by Zee Monodee
Gayle waited for them in Accidents and Emergency. She took matters over, and he was relegated to the waiting room. If he’d thought the ride had been Hell, he hadn’t known what it would cost him to pace in that dreary room while he waited for news on Jane.
The twins and Charles joined him shortly after, followed by Marenka and Damian, concern being the common denominator on all their faces.
His phone rang. His mother. After he told her where he was, she said she’d join them.
“What is this all about, Mike?” Her voice caught on his name.
He sighed. “It’s a long story.”
He was talking to Phillip on the line when Gayle walked in. All in the waiting room rose like one person.
“She’s fine. She came to while I was examining her, but she is sleeping now.” The doctor paused, before pinning her eyes on him. “Michael, a word with you.”
She nodded towards the corridor.
“I’ve had to sedate her.” She pushed her hands into her lab-coat pockets when they were outside. “She was hysterical when she regained consciousness.”
He closed his eyes for a second and pressed his back against the wall. “She was in a trance when I found her. She wouldn’t let anyone near. She fought me when I tried to hold her, and that’s how she passed out.”
Gayle shook her head. “This isn’t good. You’ve heard what happened?”
He nodded. “How did they get all this information?”
She snorted. “The papers implied there was a mole on my staff. First thing I did when I saw the headlines was call my lawyer. Together with a private detective, they’ve found out that someone hacked into my computer. That might be how they got their leads. The rest, they dug, as you probably gather.”
Michael yearned to curse, but he wasn’t sure there was a curse word he hadn’t already uttered at least a dozen times that day. “What do we do now, for Jane and the baby?”
“Thank goodness the baby’s vitals are all fine, showing no sign of trauma. As for Jane, I hope the rest will do her good. She needs peace and quiet.”
“When can I see her?”
She put a hand on his arm. “They should have wheeled her to a private room now. I’ll check and let you know.”
She left, and he went back to the waiting room. Sitting with Charles and Damian, he related what Gayle had told him about the reporter’s peculiar manner of finding information.
“Hacking is breaching the law, and finding information like this outside of the public domain is invasion and violation of privacy.” Damian shook his head.
He nodded. “I won’t let them off the hook. A friend of mine is a very good criminal lawyer, and I’ll call him later. I suppose Dr. Larkin, too, will sue the paper. They have implied that the information came from her office, and that could’ve caused a lot of damage and prejudice to her reputation and to her surgery.”
“Michael?” Gayle called from the threshold.
He sprung to his feet and followed her farther down the corridor to Jane’s room. His step faltered when he entered the space and saw her lying there, limp, on the sterile-looking bed.
“It looks worse than it really is.” Gayle patted his sleeve.
That didn’t soften the blow. “How long do you think she’ll sleep?”
“A few hours. I didn’t sedate her too heavily.”
He nodded. “Can I stay?”
“Sure.”
She left, and he walked to the bed. Pulling a chair, he dropped his weight on it and brought his hands up to cover his face.
How, and why, did this happen, Jane?
The question didn’t leave his mind for all the time he sat there gazing at her.
***
She woke up well into the night. He was still at her bedside when she stirred and moaned.
She tried to lift her arm and jerked the I.V. line.
“Easy.”
Pain registered on her face, and he grabbed her hand, his thumbs running in circles around the point where the needle went into her vein.
“Where?” Her lips barely moved to form the word.
“You’re at the hospital.”
She blinked, then gasped. “The baby?”
“Is fine.”
Her eyes drifted shut.
“I’m sorry.” And she fell asleep again.
Michael held her hand in his for a long time.
“Don’t be.” He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
***
He had to leave the following morning. His lawyer friend had called. Together with Gayle’s legal representative, they were to meet to decide the best way to attack the tabloid and the reporter who had hacked into confidential files.
Jane was awake when he came back to see her, and he smiled as he walked into her room. Sunshine bathed the interior, settling a soft, gentle glow onto her still-pale features.
“Hello, you.”
“Michael.” She gasped when she saw him.
A shadow passed over her face, and he frowned. Wasn’t she happy to see him? Unless she was worried about what had transpired with the papers. Her “I’m sorry” of the night before came back into his mind.
He stopped next to her and sat down on the bed, facing her. She lowered her eyes. She also tipped her head forward, and long strands of hair came down to shield the sides of her face.
“Luv, look at me.” He tried to lift her chin.
She refused to bring her head up, and he removed his hand.
“Jane, everything will be fine.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I never lie.”
She snorted. “Even when you pretended you were my baby’s father?”
He frowned. What was she getting at?
“That’s different.”
He didn’t want to get into an argument with her.
“Is it? I don’t think so.”
He closed his eyes for a moment before looking at her again. She had been under a lot of stress. Of course she wouldn’t be sensible so soon after such an emotional ordeal. “We’ll talk about that later, okay?”
He stood and eased away from the bed.
