Furious to find tears brimming yet again, Jenna drew in a shaking breath and squared her shoulders. So, okay! She’d made a mistake. But the damage was done and no amount of weeping and wailing was going to change it. At the very least, she could stop compounding her problems, instead of adding to them.
Her life, her future, lay elsewhere and this place…oh, it had provided the refuge she’d needed during those first long, dreadful hours after she’d received Mark’s letter, but at best it was a temporary reprieve only. Sooner or later, she had to go back and face the people and situation she’d left behind.
As for Edmund Delaney, in all fairness, her anger toward him should be tempered by gratitude. Unquestionably, he’d deceived her, but he’d also made her feel desirable again. And for that, she owed him a debt he could never begin to imagine.
“You know,” Valerie Sinclair said, regarding Jenna through narrowed eyes, “I don’t think it’s necessarily over with Mark. If you hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth so suddenly the way you did, I truly believe you’d be married to him by now. He’s phoned here, you know. Several times. Says he’s tried phoning you as well, but you never return his calls. From what I can gather, he got cold feet at the last minute but he came to his senses soon after.”
During the month since her return to Vancouver, Jenna had fielded an endless outpouring of sympathy and numerous offers to hook her up with a new man. She’d refused every one, not because she didn’t appreciate the concern of her friends but because she was actually enjoying being free to do and wear and eat what she pleased. Not until he was out of her life had she realized how completely Mark had tried to control it—or how close he’d come to succeeding.
But nothing stopped her mother from harping on the subject of a reconciliation. As far as she was concerned, there was only one avenue worth pursuing, one which led directly back to Mark Armstrong.
Thanking providence and modern technology for the luxury of call display and voice mail, Jenna heaved a weary sigh. “And I’ve told you, Mother, I have nothing to say to him. Nor can I imagine why you have, either. He humiliated everyone in this family, not just me. And his excuse that he got cold feet is pathetic. He’s thirty-one, for heaven’s sake, not seventeen!”
“We’d see our way to forgiving him,” her mother said magnanimously.
Only because of what you expected he’d do for you, once I became his wife! Jenna muttered silently.
Collecting her jacket and purse, she said, “Forget it, Mother. It’s over between Mark and me. Thanks for the coffee, but I really can’t stay for lunch. I have a living to earn.”
“If you were Mrs. Armstrong, you wouldn’t need to rely on the pittance you make running that day-care outfit,” her mother persisted.
Jenna rolled her eyes in exasperation. “In case you’ve forgotten, Mark’s the one who dumped me! Even supposing you’re right and he’s undergone yet another change of heart, whatever makes you think I’d be interested in renewing a relationship with a man I could never trust again?”
“So what are you going to do instead? Spend the rest of your life wiping the noses of other people’s children?”
“I can think of worse things,” she said. Like finding I can’t forget the married man I slept with, or realizing Mark’s prowess as a lover leaves as much to be desired as just about everything else I’ve learned about him! “I love working with children, you know that.”
And they were one thing Mark’s money couldn’t buy. An attack of mumps when he was twenty-five had left him sterile. Although she’d found it difficult at first, she’d come to accept that she’d never know how it felt to be pregnant or give birth, and had pinned her hopes instead on persuading him to consider adopting a child when the time was right.
“Come for dinner on Sunday,” her mother said, walking her to the door. “The whole family will be here and we’ve hardly seen you since you came back to town.”
“Only if you promise you won’t harp on the idea of a reconciliation with Mark. It isn’t going to happen, Mother, no matter how badly you’d like it to.”
“You’re surely not going to pretend you’re over him already?”
Could it possibly be? Was that why her thoughts turned so often to Edmund Delaney? “I still think about him occasionally,” she admitted.
Her mother beamed with satisfaction. “You miss him!”
The guy’s pure pond scum, sweet pea…!
“I’m angry with him.”
…sent someone else to do his dirty work? He’s not fit to be called a man…
“And disgusted at the way he’s behaved.”
“You’re overwrought because you’re in denial, dear.”
“I’m tired because I’ve spent hours sending back wedding gifts to people, well over half of whom I don’t know. On top of that, his mother wrote asking me to return my engagement ring—as if I had any use for it, or would dream of keeping an heirloom belonging to another family!”
“Anger and denial are part of the grieving process,” Valerie said soothingly. “They’ll pass, and then you’ll feel like your old self again and see things differently.”
Was not menstruating and being unable to keep her breakfast down also part of the grieving process, Jenna wondered, staring at her pallid reflection in the bathroom mirror, one morning five weeks later. And would they, too, pass and leave her feeling like her old self?
Or should she just face the fact that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Because while contraception might not have been an issue with Mark, unless she was sadly mistaken, it definitely should have been with Edmund Delaney!
“I think I’m pregnant,” she blurted out wretchedly, when Irene, her partner at the day-care center, stopped by that same evening to see how she was coping with the summer cold she’d claimed had prevented her from showing up at work the last couple of days.
