Chapter FOUR
THE place looked deserted when Liz arrived home, but evidence of Jack’s presence was everywhere outside. In the freshly cut lawn, a pile of tree trimmings and garden rubbish ready to burn. Things she hadn’t been able to keep up with because of work and tiredness from the pregnancy.
And inside the house the delicious smell of tomatoes, herbs and garlic wafted from the kitchen. She dropped her handbag on the sideboard and crossed to the stove to lift the lid off the cast-iron pot. Rich Bolognese sauce simmered gently.
She’d forgotten how wonderful it was to come home to prepared meals. At the beginning of their marriage Jack had done the lion’s share of the cooking. And he was better at it than she was.
The poignant memory of those honeymoon months brought a tearing lump to her throat. He’d been so caring and considerate. More than that.
Nurturing, in a subtle, masculine way. It was one of the things she’d loved about him. Probably one of the reasons she’d gone along with the crazy idea to marry on the spur of the moment while they were on holiday.
She’d travelled to New Zealand as Dr Elizabeth Dustin and flown home as Mrs Jack Campbell. The trouble had started when she’d become broody just over a year later. On some deep, deep biological level, she must have pegged him as great father material, which made his adamant refusal to consider having children such a shock. Had she missed clues to the way he felt? She didn’t think so, but in hindsight she could see how precious little he’d told her in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. He was good at hiding himself in plain view.
Even when they’d started arguing about starting a family, she’d been convinced that if she could just come up with the right approach, the magical combination of words, he’d capitulate. No wonder he thought she’d got pregnant on purpose.
She sniffed deeply, wiping her cheeks dry. Pregnancy was turning her into a regular leaking faucet. Instead of standing here weeping over a saucepan, she needed to find Jack and ask him about the uncles.
She turned to walk away from the stove and immediately faltered to a standstil as she saw the dining table for the first time. Pressure in her chest made it hard to breathe. Two long cream candles waited for a match to touch their elegant tapered tips. And, in the space between them, a cluster of rich red rosebuds.
The setting screamed Jack Campbel bent on romance…seduction. Her knees wobbled. Part of her yearned to surrender. Yearned to be held by him, to ignore the things that stood between them. But she couldn’t…wouldn’t. Her future and the future of her baby depended on it.
She had a feeling she was on the verge of discovering crucial information about her husband, that there was a real clue in his unguarded words from this morning. If she probed carefully, she might learn why he was so against having children.
On the way through the hall she checked her reflection in the mirror. Eyes not too red, just a little glassy. Cheeks pale. She scrubbed them lightly before walking purposefully down to the back door.
The fire service four-wheel drive was standing outside the shed, which meant Jack was probably working inside. She hesitated, debating whether to leave her questions until he came back to the house. But his comment had been niggling at her on and off all day, and they had to start talking some time. Why not now?
She found him at the bench bent over their portable firefighting pump. The threadbare material of faded jeans strained over his buttocks. An oily rag hanging from the patch pocket draped over the masculine curve. Grease and dirt liberally smeared his skin and clothes and a dark V of sweat stained the tattered singlet where it stretched beneath his armpit. still unshaven, the stubble on his profile gave him a tough, edgy look. Even dressed as he was, he oozed sex appeal and Liz couldn’t suppress the tide of warmth that raced through her system in response.
He lifted the hem of his top to wipe his forehead. The side view of his long, lean stomach above the low-slung jeans had her greeting stuttering to a halt.
‘Jack.’ The constriction in her throat made her voice sound strangled.
His hands lowered the fabric of the singlet over the disturbing torso as he turned to face her.
‘Liz.’ A slow smile lit his face and her heart lurched. God, she’d forgotten how special he could make her feel with just a look. ‘I didn’t hear you come home.’
She swallowed, tried to gather her thoughts. ‘You weren’t in the house.’
‘The fire pump’s overdue for a service.’ He focussed intently on her face. ‘Have you been crying?’
‘Not…really. It’s just hormones.’ The choking lump started to swell again in her throat. ‘I saw the way you’d set the table.’
He tilted his head, eyes twinkling at her. ‘Cutlery wasn’t laid out right, huh?’
She chuckled, relieved to feel the need to cry recede. ‘Ah, should I have checked that?’ Her smile slipped and she looked at him seriously for a moment. ‘The table looks gorgeous…romantic.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Jack…we need to talk.’ She tried hard to make it sound non-threatening, persuasive. But the wary look glazing his eyes told her she hadn’t succeeded. Liz’s spirits plummeted again with the sudden loss of connection between them.
‘About?’ He picked up a ratchet and selected a socket. After studying it briefly, he put it back and chose another.
She suppressed a sigh. ‘Please tell me about your uncles.’
‘Uncle Ron?’ Dark blue eyes glanced her way then away again. ‘Haven’t seen him yet. How is he?’ Tool in hand, he slotted his arms into the machine.
‘He’s doing well. So is Aunty Peg. I saw them last week.’ She stepped closer, noticing the sheen of perspiration on his shoulder. ‘But I don’t mean Uncle Ron, Jack. And you know it.’
There was a short pause before his head swivelled back towards her. ‘So they know you’re pregnant.’
Heat swept up her throat into her cheeks. ‘They’ve only just found out. And I—I asked them not to tell you.’
