by Sandra Field
One thing he would do. He’d visit Charles very soon, and have it out with him. That would give him considerable satisfaction. As for Jenessa, once Leonora had contacted her, he’d phone and find out how she felt about this revelation.
Another thing he needed to do was visit Julie’s parents. With or without her consent. Although he still didn’t know if he was in love with Julie, less and less could he contemplate being without her. Whatever that meant.
The last three weeks had felt like three years.
The miles rolled by, the shadows lengthening across the road as it wound along the coastline. He started watching for the signpost that indicated Bryce’s driveway. Yesterday, when he’d been almost sure he’d act on the invitation, he’d phoned the couple who kept an eye on the cottage for Bryce; by now, they’d have cleaned the place for him and stocked it with groceries. He was glad he’d done that. He didn’t want to have to leave the cottage for something as mundane as groceries. He wanted to spend every minute of its peaceful seclusion with Julie.
When he turned off the highway a few minutes later, Julie woke up. “Are we there?” she mumbled.
“Just about.”
He pulled up beside the cottage, letting the view speak for itself: a private beach, the curl of waves on the sand, a scattering of islands skirted with foam and then the open ocean. Nearer to hand, he and Julie were enclosed by tall pines and stands of young maple. A couple of times since Bryce had bought the property seven years ago, Travis had come here on vacation. It was, he supposed, as near to Manatuck as he could get.
Julie said softly, “How beautiful…”
“You are, yes,” he said.
She flushed, ducking her head. Then she looked straight at him. “I don’t want separate rooms. Do you?”
His heart leaped in his chest. “Nope.”
“Well,” she said with a grin, “that was easy. And even though I lust after you, Travis, I’m also very hungry. Is there anything to eat in this utterly marvelous place?”
“Besides you, there’s a refrigerator full of groceries.”
“Refrigerator first,” she said. “Me afterward.”
He captured her hands in his, smiling into her brilliant green eyes. “Promise?”
“You bet.”
“If you’re afraid of ending up like your mother,” he said dryly, “I don’t think you have a worry in the world.”
“I don’t want to talk about mothers. Yours or mine.”
“What, no fights?”
“One of the things I like about you—apart from your body—is that you catch on fast.”
“You know what?” Travis said huskily. “Right now I wouldn’t change places with anyone in the world.”
“Neither would I,” she said, almost inaudibly.
Julie wouldn’t say what she didn’t mean. Feeling lightheaded with happiness, Travis said, “Let’s grab our stuff, raid the refrigerator and light the barbecue. Or else, dearest Julie, you’re going to find yourself in the bedroom.”
“Steak—or even a hamburger—takes precedence,” she said primly, and scrambled out of the vehicle.
Travis got out, too. “Come here,” he said.
She walked around the hood of his car, flung her arms around him and burrowed her cheek into his chest. “Okay. Now what?”
“Now this,” said Travis, and kissed her with all the passion and skill he was capable of. When he finally raised his head, his heart was thumping as though he’d run the Boston Marathon. He said unevenly, “I won’t need a match to light the barbecue.”
“I don’t care if it’s hot dogs,” she whispered.
“One of these days I’ll have to thank Brent for inviting you to Manatuck.”
Julie laughed. “I’m sure he’ll be impressed.”
“You and I wouldn’t have met, otherwise.”
“I’m glad we did,” Julie said with sudden intensity.
“So am I,” said Travis, and kissed her again.
Somehow this interchange set the tone for the next two days. He and Julie spent a good deal of that time in bed, although they also made love up against the pantry door and, rather uncomfortably, underneath a pine tree. They swam, cavorting in the chill waves. They washed dishes together, discussing the politics of dictatorship and the perils of guerilla warfare. They barbecued shrimp, smothered pancakes in fresh strawberries and cream, and hiked in the woods. Travis sang in the shower; Julie taught him a Tanzanian tribal dance. They laughed a lot.
When they were loading their bags into the car on Sunday evening, Travis put a hand on Julie’s arm and said forcibly, “This weekend wasn’t just about sex, Julie.”
She glanced over at him. “No,” she said uncertainly, “it wasn’t.”
“When will I see you again?”
“Thursday?”
“Not until then?”
“Monday I’m taking my mother to a movie that she wants to see and my father thinks isn’t worth the price of admission. On Tuesday I’m meeting my friend Kathy after work—remember her, Andrea’s mother? And every Wednesday I work late.”
He quelled a flicker of unease. “I’ll meet you at the clinic on Thursday around five-thirty?”
“That’d be fine.” She took one last look around, adding with a touch of desperation, “I hate to leave here, Travis. I’m not ready for the real world.”
“This is the real world. You and I together, there’s nothing more real than that. Anyway, we can come back. Bryce won’t be needing the cottage for a while.”
She made an indeterminate sound and climbed into the car. Travis accelerated up the driveway. He’d purposely not suggested she stay at his place tonight. He’d rushed her last time; he wasn’t planning on repeating that mistake. But he wanted her to stay. He wanted her to move in with him, he thought with a tiny lurch of surprise; even though he’d never lived with a woman in his life. More than that, he wanted some kind of commitment from her.
