by Sara Wood
Suddenly he whipped around, his bulk silhouetted against the window so that she couldn’t make out his expression.
‘Your body’s changed. It feels different.’
Cut to the quick, she flushed and ensured that the sheet stayed up around her neck in concealment.
‘Do you mean I’m fat?’ she demanded icily.
‘No…I don’t know, but it is different—’
‘Oh. Texture? Firmness? Different to Celine’s? Well,’ she hurtled on before he had a chance to reply, ‘maybe it’s because I rarely have time to eat a proper meal nowadays. I’m snatching things on the run. Doughnuts. French fries. Bars of chocolate. Anyway,’ she went on, determined not to be crushed by him, ‘I like the way I am. And you didn’t seem to mind too much just now!’
That hit home. She knew she’d wounded him when he took a step back and rocked on his heels. But she didn’t like what she’d done.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, lowering her eyes in shame. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I couldn’t help it. But you must realise I’ve reason to be upset. And I feel so grungy with this wretched gastric thing—’
‘I don’t think it’s that, Helen,’ he said carefully. ‘There could be another reason why you’re being sick.’
‘What?’
He just stared. Gradually the weight of his words suddenly sank into her. She went very still, as if all life in her body had been suspended, her eyes enormous in her pale face.
No. She couldn’t be.
Not…pregnant!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I—I’M JUST…sick,’ Helen protested in a small, frightened voice. ‘One of those tummy bugs. I’ll get better in a day or so.’
A spasm pinched Dan’s mouth in. He seemed to be struggling with the fear that they might have created a baby just when their marriage was falling apart. Help us all! she thought. That would be so hard to bear! What incredibly awful timing! The poor little baby…
Hoarsely he croaked, ‘You’re saying it’s not possible?’
‘No…I…’
Helen chewed her lip, aghast. She cast her mind around, trying to remember when she’d last had a period. Life had been so hectic that she’d lost track. It must have been ages.
‘I’m sure it’s unlikely. After all, we haven’t been near each other for weeks,’ she dissembled sullenly.
‘But you could be,’ Dan persisted, his brooding eyes and harsh tone unnerving her.
‘I don’t know!’
Impatience swept across his features. ‘Surely you keep a record of dates?’ he asked coldly.
Her throat tightened. Being pregnant right now would be an absolute disaster. This was the worst possible time that it could have happened. She could see that he was horrified by the idea. And the last thing she wanted was to be a single mother, struggling on her own…
‘In my bag. Diary,’ she choked. The collapse of her dreams was complete.
Wordlessly he handed it to her, his hand shaking. She glanced up and felt herself shrivel under his ferocious expression. He was incredibly angry. As if it was her fault!
‘There’s no point in getting annoyed with me,’ she snapped, her hands plucking aimlessly at the counterpane and betraying her inner turmoil.
‘Just look, will you?’ he ordered, unnervingly close to erupting.
All fingers and thumbs, she rummaged in the roomy bag. How had it come to this? A few days ago they would have been anxious at the thought that she might be pregnant, a little shocked, but…eventually thrilled.
Instead, she wasn’t sure how she felt. And Dan was holding back a monumental fury with great difficulty, presumably irritated that he might be saddled with maintenance for a child he didn’t want, for a woman he didn’t love.
She couldn’t be pregnant. Mustn’t be. Not with Dan so hostile to the idea.
‘I’ve found it.’
Opening the small leather book, she stared for several seconds at the calendar with its increasingly haphazard marks, trying to make sense of what it was telling her.
‘Well?’ demanded Dan.
Her brain shut down for a moment as shock waves rocketed through it. Muttering an expletive under his breath, he came forward and snatched the book from her, scowling at the page as if it might as well have been in Sanskrit.
‘What’s this mean?’ He thrust the book back at her. ‘It doesn’t have any pattern to it.’
‘I-I’ve been irregular for ages.’ Panic raced through her brain, helping her to invent explanations. ‘That can happen, you know. Stressed lifestyle and a poor diet—’
‘All I need to know is, when was your last period?’ he asked heavily, cutting short her frantic excuses.
