The Unexpected Wedding Gift

by Catherine Spencer

  Sooner or later, he was going to have to come up with another name for the boy, he thought, gnawing on a hangnail and continuing to scan the driveway anxiously. He couldn’t go on calling him Kid or Squirt forever and he wasn’t interested in Junior, which had been Marian’s inspired choice—presumably in the hope that he’d turn out to be her husband’s offspring.

  His original idea—to hold off making a decision in the hope that Julia would come around and they’d choose something together—didn’t seem likely to happen, given the present rate of nonprogress in their relationship. They were drifting further apart with every passing day.

  Up in the nursery, the baby increased the decibel screech level another notch. Amazing how much noise such a pint-size body could produce!

  “Hold your fire, Squirt,” Ben muttered and, grabbing the formula, took the stairs two at a time, screwing the cap on the bottle as he went and splashing a dollop of milk on his arm to make sure it wasn’t too hot.

  The baby had managed to twist himself around so that his head was jammed up against the side of the crib. He’d thrown up, as well—mostly in his ear, which surely took extraordinary talent. As for the diaper, it had more or less exploded!

  “Holy sh—ipmates!” Shuddering, Ben tackled the rear end first, no mean feat given that the kid was pitching a major fit at being left to starve for so long. “Keep still, you little toad, or we’ll both need to take a bath!”

  By the time he’d got that end under control and stuffed the formula in the other end, another hour had slipped by, still with no sign of Julia. Propping the snoozing baby against his shoulder, he went through the burping routine with his usual lack of success, pacing the floor the whole time and keeping an ear open for the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway.

  Just before seven-thirty, the phone rang and startled the baby into letting loose with a mighty belch and spitting up all over Ben’s neck. “Sorry if I caught you at a bad moment, dear,” Felicity Montgomery said, when he explained why he was sounding just a bit harried, “but with a new baby in the house, there’s really never a good time to call. I won’t keep you, though. I just wanted to have a quick word with Julia.”

  “Me, too,” Ben said, choosing his words with care. He liked Felicity and he rather thought she wouldn’t take sides if she knew the mess his marriage was in, but he saw no reason to broadcast that he hadn’t the foggiest idea where his wife was. Blood was thicker than water, after all, and the last thing he needed was for his in-laws to get wind of the way things were. They’d be tap-dancing on the ceiling! “She went out this afternoon and isn’t back yet.”

  The utter silence this item of news produced told him plenty, even before Felicity recovered enough to say, “That’s odd. I thought she was going straight home when she left here.”

  “Oh,” he said, trying like the blazes to sound unconcerned, “she mentioned doing some shopping downtown and probably got caught in commuter traffic.”

  At this hour, idiot? You won’t fool anyone with that excuse, least of all a lady as sharp as Felicity!

  “Well, there’s no urgency,” Felicity said. “It’s just that I forgot to mention when she was here that all those wedding gifts people brought to the reception are stored in my garage and I wanted to find out when would be a good time to arrange for them to be delivered to your place. Get her to give me a call when she has a moment, Ben, and we’ll set something up.”

  “I’ll do that, Felicity. And thanks for calling.”

  “You’re welcome, dear. Kiss that sweet baby for me.”

  “I will,” he said, horrified to hear his voice cracking.

  Steamed, he hung up. Felicity, who had no reason to give a hoot about him or anyone connected with him, could show a little kindness toward his baby, but his AWOL wife—the woman who’d promised before God and half the social elite of West Vancouver to love him for better or worse and who’d elected to stand by that promise—couldn’t bring herself to remain in the same room with the kid.

  Switching the baby to his other arm, Ben gingerly felt the soggy spot on his shirt collar. “That’s the third time today you’ve left me smelling like week-old milk left out in the afternoon sun,” he told the boy. “We’re going to have to do something about your aim, kiddo!”

