You three are my life raft… Don’t let yourself sink…because I’ll drown without you.
“I’ll be fine.”
I said that because I wanted it to be true, but the future was so big, so full of responsibility and work—raising a baby—my mind couldn’t encompass the whole thing. It would only let me look at one step at a time. “First I’ll tell Jack. Then I’ll get myself organized in plenty of time for the birth. I’ve got money coming in.”
If my record sales continued, I’d be okay. And there were months before the baby would show. Plenty of promo time.
I nodded at Louella, trying to convince her, but she was very still, her mouth turned down into that I’m not happy look that was her only display of emotional upset. Well, except for when she’d broken down in my apartment. I still felt traumatized by that.
“Why did Jack break up with you?” she asked, dragging my attention back.
“It wasn’t lack of sex,” I said straightaway, remembering Brittany’s attempt to sting me. Then I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And there’s no chance of a relationship?”
“I don’t think so.”
He treated me like an embarrassing one-night stand that he couldn’t wait to escape. He humiliated me. You don’t come back from that.
“But,” I added, “I will tell him about the baby. It wouldn’t be fair to say nothing.”
“Quite right. It’s in your nature to be honest,” she pointed out. “And in times of upset, it’s important to hold onto your values.”
Exactly the opposite of the advice Jill had given me.
I hadn’t expected a gush of emotion from Louella. But I had expected something—that she’d be happy for me that my dream of motherhood was coming true. Was she jealous? Uninterested? I couldn’t work it out.
Thankfully, Nick rapped on the door again.
“Come!”
I glanced behind him as he entered, but Fritha was nowhere to be seen.
“He was on a flight to Emerald first thing this morning. Looks like he’s gone home to Daven Downs.”
I frowned at Louella. “I’d thought he’d gone off to do business.”
“His family property is a business,” she reminded me, and when Nick had left again, she added, “Does it matter where he is?”
I shook my head, but I felt like I was missing something. Maybe he had a secret girlfriend there. Although, why should that worry me? I wasn’t trying to catch him cheating on me. We weren’t in a relationship. I just wanted to give him the news and go.
Didn’t I?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I’m sorry. Are you delivering something?” The man in his seventies looked me up and down, as if I was exotic, and I suppose a woman who appeared Indian might be a strange sight at a remote cattle station a thousand miles from Sydney.
But I wasn’t going to embarrass myself by saying I’m an Aussie. I was born here. My parents are from Mumbai. I’d stopped justifying my existence when I left Dakaroo almost twenty years ago. Sydney was a melting pot of cultures where diversity was appreciated and I’d been so grateful for that. The outback, however, still had pockets of nostalgia for the old country where anyone who wasn’t white didn’t belong.
This man had bigot written all over him, and it was the last thing I needed. I’d just suffered three flights—the last one with enough turbulence to make me throw up—and a four hour drive in a rental car with bad suspension, all the while resisting the urge to scratch the flaking skin that had been revealed when my cast had come off.
My wrist alternately ached and itched, I had a headache the size of Texas, and the jeans and knit sweater combo that had suited the chill of air conditioning, was sticky-hot.
I wanted to find Jack. Now. So I could get this over and done with.
“I’m here to see Jack Davenworth,” I said again, firmly, not budging from the front door of his gigantic historical sandstone bungalow with its wide shady verandas. It was a welcomed respite from the relentless outback sun.
I hadn’t had a drink in hours, so what I really needed was a glass of cold water and a lie down, but the man in front of me with his pebble eyes and shock of white hair, would be the last person to offer hospitality.
“Why?” he snapped, blocking the doorway, as if he thought I was going to push past him.
Because I’m having his baby!
I sucked in a steadying breath. “I’m sorry that my visit is unexpected. But I’m not going until I see Jack.”
There. That was as rude as I could be.
The old man stared back at me, his eyes narrowing as though he wanted to say something terrible, but as I girded myself for an insult, a female voice that quavered with age called out from behind him.
“Is that Caitlin? Jack’s assistant?”
“How would I know?” the old man snapped, still glaring at me. “She hasn’t introduced herself.”
I swallowed down the impulse to apologize. I deliberately hadn’t told them my name. If Jack knew I was here, he might pretend to be absent.
“Are you Caitlin?” the old lady asked, coming up beside the man and gently pushing him out of the way. Then she looked me up and down while her faded grey eyes widened, “Oh. He didn’t say you were colored.”
Colored?
What century were these people living in? “My parents are from Mumbai,” I said softly, annoyed with myself that I’d gone there.
She tisked, as if she was sorry for me, and somehow I managed to smile while my teeth were gritted.
Nobody said anything until the old man huffed. “Well, she didn’t say she was Caitlin.”
“You probably bamboozled her.” The old woman pushed on his arm until he moved out of the way. “Ignore him,” she said to me. “And come inside. Jack is out checking on the cattle. He’ll be back directly.”
Finally, some good luck. “Thank you, Mrs Davenworth.” I stepped over the threshold, expecting her husband to step back.
When he didn’t, she tapped on his arm. “Scat.”