Her eyes rounded with apprehension as she met his stony stare. ‘Uh…April twenty-third,’ she squeaked.
Dan whisked in a sharp breath and sat down on the bed as if his legs had crumpled beneath him.
‘My birthday was on May seventh,’ he said abruptly.
She knew what he was suggesting. They’d celebrated with a rare meal out in London and had come home feeling so happy to have been together that they’d made love the minute they’d got home. And several times more.
Oh, heck. Now what? Fretting, she knew she couldn’t remain in bed a moment longer. She needed to do something. Catch up with the ironing. Dig the garden…
‘I need a shower,’ she muttered, scrambling up and heading blindly for the bathroom, tears falling down her wan face.
‘A…shower? Now?’ he gasped.
‘Not a crime!’ she hurled back and ran in, wrenching the lever of the power shower to its limit before he could catch up with her.
She welcomed the battering, taking it as her punishment for being so stupid as to allow him to make love to her despite his infidelity, for not noticing her periods had stopped, for being trusting and naive when everyone knew that if you took your eyes off a man for a second he’d be chatting up someone else.
Muttering under her breath about her rank idiocy, she scrubbed all trace of Dan from her body. It hurt. Outside and within her heart. But now she was free of him. All traces erased.
Bereft, she gave a broken sob and penalised herself by massaging shampoo into her hair with hard and ruthless fingers, before sluicing off the soap.
The thundering water ceased as if by magic. Pink and tingling from every pore, Helen warily eyed a partly drenched Dan, whose gaze was slowly raking over her, the T-shirt clinging wetly to his magnificent torso.
The tips of her breasts jerked into life. Heat curled seductively in a pool somewhere within her body and Dan’s eyes flickered.
‘Get out,’ he muttered, permafrost in his expression. ‘We have things to discuss. You can’t just walk away—’
‘I badly needed a shower. I felt dirty,’ she defended haughtily, collecting her thick, fluffy blue robe and slipping into it.
The sensuality of her reaction to him had shaken her. Must be some kind of latent memory, she thought crossly, drying her legs with ruthless vigour. It was about time her body came up to speed and recognised him as a danger to her health and sanity.
The permafrost deepened. ‘You pick your moments,’ he commented.
Winding a towel around her dripping hair, she saw that water was dripping from him.
‘You’re drenched,’ she said unnecessarily.
‘And you’re avoiding the issue.’
‘There is no issue. It’s ridiculous,’ she scorned, rubbing at her hair and wincing. Her scalp must be scarlet, she thought and struggled back to the argument. ‘I take the pill,’ she declared firmly. ‘We agreed, we didn’t want children for a while. We intended to work hard and provide a solid, stable b-background…’
Her voice tailed off in a little wobble. So much for that idea. Their plans had been hijacked by Dan’s infidelity.
‘No method is infallible,’ he pointed out with maddening truth. ‘And at the beginning of April you were on antibiotics for a sore throat, remember? Didn’t I read somewhere th
at they affect the pill?’
But that couldn’t happen to her. They’d been so careful, made sensible plans…
‘Dan, I can’t be pregnant!’ she insisted in mounting alarm. ‘I’d be…’ She ran back into the bedroom and picked up her diary. With a shaking finger she totted up the weeks. No. It wasn’t possible. Her pulses steadied. ‘Over two months!’ she cried, when he followed her in. ‘How could I not know about that? Women have an intuition about these things—’
‘Have you had any time for intuition?’ he asked quietly.
She went white in the middle of rough-drying her hair. ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ she admitted.
Feeling jittery, she abandoned her hair and stalked into the bedroom to grab some clothes, nervous at being watched so intently by the menacing Dan. He had stripped off his top and was slowly rubbing his chest dry, his eyes unsmiling and unnervingly bleak.
‘It’s been as much as I could do to keep on top of work and the sheer day-to-day survival,’ she mumbled, hopping her way into a pair of white briefs.
