The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump

by Kandy Shepherd

  Eliza had a sense she was leaving everything that was everyday behind her as the four-by-four effortlessly climbed the steep driveway which led from the street in Port Douglas to Jake’s getaway house. His retreat, he’d called it. As she slid out of the high-set car she gaped at the magnificence of the architectural award-winning house nestled among palm trees and vivid tropical gardens. Large glossy leaves in every shade of green contrasted with riotous blooms in orange, red and yellow. She breathed in air tinged with salt, ginger and the honey-scented white flowers that grew around the pathway.

  This was his second house. No, his third. He’d told her he had a penthouse apartment in one of the most fashionable waterfront developments in Sydney, where his neighbours were celebrities and millionaires. His riverfront mansion in Brisbane was his home base. There were probably other houses too, but she’d realised early on that Jake wasn’t the kind of billionaire to boast about his wealth.

  Then Jake was kissing her again, and she didn’t think about houses or bank balances or anything other than him and the way he was making her feel. He didn’t break the kiss as he used his fingerprints on a sensor to get into the house—nothing so mundane as a key—and pushed open the door. They stumbled into the house, still kissing, laughing at their awkward progress but refusing to let go of each other.

  Once inside, Eliza registered open-plan luxury and an awesome view. Usually she was a sucker for a water view. But nothing could distract her from Jake. She’d never wanted a man more than she wanted him. Many times since the wedding in Montovia she’d wondered if she had been foolish in holding off from him. There would be no regrets this time—no ‘if only’. She didn’t want him to stop...didn’t want second thoughts to sneak into her consciousness.

  In the privacy of the house their kisses got deeper, more demanding. Caresses—she of him and he of her—got progressively more intimate. Desire, warm and urgent, thrilled through her body.

  She remembered when she’d first met Jake. He’d flown down to Sydney to be best man for Dominic at the surprise wedding Dominic had organised for Andie. Eliza had been expecting a geek. The athletic, handsome best man had been the furthest from her image of a geek as he could possibly have been. She’d been instantly smitten—then plunged into intense disappointment to find he was married.

  Now she had the green light to touch him, kiss him, undress him. No holds barred.

  ‘Bedroom?’ he murmured.

  He didn’t really have to ask. There had been no need for words for her to come to her decision of where to take this mutually explosive passion. Their kisses, their caresses, their sighs had communicated everything he needed to know.

  She had always enjoyed those scenes in movies where a kissing couple left a trail of discarded clothing behind them as they staggered together towards the bedroom. To be taking part in such a scene with Jake was like a fantasy fulfilled. A fantasy that had commenced in the ballroom of a fairytale castle in Europe and culminated in an ultra-modern house overlooking a tropical beach in far north Australia.

  They reached his bedroom, the bed set in front of a panoramic view that stretched out over the pool to the sea. Then she was on the bed with Jake, rejoicing in the intimacy, the closeness, the confidence—the wonderful new entity that was them.

  Eliza and Jake.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ELIZA DIDN’T KNOW where she was when she woke up some time later. In a super-sized bed and not alone. She blinked against the late-afternoon sunlight streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of palm trees, impossibly blue sky, the turquoise sea beyond.

  Jake’s bedroom.

  She smiled to herself with satisfaction. Remembered the trail of discarded clothes that had led to this bed. The passion. The fun. The ultimate pleasure. Again and again.

  He lay beside her on his back, long muscular limbs sprawled across the bed and taking up much of the space. The sheets were tangled around his thighs. He seemed to be in a deep sleep, his broad chest rhythmically rising and falling.

  She gazed at him for a long moment and caught her breath when she remembered what a skilled, passionate lover he’d proved to be. Her body ached in a thoroughly satisfied way.

  Beautiful wasn’t a word she would normally choose to describe a man. But he was beautiful—in an intensely masculine way. The tawny hair, green eyes—shut tight at the moment—the sculpted face, smooth tanned skin, slightly crooked nose. His beard had started to shadow his jaw, dark in contrast to the tawny blond of his hair.

  There were some things in life she would never, ever forget or regret. Making love with Jake was one of them. Heaven knew where they went from here, but even if this was all she ever had of him she would cherish the memory for the rest of her days. In her experience it was rare to want someone so intensely and then not be disappointed. Nothing about making love with Jake disappointed her.

  Eliza breathed in the spicy warm scent of him; her own classic French scent that was her personal indulgence mingled with it so that it became the scent of them. Unique, memorable, intensely personal.

  She tentatively stretched out a leg. It was starting to cramp under his much larger, heavier leg. Rolling cautiously away, so her back faced him, she wondered where the bathroom was, realised it was en suite and so not far.

  She started to edge cautiously away. Then felt a kiss on her shoulder. She went still, her head thrown back in pleasure as Jake planted a series of kisses along her shoulder to land a final one in her most sensitive spot at the top of her jaw, below her ear. She gasped. They had so quickly learned what pleased each other.

  Then a strong arm was around her, restraining her. ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said as he pulled her to him.

  She turned around to find Jake lying on his side. His body was so perfect she gasped her admiration. The sculptured pecs, the flat belly and defined six-pack, the muscular arms and legs... He was without a doubt the hottest billionaire on the planet.

