“Amber, you need to take those tests. You need to know if you’re pregnant.” Marika’s gentle voice agreed with Becki.
“But… but… I can’t be,” I stuttered.
“Maybe you’re not and if that is the case I will apologise profusely. However… you know how much I believe in gut instinct. Right now my gut is yelling at you to go and pee on the bloody sticks so that we can see the little window that screams ‘PREGNANT’ at you. Then I’m going shopping to pick out a hat and dress for the baptism.”
“But… how? When? Where?” I didn’t get it.
“Do I really need to tell you about the birds and I really-” I cut her off with a menacing glare. She acquiesced with hands raised in the air. “Okay, okay. I believe that those tablets may have stopped your pill working properly. You weren’t meant to take them for a long period of time. And think about it. The nausea, the light headedness, the tiredness are all early signs of pregnancy. Right, Marika? You’ve been there, you know the deal.” Marika nodded with a small, knowing smile.
As Becki’s words sank in, my gaze trailed down to the bag. Was it possible? Could I really be pregnant? Oh, God! What if she was right? Craig would go ballistic. He’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to start a family yet. This couldn’t be real. There was no way.
“We need to get you home so you can do a test,” Marika said as she stretched her arm out over the table and placed a hand over one of my shaking ones. “You need to know if Becki is right.”
Without having ordered anything to eat, we threw money down to cover our drinks and left. I just hoped I would be able to drive in my frazzled state.
I stared at the back of the white stick willing it to change. Any minute now I was going to turn it back over and that little word, ‘not’ was going to join the other word in the small window easing my worries. My fingers tapped restlessly on the bathroom counter and I resisted the urge to check the stick again. Just another minute, that’s all I needed.
“If you are not out here in ten seconds I’m going to barge the door, break my shoulder, scream in pain and then you’ll have to rush me to the hospital. All the while you’ll be trying to explain why you were locked in the bathroom and I was trying to break in to get to you. So, Ambs, open the freaking door and put me out of my misery. I’m dying here,” Becki hollered banging on the bathroom door, and causing me to jump.
“Amber, I know you’re feeling scared but we’re here for you. Whatever those sticks say, it doesn’t matter. Craig loves you. He’ll be shocked, but he’ll get over it. Come on, you need to open the door and let us in. We want to support you.” This time Marika’s soothing tone and words settled me somewhat.
Without looking down for the final result I picked the stick up and walked to the door. I can do this, I can do this, I repeated as a mantra, willing myself to be strong. When I opened the door, Becki and Marika were sitting on the edge of the bed and Giana was happily playing with something on the floor.
“Well?” Becki jumped to her feet and quickly walked over to me.
I shoved the stick in her direction. “You look, I can’t do it.”
My eyes closed and I took a few deep breaths, willing my racing heart to calm down. When I reopened them and looked toward Becki she had tears welling in her eyes and a smile tugging at her lips, and I knew. She didn’t have to say it, I knew.
“Congratulations my little cherub, you and Craig are going to be parents.”
My breath caught in my throat. Craig and I are going to be parents? We are going to have a Craig mini-me running around the place?
“What am I going to do, Bec? Craig isn’t ready for this. What if he thinks I’ve done this behind his back to trap him? He’s had that shit pulled on him before. What if he leaves me?” My voice quivered as I said it, reflecting a fear that was very real.
“For one, Craig will never leave you. Ever. That man is besotted. He will also not think that you have tried to trap him. He pursued you remember? He was the one that asked you in to his life. Not the other way around. He’ll be shocked, that’s a given if you guys weren’t trying. But when the shock wears off he’s going to be over the moon. How can he not be?”
A tear escaped and trickled down my cheek and Becki wrapped her arms around me tugging me into her comforting embrace. I could only hope what she said was true.
