The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump

by Kandy Shepherd

  The irony of it didn’t escape her. They knew each other well enough to make a baby. Not well enough to spend their lives together.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t do it, Jake.’

  The first time she’d married for love—or what she’d thought was love—and it had been a disaster. Why would marrying for less than love be any better? Marrying someone she’d known for such a short time? An even shorter time than she’d known her ex.

  ‘Your pregnancy changes everything,’ Jake said. His face was set in severe lines.

  ‘It does. But not in that way.’

  ‘You’re having a baby. My baby. I want to marry you.’

  ‘Why? For my reputation? Because of the media?’

  There was a long pause before he spoke. ‘To give the baby a father,’ he said. ‘The baby deserves to have two parents.’

  That was the last reason she would have anticipated from him and it took her aback for a moment. She put her hand to her heart to try and slow its sudden racing. ‘Jake, that’s honourable of you. But it’s not necessary for you to marry me. If you want to be involved with the baby I’m happy—’

  ‘I want the baby to have my name,’ he said. ‘And a good life.’

  ‘I can give him or her a good life. You don’t have to do this. We knew marriage wasn’t an option for us.’

  ‘It’s important to me, Eliza.’

  She noticed his fists, clenched by his sides. The tension in his voice. There was something more here—something that belied the straightforwardness of his words.

  ‘You married your ex-wife because she was pregnant,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect that. Really I don’t. Please stop pacing the room like a caged lion.’

  Her knees felt suddenly too weak to support her. She wanted to collapse back onto the bed. Instead she sat down slowly, controlled, suddenly fearing to show any weakness. Jake was a man used to getting what he wanted. Now it seemed he wanted her. Correction. He wanted her for the baby she was carrying. His baby.

  ‘Why, Jake? You said you never wanted to be a father. Why this sudden interest?’

  Jake sat down on the bed beside her, as far away from her as he could without colliding with the bedhead. He braced both hands on his knees. Overlying Eliza’s nervousness was a pang of mingled longing and regret. Back in Port Douglas they wouldn’t have been sitting side by side on a bed, being careful not to touch. They would have been making love by now, lost in a breathtaking world of intimacy and mutual pleasure. Lovemaking that had created a miracle baby.

  ‘Seeing the baby on the ultrasound affected me yesterday,’ he said now. ‘The pregnancy which, up until then had been an abstract thing, became very real for me.’

  Eliza noticed how weary he looked, with shadows under his eyes, lines she hadn’t noticed before etched by his mouth. She wondered how much sleep he’d had last night. Had he been awake half the night, wrangling with the dilemma she had presented him with by unexpectedly bearing his baby?

  ‘It affected me too.’

  She remembered she had been so overcome that she had gripped his hand—so tightly it must have hurt him. Then she had intercepted a smiling glance from the nurse. She and Jake must have looked quite the proud parents-to-be. If only that sweet nurse had known the less than romantic truth.

  ‘You didn’t see a scan when your ex—Fern—was pregnant?’ she asked Jake.

  ‘She didn’t believe in medical intervention of any kind.’

  ‘But an ultrasound isn’t like an X-ray. It’s safe and—’

  ‘I know that. But that’s beside the point. The point is I saw a little person yesterday. A tiny baby who is going to grow up to be a boy, like I was, or a girl like you were. We didn’t plan it. We didn’t want—’

  She put up a hand in a halt sign, noticed her hand wasn’t quite steady. ‘Stop right there. You mightn’t want it—I mean him or her... I hate calling my baby “it”—but I do want him or her. Very much.’

  ‘I’m aware of how much you want the baby. Of the tragedy it was for you to discover you couldn’t conceive. But the fact is I didn’t want children. I would never have chosen to embark on a pregnancy with you. You know that.’

  His words stung. Not just because of his rejection of her but because of her baby, unwanted by its father. No way would she have chosen a man she scarcely knew—a man who didn’t want kids—as the father of her baby.

