by Trish Morey; Day Leclaire; Natalie Anderson; Brenda Jackson; Ann Voss Peterson
She shivered, the temperature turning noticeably cooler as clouds scudded over the sun. But even the cooler air wasn’t enough to extinguish the tiny flickering flame his words had sparked inside her. He’d hated her once, as she’d known, but he didn’t hate her now. And out of the firestorm of accusation and bitter emotion that had accompanied their first meeting had finally emerged a kernel of respect.
‘You’re nothing like she was.’
His words played over and over in her mind. If she didn’t know how beautiful Carla had been, how perfect for Dominic she looked, she might almost have believed that was a good thing.
CHAPTER NINE
BONDING with the baby or bonding with Angelina? Dominic drove home not sure what had prompted his need to reveal so much about himself and his past, only that he knew to trust his gut sometimes, even when his head questioned his sanity. Besides, he owed her something for the assumptions he’d made when they’d met. She deserved at least some kind of explanation for that.
He came home from work the next day, a package under his arm. He found Angelina with Rosa in the kitchen, just as he’d suspected, a pile of sliced mushrooms on the bench between them with two big pots in readiness on the stove. It was a picture of domesticity he was still having trouble coming to terms with. The kitchen had been one of Carla’s least favourite places.
‘Good day?’ he asked, helping himself to a slice of foccacia and dipping it into the dish of oil and balsamic vinegar alongside.
Angie looked up across the table and smiled. ‘Rosa’s teaching me how to make risotto. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of this cooking thing.’
‘In fact, she’s so good,’ Rosa added, giving her wooden spoon a flourish, ‘I’m thinking of signing her up for the next round of MasterChef.’
‘Hey,’ Angelina protested, giving the older woman a playful smack on the arm with her own wooden spoon. ‘That was supposed to be a secret!’ Rosa laughed and dodged away.
He smiled, envying the easy camaraderie the two women had found in each other’s company and the laughs that seemed to come so easily between them. The house felt a better place somehow, more alive since Angelina had arrived, especially lately. Definitely a stark contrast to the drama and tension-filled days that had been so much the hallmark of Carla’s days here.
And Angelina herself had changed. Today she looked so happy, her eyes bright and bubbly, her colour high. She left her stool to check the pot on the stove and he realised she was wearing one of Rosa’s pinnies again with just shorts and a strappy top underneath. He enjoyed the view from the back and that long stretch of legs, but then she turned and he could see nothing but white pinny and honey-gold limbs and he imagined it was how she would look if she was wearing nothing at all underneath.
Suddenly the pots weren’t the only things simmering. He turned away, looking for something else to focus on, wondering what the hell was in the package under his arm until he remembered his plan. And in order to carry out that plan, the last thing he needed was to start imagining Angelina naked. Certainly not after that kiss and discovering how good she tasted.
It was the baby he was supposed to be bonding with, after all.
He grabbed a cold beer from the drinks fridge, willing its coolness south. ‘I’ll be down in the workshop if you need me. And Angelina?’ She looked up, all blue-eyed innocence in a pinny he was having far less innocent thoughts about. ‘I’ve got something to show you after dinner.’
He sat on the stool, his beer growing warm, Poppa’s tools laid out on the bench before him. The wood was hard. The piece was challenging. But it was in there, he knew. And there was no way he wasn’t going to find it.
‘Mind if I join you?’ She’d disappeared after dinner while he’d gone to check the markets, but Dominic found her in the ballroom of all places, with a chair pulled up close to a set of French windows and a pile of books stacked next to her, an open book on her lap. ‘What are you doing? And why here?’
‘I like it here,’ she answered, sliding a bookmark between the pages and folding shut the book and inviting him to pull up a chair. ‘I can see the sea but not burn to a crisp or get distracted by Sven the pool boy.’
He frowned. ‘Since when did we have a pool boy called Sven?’
This time she did smile. ‘That’s my fantasy. You get your own.’ He liked the smile. He liked that for once it was directed at him, even if she was laughing at him at the same time.
He glanced at the cover of the book she was reading, his eyes scanning the titles of the others in her pile. He felt himself frown. ‘Those are all birthing books.’
‘Go figure. I can’t imagine why.’ Her words were tart but there was another smile lurking there behind her own mock frown, he was convinced of it.
‘Do you really need them, though?’
She blinked. ‘I am having a baby, Dominic, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Sure. But… Don’t you… Surely… I mean, I didn’t think you’d actually want to have it, if you know what I mean.’
She blinked again, shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’m following you. I just want to be prepared for what’s going to happen.’
He finally pulled over a chair and sat down, putting down the package he’d brought with him while he ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. ‘But why put yourself through the actual birth? Why go through all that pain and discomfort?’
‘Because that’s how women have babies?’
He shook his head; it made no sense to him. ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a Caesarean or something, though? So at least you can get organised?’
‘You imagine Caesareans come without pain and discomfort?’
‘But why do that to yourself?’ God, Carla had been talking Caesarean from day one and that had been for her own child. A planned caesar, a personal trainer to get her back into shape, a plastic surgeon for the bits that refused to be trained. She’d had it all worked out. It wasn’t as if he necessarily objected, but he just didn’t understand. ‘It’s not like it’s even your baby.’
