by Liz Fielding
That was why he was going away. To prove to himself that he was still capable of keeping his distance when every day seemed to make it tougher to remember why it was so necessary.
That was why he was leaving tonight, instead of tomorrow morning. Because one more night under the same roof as Amy Jones and he wouldn’t be staying in the spare room. ‘Are you going somewhere?’ he asked, curiosity finally getting the better of him.
‘Just into town.’ She checked the time again. ‘The bus goes in a couple of minutes. Give me a call when you get back; I’ll tell you how much you owe Mr Thompson. No need to come yourself—’
‘You’re going into Maybridge?’ he demanded, dropping his bag, blocking the door. ‘What for?’
‘Nothing.’ He didn’t move. She shrugged. ‘If you must know, my antenatal classes start tonight.’
‘And you weren’t going to tell me?’ He dismissed his own question as irrelevant. He’d just announced that he was leaving—and they both knew he wasn’t planning on coming back—so why would she tell him? ‘You can’t go on your own.’
‘Don’t be silly, of course I can. I’ll be perfectly safe—’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ He didn’t know exactly what he did mean. He stopped. Yes, he did. ‘None of the other mothers will be alone.’ They’d be arriving with their husbands, or their partners. Two people preparing together for a life-changing event. ‘Will they?’
Amy’s eyes widened slightly at his sudden sharpness. ‘Probably…not. But these classes are to prepare for childbirth. You won’t be there, so there’s no point in you coming. Go and sort yourself out for your trip. I can manage,’ she said, making light of it, dismissing his concerns with a smile. Her sweetness, her understanding would have softened an ogre’s heart. And, despite his shortcomings, he was not an ogre.
‘You shouldn’t have to. You don’t have to.’ His head was telling him to stop. Now. He clearly wasn’t listening because he heard himself say, ‘I’ll come with you tonight. Since I’m here.’
Amy felt guilty. Really guilty. She shouldn’t have done it. She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t. She could easily have waited until he’d gone and then called a taxi.
Telling Jake about the class was like saying those forbidden words: I need you.
That it was true had rocked her belief that she could do it all alone, the way she’d done everything important in her life. But this was different. She did need him with her; that was the honest truth. With every day that passed she needed him more. Not on the other side of the landing in the spare bed, but holding her, sharing this special time, sharing her life.
‘Is that okay?’ he whispered in her ear.
His arms were around her, his hands resting on their growing baby as they practised breathing techniques and she stopped worrying about Jake and instead snuggled back into his chest. This was probably about as good as it got. With their clothes on. She’d better make the most of it.
‘Fine,’ she said, covering his hands with her own. ‘You?’
‘It’s different,’ he conceded.
‘You didn’t have to come.’
‘Am I complaining?’
‘No. And I’m delighted you did. Thanks, Jake.’ She turned her head to look back up at him. He wasn’t exactly smiling. But his expression had an unwitting possessiveness that gave her a warm fuzzy feeling.
The feeling evaporated when after the class he drove her home, walked her to the door, but didn’t cross the threshold. Not that he was in any great hurry to leave. He leaned against the porch, his hands stuffed in his pockets as if to keep them out of temptation as he stared up at the night sky.
‘What’ll you do for the next class?’
‘I thought I might ask Willow to go with me. Be my birthing companion.’ He kicked at a stone. ‘Don’t stress yourself out, Jake.’
He glanced at her. ‘Easy for you to say.’
She sat down on the porch bench. ‘Maybe. I don’t know how to make it any easier for you.’
‘Is that what you’re doing? Making it easy?’ He half smiled. ‘Then heaven help me if you ever try to make it difficult.’ Still he lingered. ‘What’s that scent?’
‘Night-scented stocks. Nothing to look at, but they smell heavenly.’ She forced herself not to offer him coffee. She might have made a vow not to break the rules, but she’d bent them way out of shape once tonight.
‘Yes, well, I’d better be going.’ He straightened, dragged his fingers through his hair.
‘Take care, Jake.’
‘I’ll—’ He’d been going to say he’d call her. Not a good idea. He was already too close. Tonight the class had gone through relaxation techniques and he’d listened to the stuff about breathing, massage, all the time holding her and knowing that he was different from those other men who were going to be there when their longed-for babies were launched into the world. He’d thought he’d put himself beyond all possibility of hurt. He was, apparently, wrong. ‘I’ve left something for you. Well, something for the baby, I suppose. It’s in the nursery.’
She said nothing. But as he walked quickly down the path, got into the car and drove away, he knew her green eyes would haunt him for ever.
The nursery was beginning to grow on her. Now she’d got over the shock. Jake’s present was on the futon, a small parcel wrapped in gold tissue, and she picked it up, sat down and pulled on the red bow.
Inside was a poetry book, an anthology of favourite verses. And a CD of light classical music. Jake had enclosed a card.
According to all the books, babies have acute hearing and should be read to, and have music played to them. Jake.
Amy stared up at the ceiling, sighed. ‘Idiot,’ she murmured. But quietly, so that the baby wouldn’t hear. For a moment, when she’d realised what he’d done with the nursery, she’d thought he’d broken through, made the leap of faith that was required for two people, almost strangers, to reach out and acknowledge a perfect affinity.
