The Baby Deal

by Alison Kelly

  He slunk lower in the seat, angling himself so he could look directly at Josh. ‘Now let’s talk about you. One day, after not having so much as phoned since the wedding, you turn up out of the blue at the garage. I figure that with it being the school break and your mother still sulking over in Europe you were at a loose end and decided to amuse yourself by checking out how your socialite sister was coping with life on the wrong side of the tracks… How am I doing with my take on things so far?’

  Josh shrugged, looking uneasy. ‘Just go on.’

  ‘Okay, then… Well, you turn up at the garage and find not only is your once prissy sister pumping gas, but yourself commandeered into action too. You’ve got a strong enough interest in cars not to be bored and you’ve got nothing better to do, so you think, What the hell? One day won’t kill me.

  ‘Surprisingly, though, you find yourself having fun. You enjoy the hit-and-miss informality of the dinner we shared that night and so you offer to back up for another day of the same… You keep backing up, even sleeping on our sofa, until even Savvy and all her friends start accepting you for just being Josh, A.J.’s kid brother, as opposed to Joshua Vaughan, the kid who’s got everything they haven’t.

  ‘Then suddenly the vacation ends and you’re back in that swank boarding-school of yours and you should be happy, but damn! You’re missing that sofa! You’re missing the inane jokes we toss around over the best lasagne this side of Italy. So you start coming back to Vaughan’s Landing every weekend and even bring friends with you. But not to spend time lazing around the Olympic-size pool at your ancestral home or stirring up the locals by cruising town with a carload of your wealthy mates… No, you come home to pump gas, hang out with kids from the local high school and sleep on a sofa.

  ‘You come home,’ Reb repeated. ‘Because for the first time in eighteen years you feel like you’ve got a family who cares about you to come home to.’

  Josh raked his fingers through hair Reb figured had missed at least two of his usual three-figure haircuts. ‘A family who cares about you doesn’t say what A.J. did.’

  ‘Everyone makes mistakes, mate. A.J.’s only one is that, having realised the value of the family bond that’s grown between the four of us, she’s desperate to hang onto it. But she’s scared that if Savvy’s crush on you gets out of hand then things will start falling apart in the future. So those novice-level, newly developed maternal instincts of hers took over and she jumped in and tried to avert that happening.’ He paused to give the kid an assessing look.

  ‘She loves you, Josh, but she’s grown to love Savvy too. She doesn’t want either of you to be hurt, but right now she sees Savvy as being the more naive and vulnerable.

  ‘Facts, Josh… Something like eighty-five per cent of girls from this part of town are pregnant before their eighteenth birthday! Six girls out of Savvy’s grade at school this year are already pregnant and one, at fifteen, has a toddler!’

  ‘Fact, Reb!’ he shot back. ‘I’m not responsible!’

  The comment caught him off guard.

  ‘You and A.J. might’ve got caught out, but I haven’t. What’s more, I’m not such a lust-crazed idiot that I go after gaol-bait.’

  Reb knew grown men who wouldn’t have had the guts to call him on that and surprisingly, instead of anger, he felt admiration for Josh. Damn, he really liked this kid! Now all he had to do was work out a way to keep Savvy fifteen for the rest of her life, because, while Josh might be feeling as brotherly as all get out now, he’d bet his favourite bike his cousin wasn’t going accept the situation indefinitely. A.J. might have overreacted tonight, but Reb hadn’t been entirely blind to his young cousin’s fascination for Josh. Now, however, wasn’t the time to get bogged back down in that.

  ‘Okay, message received,’ Reb said. ‘You like Savvy, but on a purely Platonic basis.’

  ‘Exactly! And I’d appreciate you passing it on to both her and your wife.’

  ‘My wife,’ Reb said, ‘needs to hear it from her brother. More importantly she needs to know that he loves her every bit as much as she loves him.’

  Josh’s head dipped under Reb’s insistent stare. ‘I…I…need time to calm down before I talk to her.’

