Chapter THREE
IN THE bedroom, Liz shut the door and closed her eyes as she leaned her forehead against the wood. The faint clinking of china carried to her. Jack working in the kitchen.
Jack.
Rolling her head, she twisted until her back was pressed to the door. She opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the bed.
One area they’d never had trouble in…until now.
Blinking hard, she sniffed back the tears that pressed for release. Not that she wanted to sleep with Jack.
She grimaced. Who was she kidding? She wanted him like crazy with her heart, mind and body.
But everything was too messy. Sleeping with him wouldn’t solve anything.
She walked over to turn down the spread and touch the crisp linen pillowcase on her side. Jack making up the bed showed unexpected sensitivity. She should just appreciate it, not feel this tearing pressure in her heart.
He said that he wanted to save their marriage. Something completely out of character. Especially as she was pregnant. She had expected him to run a mile as soon as he saw her condition.
So why wasn’t he running? A quick pummelling from inside her abdomen reminded her of the shock on his face in the hospital room. A small, watery chuckle escaped before she quickly sobered. Judging by his reaction, he certainly hadn’t had a change of heart about having children.
And after their increasingly acrimonious arguments on the matter before he’d gone away, she’d changed her mind about starting a family with him. Discovering her pregnancy soon after his departure had come as a shock to her too. All that hard thinking she’d done about what sort of man she wanted to be the father of her children was suddenly irrelevant. The bottom line was, Jack was the father and he fell far short of what she wanted for her baby.
A fine situation she’d got herself and her poor unborn child into. Could Jack change? No, it wasn’t that simple. His attitude was too entrenched.
She had to stop torturing herself with such imaginings. Apart from those few fraught moments in the hospital room right after he’d discovered her pregnancy, he hadn’t mentioned their impending parenthood. Just their marriage.
Nothing had changed. Her baby’s future was her responsibility and hers alone. A child needed a warm and secure environment. No father at all would surely be better than one who was completely uninterested.
Liz would never subject her baby to a cold, formal childhood like she’d endured.
Now, with her medical training, she understood the psychology behind her drive for perfection and her brother’s addiction to extreme sports. In her secret heart, she’d hoped her father might find some value in her. Mark, her brother, must have felt lacking as well, using his dangerous behaviour as a method of seeking their distant parents’ attention.
Why hadn’t their father loved or valued them? Perhaps he hadn’t wanted children at all.
She’d known since high school that her mother must have been pregnant before the marriage. But in her teenage naivety she’d fantasised it had happened because they’d been in love and engaged. Now she wondered if her parents had talked about having a family. Or had they rushed headlong into matrimony without considering the weighty issues? Perhaps she had more in common with her mother than she’d ever have believed possible. Unfortunately, asking was out of the question. Her mother never, ever discussed personal or emotionally untidy things.
Liz frowned. Marrying, almost eloping with Jack, had been fabulously romantic at the time. They’d seemed so attuned to each other, especially in bed. She’d been smug about finding a partner prepared to give her the space to practise her career. In hindsight, she could see they hadn’t known nearly enough about each other. Hadn’t truly discussed the issue of having children. She realised Jack had made vague comments, let her do the talking whenever she’d brought up the subject. Fool that she was, she’d read the meaning she wanted into his responses.
What were Jack’s reasons for not wanting children? In all their arguments he’d skirted the issue every time. If he was serious about saving their marriage, fatherhood was part of the deal.
She stripped off the oversized T-shirt and track pants and studied her reflection in the mirror for a long moment. She looked pregnant, but nowhere near as enormous as she felt. When she was in her white coat at work, the nurses assured her that her pregnancy was barely noticeable.
And yet in the last couple of weeks she felt like she’d ball ooned. She ran her hand over the mound. Fourteen more weeks. The skin felt ready to split now. How much more could it stretch? She reached for the moisturiser and massaged more cream into the tight skin, smiling when the pummelling seemed to follow the movement of her hand. A baby. She was growing a baby, a little girl. Almost certainly a little brunette since she and Jack both had dark hair. But would she have Jack’s blue eyes or her hazel ones? Not that it was important. What mattered was this little girl had a mother who loved her to distraction, sight unseen.
