More Than One Night

chapter TEN



WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MAN?

Rhys asked himself that question all the way home from Charlie’s place.

He’d almost kissed her tonight. If she’d been any other woman, he would have. He would have pulled her into his arms and kissed her and seen where it took them—but there was no “seeing where things go” when a woman was pregnant with your child.

Through some miracle, he and Charlie had formed a friendship over the past month. Out of potential disaster they had discovered a shared sense of humor, common values and, he hoped, mutual respect. On a very basic, human level, he liked her. He liked her a lot.

He liked her calm, no-nonsense, straightforward approach. He liked her honesty and quiet courage. He liked her slow smile and her dry wit. He even liked her quietness. With Charlie, there was no pointless chatter. She said what needed to be said. She listened. And when she did say something, it was always worth hearing.

If they’d met under any other circumstances he would have been intrigued and attracted by her. But they hadn’t. They’d had one fiery night together, and now she was carrying their baby.

All of which meant she was out-of-bounds. Big-time.

The relationship they were forging would be tested in a hundred different ways over the coming months. There would be stress and sleeplessness and a million other doubts and domestic crises—he’d seen what happened when a baby was thrown into the mix with his brothers and sisters. Tempers were short. Sleep was precious. Time was at a premium.

He and Charlie were going to need every scrap of goodwill toward one another that they could muster. What they didn’t need was a failed romance lying between them. Hurt feelings and guilt and anger and sadness. It would be tough enough without making their lives more complicated.

Of course, there was always the chance that a romance might work between them. He’d never embarked on a relationship yet that he hadn’t hoped would lead to marriage—he didn’t know anyone who did. What was the point, after all, if you didn’t think things would go all the way? But as his current single status so eloquently proved, none of those relationships had worked out, for a variety of reasons. And there were no guarantees one would work out between him and Charlie, either.

For starters, he had no idea where her head was at in regard to him. Sometimes she looked at him and he was sure he saw an echo of the intense attraction they’d shared that night. Other times she was unreadable and utterly unknowable. If he’d given in to his instincts tonight and kissed her, in all honesty he had no idea if she would have kissed him back or pushed him away.

She stepped away, remember?

So maybe that was his answer. Which meant that he was mulling over a problem that didn’t even exist. If Charlie wasn’t attracted to him the way he was attracted to her, he was spinning his wheels and giving himself a hard time for nothing.

Except…

There had been something in her eyes tonight. Desire. Need. Want. Maybe all of the above. Surely he hadn’t simply imagined that, projecting it on to her because, no matter what else lay between them—the baby, the future—for the life of him he couldn’t forget the night they’d had together.

And it wasn’t only about good sex. Okay, great sex. It was about the whole night. The conversation they’d enjoyed before they went to his place and those moments in the small hours when they’d talked and laughed, lying skin to skin in his bed.

The only way he could explain that came even close to doing it justice was that he’d felt an unspoken connection with her. As cheesy and clichéd as that sounded. No, he hadn’t heard birds singing or a choir reaching for high notes. But it had been real. He’d felt as though they’d seen each other. It definitely hadn’t been just a roll in the hay.

For you, maybe. But she left without waking you. Remember?

Rhys pulled into his building’s underground parking garage and cut the engine. It hit him for the first time him how incredibly un-Charlie-like it had been to sneak off like that. He’d watched her gird her loins prior to meeting his family. He’d seen her gumption and spine and been on the receiving end of her clear-eyed, sharp gaze. Charlie wasn’t a slinker or a sneaker. She stared things in the eye and dealt with them head-on.

So why had she left that night? It had bugged him then, and it bugged him now. He’d asked her once and she’d given him a nonanswer. A really unsatisfying nonanswer.

He made his way to the elevator. The doors opened when he hit the button and he stepped inside and swiped his security card before punching the number for his floor. The car stopped on the first floor, the doors sliding open then starting to close almost immediately.

Maybe he should tackle Charlie on the issue again. Maybe—

“Could you hold the lift, please?”