  ‘No, A.J. is the one who needs calming down. She’s pregnant, Josh, and believe me I’m not going to have her upset for one second longer than necessary. Therefore what you need to do and what you’re going to do is to start this car and follow me back to the garage.’ Reb made sure his tone left no room for argument.

  Josh looked at him for a moment then sucked in a resigned breath and nodded. ‘Fair enough… I’ll be right behind you.’

  Overwhelmed with relief, Reb slapped the younger man’s shoulder in silent gratitude before slipping out of the low-slung car.

  ‘Hey, Reb,’ Josh called before he’d taken two steps to his bike. ‘Thanks. For what it’s worth, I’m real glad my sister finally found someone to love her as much as you do.’

  The kid’s words slammed into him with such cyclonic force, Reb marvelled that he was still standing. He marvelled also at how he’d managed to survive so long when he was the world’s all-time idiot. Emotional lust! Aw, hell! How stupid could a guy get? He didn’t emotionally lust after A.J., he was in love with her. And had been for…well, only God knew how long because he sure hadn’t had the brains to recognise it.

  He jumped as the Ferrari’s horn blasted.

  ‘Hey, I thought you wanted me to follow you home, Reb?’ Josh frowned. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  What was he waiting for? Only to hear the most precious person in his life tell him what no one else ever had…that she loved him.

  Three days later Amanda-Jayne decided she was probably never going to find out what had transpired between Reb and her brother on the night of the dance and that she should just be satisfied that Josh had returned to the apartment and given her the chance to repair the damage she’d inadvertently done. When she’d quizzed Reb as to what he’d said to Josh he’d simply shrugged and said it was ‘guy stuff’. Her brother had been equally vague; however, that was probably because he’d bought the story Debbie had concocted for a highly embarrassed Savannah that the only reason she’d asked Josh to come to the dance in the first place was to make another boy jealous. Josh’s expression had revealed he wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or insulted.

  Amanda-Jayne smiled, conceding that despite her rough edges Debbie’s mind was every bit as elegantly devious as any debutante’s. She also felt that a huge chunk of the animosity which had existed between herself and the other woman had been eroded that night, when Debbie had willingly shared her experience of childbirth with her and offered advice on enduring it.

  Yet, while the explosive events of that night had put her relationships with her brother, Savvy and Debbie on a more stable footing, it bothered her how tense and uneasy Reb had been since then. There wasn’t one particular incident that she could single out as evidence of this, until late one Tuesday when a well dressed, fifty-ish man breezed into the garage, just as she and Reb were locking up for the day.

  ‘Jack!’ Reb exclaimed, alarm momentarily flashing across his features. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

  The man laughed. ‘Hello to you too, mate.’

  Reb’s tension was evident in his slow response to the man’s proffered handshake and the way his gaze kept skating past Amanda-Jayne. He was definitely uncomfortable. She couldn’t guess why, but instinct told her this wasn’t one of the myriad of salesmen who regularly came in to peddle mechanical parts. A good clue was that none of them wore genuine Rolexes and instantly she too began to feel nervous. When the man’s smile drifted to her she returned it with a polite, cautious one of her own. Then Reb made a very perfunctory introduction.

  ‘Er, Jack, this is Amanda-Jayne. A.J., Jack Edgemen. So tell me, Jack,’ he hurried on, pre-empting any further exchange between the two of them, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m on my way back from inspecting th
e Queensland operation and want to discuss that expansion idea with you.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Sure. Everyone’s gone for the day so we won’t be interrupted. Er, come through to the office,’ he said, then turned to Amanda-Jayne. ‘We’ll probably be discussing business for a while, honey, so tell Savvy I’ll feed Lethal before I come up.’

  Reb’s smile and the endearment might have made it look like a pleasant request, but his tone had ‘Dismissed!’ threaded right through it. It would have been gratifying to snap back with, Tell her yourself! but she bit her tongue, forced a smile and nodded to Jack Edgemen, who was observing everything with rude interest.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Edgemen.’

  ‘Er, you too, Amanda-Jayne…such as it was.’