That was why she’d cried.
But then, when he’d so nearly been there, he’d taken a step back. She looked at the poetry book and sighed. Didn’t he realise that his baby wanted to hear his voice reading the poems as well as hers?
She squeezed back the tears. She couldn’t be angry with him because he was trying so hard. He was so caring. Imaginative. But he was so wrong.
She should have pressed him on his childhood. Whatever had happened to him must have been truly terrible to have robbed him of the ability to accept love when it was offered freely, unconditionally. To make him so resolutely determined never to become reliant on another person, never to surrender to his feelings. So determined never to have a child of his own.
Her imagination obliged with a dozen scenarios, each worse than the one before, and she cradled her swelling abdomen, as if to protect her restless unborn child from anything that terrible.
Her baby would have her daddy’s present and know that she was loved. But Amy’s throat was too tight, ached too much for her to read out loud. In her bedroom, she lit a scented candle, slipped the CD into her stereo and stretched out on her bed.
‘Listen, angel, this is a present from your daddy,’ she murmured, gently smoothing a blend of mandarin and camomile oil over her bump as the opening notes of Brahms’ ‘Lullaby’ whispered softly into the room. ‘You see how much he loves you? He’s thinking about you all the time, and while he’s away he’s going to miss you so much that when he comes home he’ll want to read those poems to you himself.’
And because her baby could hear her, she put all the belief she could muster into her voice. She only wished she felt that confident.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SEVENTH MONTH. The growing baby will be creating pressure on your bladder and your stomach. You’ll feel a little breathless, suffer from heartburn and maybe leg cramps. Your baby’s eyes will now be open.
DISTANCE made no difference. Time did not help. Jake thought about Amy every waking moment. Constantly converting
the time difference so that he would know where she was, what she was doing. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering if she was persevering with the driving lessons. If she’d really liked the nursery. Or if the minute his back was turned she’d set about changing it.
Probably.
She was probably up that old stepladder with a pot of blue paint right now. His gut clenched at the thought. He should have burned it.
He should forget it.
He was walking through a shopping mall with a list faxed to him by Maggie. It seemed as if the kid of every employee had put in a request for some special item of sportswear or clothing for him to bring back from the States.
He could have sent someone out to do it for him, but it was the weekend. He had nothing better to do, and hunting down a football jersey was a distraction of sorts. He looked about him, scanning the shop fronts. And saw the cradle.
It was at the heart of a display of designer baby stuff. Not for sale, it had been put there to catch the attention of the casual shopper. As it had caught his. A genuine backwoods piece, hand hewn and well used, it took him straight back to that moment when Amy had stopped to look at another period piece when they’d walked together through the streets of Maybridge. They were a world apart, yet the feeling that had gone into them was the same.
And he knew why he hadn’t offered to buy Amy the one in the antiques shop. There wasn’t enough money in the world to buy what it represented.
Could he make one? He’d done basic woodwork at school. Once lodged in his brain, the idea took hold, firing him up. It would be something personal, something precious for Amy to keep and pass on to her grandchildren.
His grandchildren, he realised with a shock.
Mike. He’d call Mike. He’d know, help with a design… Back at the hotel, he reached for the phone, punched in the number. Willow answered.
‘Jake! How wonderful. I thought you were in the States.’
‘I am, darling. California. And I promise you it’s neither cold nor damp—’
‘Oh,’ she said flatly. ‘You’re still there. I thought, I hoped, you’d come home when you heard about Amy—’
‘What?’ He felt his blood chill. ‘What about Amy? What’s happened?’ Cold fingers feathered his spine. ‘Is it the baby?’
‘The baby’s fine. Really. You’re not to worry.’ Her pause was judged to have entirely the opposite effect.
‘Willow! Tell me!’
‘She just had a bit of an accident, that’s all—’
‘What kind of an accident?’ He was shouting, he realised. ‘What kind of an accident?’ he repeated, more gently.
‘It’s nothing. Honestly. Her knee…’ The ladder; she’d fallen off the ladder. He’d told her, but would she listen?
‘And her shoulder. But her head was okay. They took an X-ray as a precaution—’
‘Willow, for the love of Mike, where have they taken her?’
‘It was just a minor collision, Jake. No one else was hurt—’
‘Collision?’ The fingers stopped playing along his spine and he went cold all over. ‘She didn’t fall off the ladder?’ The chill intensified. She’d been driving. She’d had an accident while learning to drive. Something she was only doing because he’d forced her into it. ‘Where did they take her?’ he repeated, grabbing his suitcase, one-handedly flinging in his clothes.
‘Maybridge General, but…’
‘But?’ He stopped. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. She’s lost the baby, hasn’t she?’
‘No…no… Everything’s going to be fine…’ There was another hesitation that did nothing to reassure him.
‘I’m looking in whenever I can. We all are. You’re not to worry, Jake, really—’
She kept saying that, but how could she imagine he wouldn’t?
Perhaps because he’d been doing everything he could to distance himself from involvement with Amy since the moment he’d learned she was pregnant?