‘Well, think about it now,’ he muttered shortly, finding himself a clean shirt and dragging it on with angry, hasty hands. ‘Intuit. How do you feel?’
After shooting him a glare, she let her hand rest on her stomach. Was it her imagination, or had it rounded significantly? The skin did seem taut…kind of shiny… Her huge eyes met his.
‘Gungy. Funny—’
‘What sort of funny?’ he pounced.
‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t feel…myself. As if…as if…’
‘As if you’re pregnant,’ he supplied, snapping out the words in contempt of her stupidity at monitoring her own body.
Hastily she covered herself up with a shirt and heaved on her jeans. ‘There!’ she declared. ‘I can do them up. I can’t be pregnant.’
‘You’ve been sick,’ he pointed out. ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything. The two could have cancelled each other out.’
‘So you’re an instant expert on pregnancy now?’ she snapped. ‘I admit, I’m probably run down and anaemic—’
‘With all the signs of early pregnancy,’ Dan said remorselessly, his arms folded in a belligerent attitude.
Helen flushed with resentment, puzzled by his fierce interrogation. ‘Don’t go on at me!’ she cried, feeling suddenly emotional.
‘You cry more than you used to,’ he observed coldly as a tear trailed a shiny path down the side of her nose.
‘I’ve more reason to!’ she yelled.
‘Keep calm!’ he barked. ‘If you are pregnant, you need to change your way of life.’
‘Typical!’ she snorted. ‘I have to start wearing pink gingham and drinking lemonade and smile sweetly all day long, while you swan about swashbuckling your way through life as usual!’
‘I don’t swashbuckle. I work darn hard. And whatever you say, you can’t continue with your current job,’ he said obstinately. ‘Your schedule is so hectic that you’d put my child’s life at risk, and I won’t have that!’
‘It’s my child, too!’ she pointed out heatedly. ‘And I’m certainly not mooning around waiting to give birth. I need to earn a living if I’m to provide for my child—’
‘You don’t know you have a child yet,’ he reminded her grimly.
‘Oh. No.’
Deflated by that possibility, she felt confused and uncertain whether she welcomed the idea or not, now. Practically speaking, it would be a nightmare. But…something undeniably maternal was tugging at her heartstrings, whispering seductively that a baby would be wonderful.
It was just the wrong time. When she was ready, she wanted a proper family: husband, child or children—the whole package. The whole point of having a baby was to share it with someone you loved. To coo over it together, watch it learn to toddle and speak, to play daft games and make sandcastles…
Her body drooped with the realisation that it could be years before she met someone as special as Dan. And she’d be old and grey by then and they’d have to try IVF—
‘Your shirt’s done up all wrong,’ Dan said huskily.
Hormones, or something deep and needy, made her heart leap. With smoky eyes she gazed at him in puzzled confusion. He was moving towards her. Reaching out a hand. Undoing the buttons.
The nerves in her body screamed at her. It had been a mistake to meet his black molasses eyes. She was beginning to drown in their hauntingly unfathomable depths and now the soft sultriness of his achingly sensual mouth was weakening her will and melting all her defences.
Slowly she raised her hand. And miraculously stopped him.
‘I can do it,’ she breathed, shocked to find how ragged she sounded, how rapidly her chest was rising and falling. She had to rebuff him. She knew that look of his. It was stark-naked carnality.
And she ached to be in his arms again, to know that new and exhilarating sensation of their recent love-making, which had teetered precariously on the edge of desperation. But for her own sanity she must get a grip.
Something in her eyes must have alerted him of her decision to stay aloof.
‘Go on, then, do it,’ he challenged, remaining whisper-close, mind-numbingly desirable.
Of course she fumbled. Made a hash of it. Got hot and bothered while he stood there, exuding male pheromones that were sending her crazy, her entire body liquid for him.
‘There,’ she said shakily, standing her ground. ‘Dan, you’ve got to stop making passes at me. It’s over.’
‘Is it?’ he asked hoarsely.