He was only here another three weeks, while her contract expired in the middle of September. Then what? She’d mentioned the possibility of going to a clinic in Thailand, while it looked more and more likely that he’d be heading off to Mexico.
Was that what she meant by the real world?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
By ten o’clock the next morning, Julie had lost her breakfast twice over. Leaning on the basin in the washroom nearest to her office, she stared at her paper-white face in the mirror. The flu. It had to be the flu. It couldn’t be morning sickness.
She splashed cold water on her face and went back to work. Apart from the tiredness that had been dogging her for a couple of weeks, she felt fine the rest of the day. The movie was about the mishaps of a family wedding and made both her and her mother laugh, a brief intimacy that felt very precious to Julie. That night she slept as soundly as a baby, cautiously ate a bowl of cereal the next morning and didn’t even make it to the apartment door before she had to rush to the bathroom. Afterward, not giving herself time to think, she picked up the phone and was lucky enough to get an appointment with her doctor during her lunch hour the following day.
When she saw him, he only confirmed what Julie already, in her heart, knew to be true. She was pregnant.
She walked out of his office like a woman in a daze. If she had to be pregnant, why couldn’t the father have been some shadowy, insubstantial character who’d fade into the wallpaper now that she’d conceived? But Travis wasn’t like that. Travis was flesh and blood, all too real, with an incisive intelligence and a temper to go with it. It was difficult to imagine him fading into anything.
What was she going to do? She had a date with him tomorrow night. She had less than thirty hours to come up with an answer.
The baby wasn’t the issue. It was quite clear to her, and had been ever since the doctor had pronounced the word pregnant, that she would have the baby and rearrange her life to take care of it. If she had to trade off her wandering work habits with a real, live baby, the baby won hands down. It was int
eresting, Julie thought slowly, what a visit to a doctor’s office could teach you about yourself.
The problem wasn’t the baby. The problem was Travis.
She had to tell him. Didn’t she?
Eventually, she thought. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t start to show until late September, by which time he’d be in Mexico. That gave her a few weeks’ grace. She’d have to be utterly discreet about the morning sickness; she knew from experience how gossip flourished in clinics and hospitals, whether they were in Maine or Calcutta.
She’d start getting up earlier; get it over with before she even left her apartment.
Feeling slightly better for these decisions, Julie caught the bus back to work. On Thursday, despite her best intentions, she still felt very queasy when she arrived at the clinic. Her first appointment wasn’t until nine-thirty. She’d catch up on some paperwork in the meantime.
She was compiling her monthly statistics when a tap came at her door. “Come in,” she called, scowling down at her desk because two columns that were supposed to add up refused to do so.
“Good morning, Julie,” Travis said jauntily.
Her jaw dropped. Travis. Right in front of her. Standing on the other side of her desk, dwarfing her tiny office. Sickness rose in her throat, her face suddenly cold and clammy. With all the willpower she possessed she tried to force the nausea down. “I’m not—” she began, then gasped, “Excuse me,” and ran for the door, pushing past him as though he were a piece of furniture.
She made it to the bathroom just in time. Ten minutes later, knowing she had no other choice, she went back to her office. “What’s wrong?” Travis said tersely, his eyes fastened on her pale cheeks.
“I must have eaten something that disagreed with me,” she said rapidly. “I feel better already, it’s nothing. What are you doing here?”
He kicked the door shut behind him. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
“I wish you’d stop saying that,” she said peevishly. “Do we still have a date for tonight?”
“Julie, answer me. Are you or are you not pregnant?”
“Yes,” she said, “I am.”
“Then we’ll get married as soon as we can.”
“I—what did you say?”
“And we’ll stay married. No child of mine is going to be abandoned the way I was.”
“It’s customary to ask a woman if she wants to get married. Not tell her.”
“These are exceptional circumstances.”
Her temper rose one more notch. “I don’t want to get married. Don’t take it personally, Travis, it wouldn’t matter who you were. The answer’s no.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You’re not being given a choice. I’ll get a special licence, probably for next week.”
“You don’t love me,” Julie said in a stony voice.
“This isn’t about love. Or romance. It’s about a child who’s going to have two parents. Not one.”
“I had two parents who don’t love each other. That’s the worst thing you can do to a child!”
“I’ve never met your parents, but I’d be willing to bet that you’re as different from your mother as you can be. And if I’m like your father, I’d be surprised.”
“We’re not in love—we can’t get married,” she said desperately.
“We mean something to each other, you know that as well as I do. We’ll build on that, Julie.”
“You’re not listening to me!”
“I’ve been offered a plum position in a new hospital in Mexico, near Cuernavaca. They have a physio clinic, you could get a part-time position there.”
“You’ve got to stop this—I won’t marry you.”
He said flatly, “There’s something I haven’t asked you, something very obvious. Do you hate the idea of being pregnant?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” she said truthfully. “But as a single mother, Travis.”
“That’s out of the question.”
“According to you.”
“It’s my child, too,” he said with menacing softness.
