘I’ll…we’ll…be along to the kitchen in just a minute to have one,’ he added.
Just before the door closed properly, Jennie heard her soft little voice one more time. Mollie fixed Alex with her clear, pale eyes. ‘Okay, Daddy.’
Jennie felt cold air rush past her cheeks and into the very roots of her hair as he shook his head and Mollie shut the door.
Daddy?
Had Mollie just called Alex Daddy?
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR the first time in their relationship, Alex was aware that the tables had been well and truly turned. He was the one dropping the bombshell, doing something totally crazy and unexpected, and Jennie was the innocent bystander, the one trying to make sense of it all. He’d thought being on the other side of the equation would have given him a sense of power, but it only left him with a lead weight in his stomach, one that was growing heavier with every blink of her incredulous eyes.
Things had been going so well. Too well, maybe.
He’d been on the verge of telling her before Mollie had opened the door. He’d brought Jennie to his study so he could sit her down and methodically fill in the holes of the explanation he’d given her last night. But all those careful explanations had gone out of the window when Jennie had sat in that leather armchair and looked at him with the same hope and expectancy as she had on their wedding day. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from walking over to her. Just one touch, he’d promised himself, and then he’d let the words out of his mouth.
He should have remembered how upside down and inside out she turned him, how she made every hair on his head stand on end and the adrenalin pump through his veins. He should have just stuck to one thing at a time.
Explaining first, touching later.
It wasn’t as if he was good at explanations, anyway. Words just weren’t his thing. Not that he felt clumsy with them, but they were just… unnecessary. He was better at showing how he felt by the things he did, by simply being the man he was. He sighed and ran a hand over the top of his head.
The shock in Jennie’s eyes was quickly turning into something else. This was one time when he definitely should have stuck to the plan.
‘You have a…? She’s your…?’
He nodded again, reached for her. She couldn’t back away, right up against the desk as she was, but she sidestepped him so fast she knocked the cafetière that had been sitting on the other side of the desk over and scalding coffee flowed all over the desk and dripped onto the floor.
She started to try and pick the cafetière up, but the hot liquid made her wince. It didn’t stop her trying, though. She just kept attempting to right the glass jug, all the while looking panicked as more and more coffee sluiced around the table and made a thin, dark brown waterfall over the edge of the desk.
He reached across and held her hands, stopping her from burning herself, held them still and looked at her, until she understood that desks and carpets didn’t matter. She looked back at him, blinking only once, and he couldn’t decide whether she was going to cry or was getting ready to hit him over the head with the half-empty cafetière.
The silence was measured by the squelching drip, drip, drip of coffee hitting the carpet.
She pulled her hands away, stepped back. ‘You have a daughter, and you never thought to tell me?’
‘Until about three weeks ago, I didn’t know…and I’m still not one hundred per cent sure.’
‘How can you not know? What do you mean?’
He sighed. Where Becky had been concerned, he’d come to realise that just about anything was possible.
‘Let me explain.’
This was the moment he’d been dreading. The moment when it all might get too much for his runaway bride. He could see the fear and uncertainty in her eyes. She looked for a long couple of seconds at the door.
‘Please? ‘ he added, and he couldn’t ignore the vague hint of desperation in his voice. Neither could Jennie, it seemed. She stopped flashing angry looks at him and went and stood by the cold firelace, her arms crossed.
Alex made his way back from the hospital cafeteria on autopilot. In the last day or so he’d done the journey so many times he didn’t need to look at the signs to navigate the endless anonymous corridors back to the Intensive Care Unit.
As he entered the ward, he instantly went on red alert. Someone was talking loudly and emphatically and after the relentless serenity, punctured only by the drab electronic music of the machines that beeped and pinged and hissed in and out of time with each other, the noise seemed to reverberate off the walls.
Just before he turned into the section of corridor that led to Becky’s room, a stout woman with a severe ponytail pushed past him, muttering something about not being a flipping free child-minding service. He quickened his pace and half-jogged to Becky’s room, where he found the plump nurse who’d been there the other day when he’d arrived, holding a squirming toddler and wearing a dazed expression.
He’d seen so many nurses in the last thirty or so sleepless hours that he was almost surprised he recognised this one. But she’d stuck in his mind because, not long after he’d walked into this nightmare, she’d come quietly alongside him and asked if he was Alex. He’d nodded numbly, all the while looking at the broken body he hardly recognised amidst all the tubes and machines, and hadn’t thought to wonder until later how she’d known.
The plump nurse, whose name he now noticed was Flora, had calmly told him that one of the paramedics who’d brought Becky in had said she’d whispered something before she’d lapsed into unconsciousness. He’d dutifully informed the staff in the Emergency Department, who’d passed it on to Flora or one of her co
lleagues. But Becky’s last words must have suffered the ‘Chinese whispers’ effect because it hadn’t made much sense.
Becky had grabbed the paramedic’s hand and told him to tell Alex she belonged to him.
If the situation hadn’t have been so dire, he might have allowed himself a dark chuckle at that. Becky hadn’t been his in a long while. Hadn’t wanted to be.
But he’d mulled the message over while he’d sat by her bedside, watching the ventilator puff air into her and then suck it out again, and he’d taken it to mean she wanted him to look after her, to be on her side. And since he was still listed on her donor card as her next of kin, the hospital had been happy to let him do that.
He supposed he should have been angry at her impudence, but he hadn’t been able to feel anything but compassion for her in this state. And guilt, of course. He always felt the guilt. Becky had finally trusted him to look out for her, something he’d failed to do properly during their seven-year marriage. It helped mend something inside him that she’d at least given him this. He was going to make sure he did it properly this time, especially as things weren’t looking promising. It was the least he could do for her.
Thank goodness Jennie understood. Well, just about understood. Even so, he wasn’t looking forward to phoning her and telling her, once again, that he wouldn’t be taking the two-hour train ride to Paris that evening.
He turned to Flora, who was doing her best to calm the grizzling child, and frowned.
‘That woman? She just left her child here?’
Flora lost the battle and, rather than drop the child, she managed to set her down without too much of a bump. Both he and Flora watched as the little girl ran to the bed and stared at Becky.
‘She says she’s not hers,’ Flora mumbled. ‘Said she was just babysitting…’
Alex frowned. ‘So whose is she, then?’
Flora didn’t move and her gaze never left the bed. The little girl was pulling at Becky’s hand, whimpering. ‘Wake up,’ she said in a tiny, thin voice.