Her eyes virtually crackled with anger. ‘Yes! You know it is!’
‘Then how do you explain what keeps happening between us?’ he growled.
‘I can’t answer for you. But my mind is clear, it’s just my body that’s still working in the past. It’ll soon get the message. I don’t like responding to you. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, nothing else—and I find your groping absolutely intolerable! Now. Where were we?’
Dark eyes regarded her with a suddenly harsh contemplation.
‘Trying to discover whether you are pregnant,’ he clipped. ‘How much did you drink this evening?’
Too much, she thought gloomily. And then her eyes widened in alarm.
‘One small glass, a few sips of another… Dan! If I am pregnant, could that—?’ Her voice dried up.
‘I’m sure that’s all right. It’s nothing,’ he said gruffly.
‘And…’ Her hands twisted anxiously, a terrible fear making her heart rate quicken. ‘We…’ She checked herself. It would be a travesty to say they’d made love. ‘We had sex! If—if we’ve endangered the baby and I have a miscarriage I’ll never, ever forgive you!’ she wailed.
There was a deathly silence following her outburst, broken only by their harsh breathing. Then uncertainly he said, ‘I didn’t fling you around. I was gentle, wasn’t I? I’m sure sex is all right—’
‘You would say that!’ she jerked. ‘If I am pregnant, I don’t want it to die inside me because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself!’
‘That’s cruel, Helen!’ he objected savagely, his face pinched and white with shock.
‘It’s how I feel!’ she sobbed. And was instantly distressed by what she’d said. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘Hell. So am I. We were both responsible for what happened,’ he growled.
She covered her face with her hands and faced the frightening truth. ‘Yes,’ she admitted with a sniff. Tear-stained and vulnerable, she lifted her head and caught a look of agony in his eyes. ‘I accept responsibility, too,’ she said shakily. ‘Oh, Dan, what are we going to do if the worst happens? How will we ever be able to forgive ourselves and I have a baby…and it’s harmed?’
‘There’s no point in crossing bridges before we come to them. The first thing to do is to find out one way or the other,’ he said almost gently. ‘I’ll make you an appointment with the doctor.’
‘No…’ She groaned. She didn’t want to know. ‘We don’t have one,’ she remember
ed with relief. ‘I’ll get one of those test things.’
‘You’ve still got to see a doc,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s one in the village a mile away. I’ve noticed the brass plate on the gatepost when I’ve driven past.’
‘I don’t want to go.’ Her eyes pleaded to be let off.
‘You must!’ he insisted. ‘We both need to know the situation.’
The corners of her mouth drooped. She knew he was right but that didn’t make it any easier.
‘Dan,’ she mumbled feebly. ‘I’m scared.’
His eyes were unreadable. For a second or two he stared at her trembling figure. Then he shrugged.
‘Nothing either of us can do, is there?’
Irrational still, she wanted to be taken in his arms and reassured, to be promised that they’d stick together and he was sorry, desperately sorry he’d cheated on her. If only he’d do that, she thought miserably, she’d accept that he’d strayed because he’d felt unloved and that he’d lacked affection.
They’d both made a mistake, thinking their love could weather any crisis. They’d been wrong. It needed nurturing, not neglect.
Too late, she thought unhappily. Her spiky lashes fluttered as she struggled to hold back the tears.
‘What are we going to do if I am?’ she jerked.
Every muscle in his body went rigid. ‘That’s your own affair. All I ask is that you let me have access.’
It was a flat statement, without emotion. Helen was too appalled to speak. It was as if he were talking about sharing one of their favourite videos.
Her body still throbbed from their love-making. Sex, she corrected. And yet he’d phoned his mistress straight after—and now they were coldly discussing access arrangements for a child that might not even exist!
‘I despise you!’ she hissed, feeling hysterical. Her spirits sank. Was that her hormones playing her up? She tried to flatten her voice, to sound more rational despite the deep hurt that was making her heart huge and aching as if it had been bruised and was swollen to twice its size. ‘I want you out of my life. As from now.’