“No, we won’t.”
A hint of steel in her voice caught his attention.
He turned towards her. “Okay. You want to talk now? Let’s talk.”
“About what happened—”
“We’ll work everything out. It’ll all be water under the bridge. Tomorrow’s fish and chips paper.” He smiled, wanting to add a light note to the oppressive tone of the conversation.
“That’s what you think?” Her voice had gone up one notch.
“Of course. We’ll fight, Jane.”
“What for?”
Her question hit him like a dagger straight into his heart.
For us.
But didn’t she know that? Something told him to be prudent here. Call it alarm bells ringing in his head.
“You don’t think there’s something worth fighting for?”
“My baby is worth it.”
That’s not what he’d wanted to hear. The slap of rejection hit him hard on the face. The sting and slow burn of outrage started smouldering inside him.
“And everything else?”
Jane looked away. “There’s nothing else, Michael.”
“I beg your pardon?” This time, he heard ice in his tone, but he made no attempt to thaw it out of his words.
“I knew it wouldn’t last.” Her gaze was on some distant point outside the window. “How could I have expected it would?”
He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
She directed her gaze on him then. “You. Us. The couple we pretended to be.”
She’d had to go there, hadn’t she?
“Pretended to be?”
“Look at it squarely in the face, Michael. You were pushed into this situation.”
Bloody hell. What was she getting at? He didn’t have it in him to fight now,
and neither did she.
“You know what? Let’s stop this right here. You’re overwrought, and—”
“How dare you imply I don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“Do you? When you’re rambling such nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense.”
“Isn’t it?”
Anger was building inside him, and he’d better leave before the blind fury caught hold of him.
“It wasn’t your choice.”
He remained frozen a few steps away from her.
“Really?” He paused. “What the hell have I been trying to prove all these past weeks, then?”
“You shouldered a responsibility that wasn’t yours, and now, you probably resent me for it. If not today, one day, you surely will.”
Her words flabbergasted him. Where had she gone digging for such muck? In the gutter?
“You really know nothing about me.” His voice thrummed low.
“Well, then you like being right in the middle of a scandal? It’s because of me your name has been dragged in the mud today.”
“You think I give a damn about the bloody tabloids? Grow up, Jane. They’re trash and make no excuses for it. Why should I let them affect me?”
Shock registered on her face. Her lips parted, and her eyes widened. But she had pushed all the right buttons, casting doubt at his very integrity, and this, he couldn’t let fly. Love her he might, but there were lines even love shouldn’t be allowed to cross. Furious now beyond the heed of reason, he remembered something. The quote in the paper.
“Did you go and talk to them?”
She paled.
“Bloody hell, Jane. Everyone knows you should never open your mouth to reporters. Why’d you go and do that?”
She remained silent. “I never wanted a scandal, Michael. Especially not with my baby at the heart of it.”
Her voice caught when she mentioned the baby, and he softened. Bloody hell, he could compromise. He would. If she just gave them a chance … He stepped closer to the bed.
“The baby will be fine.”
“How? This is going to hound him all his life. I don’t want any more scandal to affect him.”
There was a note of finality and resolution in her voice that he didn’t miss, and this sent icy shivers like death’s fingers down his spine.
“What exactly do you mean?”
She took a deep breath and averted her eyes. “I have to do what I should have done all along. Take responsibility for my child.”
She couldn’t have screamed she was pushing him out any louder. And the blow hit him. Hard. She didn’t care. Nothing he’d done had mattered. All the ways he’d shown her how much he wanted her and their baby … Yes, he’d even started to think of the baby as theirs.
And now, she wanted to rip everything from him.
“And you think this will wipe the slate clean?”
She didn’t reply, only closed her eyes.
“Wake up from your fantasy.” His voice was thick with frost. “You don’t protect your children like that, Jane.”
“Forget it, Michael. It’s too late now.”
Yes, it is. She didn’t believe in them. What good would it do to fight any longer?
“You know what? I guess you’re right.”
He turned on his heel and left the hospital room.
*
He never looked back.
With every step he took away from her, more daggers joined the assault to rip into Jane’s flesh.
What else could she have done? They’d said what they’d both had on their hearts, and this was what it had come down to.
How could she have explained she wanted nothing more than to protect him? How could she have told him that she didn’t want to saddle him with her and with a baby when he had been thrown into the situation by a twist of Fate? The child wasn’t his, so not his responsibility.
Better that she let him go. He’d be angry, yes, but he’d thank her one day.
The life of bliss she’d glimpsed with him hadn’t been made to last. Happiness like that didn’t come into existence for people like her. It thrived in dreams, in suspended reality, like the few moments of her life with him. At least she’d had them. Many women never experienced what she’d had with Michael.
The idea of a child—another man’s child, at that—was something he might have reconciled himself to, but what of the future? What would he have done when faced with the cold dawn of reality and he’d then found himself with a kid on his hands?
