The Blackmail Pregnancy

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Gradually the deep sobs faded to hiccups and sniffles, which precipitated the emergence of his clean white handkerchief. He watched as she buried her face in it, and was surprised by the rush of emotion he felt.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said gently.

  He led her back along the track to the street above, her hand totally encased in his. For once she didn’t pull away. He felt her fingers grip his, ever so slightly, and smiled to himself; perhaps she was beginning to trust him at long last.

  When they got back to the house he led her to the big bathroom upstairs and ran a deep bath. She stood silently as he began to undress her, lifting her arms above her head like a child as he removed her top. Her face bore the ravages of her bout of crying but to him she looked beautiful. She looked like a real person instead of the cardboard cut-out that had annoyed him so much in the past. He felt as if he could reach out and touch her soul, so vulnerable was she. And he wondered then if she could learn to love him the way he loved her. Could she learn to trust him? Would she ever have the courage to tell him about her decision to end her pregnancy? The reasons for it, why she’d done what she’d done, even if he himself could never really understand or accept it.

  He’d hated her for it when he’d found out. A business acquaintance had mentioned he’d seen Cara in Sydney, informing him of her very obvious pregnancy. Byron had still been agonising over how to confront her about it when his business associate had called again and told him he’d seen Cara once more, but she was no longer pregnant and there was no pram in sight. He hadn’t believed it at first, couldn’t believe it, but then he’d recalled all the arguments they’d had about starting a family. In the end he had called her, just the once, but her mother had answered the telephone and before he’d been able to stop himself he’d asked if it were true. Edna Gillem had informed him that his child had been dispensed with and he had no business contacting her daughter any more.

  He hadn’t bothered to contact Cara after that. Instead he’d got shamefully drunk and ended up having a one-night stand which he still hated to think about.

  He helped Cara step into the warm water and wondered if she regretted it now, if that was what her weeping was about. The news of Fliss’s baby had been the trigger, but why? Cara had always claimed never to want children, and yet seeing her interact with his nieces and nephews had made him wonder if she was being entirely honest with herself.

  ‘I’ll go and rustle up something to eat,’ he said, running a hand through his hair as he looked down at her.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Cara?’

  She looked up at him, her eyes still red-rimmed and swollen.

  ‘Byron, I…’ She ran her tongue across her dry lips and began again. ‘Could I just go to bed?’

  His frown was one of concern.

  ‘You’re not hungry?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said, and reached for a towel.

  He handed it to her and without hesitation wrapped it around her and began drying her.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said as her hand touched his.

  He stilled the movements of his hands as he looked into her eyes.

  ‘If I don’t do it I might be tempted to do something else instead,’ he confessed ruefully.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she answered quietly, her eyes never once leaving his.

  He looked at her in mild surprise.

  ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Now?’ he asked. ‘Right now?’

  She nodded again.

  He touched her cheek with one finger, trailing it down to trace the outline of her soft mouth. She opened her mouth on his finger and the tug of her teeth sent arrows of sensation straight to his groin. She stepped into his arms and he crushed her to him, breathing in the scent of her.

  He carried her to the bedroom. He watched her following the movements of his hands as he removed his clothes and desire kicked him deep in his gut.

  She didn’t say a word. Her hands and mouth spoke for her. Byron relished in her display of feeling. It might not be love but she wanted him, and that would have to do for now.

  Cara sent her hands on a journey of exploration. She touched Byron’s face, outlining each of his features: the patrician nose, the straight black eyebrows, the lean line of his chiselled jaw with its sexy masculine shadow which grazed her fingers in a slight rasp. She trailed over his neck and shoulders, rediscovering the contours of his muscled form. She heard his tight intake of breath when her fingers found the cave of his navel. She dawdled there, tantalisingly so, knowing he was waiting for her next move with bated breath. She could see it in his dark, desire-heated eyes as they followed her. She wriggled down slightly and began to tiptoe her fingers one by one through the dark trail of hair arrowing down to where he most ached for her touch. It made her feel powerful and feminine to be able to have this effect on him.

  ‘Oh God!’ he groaned as her mouth found its target.

  She lingered there for as long as she dared, feeling his control slipping, tasting it on her tongue.

  He stilled her movements with his hands on either side of her head.

  ‘Honey, I can’t take much more.’

  She looked up at him through the curtain of her eyelashes and he groaned again, before hauling her up and underneath him, trapping her with his body.

  ‘Now I’ve got you,’ he said against her mouth. ‘It’s payback time.’

  Cara shivered in reaction to the playful threat in his words. His mouth took hers in a searing kiss before moving down her body, lingering over the hardened peaks of her breasts before travelling further, until she was writhing under the ministrations of his tongue. He let her subside for a few moments before sliding into her warmth to take her on another journey of ecstasy.

  When it was over Cara lay in the circle of his arms and two tears slipped unchecked past her lashes. Byron felt the moisture on his forearm and gently turned to look down at her. He blotted another spilling tear with the blunt end of one finger, his eyes warm as they held hers.