It took a lot to rattle Irene. Tantrums, toilet training, finding herself splattered with paint and food—she took them all in stride. “That’s the way kids are,” she always said. “They spit up on your best blouse and wait till they’re sitting on your lap before they wet their pants. It’s the nature of the little beasts, but we love them anyway.”
Her reaction to Jenna’s announcement would have been no less pragmatic had it not been for the spark of curiosity she couldn’t quite hide. “Well, it’s not Mark’s because we both know he was shooting blanks,” she said, fixing Jenna in a beady-eyed stare. “So who’s the lucky daddy?”
“Someone I…met.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d received an anonymous donation in the mail, Jenna! What’s his name?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m no longer involved with him.”
“Were you at the time you were supposed to be getting married? Is that why Mark called off the wedding?”
“Of course not!” she exclaimed, stung. “How could you even ask such a question?”
“It’s been known to happen. One last fling before settling down, and all that sort of thing, you know. Men do it all the time, so why not women?”
“Well, not this woman,” Jenna said, afraid she was about to lose the dry toast and scrambled egg she’d forced down earlier.
Irene subjected her to another inspection. “You do look a bit off-color, I must admit, but it doesn’t have to mean you’re pregnant.”
“To what else would you attribute two missed periods and morning sickness which lasts all day?”
“Stress, for one thing. What you’ve been through in the last couple of months is enough to put any woman’s cycle out of kilter,” Irene replied, a shade more sympathetically. “But if you’re right, you’ve got to know I’m not the only person who’ll wonder if this is the reason Mark backed out at the last minute. People are going to have a field day with this one, sweet child!”
“I’m past caring what other people think,” Jenna said wearily. “I’ve got a life that I thought was sorting itself out rather well. Now I’m back at square
one again and facing questions a lot more important than what’s making the gossip vine thrive.”
“Hmm.” Irene nibbled on a fingernail. “How far along do you think you are?”
“Nine weeks.” Plus one day and nineteen hours, to be precise!
“Have you thought about what you want to do?”
“Do?”
“You don’t have to go through with the pregnancy, Jenna. There are other options.”
“I hope you’re not hinting at an abortion,” she said, shocked. “I was reconciled to never having children with Mark. I’ve accepted his leaving me standing at the altar. But this…this is my baby and I’m damned if I’ll let anyone rob me of him—or her!”
“What about the father’s rights?”
“The father has no rights,” she spat, jumping up from her chair and pacing agitatedly across the room and back. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since the night we…had sex.”
Because he already has a wife.
“Don’t get your knickers in an uproar,” Irene said calmly. “Whatever you decide, I’m with you all the way, you know that. You can work as much or as little as you like before the birth. And after, when you feel up to it, you can come back to the center and bring the munchkin with you. If single parenthood’s the route you choose to go, you’ve got the ideal setup. No need to worry about baby-sitters or leaving him with strangers.”
She made it all sound so possible. And maybe it would have remained that way if, that following Sunday night, Edmund Delaney hadn’t shown up on Jenna’s doorstep.
“I’ve had a devil of a time tracking you down,” he said, when she opened the door. “You’re not listed in the phone book, you never did tell me your last name, and if it hadn’t been that the desk clerk at The Inn was susceptible to a bribe, I never would have found you. You look like hell, by the way.”
Appalled, she stared at him, willing him to be a figment of her nauseated imagination. In the beginning, she’d fantasized more than was good for her about what might have happened if he hadn’t been married and they’d spent a few more days together. But common sense had finally prevailed and she’d long since accepted that, in his own way, Edmund was no better than Mark and she was well rid of both of them.
He was looking at her quizzically, his slate-blue eyes with their absurdly long lashes sparkling with laughter. “Aren’t you going to invite me in, sweet pea?”
“No,” she said. “Go away. And I’m not your sweet pea.”
But before she could slam it in his face, he had his foot in the door, and then the rest of him. “Hey,” he said, “I know you’re probably ticked with me, but I can explain.”
Ignoring the lurching of her stomach, she straightened to her full height and glared at him, sincerely believing she was in charge of herself and her emotions. “Nothing you have to say excuses your behavior. You are…you are…!”
“Pond scum?” A grin tugged at his mouth and he had the audacity to reach out and cup her chin.
His hand was warm and strong and steady; the kind that made a woman feel safe and protected and all those things she badly needed to see her through the coming months and years. And knowing she couldn’t have them—at least not from him—had her suddenly choking back the tears which, along with all the other less than welcome symptoms of pregnancy, plagued her without warning.
“I would have come before,” he said gravely, seeing her distress. “But I’ve been away and only just got back. How are you, Jenna, my dear?”
Pregnant, that’s how! And just to prove it, the soup she’d had for dinner rose up in her throat with alarming urgency. Blindly, she spun away from him and headed for the bathroom at the end of the hall.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE had no idea he’d followed her, that he saw her hunched over the toilet bowl and heard her retching, until she felt him scooping the hair away from her face and pressing a cold cloth to her forehead.