He had his pride, and though he didn’t bring it forth, it played a lot into who he was. Would he have stomached the fact that the child he told the world was his looked like another man? Wouldn’t he be reminded of the circumstances of the baby’s conception? What did that also say of the relationship that would exist between him and her?
What sort of future would they have built on such treacherous foundations?
She had trouble imagining a man like Michael wanting a child. If his wife or his girlfriend got pregnant, he would see it as his responsibility to do the right thing by his baby. Would he willingly choose to become a father? She doubted it, not when one considered the way he held his own father in contempt and the indelible impression and example Umberto had burnt into his persona.
In the end, Michael owed her nothing. She needed to own up to that. In fact, she should’ve done so in the very first instances of their meeting.
But she hadn’t, thrown into a storm by circumstances and then too obliterated by the desires of her heart for happiness and love.
Love. She gave a dry chuckle. She’d fallen in love with him, and that alone was reason enough to let him go. What good would her love do him? Already, she’d shown she could only bring chaos and bad tidings.
The scandal would follow them for a long time. Mostly, it would plague him. She could live with the gossip. She just needed to get on with life like she always had.
She had to blank any notion of Michael Rinaldi out of her mind and out of her heart as from now.
It would be hard, but she could do it.
As pain tore through her and brought her to curl into a little ball on the bed, she let the tears come.
She would forget him. But no one said it was going to be easy.
Chapter Sixteen
“You didn’t eat anything, dear.”
Jane looked up into the face of Mrs. Parrish, or Mrs. P as everyone called her, the grandmotherly housekeeper at Charles’s house in Mayfair. She had gone to stay at his place after being discharged from the hospital. Gayle didn’t want her to be alone, and going to her mother’s hadn’t been an option she’d wanted to consider. The compromise had been her former stepfather’s place, now that Michael’s house was out of the equation.
Stop it. Don’t think of him. You think he has you on his mind?
She hadn’t heard from him since that fateful morning close to a week ago.
Just as well. A clean break. It’s what they all needed. She closed her eyes tight when the pain slithered through her heart and brought the sting of tears behind her shut eyelids. A small chuckle nearly escaped her. Pregnancy hormones set one up for a roller coaster ride, didn’t they?
Enough of this, though. She shook herself mentally.
“Mrs. P, I’m gonna end up looking like a tin of lard if I keep this up. I had a full plate of shepherd’s pie already.”
“Tut tut, dearie. You need to eat in your condition.”
Yes, she reckoned, but not a whole pantry’s worth of food every day. Already, she had slapped on the pounds, her swollen midsection like a barrel around her frame.
The ring of the intercom resonated, and Mrs. P left her to go see who it was. Jane wasn’t worried. A security team patrolled the garden day and night, and unwelcome visitors didn’t get past the gate. This comforted her. She could lick her wounds in peace, away from the glaring spotlight of the tabloids.
“Janey dear, there’s a young man here to see you,” Mrs. P said when she c
ame back into the dining room. “He says his name is Jeremy.”
The air inside her lungs escaped in a whoosh, and she felt lightheaded. Good thing she was sitting, or she would have swooned under the dizziness.
Had she heard right? Jeremy?
“What does he look like?” She just wanted to confirm the news inside her head. Mrs. P would have caught a good look at him from the security camera image.
“Oh, he’s a sweet-looking boy. Looks very polite and nice. Security also checked and cleared his ID.”
That was him, all right. Sweet was a word many people used to describe Jeremy Wickham.
“Do I take him to the red sitting room, dear?”
She nodded. Thoughts scrambled and danced inside her head. What was he doing here? What did he want? Did he know …?
She had to face this, didn’t she?
Heaving herself off her chair, she made her way towards the sitting room at the front of the house. Her step in her flat slippers was heavy, a combination of dread and her now-protruding belly. She would swear her abdomen would cross the finish line well before her feet stepped over said line.
He stood in front of the window. In jeans and a navy blazer, he could pass for a secondary school student, a far cry from the thirty-something years of age he actually carried.
She cleared her throat softly when she paused on the threshold.
Jeremy turned and froze.
“Whoa. You’re really … pregnant.”
In the past months, seeing as she’d been living in Hampstead, she hadn’t seen her landing neighbour. The discrepancy in her size would come as a shock for someone who hadn’t seen her in a while. He sounded uncomfortable, and she couldn’t reproach him for his lack of tact.
“Believe me—” she walked in and sat on a high-backed chair, “—I feel really pregnant, too.” She nodded towards the seat across from hers. “Come sit down.”
“Yeah, sure.” He perched on the edge of his chair. “How are you, otherwise?”
“Could be better, but I’ll be fine.”
Tension lingered thick and heavy between them. They heard the chirp of birds outside, the merry sound filling the silence with a surreal aura.
“Jeremy, why—”
“I won’t beat around the bush—”