  ‘I seem to be having the strangest effect on you lately,’ he observed.

  She bit her lip, and he frowned when a sob broke free.

  ‘Cara?’

  She burrowed against his chest and he laid his hand on the back of her head and let her cry. God knew, she had a lot of crying to catch up on, but he hadn’t realised how it would impact on him to hear her do so. It tore at him where he didn’t want to be torn.

  She fell asleep in his arms, and he lay there listening to the soft sound of her breathing, grimacing every time his stomach growled with hunger. After a while she turned. He shook his numb arm back into life and, leaving her undisturbed, carefully moved away and reached for his bathrobe.

  She was still soundly asleep when he came back some time later. Her hair flared out on the pillow in strands of gold and brown, her cheeks were still slightly flushed from crying, dark shadows like bruises underscored her closed eyes, and she was clutching a stray pillow to her chest like a shield.

  Byron sighed and slipped into the bed beside her, but the fingers of dawn were already beginning to write their morning message on the eastern sky before he finally closed his eyes and slept.

  Cara was showered and dressed when he came downstairs, already two hours late for work. She passed him a cup of tea with the ghost of a smile. He took the tea and bent down to drop a swift kiss on her lips.

  ‘You look so amazingly beautiful when you smile.’

  She didn’t reply, but her smile increased fractionally.

  ‘If you’re not doing anything today I thought you might like to help me choose a present for Emma. Can you meet me at the office at lunch—?’ Byron stopped.

  Cara had stiffened and the smile had fallen from her mouth. Her eyes had lost their earlier warmth and instead had clouded over, effectively shutting him out once more.

  ‘Cara, should we talk about this?’

&nbs
p; She shook her head and refilled her cup from the pot.

  ‘I’m busy today,’ she said in a dismissive tone. ‘You choose something; she’s your niece after all.’

  He sighed and headed for the cereal bowls, not wishing to press her. He knew there was something significant in the way she was acting whenever Fliss’s baby was mentioned, but just what he had no idea. He wondered if she was thinking of the baby she’d terminated.

  His baby. God, it still hurt to think of it. He reached for the milk and then changed his mind, shutting the fridge with a snap.

  She looked up at him at that, her eyes still shrouded pools of mystery.

  ‘I’m late,’ he said. ‘Call me if you change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t change my mind.’

  He hooked up his jacket with one finger and, scooping his car keys with his other hand, said with a tinge of resentment he couldn’t quite remove in time, ‘No, somehow I guessed that.’

  She watched him leave, but no words to bring him back came to her trembling mouth in time. She sighed and turned to stare out over the lush gardens and the harbour glistening in the distance.

  It was so quiet at the cemetery.

  Even the birds seemed to be toning down their song in a respectful hush. Cara took the longer walk to Emma’s grave. She didn’t quite know why she did that, but suspected it was because she didn’t want to come face to face with the words inscribed there. They made it all so final. So permanent and painful.

  Walking past the other sites was like walking through a faceless crowd. Cara glanced at the names and wondered what the circumstances of their births and deaths had been. Some were so young—not as young as Emma, but far too young all the same. Others were old, and Cara hoped they’d lived a full life and spread love in their wake.

  Her steps slowed down as she approached the tiny bronze cherub guarding her daughter’s resting place. The flowers she’d left previously had died and curled over, as if spent in grief. She sank to her knees and plucked them out of the sponge one by one, laying them to one side as if they too deserved some final respect.

  She carefully unwrapped the pink carnations she’d brought, and the white baby’s breath. The faint breeze stirred the tiny buds like air in fragile lungs. It reminded her of Emma’s one and only breath, which had begun and ended her life in the space of seconds. The doctors had been so kind, so gentle as they’d handed Emma to her, still coated with the pale, sticky colour of birth.

  They’d left Emma with her for hours. They’d said it would help her grieve properly. But somehow she didn’t think it had. It had made the loss harder to bear—although she knew deep down she would do the same if she had her time over again.

  She wrapped the spent flowers in the paper that had protected the fresh ones and got to her feet. She began to retrace her steps, but stopped when a pair of shiny black shoes came into her line of vision. She stood rigid in shock when her eyes finally travelled upwards to the tall figure of Byron standing there. The sun was behind him, shielding his expression from her.

  ‘Byron…I was…’ She clutched the dead flowers in her hands distractedly. ‘I was…I was just…’

  ‘Is this where your mother is?’ he asked.

  Her eyes skittered away from his.

  ‘No.’

  There was a stretching silence. A silence so heavy Cara was sure he would hear the erratic thud of her heart in her chest.

  ‘Who is here, Cara?’

  She looked at him for a long moment, torn with indecision. Wasn’t it enough that she suffered this loss? What point was there in making him share it with her?

  ‘No one.’

  He made an impatient sound in the back of his throat.

  ‘So you regularly come here for no other reason than to wander indiscriminately amongst graves?’ His tone was unrestrainedly sarcastic.