  Pretending not to notice the irritated look Reb shot at the man, she walked from the office as serenely as her ballooning size and temper would allow. Something was definitely going on! And if Reb couldn’t trust her enough to share his problems with her voluntarily…well, then, she’d just have to resort to deviousness to discover what they were. She didn’t feel a bit guilty about this because turn-about was fair play and at least she wasn’t going to stick a private investigator on him!

  ‘I can’t believe,’ Jack said twenty minutes later, ‘that you’ve suddenly gone cold on this idea, Reb. You were the one trying to talk me into investing in something like this a few months back.’

  Reb could have corrected him and said that the last time he’d pushed for them to expand into the South Australian motorcycle market had been exactly seven months ago, on the nineteenth of October. For it had been after Jack had left the bar where they’d met for drinks to discuss the project that he’d run into A.J. Now it wasn’t so much the case that he’d had a change of mind on the concept as he’d had a change in his life.

  ‘I know, Jack,’ he said, his tone apologetic. ‘And for what it’s worth I still think it’s an incredible investment opportunity, but the timing of it isn’t right for me now. I’m not in a position to commit to the project. The baby’s due in a couple of months and, well, to be truthful things are going better for me now than I dared hope. I’m not prepared to gamble what I’ve got now.’

  ‘Reb, look… I can understand that you don’t personally want to tie yourself to an interstate project under the circumstances, but I’m willing to take on all that stuff,’ Jack pressed.

  ‘I appreciate that, mate, but I wouldn’t feel right just coming along for a free ride and, like I said, I can’t see my way clear right now to make that sort of business commitment. Maybe down the track a bit…’

  Jack Edgemen sighed. ‘Okay, okay. But I’d like to go ahead with things anyway, so as a favour to me would you at least come to Sydney and meet with the other investors? If there are any holes in the proposal you’re more likely to spot them than I am.’

  Glad to do something that didn’t leave him feeling as if he’d completely bailed out on his friend, Reb nodded. ‘When?’

  ‘The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. What suits you?’

  ‘Well, I’ll be in Sydney Thursday; Amanda-Jayne’s got a specialist’s appointment. Any chance you could set something up that fast?’

  ‘No worries. These guys are keen with a capital K.’ He pulled a face. ‘At least they were when they thought you’d be coming in on the deal.’

  ‘They’ll stay keen, Jack. A project like this should bring you some real nice returns.’

  ‘But not enough to sway you, huh?’

  Reb grinned. ‘Nope. I’ve got too much invested in my personal life at the moment to handle the excitement of a business gamble right now.’

  That night, before Reb had a chance to tell A.J. he had a business meeting before her specialist’s appointment and suggest she meet a friend while he attended it, she announced that Savannah would be accompanying them to Sydney.

  ‘But that’s a school day,’ he protested.

  ‘Apparently the teaching staff are having some sort of Education Department training day. The kids have the day off, so I invited Savvy to come to Sydney with us. It’ll be perfect.’ She smiled. ‘You don’t like me driving by myself so this means Savvy and I can go shopping or something while you’re at your meeting.’

  While she was obviously pleased with her idea, Reb was less than thrilled. After Jack had left he’d decided the long trip south would provide a perfect opportunity to come clean with A.J. and tell her everything about himself—a perfect opportunity if only because, stuck within a moving vehicle, she wouldn’t be able to storm off before he could explain all the reasons he’d been less than honest with her. Having Savvy along butchered his plans for a personal discussion.

  To make matters worse, on the morning of the trip A.J. stubbornly insisted they make it in her car rather than his four-wheel drive. No amount of reasoning from him, nor complaints from Savvy that she’d be cramped past breathing point in the small rear seat of the convertible, could get her to change her mind or her argument that she wouldn’t be comfortable negotiating city traffic between one shopping mall and the next in the larger vehicle. Reb, who’d weeks ago given up trying to identify at what stage of pregnancy a woman went from being difficult to reason with to being impossible to reason with, in the end decided it was easier and more expedient to simply give in to her.