‘I’ll be home on the first available flight,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘In the meantime I want you to see that she has absolutely everything she needs.’
‘Well, yes, of course…’
‘Everything,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll call my secretary at home and she’ll be in touch with you about getting her moved into a private room—’
‘But, Jake—’
‘I’ll be there in twenty-four hours.’
Willow replaced the receiver, turned to Mike, who’d just come in from the garden with Ben.
‘That was Jake,’ she said.
‘Really? I thought he was still in America.’
‘He is.’
‘Oh. What did he want?’
‘I’ve no idea. He must have forgotten when I told him about Amy’s accident. He seemed very upset.’
He pulled a face. ‘She said not to do that, Willow.’
‘No, darling, what she said was that we weren’t to ring him and tell him about the accident. I didn’t. He rang me. He said we were to get Amy anything she needed.’
‘And?’
She grinned. ‘Sorted. He’ll be here tomorrow.’
Jake regarded the hospital receptionist with disbelief. ‘What do you mean, she’s not here? She’s had an accident. She’s pregnant,’ he added desperately, as if that might jog something loose in the woman’s memory.
‘That’s right,’ she replied with a practised calm that was presumably supposed to soothe distraught friends and relatives. It was having quite the opposite effect on him.
‘So where is she?’
‘According to my records she was treated in Casualty on the eighteenth.’
‘And then?’ he prompted, with what he considered commendable restraint, considering the provocation.
‘And then she was sent home.’
‘Home? But—’ Didn’t she understand? This was serious. He’d flown six thousand miles because…well, it was that serious. The woman, rushed off her feet, wasn’t interested in his ‘but’. She was already dealing with another query.
Home. He pushed open the back door of the cottage and it felt just like that. Coming home.
Except nothing was quite as it should be. The mud room was uncharacteristically tidy. Amy’s gardening boots had been scraped clean and polished, for heaven’s sake. He glanced around and saw that everywhere was immaculate. Cold. There was usually music, warm kitchen smells, activity of some kind, and the quiet emptiness was disquieting.
‘Amy?’ he called. The polished surfaces echoed back at him.
He ducked under the beam and Harry looked up from his cushion, sighed and then put his head back on his paws.
‘Amy!’ he called again, with more urgency. The back door had been open, so someone must be at home. Maybe she was upstairs, unable to move, unable to call out…
He took the stairs in three long strides. All the doors were shut, but he didn’t stop to knock, bursting through her bedroom door. The rush of relief, of joy when he saw her, propped up on the bed, a heap of soft knitting on her lap, listening to music through her headphones, was so powerful that it momentarily took his breath away. He couldn’t speak. Remained frozen in the doorway.
‘Jake!’ She put the knitting aside, pulled off the headphones, leaving her hair sticking up in a little quiff. She was bereft of make-up, wearing a long football jersey that had seen better days and a pair of old jogging pants that had been cut off above the knee on one leg. She looked absolutely wonderful. Beautiful. The best thing he’d seen in a long time—or, more accurately, since he’d left her at the cottage door weeks—no, a lifetime—ago and flown away.
‘Don’t move,’ he said, finally regaining the use of his vocal cords as she struggled to rise. ‘I want to remember you always, like this. With a packet of frozen peas draped over your knee.’
She took the defrosting vegetables from her knee and, ignoring his order not to move, threw them at him. He caught them, dropped them, then crossed swiftly to the bed, sitting beside her as she eased hers
elf up, quickly biting back a wince of pain. Not quickly enough.
‘You’re in pain. You should be in hospital.’
‘It’s nothing.’ She made a dismissive gesture. ‘I didn’t know you were back—’
‘I came straight from the airport. And I told you not to move.’ He reached round her, fluffed the pillows. ‘Lie back.’
She subsided without protest, slipping down between his arms, her head on the pillow, looking up at him with eyes like molten emeralds, eyes that were hot, and dark, and inviting. It was an invitation his body responded to with an eagerness that left him gasping for breath.
He wanted to kiss her, really kiss her. None of that polite, big brother kiss-on-the-cheek stuff he’d been congratulating himself on doing so well. He wanted her lips beneath his tongue, he wanted to taste her, look at her, hold her and their baby. And never let them go again.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he said abruptly, sitting back.
She swallowed, as if she too had felt the charge, the heat. ‘A fresh ice pack would be good,’ she said.
Her voice shook a little, and it was taking every ounce of his self-control not to simply take her into his arms and tell her how much he’d missed her, how he’d be there for her, always. He owed her a lot more than easy words. A lot more than he could ever offer her.
Better make that two ice packs. One for her, one for him.
‘Any particular flavour?’ he asked, keeping it light.
‘Broad beans, perhaps? Or maybe diced carrots would make a change?’
There was a small still moment, then she said, ‘The choice is peas or peas. Dorothy got them from the village shop and she doesn’t believe in unnecessary complications.’
‘She’s in the wrong place, then.’ He retrieved the soggy packet from the floor. ‘She’s looking after you?’
‘Like a mother hen,’ she said, with a look that suggested she didn’t find being a ‘chick’ an entirely pleasing experience. ‘If you’d just put those back to refreeze and bring another one, I’d be eternally grateful.’