His muscles pleasantly tired after a long run, Jack scooped up the morning newspaper off the veranda and let himself into the house quietly in case Liz was still asleep. He needn’t have worried. The door of the main bedroom was open and the bed already neatly made up. No sign of Liz. He found her at the kitchen bench, eating a bowl of cereal. When she turned towards him, sunlight from the side window gilded her profile.
‘God, it’s true.’ Fresh shock rippled through him as he took in her swol en abdomen. The thin fabric of her red top was stretched so tightly across the bulge that he could see her belly button protruding like some sort of tiny stem. ‘You really are pregnant.’
‘brilliant observation.’
His gaze shifted upwards when the quick breath she sighed out moved her breasts gently. He realised for the first time how much larger they were. Pregnancy had made his wife, who’d always been on the small side, positively voluptuous. Were they tender? He wanted to touch, to caress.
To sink his lips onto the soft, creamy flesh. His heart skipped a beat then set an uncomfortable rhythm of hard, fast thuds.
‘Didn’t it sink in yesterday, Jack? Maybe you hoped you’d dreamed it.’
‘Dreamed what?’ He blinked, trying to clear the direction of his thoughts as he dragged his gaze from her cleavage back to her face.
Liz gave him a strange look. ‘The pregnancy.’
‘Oh, that. No. No, I just…’ He could feel heat gathering across his cheekbones. ‘It did sink in. It just didn’t really…sink in.’ God, he sounded so lame. ‘It takes some getting used to.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said, her voice flat as she turned away from him. She rinsed her plate and left it on the sink to be washed.
‘Do you want me to cook you some breakfast?’
‘No. Thanks. I—I want to get to the hospital early.’ Drying her hands, she moved away from the sink.
‘No. Thanks. I—I want to get to the hospital early.’ Drying her hands, she moved away from the sink.
Jack kept his eyes fixed firmly on her face, relieved when his pulse began to level off with his mind on less provocative subjects. ‘It’s only half past seven. Aren’t you supposed to be eating for two?’
‘Only if you want me to be the size of a barn instead of a small house.’
‘Are you larger than you should be?’ His pulse jumped again this time on a surge of fear. According to his mother, he’d been a very large baby and giving birth to him had nearly killed her. Could having his baby put Liz at risk? She was such a dynamo he tended to forget she was tiny. He frowned. ‘Isn’t that dangerous? Have you been to the doctor? What did he say?’
‘Yes, I have been to the doctor. No, it isn’t dangerous. And I’m the right size, thank you for asking.’ She was very nearly pouting.
‘I’ve upset you.’ He wanted to take her in his arms, comfort her, promise her he’d fix everything. But as he was part of the problem here, she wouldn’t be impressed by words. He needed to prove he’d go the distance with her. Time was his best ally.
‘Not really.’ She huffed out a breath. ‘It’s one thing for me to feel enormous, it’s another thing for you to tell me that I look it. Especially since…’
‘Especially since I got you in that condition in the first place?’ he finished for her. But at the time he’d been looking for the simple pleasure that came with their tentative reconciliation. Nothing more. ‘I didn’t do it deliberately, Liz, and I seem to remember the occasion as mutually pleasurable.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t. Get pregnant deliberately, I mean.’ She moved closer and poked him in the sternum to emphasise her point. ‘That’s what you think, isn’t it? That I messed up the precautions.’
With her so close, keeping his eyes away from her cleavage took a conscious effort. ‘Not deliberately, perhaps.’
‘Oh, you think I did it subconsciously? That’s so much better. How magnanimous of you.’ Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head to glare up at him. ‘I would never bring a child into a household where one parent doesn’t want it. But if I had decided to go behind your back on this, don’t you think I’d have accidentally fall en pregnant while there was still a chance for our marriage? How dumb to wait until we’re teetering on the verge of divorce and you’re about to fly off to the other side of the world.’