  He’d bought a swing that morning, one of those contraptions that wound up and kept an infant content and safe while whoever was in charge took time for other essentials. Carting the whole works into the master bathroom, he strapped the baby in place and adjusted the speed of the motor. Fascinated by the motion and seeming perfectly content, the baby gazed around with big blue eyes and hiccuped.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Ben said, shucking off his clothes. “You stay happy while I grab a shower, then we’ll hike back downstairs and you get to watch while I throw some sort of dinner together. We guys have to stick together, you know.”

  Except it shouldn’t be like that. For all that things had been tough for his parents—and his father had screwed up more times than Ben cared to remember—his mom had stood by her man to the bitter end.

  He’d thought he and Julia would be the same, yet here he was, alone in the house they’d bought together, with no idea if she was ever coming home again.

  I’m rather ashamed of you. Ashamed…ashamed…ashamed…! Felicity’s words hounded Julia as she drove south on Highway 99, repeating themselves over and over in her mind and leaving her feeling small and undeserving of the unconditional love her grandmother had showered on her all her life. How was it that she couldn’t show the same generosity toward Ben? What flaw in her makeup had her holding back, and making an innocent baby pay the price?

  She knew the answer. It wasn’t that she couldn’t love the little mite; it was that she was afraid to—not because he might not be Ben’s real son, but because he most likely was.

  A week ago, she’d have staked her life on the conviction that love could overcome any obstacle. Ben was her rock, her life, her future. Together they were indestructible, indivisible. The world was their oyster.

  But in the space of half an hour, that belief had been rocked with an uncertainty that had continued to fester in the days since. From the moment Marian Dawes gate-crashed the wedding and made her dramatic revelation, all Julia’s preconceived notions of happy-ever-after had flown out of the window.

  She was so immersed in her thoughts that she missed the turnoff for Crescent Beach and had to drive several miles farther before she could leave the freeway and take the narrow road winding along the beach into White Rock.

  The receding tide had left behind milk-warm pools in the vast stretch of pale beach—a treasure land of discovery for a little boy. When the baby was old enough…

  When the baby was old enough, he might well be living with his birth mother again. And his father!

  The realization brought her smack up against the true heart of the problem. It wasn’t that she couldn’t forgive Ben or that she couldn’t love his son. It was fear of losing one or both that held her back, and she knew why.

  She’d been nine when someone gave her a kitten, and for a few wonderful weeks, the loneliness that had been such a part of her childhood had been eased by the comfort of that warm, furry little body cuddled up close to her. It had waited for her to come home from school each day and slept on her bed each night.

  But it had also scratched the furniture and broken a priceless Ming vase, and one day she came back to find it gone. “We got rid of it, of course,” her mother had told her. “It didn’t belong in a house like ours.”

  What if Marian decided her baby didn’t belong in the Carreras household, and decided to take her child away again? That was the real crux of the matter. The difference lay in the fact that Julia was no longer a helpless child. She was an adult and big enough to fight for what she wanted.

  Shortly before ten-thirty, she started the car and turned it toward home. The standoff between her and Ben had gone on long enough. It was time to start making their marriage wo
rk.

  He must have paced to the front door a hundred times. And as the hours passed, what had begun as anxiety metamorphosed into gut-wrenching fear insulated with anger. When the beam of headlights finally arced across the window, followed by the familiar growl of her car inching its way into the garage, something inside him snapped and blind fury took hold of him.

  She came in quietly, tiptoeing like a thief toward the stairs. He could see her quite clearly in the moon-dappled hall and waited until she was level with the open door to the library before he flicked on the lamp and showed himself seated at the desk.

  Startled, she spun around. “I thought you’d be in bed,” she exclaimed softly.

  “I thought you might be dead,” he said, tamping down with a marked lack of success the urge to roar at her like a demented lion. “I was so sure something had happened to you that I phoned the police and every hospital in the lower mainland.”

  “Oh, Ben, I’m sorry!”