  Eliza trailed her hand over the smooth skin of his chest. ‘Smokin’,’ she murmured.

  He propped himself up on his other elbow. Smiled that slow smile. ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Very okay,’ she said, returning his smile and stretching like one of her cats with remembered pleasure. ‘It was very sudden. Unexpected. So soon, I mean. But it was good we just let it happen. We didn’t get a chance to over-think things. Over-analyse how we felt, what it would mean.’

  ‘Something so spontaneous wasn’t in my dating after divorce guidebook,’ he said with that endearing grin.

  His face was handsome, but strong-jawed and tough. That smile lightened it, took away the edge of ruthlessness she sensed was not far from the surface. He couldn’t have got where he had by being Mr Nice Guy. That edge excited her.

  ‘Lucky you threw it out the window, then,’ she said. ‘I seriously wonder about the advice in that thing.’

  ‘Best thing I ever did was ignore it,’ he said.

  He kissed her lightly on the shoulder, the growth of his beard pleasantly rough. She felt a rush of intense triumph that she was here with him—finally. With her finger she traced around his face, exploring its contours, the feel of his skin, smooth in parts, rough with bristle in others. Yes, she could call this man beautiful.

  He picked up a strand of her hair and idly twisted it between his fingers. ‘What did you do to get over your divorce?’

  The question surprised her. It wasn’t something she really wanted to remember. ‘Became a hermit for a while. Like you, I felt an incredible sense of failure. I’m not used to failing at things. There was relief though, too. We got married when I was twenty-four. I’d only known him six months when he marched me down the aisle. Not actually an aisle. He’d been married before so we got hitched in the registry office.’

  ‘Why the hurry?’

  ‘He was seven years older than me
. He wanted to start a family. I should have known better than to be rushed into it. Big mistake. Turned out I didn’t know him at all. He showed himself to be quite the bully.’

  She had ended up both fearing and hating him.

  ‘Sounds like you had a lucky escape.’

  ‘I did. But it wasn’t pleasant at the time. No break-up ever is, is it? No matter the circumstances.’

  Jake nodded assent. ‘Mine dragged on too long.’

  ‘I know. I was waiting, remember.’

  ‘It got so delayed at the end because her new guy inserted himself into the picture. He introduced an element of ugliness and greed.’

  Ugliness. Eliza didn’t want to admit to Jake how scary her marriage had become. There hadn’t been physical abuse, but she had endured some serious mental abuse. When she’d found herself getting used to it, even making excuses for Craig because she’d hated to admit she’d made a mistake in marrying him, she’d known it was time to get out. The experience had wounded her and toughened her. She’d vowed never again to risk getting tied up in something as difficult to extricate herself from as marriage.

  ‘It took me a while to date again,’ she said. ‘I’d lost faith in my judgement of men. Man, did I date a few duds. And I turned off a few guys who were probably quite decent because of my interrogation technique. I found myself trying to discover anything potentially wrong about them before I even agreed to go out for a drink.’

  Jake used her hair to tug her gently towards him for a quick kiss on her nose before he released her. ‘You didn’t interrogate me,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t need to. You weren’t a potential date. When we first met at Andie and Dominic’s wedding you were married. I could chat to you without expectation or agenda. You were an attractive, interesting man but off-limits.’

  He picked up her hand, began idly stroking first her palm and then her fingers. Tingles of pleasure shot through her body right down to her toes. Nothing was off-limits now.

  ‘You were so lovely, so smart—and so accepting of me,’ he said. ‘It was a revelation. You actually seemed interested in what I had to say.’

  As his ex hadn’t been? Eliza began to see how unhappy Jake had been. Trapped in a past-its-use-by-date marriage. Bound by what seemed to have been misplaced duty and honour.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ she said. ‘You’re such a success story and only a few years older than me. I found you fascinating. And a surprise. All three Party Queens had been expecting a stereotype geek—not a guy who looked like an athlete. You weren’t arrogant either, which was another surprise.’

  ‘That was a social situation. I can be arrogant when it comes to my work and impatient with people who don’t get it.’

  His expression hardened and she saw again that underlying toughness. She imagined he would be a demanding boss.

  ‘I guess you have to be tough to have got where you are—a self-made man. Your fortune wasn’t handed to you.’

  ‘I see you’ve done your research?’

  ‘Of course.’ She’d spent hours on the internet, looking him up—not that’d she’d admit to the extent of her ‘research’. ‘There’s a lot to be found on Jake Marlowe. The media loves a rags-to-riches story.’

  ‘There were never rags. Clothes from charity shops, yes, but not rags.’ The tense lines of his mouth belied his attempt at a joke. ‘My mother did her best to make life as good for me as she could. But it wasn’t easy. Struggle Street is not where I ever wanted to stay. Or go back to. My ex never really got that.’

  ‘You married young. Why?’ There hadn’t been a lot in the online information about his early years.

  He replied without hesitation. ‘Fern was pregnant. It was the right thing to do.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t have kids?’

  ‘I don’t. She lost the baby quite early.’