  Amanda-Jayne decided that the trip to Sydney had never taken so long. By the time Reb steered the car into a parking area outside a large motorcycle showroom, she was ready to shove him out from behind the wheel. As interested as she was in hearing about how this was where he’d worked when he’d first come to Sydney twelve years ago, she didn’t want to hear it now! She was far more concerned with the fact that she had less than twenty-five minutes to navigate her way through heavy Sydney traffic to make her appointment on time.

  No longer able to comfortably slide from the passenger to the driver’s seat, she darted out of the door, around the car and was behind the steering wheel turning over the engine before Savvy had removed herself from the back seat. ‘C’mon, Savvy, hurry it up,’ she urged.

  ‘What’s your rush?’ Reb asked, watching her with amusement. ‘Afraid the shops will sell out before you get there?’

  With her foot hovering over the accelerator she dutifully accepted his kiss on the cheek as her mind catalogued how much she had to get done and how little time she had to do it.

  ‘You definitely think your meeting will only go on until about two, right?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Yes, A.J. Stop worrying,’ he said, giving her another patient smile. ‘I promise we’ll make it to Dr Geermaine’s offices by four-thirty. You won’t be late for your appointment.’

  Unable to tell him that she’d switched the appointment to next week so that wasn’t what was worrying her, she smiled and nodded at his suggestion that they have fun. Then, releasing the parking brake, she accelerated towards the exit…and with luck the future she’d always dreamed of.

  ‘Er, A.J….?’ Savvy said fifteen minutes later as she zipped lanes to escape a crawling truck in front of her. ‘That’s the second major shopping mall you’ve driven past. Exactly where are you planning on shopping?’

  She laughed, shooting her passenger a quick look. ‘Oh, I’m not going shopping, Savannah…I’m going selling. But hopefully I’ll manage to buy a happy future at the same time!’

  Impatient with the drone of the man trying to convince him to reconsider his refusal to invest money into a prototype for an Australian-designed and manufactured motorcycle, Reb glanced out of the window of Jack’s office in time to see A.J. and a worried-looking Savvy emerging from a taxi. Disbelief had him doing a double-take. Then, with fear running a relay around his nervous system, he bounded out of his chair and raced from the room at a speed which had him arriving at the entrance of the showroom the same time the two women did.

  After checking and seeing no visible signs of injury, he carefully pulled A.J. into his arms. ‘Thank God you’re okay!’ He pulled back. ‘You are ok
ay, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Reb, I—’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Holding her close, he fought to regulate his heartbeat before directing his next question at his cousin. ‘What about you, Savvy? You okay?’

  She gave a nervous laugh and shrugged. ‘I think I’m in shock.’

  He nodded. ‘Okay, what happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure you want to know,’ Savvy said dryly. ‘Which is why I’m making myself scarce.’

  ‘Oh, no, you’re not!’ he said, when she tried to move past him. ‘I want to know how the accident happened.’

  The woman in his arms struggled to free herself. ‘Oh, Reb!’ Her smile was sympathetic. ‘We didn’t have an accident.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ He blinked. ‘Then where’s the car? Why were you getting out of a taxi?’

  ‘Because—’ A.J. started.

  ‘I’m outta here!’ Savvy said, her words and action unified.

  ‘Because,’ A.J. repeated, her voice not entirely steady, ‘I sold the car.’

  ‘You did what?’

  Even when she repeated the words, digging frantically through her shoulder bag, Reb couldn’t mentally reconcile them.

  ‘But why? A.J., you love that car.’

  Smiling, she thrust a thick manila envelope into his hands. ‘Not as much as I love you.’

  His heart melted. His lungs froze. With emotion blurring his vision and thickening his throat he was incapable of doing anything, bar staring at the woman in front of him. With those whisky-brown eyes gazing up at him, full of warmth, his brain was scarcely aware of Jack hovering only metres away asking if everything was all right.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Mr Edgemen. Reb will be right in,’ A.J. responded, her gaze darting over his shoulder, before returning to his.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she whispered, ‘exactly how much you need to get in on this deal with Jack, but what’s in here…’ she tapped the envelope he’d forgotten he held ‘…should be enough to get you started. We can figure out a way to get the rest later. Now quick,’ she urged, giving him a subtle shove. ‘Get back in there and—’