He growled in displeasure, but said, “I’ll check the girls,” and shuffled off down the hallway.
Jack’s nieces? Isabella’s children? I wondered if the whole family lived in this big old house. Then I realized there was no point wondering anything. I wasn’t going to interact with these people beyond today, so their living arrangements were irrelevant.
“Cup of tea,” she said, leading me down the hallway which was thankfully air conditioned and far more comfortable than the outside air. I followed her into a big old country kitchen with casement windows and a rough-hewn pine table monopolizing the center of the room. With their money, they could have afforded the best of everything, so it was a surprise to see the simple country furniture—possibly generations old—still being used.
“You sit there,” she pointed to a chair with a pine back and a gingham cushion.
I did as I was told, waiting with my hands on the table in front of me, wondering at what point I should admit that I wasn’t Caitlin. If my luck held, I’d be able to make polite conversation until Jack arrived, then discharge my duty and leave.
His mother fussed at the sink for several minutes, then returned to the table with a teapot, covered in an orange hand-knitted tea cozy. “Good bush blend,” she said, going back for cups and saucers. “None of your Earl Grey nonsense.”
“Thank you.”
The teapot was followed by a plate of pumpkin scones with rosella jam and cream which made my empty stomach wake up and take notice. Then sugar and a milk jug from a modern, stainless steel fridge hidden behind a rustic looking cupboard door. Finally, she sat, poured our tea and then looked at me expectantly.
I smiled and took a sip of mine black, but she just sat there looking at me, as if she was waiting for me to speak
At last I said, “I love your home,” grasping for anything to keep awkwardness at bay.
She replied, “You’re not Caitlin.”
Okay, that was the last thi
ng I expected her to say. I blinked in surprise, but as I looked into her faded grey eyes, I suddenly realized how sharp they were. Like silver lasers honing in on me.
“I’m not Caitlin,” I admitted, and waited to hear what was next.
“Then are you a gold digger, after my boy?”
“No.” Jack’s money was the last thing on my radar. “I’ve got my own money,” I said, allowing myself to step into the future I hoped was coming. “I’m a successful recording artist.”
“I saw you on Sunshine with Jack.”
So…that was embarrassing. If she saw Sunshine, she would know I was at the start of my career. But still, it was promising or I wouldn’t have been on television. So my exaggeration wasn’t huge.
It was also clear that she hadn’t mistaken me for Caitlin in the beginning. She’d just said that at the door to get rid of her husband so she could…what? Grill me in private?
Before I could ask, she said, “There’s something between you and Jack—”
“We met at my club.”
“—and I can hear it in your voice when you say his name.” She raised both eyebrows below that short-cropped white hair, daring me to contradict her, and when I didn’t, she added, “And right when we need him here, he keeps going to Sydney and coming back a mess.”
She stared at me patiently while I digested her outburst, then she stirred sugar into her tea and took a sip. I just sat there looking at her. Coming back a mess?
I was the mess.
Not Jack.
“What sort of mess?”
She gazed at me calmly. “The sort of mess that a man would be…if he was in love.”
I shook my head, slowly at first, and then more determinedly. Lust, sure. But love? No. There was no way he could treat me the way he had if he was in love. No way.
She ignored my reaction to say, “But that’s not what we need right at this moment. We need him here with us. One hundred percent.”
I had a moment of thinking his mother was as selfish as mine—thinking her needs were more important than her child’s. But I kept that to myself and said, “I won’t be here long—”
“Because if he needs any woman…” she went on quietly, “…it wouldn’t be a city girl who expects him to follow her around like a puppy. It would be someone who came to live here with him, who put him first. Who cared about what he wanted, not just what her career demanded.”
The silence at the end of this speech was deafening, and my teacup clattered back into the saucer abruptly before I rose. But I didn’t take my eyes off her. I wasn’t giving her that satisfaction.
I might be intimidated by the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere, with two people who didn’t like me. At all! But I had my pride. I lifted my chin and said, “Pity help the woman he does marry, if this is the level of hospitality you show to a complete stranger.”
I swallowed tightly and pressed my trembling hands together at my waist. “I’ll wait in my car. If you could ask him to see me there, I’d greatly appreciate it. I can’t leave until I speak to him, and as you can imagine, I want that to be soon.”
Good day!
I didn’t say the words out loud, but I thought them as I turned and walked out of their house into the blazing sunshine. Good day Mrs Horrible, Witchy, Mean, frumpily dressed, dirty-fingernails and over-boiled tea Davenworth. I wish I’d never walked into your house.
I marched back to my car, stomping up dust on the drought-dried pathway that led to the visitors’ carpark. Then I wrenched open the door, setting off a fresh ache in my wrist as captive hot air poured out over me.
Damn it. I’d forgotten to ask for water.
No matter. I clambered in and started the engine, cranking the air conditioning up to high. Then I drove straight up to the front door—my version of You haven’t scared me away—and sat in the idling car, waiting.
Ten minutes later, I heard a whipping sound over the hum of the aircon, and I looked out through the windscreen in time to see a small helicopter clearing the house and landing behind it.