‘Did you?’ A tinny scrape punctuated the sentence. Despite his flat, uninformative tone, she had the feeling he was upset.
Guilt stabbed at her. ‘I’m sorry, but it seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time. It wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with you on the telephone.’ She studied his grim profile. ‘Anyway, stop changing the subject. We were talking about your uncles.’
‘My parents were only children.’ He was being deliberately obtuse.
‘This morning you said you didn’t want your child brought up by a parade of uncles. I wondered what you meant.’
The ratchet’s clackety-clack as he levered the handle energetically backwards and forwards effectively stopped communication. Though maybe it was Jack’s way of saying he wasn’t going to answer.
Liz stood her ground, unable to help herself from watching his perfectly toned biceps muscles flex and release with each pull. She didn’t need to notice things like that about him, damn it. Her teeth ground together as she waited until the noise stopped. ‘Well, Jack?’
‘Well, Liz?’ he mimicked, pulling an odd-shaped nut out of the machine’s innards.
Tension banded around her chest. She was fighting for her marriage and all her husband could do was parody her.
‘What are you afraid of? What’s so terrible about your past and your family that you can’t tell me?’ She kept her voice steady, calm, refusing to give in to her pain. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘That’s a bloody stupid conclusion to come to.’ He glared at her as he yanked the oily rag out of his back pocket. ‘I’d trust you with my life, you know that.’
‘But not with your secrets?’ she pressed.
He turned his attention back to the gadget in his hand and rubbed the cloth briskly across the metal. ‘I just don’t see the point of dredging up the past to try to excuse my behaviour in the present. It’s crap.’
Liz wanted to seize the rag and nut and toss them out the door. To grab Jack by his sexy singlet and shake him until he told her who he was, where he’d come from, what he was hiding. ‘Don’t you think it’s shaped the person you’ve become?’
He jammed the oily rag back into his pocket. ‘Getting all Freudian on me, babe?’
Liz realised he hadn’t called her that since she’d asked him not to. Perhaps he thought he could distract her by using the annoying endearment now.
‘No. Babe. ’ She had the satisfaction of seeing him react, the tiniest flinch, quickly suppressed. ‘I’m trying to understand you.’
‘What’s to understand?’ He held the nut up to the light and squinted at it before blowing on it sharply. His face was hard when he looked at her again. ‘What you see is what you get.’
‘But that’s not true, is it? On the surface you seem like a patient, drop-dead gorgeous man with a responsible, demanding job. Someone with integrity, who can be relied on in a tight spot.’ She watched as he bent to place the nut back into the machine and used the ratchet in quick jerky motions. Again, she waited for the noise to cease. ‘Someone who would make a wonderful father. But you’re afraid and I think your past has made you that way. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me. We need to discuss things if we’re going to be parents, Jack.’
He snorted out a breath. ‘It seems to me we’ve had the most important discussion.’ His gaze slid down to her belly then back to fasten on her eyes. ‘You’re pregnant and I’m staying around. Ergo, we’re going to be parents.’ His mouth twisted derisively.
‘Yes, but what sort of parents are we going to be? That’s the point here.’
He swung to face her, hands on his hips. Six feet of irritated male wanting her out of his domain. ‘Look around you, Liz. Now’s not a great time for this discussion.’
‘ No time is a good time for you, is it?’ Anger pulsed through tired muscles, giving Liz a much-needed energy boost. ‘And I’m sick of it, Jack.
Do you realise that you’ve never really talked to me?’
He thrust his fingers though his hair, leaving spikes standing in their wake. ‘We talk.’
‘Never about the important stuff. Never. All I’ve had from you are edited snippets of your life. Carefully censored titbits so I don’t learn too much.
So I can’t get too close to the real Jack Campbell.’
His face twisted as though he was in pain. Liz could feel her features screwing up in sympathy. ‘Not true. Hell, Liz. You are close to me. I love you.’ His voice was heart-breakingly hoarse. ‘You know that.’
She shook her head in sorrow, exhaustion suddenly swamping her. ‘Then that’s sad, Jack. Because you keep me at such a distance, it doesn’t say much for the other relationships in your life.’
He turned aside, braced his hands on the bench. Skin stretched taut and white across his knuckles, contrasting with his tan. She lifted her eyes to his profile. A muscle in his cheek flexed and then stilled.
‘Please talk to me. You said you wanted to save our marriage. Bottom line, Jack. Opening up, and I mean really opening up, is what it’s going to take.’ She could hear the desperation, the begging note in her voice. ‘Please.’
The silence lengthened.
‘Oh, God. You’re not going to, are you?’ Liz swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. Tears were perilously close and her heart splintered with the agony of them. ‘You can’t do it. Not even with our marriage on the line.’
His face might have been carved from ash-coloured marble, cold and grey and frozen, for all the effect her words were having on him. She’d never felt so lonely, so empty. As though she’d made a desperate gamble and was learning the full calamity of her loss.
‘I’m going inside.’ The words rasped out, past the painful tightness in her throat. He didn’t move.
Her body quivered with spent emotion, but somehow she managed to turn and walk back towards the house. One foot in front of the other, mind carefully blank. She couldn’t break down in front of Jack. Not now.