She looked out to sea, at the rolling swell and the shifting diamonds sprinkled upon the surface of the water by the sun. No. It wasn’t her baby. It had never been her baby.
But the more her body changed and the longer she harboured this other tiny life, the more she felt herself wishing that things could be different. ‘I know,’ she said on a sigh. ‘Why don’t we talk to the doctors about that? I just don’t want to take any unnecessary risks with this child, whoever it belongs to. Okay?’
He’d upset her, he could tell, but for the life of him, he couldn’t work out why. He’d thought he was being considerate, thinking about her. He didn’t expect her to go through hell to have his baby.
‘Why did you come looking for me?’
‘Oh.’ He retrieved the parcel by his side, pulled out a stash of picture books. ‘I went to a bookshop today. I wanted to get something I could read to the baby. To get it used to my voice before it’s born. They say it can hear from a few months, maybe not quite yet, but given you are leaving, I should do something to bond with this child.’
God—she breathed in deep—did he have to remind her with every word, with every sentence? But he was right. ‘That’s a good idea. What did you get?’
He flicked through some of the titles. Most she recognised as classics. She stopped him when he got to Possum Magic. The Mem Fox book had been a favourite of hers when she was a child. She remembered her mother reading it to her at bed time. ‘That one,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should start with that one.’
He looked a little uncertain, as if wondering if his idea was a mistake, so she just stared out of the windows so he wouldn’t feel self-conscious and left it up to him.
‘Once upon a time,’ she heard, and already she was smiling. She knew the book practically by heart. She loved the story of Grandma Poss and Hush and the bush magic that made Hush invisible and the quest to make him visible again. She’d loved it when her mother had re
ad it at bed time. And now, hearing the story come to life in Dominic’s deep tones, she loved it even more.
This baby would so love bed times, she was sure. All too soon it was over. He finished the story, closed the book. ‘Do you think it would be all right to do another one?’
She smiled and sat back in her chair and listened to him read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Time for Bed, thinking she’d been so very wrong about Mr Dominic Pirelli and about how he cared about nothing except money, and how he might make an excellent father indeed.
And how this child might end up being so very, very lucky…
She felt the brush of something soft against her forehead. She felt the sway of movement. She stirred, wondering where she was, wondering why she felt so warm and safe when the ground was shifting below her.
And then she came to, to find herself in his arms. He smiled down at her. ‘You fell asleep. Apparently, I tell a pretty effective bed time story.’
Half-asleep, she smiled back up at him, trying not to think too hard about how warm his body felt against her and how good it felt to be in his arms. ‘You’ll make one hell of a father.’
‘You missed the last story,’ he told her as he entered her suite.
‘Which one was that?’ She was sure she’d heard all of Time for Bed.
He laid her amongst the cloud-soft covers of her bed, kissed her softly on her brow. ‘Tucking Mummy In.’
They settled into somewhat of a routine after that. Dominic would leave early in the morning for the office. Angelina would walk along the cliff tops or swim in the pool and then she’d read or help Rosa during the day. And after dinner Dominic would sit with Angelina and read to his baby. Sometimes picture books, sometimes longer chapter books, and she would sit and get lulled to sleep herself by the sound of his deep voice.
What she wouldn’t give to be there to see this child listening to its father’s voice, to see its tiny eyelids droop before it drifted into sleep.
But before she could get maudlin about what she would miss, the delivery van from the baby shop arrived, a truckload of purchases unloaded, including all the paint and paper she’d need to decorate the nursery.
And Angie put on overalls and headed for the nursery, amused by her own cunning. He wouldn’t let her get a real job? Too bad. She’d make this one real in that case.
Rosa had arranged for the furniture to be removed from a small room nearest the master suite. The rest of it was up to Angie. It was the perfect room, with its own sitting room that would make a great play room, they’d all decided. Angie tried her hardest to stifle a concern that it was too far away from Rosa’s room in case the baby cried, but Rosa calmly reminded her of the baby monitors they’d ordered and said it would all work out fine, so who was she to argue? Her job was to create the child a nursery.
Which was exactly what she was doing.
She spent the days cleaning the walls; she scrubbed the skirtings free of dust where they’d been hidden behind furniture. And then she prepped and painted.
The guaranteed toxic-free baby-safe paint went on like a dream. The colours were superb and with each layer she felt she was creating something special. This baby would have the best nursery ever.
By the time Dominic came home each night, she would usually be found helping Rosa in the kitchen, baking bread or running fresh sheets of pasta through a machine to make fettucine.
‘The decorators are taking a while,’ he’d say, looking into pots and pinching an olive from the salad. And she’d murmur vaguely about paint colours with the wrong tint and conflicting jobs but they’d promised they’d be finished soon and Dominic would disappear a while before dinner down to the workshop.
‘What does he do down there?’ she asked Rosa one night when he’d once again taken himself off to the depths and she was busy pulling off basil leaves to dress the tomato and bocconcini salad. ‘Tinker with those cars he keeps down there?’