  ‘I know we had a deal for four days of no-strings fun,’ she said. ‘Mother Nature had other ideas. Trust me—I wouldn’t have chosen to have a child this way either.’

  He indicated her bump. ‘This is no longer just about me or about you; it’s about another person at the start of life. And it’s my responsibility. This child deserves a better life than you can give it on your own.’

  If that wasn’t an insult from an arrogant billionaire, she didn’t know what was.

  She forced herself to sound calm and reasonable. ‘Jake, I might not be as wealthy as you, but I can give my child a more than decent life, thank you very much. I’m hardly a pauper.’

  ‘Don’t delude yourself, Eliza. You can’t give it anything like what I have the resources to provide.’

  Perspiration beaded on her forehead and she had to clasp her hands to stop them from trembling. It wasn’t just that she was still feeling weak. She had a sudden, horrible premonition that she was preparing to do battle for her own child.

  So quickly this had turned adversarial. From a proposal to a stand-off. She couldn’t help but think how different this would be if she and Jake were together on this. As together and in tune as they had been in bed. Instead they were sitting here, apart on the bed, glaring at each other—she the mother, he the inadvertent sperm donor who wanted to take things further than he had any right to do.

  ‘I can—and will—give this child a good life on my own,’ she said. ‘He or she will have everything they need.’

  Jake was so wealthy. He could buy anything he wanted. What was he capable of doing if he wanted to take her child from her?

  ‘Except its father’s name,’ he said.

  Eliza was taken aback. She’d expected him to talk about private schooling, a mansion, travel, the best of everything as far as material goods went. Not the one intangible thing she could not provide.

  ‘Is that what this is about?’ she said. ‘Some patriarchal thing?’

  ‘What is that meant to mean?’ He stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns. ‘This is about making my child legitimate. Giving it its rightful place in the world.’

  My child. How quickly he had claimed her baby as his own.

  ‘Legitimate? What does that mean these days?’ she asked.

  He gave a short, sharp bark of laughter she’d never heard from him before. ‘I went through hell as a kid because I was illegitimate. Life for a boy with no father was no fun at all.’ His mouth set in a grim line.

  ‘That was thirty years ago, Jake,’ she said, trying not to sound combative about an issue that was obviously sensitive for him. ‘Attitudes have changed now.’

  ‘Have they really? I wonder...I walked the walk. Not just the bullying from the kids, but the sneering from the adults towards my mother, the insensitivity of the schoolteachers. Father’s Day at school was the worst day of the year. The kids all making cards and gifts for their dads... Me with no one. I don’t want to risk putting my child through what I went through.’

  He traced the slight crookedness of his nose with his index finger. The imperfection only made him more handsome, Eliza had always thought.

  ‘Surely it wasn’t such a stigma then?’ she asked.

  He scowled. ‘You have no idea, do you?’ he said. ‘Born into a family with a father who provided for you. Who gave you his name. His protection.’

  Eliza felt this was spiralling away from her
. Into something so much deeper than she’d realised. ‘No, I don’t. Have any idea, I mean.’

  One of her first memories was of her father lifting her for the first time up onto a horse’s back, with big, gentle hands. How proud he’d been of her fearlessness. No matter what had come afterwards, she had that. Other scenes of her father and her with their beloved horses jostled against the edges of her memory.

  Jake’s face was set into such grim lines he almost looked ugly. ‘Every time I got called the B-word I had to answer the insult with my fists. My mother cried the first time I came home with a broken nose. She soon ran out of tears. Until the day I got big enough to deliver some broken noses of my own.’

  Eliza shuddered at the aggression in his voice, but at the same time her heart went out to that little boy. ‘I didn’t realise how bad it was not to have a dad at home.’

  ‘It’s a huge, aching gap.’

  His green eyes were clouded with a sadness that tore at her.

  ‘Not one I want my own child to fall into.’