Craig
Slamming the phone down on my desk with a thud and a string of curse words I turned to stare out the window. It would appear Kordell and Andre had covered their tracks and left no trail for us to go on to bring them down… well legally anyway. Max had been liaising with his contacts in the police to keep abreast of any new leads or information, and either there weren’t any or the brothers had someone in their back pocket covering their arses. Either way, I was going to find out. If I couldn’t get legal retribution for James’s death for Amber, I would get it another way. They couldn’t start a battle and not expect me to go to war after what they did. It just wasn’t possible. I would just have to be careful and make sure my back was covered.
Amber was out enjoying some time with the girls shopping, and I hoped she would come home with some new purchases from that Victoria Secret place. Maybe she could model them for me later. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. A guy could dream. With thoughts of Amber in sexy underwear, and the news of Max’s inability to get anywhere on the James case I wasn’t getting anything done. I had wanted to clear as much work as I could so I would be free the next weekend. After everything that had been thrown at Amber in recent months I knew she needed a short break, so I was planning on taking her down to our cottage in Devon for a day or two of doing nothing.
“Bored with the wife already so you chose to come in and work on a Saturday? I can make things more interesting for you if you’d like.” I peered up from my monitor to see Jenny stood in my doorway grinning at me.
“What are you doing here, Jenny?” I snapped.
“I could ask you the same thing. We don’t see you around here much on the weekends now that you’re a kept man. What happened, did she kick you out already?” Her throaty giggle grated on my nerves and I wanted nothing more than to slam the door on her, blocking her and her voice from me.
“I’m busy, Jenny. What can I do for you?” Turning my attention back to my screen, I waited for Jenny to either spit out what it was she wanted, or – and this would have been preferable – just leave.
“No need to be so rude Mr Silver. Can a girl not pop by and say hello. It’s what old friends do you know.” My hopes of her making a speedy exit were short lived when she sauntered into the room and perched on the edge of my desk, dragging her tight skirt further up her thighs showing more flesh than I was comfortable with.
“You’ve said hello, you can leave now.”
Jenny shuffled around slightly and sent paperwork fluttering to the floor. My eyes locked onto the flesh of her inner thighs when she spread her legs as far as her pencil skirt would allow. In the past that creamy coloured flesh would have been a turn on. Not anymore. Now there was only one person’s soft, beautiful skin that could give me a raging hard-on in a nanosecond.
“Nah, I think I’ll stay here and give you some attention.”
I sighed in irritation. “I don’t have time for this, Jenny. Unless you have something you urgently need to discuss would you mind leaving so I can get on with my work?”
She didn’t stand to leave or speak for several seconds. I lifted my gaze from my computer to find her unbuttoning her blouse. “Jenny, what the fuck are you doing?” I was out of my chair and moving as far away from her as possible in the blink of an eye.
“Oh come on, Craig. You know you want this. Little Miss Prissy won’t keep you satisfied. Might as well reacquaint yourself with the goods now.”
My blood was boiling. “Get the hell out of here, Jenny. I told you before, you and me together was a major drunken fuck-up and will never happen again. Unless you want to find yourself in the league of the unemplo
yed, I suggest you wipe that desperate look of your face, straighten yourself up and get the fuck out of my office. I won’t do this again, Jenny. Back off and leave me the fuck alone,” I seethed. With a snarl she scooted off the desk, refastened her blouse and walked to the door.
“You’ll be sorry, Craig.” She left slamming the door behind her.
The entire fucking morning had been one drama after another and I’d had enough. I needed to let off some steam before I ended up lashing out. The best way for me to do that would be to hit the gym and beat the shit out of a punch bag or pound the pavements.
After I left the confines of my office behind me and made my way down the corridor, I noticed Jenny standing near the lifts fumbling with something in her hands before she dropped it into her bag. She looked up with a shocked expression when she saw me watching her and quickly turned on her heels and hurried away. My phone vibrated in my pocket announcing I had a text message. Yet another fucking ‘number withheld’ stared at me when I glanced at the screen and opened the message with all the frustration I was feeling. “I’ll get you,” the text simply said. Did this fucking idiot seriously think that a few phone calls and text messages were going to intimidate me? Aggravated by everything going on, I shoved my phone back in my pocket and continued walking toward the lifts.