  ‘That’s sad...’ Her voice trailed away. Very sad. She would not—could not—reveal how very sad the thought made her. How her heart shrank a little every time she thought about having kids.

  ‘The pregnancy was an accident.’

  ‘Not a ploy to force your hand in marriage?’ She had always found the ‘oldest trick in the book’ to be despicable.

  ‘No. We’d been together off and on since my last year of high school. Marriage was the next step. The pregnancy just hurried things along. Looking back on it, though, I can see if she hadn’t got pregnant we might not have ended up married. It was right on the cusp, when everything was changing. Things were starting to take off in a big way for the company Dominic and I had started.’

  ‘You didn’t try for a baby again?’

  ‘Fern didn’t want kids. Felt the planet was already over-populated. That it was irresponsible to have children.’

  ‘And you?’ She held her breath for his answer.

  During her infrequent forays into dating she’d found the children issue became urgent for thirty-somethings. For women there was the very real fact of declining fertility. And men like her ex thought they had biological clocks too. Craig had worried about being an old dad. He’d been obsessed with being able to play active sports with his kids. Boys, of course, in particular. Having come from a farming family, where boys had been valued more than girls, that had always rankled with her.

  Jake’s jaw had set and she could see the hard-headed businessman under the charming exterior.

  ‘I’ve never wanted to have children. My ex and I were in agreement about not wanting kids.’

  ‘What about in the future?’

  He shook his head. ‘I won’t change my mind. I don’t want to be a father. Ever.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, absorbing what he meant. What it meant to her. It was something she didn’t want to share with him at this stage. She might be out of here this afternoon and never see him again.

  ‘My support group devoted a lot of time to warnings about women who might try and trap a wealthy, newly single guy into marriage by getting pregnant,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t it take two to get a woman pregnant?’

  ‘The odds can be unfairly stacked when one half of the equation lies about using contraception.’

  Eliza pulled a face. ‘Those poor old gold-diggers again. I don’t know any woman I could label as a gold-digger, and we do parties through all echelons of Sydney society. Are there really legions of women ready to trap men into marriage by getting pregnant?’

  ‘I don’t know about legions, but they definitely exist. The other guys in that group were proof of that. It can be a real problem for rich men. A baby means lifetime child support—that’s a guaranteed income for a certain type of woman.’

  ‘But surely—’

  Jake put up a hand at her protest. ‘Hear me out. Some of those men were targeted when they were most vulnerable. It’s good to be forewarned. I certainly wouldn’t want to find myself caught in a trap like that.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about me,’ she said. In light of this conversation, she had to tell him. ‘I can’t—’

  He put a finger over her mouth. She took it between her teeth and gently nipped it.

  ‘Be assured I don’t think of you like that,’ he said. ‘Your fierce independence is one of the things I like about you.’

  ‘Seriously, Jake. Listen to me. I wouldn’t be able to hold you to ransom with a pregnancy because...because...’ How she hated admitting to her failure to be able to fulfil a woman’s deepest biological purpose. ‘I...I can’t have children.’

  He stilled. ‘Eliza, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t know. It’s not something I blurt out too often.’ She hated to be defined by her infertility. Hated to be pitied. Poor Eliza—you know she can’t have kids?

  ‘How? Why?’

  ‘I had a ruptured appendix when
I was twelve years old. No one took it too seriously at first. They put my tummy pains down to something I ate. Or puberty. But the pain got worse. By the time they got me to hospital—remember we lived a long way from the nearest town—the appendix had burst and septicaemia had set in.’

  Jake took her hand, gripped it tight. ‘Eliza, I’m so sorry. Couldn’t the doctors have done something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was twelve and very ill. Turned out I was lucky to be alive. Unfortunately no one told me, or my parents, what damage it had done to my reproductive system—the potential for scar tissue on the fallopian tubes. I wasn’t aware of the problem until I tried to have a baby and couldn’t fall pregnant. Only then was I told that infertility is a not uncommon side effect of a burst appendix.’

  He frowned. ‘I really don’t know what to say.’

  ‘What can you say? Don’t try. You can see why I don’t like to talk about it.’

  ‘You said your ex wanted to start a family? Is that why you split?’

  ‘In part, yes. He was already over thirty and he really wanted to have kids. His own kids. Adoption wasn’t an option for him. I wanted children too, though probably later rather than sooner. I never thought I wouldn’t be able to have a baby. I always believed I would be a mother. And one day a grandmother. Even a great-grandmother. I’ll miss out on all of that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Eliza,’ he said again.

  She couldn’t admit to him—to anyone—her deep, underlying sense of failure as a woman. How she grieved the loss of her dream of being a mother, which had died when the truth of her infertility had been forced into her face with the results of scans and X-rays.

  ‘They don’t test you until after a year of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant,’ she said. ‘Then the tests take a while. My ex couldn’t deal with it. By that stage he thought he’d invested enough time in me.’

  Jake spat out a number of choice names for her ex. Eliza didn’t contradict him.

  ‘By that stage he’d proved what a dreadful, controlling man he was and I was glad to be rid of him. Still, my sense of failure was multiplied by his reaction. He actually used the word “barren” at one stage. How old-fashioned was that?’