  ‘Why wasn’t your father around?’

  ‘Because he was a selfish pig of a man who denied my existence. Is that a good enough answer?’

  The bitterness in his voice shocked Eliza. She imagined a dear little boy, with a shock of blond hair and green eyes, suffering a pain more intense than that of any broken nose. She yearned to comfort him but didn’t know what she could say about such a deep-seated hurt. At the same time she had to hold back on her feelings of sympathy when it came to Jake. She had to be on top of her game if Jake was going to get tough.

  He sighed. Possibly he didn’t realise the depth of anguish in that sigh.

  She couldn’t stop herself from placing her hand over his. ‘I’m sorry, Jake. It was his loss.’

  He nodded a silent acknowledgment.

  Back in Port Douglas she had yearned for Jake to share his deeper side with her. Now she’d been tossed into its dark depths and she felt she was drowning in a sea of hurts and secrets, pulled every which way by conflicting currents. On top of her nausea, and her worries about handling life as a single mother, she wasn’t sure she had the emotional fortitude to deal with this.

  ‘Do you know anything about your father?’

  About the man who was, she realised with a shock, her unborn child’s grandfather. Jake’s mother would be his or her grandmother. Through their son or daughter she and Jake would be connected for the rest of their lives—whether they wanted to be or not.

  ‘It’s a short, ugly story,’ he said, his mouth a grim line. ‘My mother was a trainee nurse at a big Brisbane training hospital. She was very pretty and very naïve. He was a brilliant, handsome doctor and she fell for him. She didn’t know he was engaged to a girl from a wealthy family. He seduced her. She fell pregnant. He didn’t want to know about it. She got booted out of her job in disgrace and slunk home to her parents at the Gold Coast.’

  The father handsome, the mother pretty... Both obviously intelligent... For the first time a thought flashed through Eliza’s head. Would the baby look like her or like Jake? Be as smart? It wasn’t speculation she felt she could share with him.

  ‘That’s the end of it?’ she said. ‘What about child support?’

  ‘Not a cent. He was tricky. My mother’s family couldn’t afford lawyers. She wanted nothing to do with him. Just to get on with her life. My grandparents helped raise me, though they didn’t have much. It was a struggle.’

  Poor little Jake. Imagine growing up with that as his heritage. Before the drought her parents had loved to tell the story of how they had met at an agricultural show—her dad competing in the Western riding, her mum winning ribbons for her scones and fruitcake. She wondered if they remembered it now. Would her child want to know how she and his or her dad had met? How would she explain why they weren’t together?

  ‘You never met him?’ she asked.

  ‘As a child, no.’ Jake’s mouth curled with contempt. ‘But when media reports started appearing on the “young genius” who’d become a billionaire, he came sniffing around, looking for his long-lost son.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Kicked him to the kerb—like he’d sent my mother packing.’

  Eliza shuddered at the strength of vengeful satisfaction in his voice. Jake would make a formidable enemy if crossed.

  * * *

  Jake got up from the bed. It was hard to think straight, sitting so close to Eliza She looked so wan and frail, somehow even more beautiful. Her usual sweet, floral scent had a sharp overtone of hospital from the bandage on her hand, which reminded him of what she had been through. He would never forget that terrifying moment when he’d thought she had stopped breathing.

  He fought a powerful impulse to fold her in his arms and hold her close. She needed him, and yet he couldn’t seem to make her see that. He wanted to look after her. Make sure she and the baby had everything they needed. If his own father had looked after his mother the way he wanted to look after Eliza, how different his life might have been. Yet he sensed a battle on his hands even to get access to his child.

  He hadn’t intended to confide in her about his father. Next thing he’d be spilling the details of his criminal record. Of his darkest day of despair when he’d thought he couldn’t endure another minute of his crappy life. But he’d hoped telling her something of his past might make her more amenable to the idea of getting married to give their child a name.

