The Blackmail Pregnancy

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘I realise this must be a shock to you,’ she was saying. ‘I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t do that without telling you about…about Emma.’

  Her slight hesitation over their daughter’s name tightened his chest another notch.

  ‘You’d end up hating me more than you do now,’ she continued. ‘You deserve better than that. You’d make a great father. Don’t throw yourself away on me, because even if I wanted to I can’t give you what you want.’

  ‘We can adopt.’ He clutched at the nearest straw.

  ‘No. You can still have your own children. Why shouldn’t you do so?’

  He didn’t have an answer for that. He needed some space to think. Everything that had happened today had completely thrown him. He wasn’t used to being so out of control.

  ‘Why did you agree to live with me?’ he asked when his thoughts had reshuffled a bit more. ‘If you knew all the time you couldn’t have another child, why let me railroad you into a relationship with me?’

  She found it hard to meet his questioning gaze.

  ‘I felt guilty about the way I’d neglected the business. I didn’t want Trevor to lose everything he’d invested just because I’d been preoccupied and out of focus. Besides,’ she added with a hint of wryness, ‘I thought you’d soon get tired of me when I failed to produce the goods.’

  ‘And the Pill?’ His eyes had narrowed and his frown deepened. ‘Why bother taking it if you don’t really need it?’

  ‘I need it to regulate my cycle. Ever since…Emma…’ Her stumble over their daughter’s name clawed at him again. ‘It’s got out of whack; my GP thought a low-dose pill would help.’

  He met her eyes across the short distance between them, his expression determined.

  ‘I want us to get remarried.’

  It took her a full thirty seconds to register his words.

  ‘What?’

  He closed the distance and took both her hands in his.

  ‘I want us to get married right away and start again,’ he stated.

  ‘Are you completely mad?’ She gaped at him. ‘I can’t have children! Didn’t you hear what I said? I can’t give you what you want!’

  ‘I want children, but I want you more.’

  She opened and closed her mouth, trying to find the words to answer him but nothing came out.

  ‘There are hundreds of abandoned children in the world we can adopt or sponsor,’ he added before she could respond. ‘Children are children, no matter who they belong to biologically. I can see that now, after the way you were with my nieces and nephews. You’re a born mother; no child you come into contact with could resist you. Damn it, I can’t resist you—and I’m an adult, although I haven’t been acting like one lately. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say…’ She was having trouble keeping up with him. Her emotions were rocketing around her chest as if they threatened to break through the barrier of her ribcage.

  ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Cara,’ he said. ‘Surely by now you realise that?’

  ‘You…’ She swallowed the lump in her throat and raised her eyes to his. ‘You…care for me?’

  ‘I more than care for you. I’ve never stopped loving you. The day you walked out of my life I wanted to die. I threw myself into my work to compensate, but even after seven years it’s just not enough. I want you to fill the emptiness of my life. Only you.’

  ‘I still don’t know what to say.’ She felt his arms gather her to him, felt herself melt into the solid warmth of his frame.

  ‘What you’re supposed to say is you feel exactly the same way,’ he said with a soft smile.

  ‘I do, I love you, but—’

  ‘But?’

  She threw him a troubled glance.

  ‘I want to be with you, but I feel as if in time you’ll come to resent me for not being able to be the sort of partner you need.’

  ‘I need you, Cara. I don’t want anything else.’

  She so wanted to believe him, but how could she be sure?

  He lowered his mouth to hers and her doubts were temporarily suspended by the magic of his touch, his very fingers drawing from her the lurking fears with determined strokes that made her flesh sing with delight. But even after the taste of paradise her worries crept back, like seeping damp cracks in the wall of security she so needed around herself…

  Byron smiled at her across the table over breakfast the next morning.

  ‘My folks want to know when you’re going to make an honest man out of me.’

  Cara could feel herself stiffening in reaction.

  ‘You’ve told your parents about us?’

  ‘Of course I have.’ He pushed his cereal bowl aside. ‘I rang them first thing this morning. They were delighted with our news.’

  She pushed her own breakfast away untouched.

  ‘Why do your family have to know about everything you do?’ she asked.

  She heard the tinny clatter of his spoon as he placed it inside his bowl.

  ‘They’re my family—that’s what families are for: to share one’s life with,’ he said.

  ‘Couldn’t we have had just a few days to ourselves before they were in on the secret?’

  ‘Secret?’ He stared at her. ‘What secret?’

  She shifted agitatedly in her seat.

  ‘I wanted to get used to the idea of us being together again before we announced it to all and sundry.’

  ‘My family are hardly all and sundry.’

  ‘Your family are all-consuming. Even Fliss says so.’

  ‘Yeah, well, she would, since she’s had her head screwed by Freud and Jung et al. For God’s sake, Cara, we’re together again! What the hell does it matter who knows about it?’

  ‘Have you told Megan?’

  His gaze shifted away from hers.

  ‘I didn’t think it necessary to do so.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  He got to his feet and his sudden movement sent a splash of untouched coffee over the side of his mug.

  ‘I’m going to work, and when I return I want the Cara I had in my arms last night back here. Got that?’