‘Did you know before I went away?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Her breasts rose and fell with her sigh. ‘Though I can see that there were some signs, but I put them down to other things.’
‘But you must have known soon after I left. When were you going to tell me about…it?’
‘About… it?’ she said, arching a brow at him. ‘You mean about the baby?’
‘Yes.’ Tightness gathered in his chest as he waited for her answer.
Finally, she gave him a helpless look and slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I think I hoped you’d just…stay away, go on fighting other people’s fires indefinitely. It was stupid.’
‘Didn’t you think I had a right to know?’ He should stop pushing. Sooner or later, she would say something he didn’t want to hear. But he could help himself.
‘Did you?’ She crossed her arms defensively. The action pushed the disturbing cleavage into even more prominence. ‘You’d made your position abundantly clear before you left. There didn’t seem to be any room for negotiation.’
‘But this…’ he waved a hand towards her stomach ‘…changes things.’
‘It does for me, yes.’ She tilted her chin at him defiantly. ‘I wanted a baby and now I’m having one.’
The band around his heart squeezed harder. ‘It changes things for me, too, Liz.’
She pounced as soon as the words were out of his mouth. ‘Are you saying you want this baby?’
His brain refused to co-operate. He opened his mouth, hoping the right words would be uttered magically. ‘I…I’m—’
‘Don’t bother straining yourself for a reply to placate me.’ She held up her hand, disgust patent on her face. ‘I can see the answer for myself.’
‘No, dammit, you can’t.’ He reached out to stop her as she stalked past him. With his hand circling her upper arm loosely, the backs of his fingers were nestled against the soft, warm flesh of her right breast.
She gasped, raising startled hazel eyes to his. Her pupils flared dark and deep, betraying her involuntary reaction, giving him the unexpected knowledge that she wasn’t as contained as she was trying to appear. Hope and exultation surged through him, a palpable force loosening the pain in his chest.
‘Give me a chance,’ he said, softening his voice persuasively. ‘I need time to get used to the idea. You’ve known for months. I’ve known for a bare twenty-four hours.’
‘And what if you can’t get used to the idea, Jack?’ She wrested her arm out of his grip, rubbing the skin as though trying to scrub away the evidence of his touch. ‘This is a baby. Not a ten-day trial where you get a refund if you change your mind.’
‘I know that.’ He ground his teeth. God, he probably knew it almost better than she did. ‘I’m prepared to do the right thing.’
‘That’s big of you, isn’t it? Forgive me if I don’t fall down on my knees to offer up prayers of gratitude.’ She looked at him stonily. ‘I don’t want my child to have a duty father.’
‘And I don’t want it to have an endless parade of uncles through its life when it has a perfectly good father around.’ The irony of his words blasted into the silence and he couldn’t suppress a wry grin. ‘Well, perhaps an imperfectly good father.’
Liz stared at him for a long moment. Then her lips twitched, only to immediately thin. She was obviously not prepared to let a smile escape. ‘It depends on the imperfection, doesn’t it?’
He felt his smile slip as the cold vice around his heart clenched again. ‘Yeah, I guess it does.’
‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere, and I really do have to go to work now. Can we pick it up later?’
‘Sure.’ He watched her walk out the door before rubbing a hand over his face in defeat. She was right. He wasn’t good enough. Even without knowing his history, she could sense that lack in him.
‘Grace Burns?’ Liz scanned the room for her first patient, a four-year-old according to the notes.
A mountain of a man stood up, his muscular, tattooed arms cradling a small blonde urchin.
‘Come through, Mr Burns.’ She led the way into the cubicle and shut the door. ‘I’m Liz Campbell. Have a seat.’
Liz slid onto a second chair and smiled at the child. ‘hello, Grace. Tell me why you’ve come to see me today.’
‘I got somefing in my ear.’ Solemn blue eyes were wide with caution.
‘Have you? How did it get there?’
‘I put it dere.’ Golden ringlets bobbed as she tilted her head to look up at her father. ‘Didn’t I, Daddy?’
Liz suppressed a smile. Grace was adorable.