  She started toward him, her eyes wide pools of distress and her mouth soft and tender. Once, that would have been all it took for him to forget everything but that she was home safe and within arm’s reach where she belonged. Now, it just wasn’t enough. Too much had happened; too much resentment and mistrust had sprung up between them.

  “The next time you decide to take off, Julia, do me the courtesy of telling me where you’re going and how long you expect to be away.” He paused a second or two, then added heavily, “Always assuming there is a next time, of course.”

  She stopped in her tracks and stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘assuming there is a next time’? What are you trying to say?”

  “That your little sulking spell’s gone on long enough. I’m tired of it, Julia. In fact, I’m perilously close to being tired of you. I’ve got my hands full coping with one baby. I don’t need another, especially not one who’ll turn twenty-four in another couple of weeks. It’s long past time for you to grow up, my dear.”

  Her smothered gasp hung in the air a moment, then she straightened her shoulders in that proud Montgomery way her mother had perfected to a fine art. “I see. And are you at all interested in knowing how I feel?”

  Flinging the question in his face like that, as if, yet again, he’d committed some unspeakable sin by daring to spit out the truth, ignited him to further rage. Lunging to his feet, he strode around the desk and bore down on her. “As a matter of fact, no. For once, it’s how I feel that counts. I don’t like being treated like dirt. I don’t like being left to cool my heels while the woman I married debates whether or not she’s willing to behave like a wife. I don’t like having to account to her for things that happened before I even met her. I’ve recited mea culpas without end and they’ve done me not one iota of good. To put it very bluntly, my dear, I’ve had it up to here with pussyfooting around your sensibilities.”

  For a second or two, she stood her ground and glared him down unflinchingly. “Are you threatening to exercise your conjugal rights, regardless of whether or not I agree?”

  Was he? Heaven knew, his wanting her never let up. Deep, powerful, obsessive, it left him so hollow with need that he hardly knew how he kept his hands to himself.

  His personal code of ethics had saved him from disgracing himself throughout the days since the wedding and it came to his rescue now. “I’d rather be dead,” he said stonily. “To my way of thinking, there’s a name for that kind of behavior that no man worth his salt would ever countenance. Wife or lover or one-night stand, if a woman doesn’t come to a man willingly, he’s guilty of rape. And wouldn’t mother-in-law dearest love to hang that label around my neck! So, no, Julia. You can retire to your virginal bedchamber safe in the knowledge that I don’t believe in droit de seigneur.”

  He touched a nerve. Like a balloon leaking air, all the umbrage seeped out of her. Collapsing into one of the armchairs next to the fireplace, she buried her face in her hands.

  She wasn’t crying. At least, he didn’t think she was because she didn’t make a sound and her shoulders weren’t shaking. She just sat hunched over so that her hair fell forward and he couldn’t read her expression.

  When at last she spoke again, her voice was muffled. “You’re right, and I’m so ashamed. This is all my fault.”

  If she’d railed at him some more, or tried to excuse her behavior, or even flatly denied his allegations, he could have met fire with fire. But he was no match for her complete surrender. Everything about her, from the sweet curve of her spine to the pale skin at the nape of her neck, seemed so…vulnerable. It left him feeling like some brutish hunter terrorizing a rare and beautiful creature too gentle to protect itself.

  In the blink of an eye, all the outrage that had built such a fine head of justified steam during the hours of her absence turned to mush inside him and all he knew was an aching need to hold her, to stroke away her misery, to comfort her.

  Touching her too soon, though, would merely complicate matters. Despite everything, he was still hungry for her, no question about that, and talking himself into satisfying the craving would take little persuasion, but it wouldn’t resolve the wider issues separating them.

  So he went back to his chair—on the other side of the desk and about as far away from her as he could get, short of leaving the room completely—and said, “Let’s back up a bit before we make things worse. I’m sorry I yelled. I was worried when you were gone so long, and when you finally got home, I overreacted. Seems to me we’ve both been doing a lot of that lately.”