“Why didn’t we stop and think before we made love?”
“Because there’s something elemental between us,” he said ruthlessly, raising one hand and running it down the side of her face to the hollow at the base of her throat, where her pulse quickened in spite of herself. “Don’t bother denying it.”
“You can’t base a marriage on passion!”
“There are a lot worse things to base it on.” He frowned down at her. “I’ll look into the licence this morning. Then I want to meet your parents. In the meantime, I’ll call Bryce and see if he’ll be best man. Who do you want to stand with you?”
“You’re like an avalanche, carrying everything in its path,” Julie said furiously. “What about your mother, will you invite her?”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “That’d throw Charles into a tailspin. Although, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he already knows Leonora’s in Portland, and he staged that fake reconciliation with me to get me away from her.”
“Have you been in touch with her?” Julie persisted.
For the first time, Travis wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Not yet, no.”
“If you’re to marry me,” she taunted, “you’ll have to, won’t you?”
“There’s no if about it, Julie.”
He was standing altogether too close. She squeezed past him, putting her desk between them, and found the courage to ask the only meaningful question. “Why do you want to marry me, Travis?”
“I told you. Because of the child.”
“Nothing to do with me, then.”
“Come off it—you spent last weekend with me, you know how well we’re matched.”
She said with true despair, “But that won’t last!”
“I disagree. But even if I didn’t, do we lock ourselves in separate cages, stay alone for our entire lives? I don’t think so.”
Was that why she wanted the baby, Julie wondered with uncomfortable honesty. So she wouldn’t be alone? She wanted the baby, but not the baby’s father.
As though he’d read her mind, Travis said abruptly, “Were you going to tell me you were pregnant?”
“I only found out yesterday.”
In a voice like a knife blade, he repeated, “Were you going to tell me?”
“Yes,” she said dully, “eventually.”
“When it suited you. After I’d left Portland.”
She lowered her eyes, ashamed. Put like that, her plan sounded shoddy and underhanded. “I haven’t had much time to think,” she said defensively.
“Nor are you going to,” he said grimly. “I’ll let you know the date of the wedding as soon as I’ve looked after the legalities. Tonight we’ll go and see your parents.”
“Oh, no, we won’t,” she flared. “If this travesty of a marriage is to take place, I’m going to see them first. By myself. To break the news.”
“Then we’ll go together tomorrow night.”
The force of his willpower beat against her, as pitiless as the surf on the ocean. A cliff might seem impregnable, she thought, but the water’s ceaseless pounding would eventually topple it. “You’re taking for granted that I’ll marry you.”
He smiled crookedly. “I dare you to marry me.”
She didn’t smile back. “I don’t like being taken for granted.”
He suddenly pounded his fist on her desk, making her jump. “This is all wrong, the way we’re going about this! Remember the weekend, Julie. I don’t know if I love you. I always figured I didn’t know how to love a woman, I’d lost that capacity when my mother disappeared. But I’m sure not indifferent to you, nor you to me. Give us a chance, that’s all I ask. Look how we laughed and made love and talked all weekend… I’m more real with you than I’ve ever been in my life.”
She stared up at him, shaken. She couldn’t fault him for honesty, she thought, and sought for an answering honesty in hersel
f. “To marry you… it frightens me more than I can say.”
He closed the distance between them, reaching out for her. But Julie shrank from him, knowing if he so much as laid a finger on her she’d weep as though her heart was broken. Travis stopped dead in his tracks, a flash of pure agony lacerating the deep blue of his eyes. But then it was gone, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined it. He said coldly, “I’ll call you later in the day.”
As he wheeled and left her office, she made a tiny, instinctive gesture toward him. But he was striding away from her and didn’t see it. Reaching for her chair like a blind woman, Julie sat down. Travis disappeared around a corner.
The man who wanted to marry her. Because she was pregnant.
In her lunch hour Julie phoned Leonora, asking if she could come and see her right after work. So at five forty-five, Julie was walking into Leonora’s cool, austere living room. It was interesting, she thought numbly, that it was to Travis’s mother, not her own, that she’d come for help. She said, “I have to talk to you.”
Leonora sat down in a graceful flow of movement. “Is it about Travis?”
“Yes.” Absently Julie tugged at a loose thread in her uniform. “I wasn’t wholly truthful with you about Travis and me.”
“I’d wondered,” Leonora said mildly.
“Until I met him, I’d only slept with one other man, back in my college days. My parents’ marriage is a disaster, and I’d long ago decided marriage and commitment weren’t for me.” Warm color crept up her cheeks. “And then I met Travis, and I just about dragged him into my bed. Not that he was unwilling,” she added hastily.
“I’m sure he wasn’t.”
“We have these huge fights all the time. We spent last weekend together and it was wonderful and then on Wednesday I found out I was pregnant.”
For the first time, Leonora was taken aback. “Julie…”
“Travis dropped in to see me at my office this morning. I have this awful morning sickness and he guessed right away. He insists we’re to get married immediately. Leonora, I can’t marry him! We don’t love each other.”