As I watched Jenny’s back retreat into the stairwell I couldn’t help but wonder if she was behind all the weird phone calls. The closest the tech guys had got to tracing anything was that the calls were coming from an unregistered number and some could be tracked by GPS to being made in the near vicinity.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Amber
Marika and I were sitting in the living room in what I could only presume was an excruciatingly uncomfortable silence for her. For me it was a welcomed one. I was in shock, curled up in the corner of the sofa fiddling with the hem of my top trying to figure how I got here. My mind kept drifting back to snippets of conversations Craig and I’d had. He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to be a dad yet. We needed time. These were all thoughts swirling around my head like a tornado, round and round, destroying everything in their path and leaving nothing but destruction and confusions.
I’m going to be a mum! That thought blew me away and with an odd sense of protectiveness I peered down at my belly, mesmerised by the thought of what, or who, was growing in there.
“We should get out of here for a while,” Marika remarked turning to face me. “I’m sure you could do with some time away from the house to clear your head and Gigi could use some fresh air. Maybe we could go for a walk down to the river. We can feed the ducks and watch the boats while we talk.” She sounded unsure.
Becki had left us a short while earlier stating she had plans with Scott, and after a bit of a meltdown by me, she’d promised she would keep my news to herself for the time being. I needed to find the right time to tell Craig his world was about to be turned upside down and I couldn’t risk Scott, or anyone else for that matter, letting the news slip.
“Yeah, sounds great. I feel like I’m suffocating in here at the moment,” I replied, untangling from the knot I’d twisted myself into.
“Excellent! Give me five minutes to get Gigi ready… And, Amber, it will all be okay, I promise.” She smiled warmly and rubbed my arm in a soothing caress as she walked by.
Fifteen minutes later we were strolling down toward the river. The sun was shining but there was a bit of a cool nip in the air so I pulled my jacket around me tighter, hoping to keep the chill from seeping into my body which was already numb from shock.
We continued to walk in silence until we reached the riverbank where we found an empty bench and took a seat. Although I was looking out at the ducks on the water fighting over the slabs of bread a young boy was throwing at them, I wasn’t really seeing them. Everything around me was a hazy blur of them and me.
I sensed Marika watching me from her position at the end of the bench where she was rocking Giana in her stroller. Shifting in my seat to see her better, I asked “What is it? I can tell you want to say something.”
Her head tilted and she drew in her bottom lip, studying me closely. After a brief pause, she replied, “I felt the same you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I found out I was pregnant with Giana, I was scared too. I was happy but terrified of what James would think. We hadn’t been together very long so the subject of having children together some day had never cropped up. I mean, we were living one day to the next. We didn’t know if our relationship would last another week, never mind forever and certainly not with a child. Gigi is the best thing that could have happened for James and me, Amber, she pulled us together.” The melancholy in her voice was evident as she thought back to my brother.
“But Craig has been clear he doesn’t want children yet. He’s not ready.”
She barked a humourless laugh. “And you think James was? Jesus Christ, Amber, he went ballistic on me. Absolutely apeshit. He screamed and shouted accusing me off all sorts and then stormed out. But you know what? He was back an hour later pleading for forgiveness for the way he’d behaved and promising to be the best dad he could possibly be. And he was. He loved Gigi with everything in him… Here, I haven’t shown you these yet.”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and after tapping the screen a few times she handed it to me. When I saw the smiling face of James holding a new-born baby in his arms I couldn’t stop the tears from welling in my eyes. The look of total and utter pride and happiness was clear for everyone to see. It upset me to realise that I’d never had the chance to see that side of him. I’d never seen the compassionate and loving side of my adult brother.