  She lifted her head, and he saw that she was crying after all, a silent, heartbreaking trickle of helpless tears. “I know,” she said, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I should never have suggested you’d force yourself on me. I know you never would. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided you hated me.”

  Her remorse was killing him. Go to her now, you dolt, and let nature take its course! his insidious libido urged. It’s the fastest route to reconciliation and nothing she’s said or done justifies your putting her through this kind of hell.

  “I could never hate you, Julia,” he said, wrestling with his inner devils, “and this isn’t about who’s to blame. It’s about you and me salvaging our marriage. It’s cracking badly, and if we don’t start effecting some sort of damage control, it’s going to fall apart.”

  “No!” she cried, springing up from her chair. “I don’t want that, Ben, I honestly don’t! You’re the most important person in my life. You are my life! And I want us to be a family, I really do.”

  “I’d like to believe that, honey,” he said, “but I can’t help feeling you’re speaking more out of fear and pride than conviction. It’s not always easy admitting to the mistakes we make but we owe it to ourselves and each other to confront the facts. And the way I see it, if our staying married is going to be an uphill struggle for the next however many years, then I’ve got to tell you now, Julia, that I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I won’t bring up a child in a house filled with discord and reproach just so that we can save face with other people.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she cried, coming around the desk and reaching for him.

  Another couple of steps and she’d be touching him. In anticipation of her soft hands sliding around his neck, of her sweet body pressing up against his, his flesh tightened, increasing the perpetual ache in his groin. He wanted her so badly, he could taste it.

  “Stop right there,” he said huskily, “or I won’t be responsible for what I do, and I’ve got to live with myself tomorrow. I just told you how I feel about my so-called husbandly right. Please don’t make a liar out of me.”

  “What if I don’t want you to be responsible?” she murmured. “We’ve waited so long, Ben, and let so many other things come between us.”

  “And we can wait a bit longer,” he said, forcing the reply past the ravings of a mind gone mad with frustrated passion. “I won’t use sex as a means of trying to manipulate—”

  “Not ev
en if I’m begging you to?”

  She was so close by then that her perfume filled his senses. He felt her fingers slide over his jaw and trace a path along his mouth. The impact shot the length of him like an arrow, with the usual incendiary result. Risking permanent injury, he attempted to cross his legs and maintain at least a modicum of dignity.

  “Julia, please…!” The warning whistled past his lips as if he were in the throes of an asthma attack.

  “Please just shut up and kiss me,” she whispered, dipping her head so that her breath fanned his eyelashes. Cripes, even they were getting aroused! “I don’t think I can go through another night without your arms around me.”

  And just in case he hadn’t figured out exactly what she was really saying, she took his hand—which resisted her move with all the determination of a limp lettuce—and placed it on her breast. He felt the firm warmth of her flesh beneath her cotton dress, the surge of her nipple against his palm, and almost had a heart attack.

  “No…!” His protest emerged on a strangled moan. “I don’t want you giving in to impulse tonight, then regretting it in the morning.”

  “I promise you I won’t. I’ve never been more clear-headed in my life.” Sidling behind his chair, she cushioned his head against her breasts, swirled her tongue in his ear and let her fingers walk an erotic path all the way down his chest to his waist.

  Doing his best to shake hands with her, the yardstick of his manhood outdid itself, rising to the occasion in grand style.

  Julia’s reaction almost moved Ben to tears. “Oh,” she said, on a breath as frail as a petal, and then, with a curiosity at once artlessly curious and wickedly possessive, she touched him.

  In his mind, he still wasn’t sure making love was the right way to go about fixing everything that had gone wrong between them. But his mind wasn’t in charge anymore. Julia was.

  He knew when he was beaten. “Okay, you win,” he said hoarsely and like a lamb being led to the slaughter, allowed her to pull him up out of the chair and steer him toward the stairs.