Was that Jack? Checking the cattle in a chopper? How big was their property?
I swallowed in a dry throat and told myself he’d be out in under a minute, because his mother wanted me gone just as much as I wanted to go. Horrible people.
But it was half an hour before the front door, which I’d been watching as I gnawed the edge of a fingernail, swung open.
Jack came out wearing jeans and buttoning a caramel shirt the same color as his eyes. His hair was wet, so he’d clearly taken time to shower. But did that mean he was making an effort to be presentable?
I was wondering about that when a hot breeze caught his shirt and blew it open at the bottom, where his hands hadn’t reached yet. A section of belly above his low slung jeans was exposed, and in an instant, the sexual chemistry between us that I’d been so desperate to forget, came flooding back.
I remembered sliding my hands over that belly in the shower, feeling the muscles tighten as my hand drifted down…
“Angela.”
He was standing two paces out from my closed window, his expression watchful, his shoulders stiff, as if he was girding himself for something.
I snapped out of my sexual haze and wound down my window, confronted immediately by the difference in air temperature. “Would you mind getting in for a moment? It’s hot out there.”
I was starting to feel light-headed, and knew that no matter how this went with Jack, I needed to ask him for water before I left. I had a baby inside me. I couldn’t be stupid and allow myself to get dehydrated.
He walked around the car, but as I wound up the window, I realized a waft of aftershave had come in, and it made me feel even dizzier.
He pulled open the passenger door and slid his large frame into my rented sedan. When his door closed again, I turned to face him.
“Thank you for speaking to me.” I had a planned sequence of dialogue and that was the opening line, however, my determination to make this fast and impersonal was completely derailed by my body’s reaction to him.
Having him enclosed in the car with me, close enough to smell and touch, to kiss, brought back every tingling memory of the sex we’d shared, of the orgasms his clever touch had so effortlessly ignited.
I have no idea how I was looking at him, but I could see how he was looking at me. Hungry. As if it would take only the slightest misstep/permission/demand to end up back in his arms and then in his bed.
Only, his bed was inside that house, and there was no way I was going back there. So I racked my brains to remember the second line of dialogue I’d meant to present.
Before I could find it, he reached across and touched my wrist with its paler, still sensitive skin. “The bone is fixed.”
I couldn’t even nod. His fingertip was sliding up and down the soft skin of my inner wrist, and he may as well have been running a hand down my body. It brought everything to life, throbbing, tingling, and even stinging behind my nipples.
His gaze dropped momentarily to my breasts and I wondered if my nipples were up. But then he withdrew his hand, sucked in a slow breath and brought his roving attention back to my face.
“Why are you here?” he asked, but before I could answer he said, “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me?”
Hard? My thoughts drifted off to innuendo before I reined them back in. I needed to stay on-task. “Do your parents suspect that we…” Had the best sex of our lives.
He shook his head again. “Whatever was happening between you and I—”
“Whatever is happening, you mean.” The throbbing promise of what could ignite between us again was a living entity inside the car. He couldn’t deny that. And as much as I’d come to deliver my news and go, I now perversely wanted him to acknowledge this truth.
“—it’s over.” His voice was low and determined. “I have responsibilities here, and—”
“Yes, your mother told me in no uncertain terms that you don’t need a flake li
ke me messing up your life.”
He went very still. “She wouldn’t say that.”
I shook my head. “She couched it more politely, but I distinctly remember her saying, if he needs any woman, it wouldn’t be a city girl who expects him to follow her around like a puppy.”
He stared back at me, and I felt the pulse inside me quicken, but it wasn’t anger. It was the way he was looking at me, hot and hungry. Yet his body was unnaturally stiff, as if he was holding himself in place. The combination was making me feel reckless, as if I wanted to see how far I could push him before he let go.
“I did follow you around,” he said, his jaw tensing. “I did a hundred things that were out of character—”
“You told Kamal that we had sex. Several times.” And I let myself add, “That was embarrassing.”
He nodded, not denying it, which was points in his favor. “Cocky shit was going to shut the door in my face. I had to say something to convince him to take the box—”
“So you could follow him to my apartment building.”
“Correct.” He didn’t look the slightest bit embarrassed. “I would have told lies to see you again.”
Yet now he was trying to get rid of me. “What changed?” I swallowed, not wanting to hear what he was about to say.
“I don’t have time to be selfish anymore.”
I shook my head, feeling some of his tension bleeding into me. “I’m not a mind reader.”
“So why are you here?” He was clearly not going to explain what had happened—what had changed the amazing sex we were having into him being selfish.
Before I could work out whether there was any point in asking him about that, the front door of the house, behind me, slammed.
“Jack!” His mother called, loud enough for us to hear with windows wound up and the air-conditioner on.
He looked over my shoulder and I turned in my seat to see his mother rushing down the stairs to my car. For a second I expected her to tell me to leave, then I saw the expression on her face and it made my heart lurch. It was pure panic. Nothing to do with me.
I slapped a finger on the button to wind down the window.
Husband Stay (Husband #2) Page 26