  She swallowed the lump of dread in her throat without responding. He was stepping past her. Panic tightened her chest. He was three strides away from seeing Emma’s grave. Just three steps…

  Cara stood there, desperately trying to frame words in her head to tell him what she realised now he should have been told from the very first.

  Now it was too late.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Byron stared at the bronze cherub in front of him.

  Cara shut her eyes and pictured what he was reading.

  Emma Grace Felicity Rockcliffe. Born and died on the same day. I will love you for ever, and somewhere, some day, I will find you again and be your mother.

  It was so quiet she could hear Byron swallow.

  He turned to her then, his dark eyes blank with shock.

  ‘For God’s sake why didn’t you tell me?’ he rasped.

  ‘I…’

  ‘I had a right to know, damn it!’

  His anger hit her like a slap.

  He thrust a hand through his hair distractedly before adding, ‘Why did you let me think you had an abortion?’

  Cara looked at the dead flowers still in her hands.

  ‘I felt I deserved that for what I did.’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ he said, his frown deepening even further. ‘What did you do?’

  She lifted her eyes to his.

  ‘It’s my fault she died.’

  He paused for a moment, trying to get his emotions under some sort of control.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was…I was in an accident. My mother and I were going to a…a clinic.’

  ‘What sort of clinic?’

  ‘An abortion clinic.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Tell me you weren’t going to go through with it,’ he said, in a tone she barely recognised.

  She took a deep, steadying breath.

  ‘I would never have done that. I just went to get my mother off my back. I was already six months gone, but my mother didn’t know that. I was planning to leave her in a few days, but on the way to the appointment a car came from nowhere. I think it ran a red light or something. My mother was severely injured.’

  ‘And you?’

  Cara lifted pain-filled eyes to his.

  ‘They couldn’t stop the labour in time. She didn’t stand much chance after the impact of the crash. She was too tiny. I held her for hours, but…’ The flowers she was holding slipped to the ground at her feet as she buried her head in her hands.

  Byron took a deep breath and pulled her into his arms, his eyes settling on his daughter’s name over the top of Cara’s head.

  ‘I couldn’t get away,’ she said into his chest. ‘I felt so guilty, and my mother played on that guilt until I practically gave up my life to look after her. If it hadn’t been for Trevor and the business I wouldn’t have survived.’

  Byron blinked away the moisture from his own eyes and tried to understand. Why hadn’t she come to him? Had she hated him that much?

  ‘She had your mouth,’ Cara said brokenly. ‘And…and your chin.’

  He let her talk it out, not trusting himself to speak. He felt poleaxed. As if someone had kicked him in the gut so hard he could scarcely breathe without pain.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Cara asked after a long silence.

  ‘I came home at lunchtime and I saw you at the bus stop. I decided to follow you. I thought you were coming here to visit your mother, although I couldn’t imagine why you’d want to after all she’d done.’

  He wondered if he should tell her about the phone conversation he’d had with Edna. He decided against it. Cara had enough to deal with; she didn’t need any more pain right now.

  After a time they made their way out, to where he had parked his car. Neither of them spoke much on the journey home. Byron glanced at Cara several times, but she was looking out of the window with a faraway look in her eyes. He wondered if she was still planning to leave him. He didn’t want to force her to stay if she no longer cared for him, but neither did he want to spend the rest of his life missing her, aching for her presence, her touch, her rare smile.
<
br />   He waited until they were home before he broached the subject.

  ‘Cara?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He studied her uptilted face for a long moment.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ he asked.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Our relationship,’ he said. ‘Do we have a future together or is it over?’

  He could see the answer in her eyes and wished he could stop her from saying it, but he could see it was already too late.

  ‘It’s over, Byron.’

  ‘Why?’ He was proud of the way his tone was unaffected by the emotion he was feeling inside.

  ‘Because we have no future, only a past.’

  ‘We can make a future. Surely that’s possible?’

  ‘No.’ She turned away, unable to look him in the eyes. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Desperation was creeping back into his tone and he tried to bank it down. ‘Why can’t we give it a try?’

  She looked at him with a cold blankness in her eyes that totally unnerved him.

  ‘I can’t give you what you want.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You want children, don’t you?’

  ‘Eventually. But we don’t have to be in any hurry. We can wait until you’re ready and—’

  ‘I’ll never be ready.’

  ‘Cara, of course you will be—once you get over Emma. We both need time to heal.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ A tiny crack began to appear in her composure.

  ‘Understand what?’ he asked. ‘I said we’ll give it some time. Take all the time you need.’

  ‘Byron you’re not listening to me.’

  He stopped, somehow sensing she had something serious to say. If only he’d known how serious he might have better prepared himself.

  ‘I was also injured in the accident,’ she said, in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘I can no longer have children.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE DIDN’T trust himself to speak. He couldn’t speak. Emotion had clogged his throat as he recalled the way he’d forced her back into his life. He cringed at the pain he’d caused her, insisting on things he had no right insisting on, when all the time she had been trying to heal herself. He’d come rampaging through and reopened all her wounds.