  ‘I’m asking you again to marry me, Eliza. Before the baby is born. So it—’

  ‘Can you please not call the baby it? Try he or she. This is a little person we’re talking about here. I thought you got that?’

  He felt safer calling the baby it. Calling it he or she made it seem too real. And the more real it seemed, the more he would get attached. And he couldn’t let himself get too attached if Eliza was going to keep the baby from him.

  He didn’t know a lot about custody arrangements for a child with single parents—though he suspected he was soon to know a whole lot more. But he doubted the courts were much inclined to give custody of a newborn to anyone other than its mother. No matter how much money he threw at the best possible legal representation. Once it got a little older that would be a different matter. His child would not grow up without a father the way he had.

  ‘I want you to marry me before the baby is born so he or she is legitimate,’ he said.

  She glared at him. ‘Jake, I’ve told you I don’t want to get married. To you or to anyone else. And if I did it would be because I was in love with my husband-to-be.’

  Jake gritted his teeth. He had married before for love and look where it had got him. ‘That sounds very idealistic, Eliza. But there can be pragmatic reasons to marry, too. There have been throughout history. To secure alliances or fortunes. Or to gain property or close a business deal. Or to legitimise a child.’

  Slowly she shook her head. A lock of her hair fell across her eyes. She needed a haircut. She’d obviously been neglecting herself. Why couldn’t she see that she needed someone to look after her? Vulnerable. That was what Andie had called her. Yet Eliza just didn’t seem to see it.

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wish you could hear how you sound, Jake. Cold. Ruthless. This isn’t a business deal we’re brokering. It’s our lives. You. Me. A loveless marriage.’

  ‘A way to ensure our child is legitimate.’

  ‘What about a way to have a woman squirming under a man’s thumb? That was my experience of marriage. And I have no desire to experience it again.’

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you squirming. Or under my thumb.’ Jake held up his fingers in a fist, his thumb to the side. ‘See? It’s not nearly large enough to hold you down.’

  It was a feeble attempt at levity and he knew it. But this was the most difficult conversation he had ever had.
The stakes were so much higher than in even the most lucrative of potential business deals.

  ‘I don’t know whether to take that as an insult or not. I’m not that big.’

  ‘No, you’re not. In fact you’re not big enough. You’ve lost weight, Eliza. You need to gain it. I can look after you as well as the baby.’

  Her chin lifted in the stubborn way he was beginning to recognise.

  ‘I don’t want to be looked after. I can look after both myself and my baby on my own. You can see him or her, play a role in their life. But I most certainly don’t want to marry you.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake, Eliza. Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?’

  ‘You can’t force me to marry you, Jake.’

  ‘But I can make life so much easier for you if you do,’ he said.

  ‘Love is the only reason to marry. But love hasn’t entered the equation for us. For that reason alone, I can’t marry you.’

  ‘That’s your final word?’

  She nodded.

  He got up. ‘Then you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.’

  Eliza’s already pale face drained of every remaining scrap of colour. ‘What?’

  She leapt up from the bed, had to steady herself as she seemed to rock on her feet as if she were dizzy. But she pushed aside his steadying hand and glared at him.

  ‘You heard me,’ he said. ‘I intend to seek custody.’

  ‘You can’t have custody over an unborn child.’ Her voice was high and strained.

  ‘You’re about to see what I can do,’ he said.

  He turned on his heel, strode to the top of the stairs. Flimsy stairs. Too dangerous. She couldn’t bring up a child in this house. He ignored the inner voice that told him this house was a hundred times safer and nicer than the welfare housing apartment he’d grown up in. Nothing but the best for his child.

  She put up her hand in a feeble attempt to stop him. ‘Jake. You can’t go.’

  ‘I’m gone, Eliza. I suggest you get back to bed and rest. An agency nurse will be arriving in an hour. I’ve employed her to look after you for the next three days, as per doctor’s orders. I suggest you let her in and allow her to care for you. Otherwise you might end up back in hospital.’