‘I found her in my wife’s studio with the bead box, Doc. She must have got in while I was getting the other kids off to school.’ The man spoke quickly, obviously nervous. ‘I managed to get one of the beads out, but I couldn’t reach the red one. And Gracie said it was hurting.’
‘Let’s have a look, then, shal we, Grace?’
The girl watched with saucer-like eyes as Liz picked up the otoscope and attached a speculum. ‘I’m going to shine this light and look inside your ear through this magnifying glass. See?’
Grace squinted at the instrument doubtfully.
‘I need you to keep very still for me. Can you do that, Grace?’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘It shouldn’t, but I want you to tell me if it does, okay?’
Grace checked with her father for reassurance. His smile must have given it because the big blue eyes swivelled back to Liz and the blonde head nodded.
Using a pair of forceps, Liz extracted the red bead easily and dropped it into a waiting kidney dish.
‘Hmm, you’ve got something else in here, Grace,’ she said, examining the ear canal again before carefully probing with the forceps.
‘Ow. It hurts now.’
‘Okay.’ Liz straightened up, addressing the girl’s father. ‘It’s very deep and the skin around it is quite red so whatever it is has probably been there a while. I think we’ll use light sedation to make it easier for Grace. Are you happy to hold the anaesthetic mask? I can call the nurse in if you’d prefer.’
After a tiny hesitation, he said, ‘No, I can do it.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
Liz smiled reassuringly then looked back at the urchin. ‘We’re going to put this mask on you, Grace. You’ll feel sleepy for a few minutes and when you wake up again your ear will feel much better.’
A hand that looked as though it’d be more at home with a spanner or a plough held the mask over Grace’s nose and mouth. The man’s gravelly voice murmured words of reassurance and his free hand stroked the girl’s hair gently as she lay on the bed.
‘That’s got it,’ said Liz moments later as she pulled the suction tube out of the ear. A small grey lump dropped into the dish as the vacuum was switched off. ‘You can take the mask away now.’
‘What is it?’
‘It looks like a seed of some sort. Maybe from an apple. I’ll check her other ear and nostrils just in case she’s been busy there too.’
When she’d finished, Liz stripped off her gloves and reached for a prescription pad. ‘I’ll give you a script for antibiotic drops to put in her ear three times a day for a week to settle down that inflammation. And I’d like you to bring her back early next week so we can check to make sure it’s resolved.’
‘Okay.’
Liz smiled at the waking child. ‘And I want you to leave the beads for Mummy, okay, Grace?’
Another solemn nod, this one a little sleepy.
‘She will. We’ll be putting a higher bolt on the door as soon as we get home, won’t we, Gracie?’ The unlikely-looking father scooped the girl up and she immediately buried her face in the crook of his shoulder. ‘Thanks, Doc.’
Liz sat for a few moments after the pair had gone, thinking about this morning’s scene with Jack, remembering his wry smile as he’d joked about the sort of father he’d make. For a moment, a bare split second, after she’d rejected his banter, he’d looked so…raw, so vulnerable.
Her fingers massaged circles at her temples, trying to dissipate the headache she could feel forming.
Was she wrong to dictate the sort of parent she wanted him to be?
Was an imperfect father better than none at all?
Better than a parade of uncles was what Jack had said. Was that what he’d had in his childhood? It looked like neither of them had had a good father figure. She frowned, trying to remember what she knew about his family. He hadn’t talked much about it, but she knew he’d lived with his grandmother for most of his life. At least, that was the impression he’d given her. She realised just how little he’d really told her. They needed to talk, about lots of things, not just the baby.
She huffed out a sharp breath. Nothing was turning out the way she expected. Jack had been back a day and suddenly she was questioning everything she’d resolved in her mind while he’d been away. And the enormity of her neediness was alarming. She had to pull herself together, be strong, be prepared in case their marriage couldn’t be saved.
He’d asked her to give him a chance. Did she dare? Her heart would break all over again if he failed and decided fatherhood wasn’t for him.
But how could she not take the risk? Didn’t her baby deserve a father?