  She threw him a defiant glare.

  ‘Why haven’t you told Megan about us?’

  He shoved his chair in, sending another shockwave through his coffee.

  ‘I’ve told you before—Megan has nothing to do with us.’

  ‘She’s pregnant, you know,’ she said, watching his face like a hawk.

  ‘That’s got absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘How can you ask that?’ He stared at her incredulously.

  She gave an indifferent shrug.

  ‘I don’t know. She might come in useful one day. You could engage her services as a surrogate mother. At least that way you’d be able to add to the Rockcliffe gene pool.’

  ‘I refuse to partake in such a useless conversation,’ he said, reaching for his keys. ‘You seem determined to bring down the bridge we’ve built as if you don’t want to be happy. What is it with you? You criticise my family, as if they’re intent on destroying you, when all they want is for you to be happy.’

  ‘They’re your family, not mine.’

  ‘No, Cara, they’re our family. They did their best to make that clear to you seven years ago, but you rejected them out of hand. They loved you and welcomed you with open arms, but you kept pushing them away. Even now you’re pushing them away.’

  ‘I’m not pushing them away. I just feel claustrophobic around them.’

  ‘Only because you can’t keep your guard up all the time.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she flashed back at him defensively.

  ‘You don’t like crowds because you can’t keep your tight façade under control. People slip under the barricade and you feel threatened in case they see the real Cara for who she really is.’

  ‘I thought it was just your sister with the psychologist’s degree?’ she tossed
at him with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘I’m not going to let you get away with it you know,’ he said. ‘I love you too much to stand by and watch you sabotage your life again. I realise my family are a touch overpowering, especially to someone like you who has missed out on so much of what makes a family a family.’

  ‘I don’t want your pity.’

  ‘I’m not giving it,’ he said. ‘I’m simply stating a fact—we had completely different childhoods, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a happy and satisfying life together.’

  Cara wanted to believe him, but there was a part of her that kept holding something back just in case.

  ‘Look, sweetheart.’ He gave a deep sigh of resignation. ‘Maybe you’re right; I do allow my family too much space in our lives. Perhaps I shouldn’t have insisted on you coming to Melbourne with me.’

  Hearing him finally acknowledge it somehow seemed to make his family less of a threat. She knew deep down the problem was really with her. Her childhood experiences had encroached on their relationship just as much if not more than his large and boisterous family had ever done. The truth was she was jealous. Jealous of the bounty of love his family shared between them—each one looking out for the other, taking an interest, laughing together, crying together.

  They represented what she’d always dreamed of having, but instead of joining in she’d made herself feel excluded, deliberately sabotaging his relatives’ attempts to draw her into the shelter of their inner warmth. Ironic, really, she thought, that it had taken until now to actually see it.

  ‘We don’t have to see them unless you want to,’ he said across her thoughts. ‘And they don’t need to be present at our remarriage. We’ll keep that simple and private too.’

  ‘I’d like them to be there,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Especially Great-Aunt Milly.’

  ‘Well, then.’ Byron laughed. ‘I’d better order an extra case of champagne just for her.’

  She couldn’t stop the spread of her smile over her face as she looked up at him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to be late for work?’ she asked.

  He gave his watch a cursory glance before hauling her into his arms.

  ‘Work can wait,’ he said huskily. ‘I’ve got something much more interesting to do.’

  Cara watched Byron drive off to work an hour later, her emotions in a state of ambivalence. She wanted to be confident of their future together, but no matter how hard she tried to envisage it the picture in her mind became blurred when she thought of their long-term happiness. At the very core of Byron’s being was the desire to have his own child, just as his brothers and sister had done. He wanted a replica of his own childhood family—something she was unable to give him.

  She loved him, but was it enough? Would her love be enough to carry them through the long, lonely years of middle age and retirement? What if he decided at the last minute he’d had enough of her and wanted to move on? It was so much easier for men; there was no biological clock ticking away in the background like an atomic bomb waiting for the most devastating moment to go off. Byron could still father a child at any age while she had no further chance. That had been ripped away from her, along with the tiny baby she’d so wanted to bring into the world.

  Trevor called her during the emptiness of the afternoon.

  ‘I can’t believe what a prima donna she is!’ he railed as he described his first morning with Megan at the helm. ‘She’s been asking for all the business receipts. I don’t know where they are, for God’s sake.’

  Cara couldn’t help a twinge of guilt at the frustration in his tone. She couldn’t let him take the total blame for the near collapse of the business.

  ‘Let her do what she has to do, Trevor,’ she said. ‘I’m sure things will start to look up once all the bookwork is sorted out. I’m sorry I left you with it. I should have helped but—’

  ‘She’s a bitch on legs,’ Trevor said. ‘And she got even worse once her boyfriend arrived.’

  Cara’s spine instantly tightened.

  ‘Her boyfriend?’

  ‘Haven’t you met him?’

  ‘I’m…I’m not sure,’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Married guy, high-profile, all hush-hush.’

  ‘Should I know him?’

  ‘Well, sweetie, you did his house for him.’

  Her stomach gave a sickening lurch.