The older woman shrugged and passed her the olive oil. ‘Before you came he always used to disappear into his office. Now it’s the garage.’
Before she came? A shiver went down her spine.
‘Really? That’s odd.’
Rosa nodded. ‘And you know something else? Dominic never ventured into the kitchen before, except to say he was home.’ She threw Angie a look that was loaded with meaning. ‘He never dropped in to see what I was doing or to pick up a taste. Now what do you think is going on there?’
Angie didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to think too much about it.
But as she sprinkled oil over the top of the salad and ground on black pepper, she couldn’t help but think about it.
Maybe whatever he was doing downstairs was giving his appetite an edge?
Maybe he was checking up on her, wanting to be sure she was taking good care of his child? Now that one did make sense.
Or maybe…
Oh, no. She would not go anywhere near that maybe. To entertain that maybe was to invite despair and doom and utter humiliation on herself. There was no way he was attracted to her. No way he visited the kitchen for the pleasure of her company. The kiss had been a mistake. He’d said so. She’d agreed. It wouldn’t happen again and it hadn’t.
Not that knowing that hadn’t stopped her dreaming of it every night.
She gasped when she felt it, so deep in thought that the tiny flutter caught her unawares.
‘What is it?’ said Rosa. ‘Are you all right?’
And a smile found its way to her lips, a sense of wonderment overwhelming her as her palm cupped her bump. ‘I felt it, Rosa. I felt it moving. It must still just be tiny but I felt it move.’
Rosa squeezed her shoulders in a hug. ‘It is a feeling like no other. Your baby is playing. And just wait until he starts with the football. Then you will know you are alive.’
‘I never realised.’ she whispered, still awed by the concept of this tiny baby active inside her. Never realised the magnitude of the emotions she would feel, never realised the sheer wonder at the miracle that was taking place inside her, part of her but not belonging.
Never realised that she would feel this bond with a child that wasn’t hers.
And it terrified her.
‘I’m flying to Auckland tomorrow,’ he revealed a couple of nights later as Rosa served dinner. The instructions were ostensibly meant for Rosa’s planning purposes but Angie hung on to every word. ‘I’ll be there a week.’
So long…
Then again, an entire week? She could put in longer days and have the nursery finished by then. The furniture could be in place. She could show him what she’d done.
She couldn’t wait to show him what she’d done.
‘Simone’s coming with me this time—a couple of functions I have to attend. All good PR. But she won’t be around if you need to contact me urgently so best to call me direct.’
Rosa flashed a glance in Angie’s direction but Angie just smiled, doing her level best to look unconcerned, wondering where this sudden coiling thread of jealousy had come from. And why should she feel jealous?
Simone was his beautiful, elegant PA while Angie was doing nothing more than carrying his child. She was an incubator. She had no claims on Dominic. It wasn’t as if she had any right to feel jealous of the woman spending days and nights away with the father of her child. Not when she was his PA, for heaven’s sake!
She would miss him because of the effort he was making with his baby. She would miss him because his baby would no doubt miss him.
It was hardly as if she were in love with him.
Liar, a small voice sounded.
She couldn’t be in love with him.
Get used to it, she heard the voice say. Why else are you so jealous?
She hated that voice. Hated what it was telling her. Hated more than anything that she suspected it was right.
She sniffed. He was taking Simone away with him. Why shouldn’t she be jealous?
The woman was beautiful. Slee
k, dark-haired and gorgeous, just like his first wife. How could he not be attracted to her? How could he not choose her to be his life partner?
And now they had a week away together. Damn it all, she didn’t want Dominic to marry someone like Simone. He had a baby to think about—a tiny baby who would need a mother. This baby. And Simone had struck her as someone as maternal as a viper. Surely he could find someone altogether more… nurturing?
She heard her name. Looked around to see piercing dark eyes following her fork, which was tracking idly around the edge of her spaghetti. ‘You’re not eating.’ He was watching her carefully. Closely.
She pushed the bowl away. ‘I’m not very hungry.’
His frown deepened. ‘You’re not sick?’
Heart-sick. Devastated. Green with jealousy. And shell-shocked beyond belief. ‘I’m fine.’
If he believed her it didn’t show. ‘So your scan. I won’t miss it?’
She searched through her shattered thoughts for his meaning, remembering the appointment for her twenty-week scan. Twenty weeks already. Which meant twenty weeks until the birth. Twenty weeks until it was time for her to leave. So soon. She shook her head. ‘It’s not till the twenty-first. But I wasn’t expecting you to come with me.’
The look he sent her was one hundred per cent ownership, one hundred per cent proprietorial, and all clad in black-as-night eyes that she would miss more than she wanted to admit when she was gone. ‘I’ll be there.’
Auckland was a grind. Normally he thrived on the cut and thrust of doing business face to face. Normally he relished the challenge of negotiating and securing a deal. But here he’d endured meetings that had gone around and around in circles; he’d spent hours locked away in offices in negotiations and he’d suffered long lunches and long dinners, where Simone had been the only person who understood. Stoic Simone who had stayed by his side and said all the right things and smiled to all the right people and laughed at all the lame jokes.