As I scrolled through the images there was picture after picture of James with Giana, James with Marika, a couple with the three of them together looking very much the happy family. The final picture broke my heart. It must have been taken on Christmas day, just a few days before his life was so brutally taken from him. James was sitting on the floor in front of a Christmas tree; Giana was resting on his crossed legs as he helped her open a present. He was looking down and Giana was looking up at her daddy, her love for him evident in her big smile and the twinkling in her eyes. It was the perfect picture.
“I’m so sorry, Marika,” I said quietly, fearing my voice might crack.
“What are you sorry for? You didn’t take him from us. Besides, that wasn’t why I showed you the photos. I showed you because I wanted you to see that although Craig might be shocked at first, he loves you and will be thrilled to be having a baby with you. You two were thrown together by fate, right?” I nodded. I couldn’t deny it. “Well this is obviously fate’s next path for you. Or James’s present to you to say sorry for the way he treated you. Whatever the reason, you and Craig are going to be parents, and damn fine parents you will be too.” I stared at her, unable to form a reply. My head and heart were in a battle of wills and I wasn’t sure which would come out on top. My heart said she was right and Craig would be happy. My head remembered his words stating unequivocally that he wasn’t ready for children yet.
“Do you want the baby?”
“What kind of question is that?” I snapped as my hand dropped protectively to my tummy. Of course I wanted it, more than anything. I just wasn’t so sure about Craig being happy about or even accepting it. “Of course I do,” I added, my voice sounding much softer.
“Well then, you just need to be strong and trust that Craig loves you and will be happy about this.”
Giana began fussing in her stroller and as Marika reached over to get her out my phone started ringing in my bag. Pulling it out, my heart skipped a beat as I looked at Craig’s handsome smiling face filling my screen. God I hoped he didn’t lose that smile after I told him his whole life was about to change immeasurably. “Hello,” I greeted, anxiously.
“Amb’s, where are you?”
“We brought Giana down to the river for a while. I needed to get out of the house,” I rep
lied. My voice sounded strained even to my own ears.
“Is everything okay?” Craig asked, sounding concerned.
“Everything’s fine. How was the office?” Distraction, as ever, was the best way to skirt the issue.
“It was fine,” he replied curtly, taking me by surprise. “Where are you? I was going to go to the gym or for a run but I’ll come and meet up with you.”
I told him our location and said he didn’t need to come, but he insisted. He sounded a bit off, like he was distracted or brooding about something. It put my already frayed nerves on high alert. When we hung up, a bout of nausea caught me by surprise and I had to run behind a tree as my tummy tried to expel what little food remained.
Marika came up behind me and placed a soothing hand on my back as I closed my eyes and prayed for the nausea to pass. “Have you eaten anything today?” she asked.
Thinking back to the morning, I realised that no, I hadn’t. I’d been feeling the queasiness and giddiness for about a week and any thought of eating had made my stomach roil. I had been so stupid. The signs had all been there, a bright flashing neon emblem screaming ‘hey, look at me, I’m pregnant’.
Resting my forehead against the bark of the tree trunk, I thought about the sickness and dizziness and how all those symptoms now made perfect sense. I also wondered how long they would last.
Marika handed me a bottle of water and a biscuit and lectured me about taking care of myself and making sure I ate even if I felt sick. The thought of placing any food in my mouth when I felt like shit just made me feel worse, but she assured me it was what I needed to do.
“Do you know how far along you are?” Marika questioned as we made our way back to the bench. I tried to think back to my last period and realised I hadn’t had one since January. With everything going on I hadn’t really thought too much about it, or if I did I’d just put it down to stress messing up my system. After all when I’d Googled self-help strategies to combat stress, a messed up menstrual cycle was a possible symptom. Why would I have thought any differently? Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep calming breath. Three months? Was it possible I could already be three months along?
Silver Dove (Silver #2) Page 15