  ‘Not…not…’ She just couldn’t voice his name.

  ‘Dylan McMillanus.’ Trevor interrupted the torture of her mindset. ‘You know—that guy who’s in that soap opera on Channel Eleven. He’s going to be a daddy too, but you didn’t hear it from me. My lips are sealed like an express envelope.’

  Cara felt faint as relief flooded her veins like a hypnotic drug.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I heard them talking about it,’ he said. ‘Well, to tell you the truth half the street would’ve heard if I hadn’t shut the office door in time. He wasn’t too happy about the kid—bad publicity, you know, having it off with someone when there’s a wife already installed at home.’

  ‘A wife and two kids, if I remember,’ Cara said, recalling the actor’s beautiful children—a boy and a girl not much older than Byron’s nieces Katie and Kirstie.

  ‘Men can be such bastards,’ Trevor said disparagingly.

  ‘He didn’t do it alone,’ she pointed out. ‘Perhaps Megan wanted a child?’

  ‘Well, according to the little domestic I overheard that’s all she’s going to end up with. Dylan McMillanus is not the sort of guy to break up a happy home for the sake of a bit of fun on the side. He offered her a pay-out to keep her mouth shut.’ He named a sum that raised Cara’s brows.

  The conversation shifted to other topics, to Cara’s relief. Once she’d hung up the phone, however, the irony of it all hit her with a stomach-clenching jolt. Megan was going to have a child, but no husband, and she, Cara, was going to have a husband and no child. No wonder Megan had been on Byron’s tail! She must have known Dylan McMillanus would let her down in the end and in her desperation tried to hook Byron instead, but somehow he’d resisted.

  A warm glow of feeling rushed through her at the thought of his determination to repair their relationship—even though he was the one making the bigger sacrifice. How she loved him! And how she had misjudged him!

  She couldn’t wait for Byron to get home. She tried calling his mobile, but it kept switching straight through to the message service. She kept looking at the clock as the evening drew to a close, but the driveway outside stayed empty and the telephone stubbornly silent.

  The clock had finally crawled around to ten p.m. when the phone suddenly rang, startling her so much that she stared at it for several rings before moving across the room to lift the receiver.

  ‘Cara?’ Byron’s voice spoke over the beeps, indicating it was a long-distance call.

  ‘Byron? Where are you? I’ve been waiting for—’

  ‘I’m sorry, honey. I tried to ring you several times but the line was engaged. I’m in Melbourne.’

  ‘Melbourne?’ Her hand on the receiver tightened. Couldn’t he last even one day without flying back to his family?

  She heard him sigh, and then in the background the sound of voices in lowered tones.

  ‘My father has had a heart attack,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m at the hospital. I caught the first flight I could.’

  ‘Is…is he all right?’ Somehow she managed to get the question out past the shocked oval of her mouth.

  ‘He is now, but it was touch and go there for a while. He’s having bypass surgery later this week.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Shall I fly down?’

  ‘No.’ His tone was definite. ‘That won’t be necessary. There are already too many of us here as it is. The charge sister has sent each of us packing every chance she gets, but we keep drifting back in to support my mother.’

  ‘She must be so worried.’

  ‘She’s being very brave, but I think I
might need to stay here for a few days and hold the fort. Would you mind?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind!’ she insisted. ‘Byron, I wanted to tell you something—’

  ‘Honey, the doctor’s just arrived; I’ve got to go. I’ll call you in the morning, OK? Love you.’

  ‘I love—’ The phone clicked off before she could finish the sentence she most wanted to say.

  She sat despondently on the nearest sofa, her legs folding with shock at Byron’s news.

  It was hard to imagine his father lying in a hospital bed, having so narrowly brushed past death’s door. She knew how sick with worry the whole family would be. Her thoughts flew to Fliss, so recently delivered of a child, hit with such dreadful news. She thought of Byron’s mother, her soft face pretending not to be overly concerned for the sake of everyone else when inside she was crumbling. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Jan the day of the party, when she’d told her of the child she’d lost thirty-eight years ago, of the way she’d soldiered on nursing her grief. She thought of Byron’s nieces and nephews, their little faces frightened and uncertain at the hushed voices and silent tears.

  Cara realised with a sharp arrow of awareness that she wanted to be with them. She wanted to be in the midst of them to offer her own warmth. She wanted to feel with them, to listen and to console. She wanted to help Byron through this difficult time, to show him how much she loved his family. He was right—they were her family now, the only family she had ever really known.

  She reached for the telephone, but the last flight of the evening had already closed. Disappointment ripped through her until she almost felt sick to her stomach with it. She even considering going out to the car and driving all night to get there, but decided against it. She would wait for Byron’s call in the morning and tell him of her decision to join him as soon as possible.

  When the sun came up she crawled out of the big bed and got to her feet, but suddenly the room began to tilt alarmingly—the Persian rug at her feet swirling before her eyes in a sickening vortex and making her feel as if she were going to be sucked right down into it and disappear into nothingness. She made a futile grab for the bedside lamp, to anchor herself, but it came with her to the floor, splintering into a thousand pieces to lie around her unconscious form…