“Ugh…!” she gagged, swatting ineffectually at him. “Leave me…alone…!”
He stroked her back as another spasm took hold. “Not a chance,” he said. “You ought to know by now that I can’t ignore a lady in distress.”
“I will not have you see me like this!”
“From where I stand, sweet pea, you’re in no position to be issuing orders. You’ve got your work cut out tossing your cookies.”
The man was about as sensitive as a water buffalo. “Show a little tact, for pity’s sake! I don’t need an…audience.”
“Instead of fighting me every step of the way,” he said virtuously, “you might try thanking me for showing up when I did, since it’s obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that you could use a little help.”
She crawled to a sitting position on the lip of the bathtub as the bout of sickness abated. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m fresh out of gratitude where you’re concerned.”
He rinsed the cloth in more cold water and attempted to wipe her flushed face. “No call to get testy, Jenna. You aren’t the first woman I’ve seen throw up and I suspect you won’t be the last.”
She slapped his hand away. “Stop fussing over me! I’m feeling better.”
He inspected her minutely, starting with her bare feet sticking out at the bottom of her ratty old pink bathrobe, and ending with her hair which hadn’t seen the working end of a brush in hours. “You look like the wrath of God!”
“So you keep telling me.”
“Worse even than you did the night we met.”
“Thank you,” she said peevishly.
“Is it something you ate that’s making you ill?”
“Yes,” she lied, because to admit the truth to him, of all people, was out of the question.
“You want me to put you to bed?”
“God, no!” She sprang up from the edge of the tub and tried to push past him. “You’ve already done enough damage!”
She didn’t need his raised eyebrows and quizzical expression to know she’d almost blown her cover.
“How so, Jenna?” he asked carefully, manacling her wrist in an iron grip. “What heinous crime have I committed, beyond making a habit of being there to pick up the pieces when things go wrong in your life?”
She attempted to stare him down, which was a mistake. For a start, he didn’t stare down easily. And second, he was too disturbingly good-looking. Admiring his face, with its strong, clean lines, led to her remembering other, equally chiseled parts of him, and that provoked exactly the kind of turbulence her stomach was in no shape to tolerate. “I’m surprised you have the nerve to ask me that!”
“If you’re referring to the night we spent together, let me remind you that I made a superhuman effort to decline the invitation you so charmingly extended.”
“Oh!” she gasped, a furious blush riding up her neck at the unquestionable truth of his allegation. “Only an utter boor would throw that back in my face!”
His hold on her wrist lessened, became a lazy, evocative caress. “Before you fly into orbit, let me also say that I found it a memorably magnificent experience which I have never for a moment regretted.”
“Did you really?” she snapped, refusing to be blindsided by his belated attempt at flattery. “Is that why you left so early the next morning without so much as a note telling me why?”
“Funny you should mention that since it’s one of the reasons I felt obliged to track you down now. Believe me, Jenna, I’m well aware I have some explaining to do.” He trailed his fingers over her palm, folded her hand around his, and propelled her toward the door. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d as soon find some place more conducive to conversation before I unburden myself. Unless, of course, you think you might be sick again any time soon?”
Annoyed to find herself warming to his touch, she wrenched her hand away. “I already told you, I’m feeling much better.”
“Enough to offer me coffee?”
She hadn’t been able to tolerate coffee for days. The mere mention of it w
as enough to leave her salivating like a rabid dog. “I’m out of coffee.”
“Beer, then?”
“I don’t drink beer.”
He compressed his rather beautiful mouth, though whether it was to contain a grimace or a grin she couldn’t decide. “Okay, Jenna, you choose. And if acting the perfect hostess strains your energy too severely, I’ll be happy to take over in the kitchen and do the honors myself.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be rid of him until he was good and ready to leave of his own accord. “I can offer you ginger ale or tea. Take your pick.”
“How gracious! I’ll settle for tea, thanks.”
She indicated the living room to the left of the front hall. “Have a seat in there then, while I make it.”
She was just as glad he hadn’t asked for ginger ale. At least waiting for the kettle to boil for tea allowed her time to scurry to her bedroom, abandon the pink bathrobe for a silk jersey caftan, unearth a pair of high-heeled satin slippers, and rake a brush through her hair. Most definitely not to impress Mr. Married-Man Edmund Delaney, she assured her pasty-faced image in the mirror, but to make herself feel human again. She hadn’t needed his candid assessment to know she looked as if she’d just been dug up!
He hadn’t been idly twiddling his thumbs during the time she was gone, either. When she carried the tea tray into the living room, she saw that he’d turned on a table lamp and was leafing through a photograph album he’d found in her bookcase. “Do make yourself at home,” she said sourly.
“I already have,” he returned, not the least bit perturbed at being caught snooping. “Is this the chinless wonder you almost married?”
She cast a quick glance at the picture in question. “It is. And while you might not think so, most people find Mark very handsome.”
Edmund snorted irreverently. “I guess—if you’re into roosters! Quite a beak he’s sporting, wouldn’t you say?”
The Pregnant Bride Page 5