He stuck his arm out to stop the doors. He heard the clatter of heels, then a woman appeared, her face flushed, a small rolling suitcase trailing behind her. She was slim and blonde, late twenties, early thirties, and wearing one of those jaunty little neck scarves that he always associated with flight attendants. His gaze dropped to her tailored, discreetly sexy dress and he realized she was an air hostess. Complete with name tag—Heather—and uniform.

“Thanks,” Heather said as she dragged her bag over the gap between the lift and the floor. “Huh. We’re on the same floor. How’s that for a coincidence?” She pushed a strand of wavy blond hair out of her eye and gave him a friendly smile as she offered him her hand. “Heather, apartment 4A. I moved in last month.”

“Rhys, 4D. Been here awhile,” he said as they shook hands as the lift began to ascend.

“Ah, so you must know where I can find a decent cup of coffee around here. Because the café around the corner—”

“Sucks hard. I know. Don’t worry, everyone gets conned at least once. Try the place up the hill. The one with the orange sign. They do a mean single origin.”

Heather’s smile broadened. Her gaze flicked down his body in a lightning-fast appraisal before finding his face again. “Orange sign, up the hill. Got it.”

A pinging sound announced their arrival on the fourth floor. Rhys stood back while Heather maneuvered her suitcase out of the elevator.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’d think I’d be better with this thing, after all these years but I think I must be suitcase challenged.”

They paused in the hall. His apartment was to the right, hers to the left.

“Well, nice to meet you, Rhys,” Heather said.

“You, too.”

Rhys was turning away when she spoke again.

“Maybe we could have coffee or wine sometime and you can fill me in on the other local secrets.”

She fiddled with the suitcase handle as she waited for his response. He was so fixated on what had almost happened with Charlie that it took him a moment to realize that Heather was signaling her interest—in the nicest possible way.

“Um, yeah. Sure. Why not?” he heard himself say after a slightly-too-long pause.

She nodded uncertainly, clearly picking up on the ambivalence in his lukewarm response. “Okay. I guess I’ll see you around.” She hesitated a second as though she was waiting for him to say something else, then she waved and headed up the corridor.

Rhys walked to his own apartment and let himself in. He shrugged out of his jacket, slinging it over the back of the nearest chair.

He was very aware that Heather had been waiting for him to name a time and place for them to get together. Which he hadn’t done because the first thing that sprang to mind when he thought about having a coffee with another woman was that it would be a betrayal of Charlie.

Which was pretty much crazy. Especially considering the lecture he’d been giving himself in the garage not five minutes ago. He and Charlie were friends, and they were about to become parents. He owed her his support and his patience and his time. He did not owe her his emotional or sexual loyalty. They had a relationship, but they weren’t in a relationship. And the odds were good they never would be, for all the reasons he’d already listed. There was too much at stake.

So he could have said yes to Heather. Apart from a lackluster blind date that Greg’s wife, Jessica, had set up for him a few weeks after that fateful night at Café Sydney, he hadn’t been out with anyone since Charlie. He’d been too busy with work to socialize. And, if he was honest with himself, he’d been a little thrown after his experience with Charlie. The intensity of it, followed by the fact that she’d simply bailed on him the next day. He hadn’t exactly felt like diving into the dating pool.

He ran his hand through his hair, very aware that the real reason he hadn’t set up a date with Heather—and the reason why he wasn’t knocking on her door now to do so—was because, as attractive as she was, he really wasn’t that interested.

His head was too full of Charlie. And not only because of the baby.

Better get past that, buddy, because it’s never going to happen.

Stripping off his shirt, he strode through the bedroom into the en suite. He shed the rest of his clothes and stepped beneath the shower, washing away the day’s labors.

Not so long ago, his life had been simple. He’d known what he wanted, and he’d had a plan to get it. Now…he had no idea what he wanted. And half the things he’d once thought were important had lost their shiny allure. The wharf apartment, the European sports car, the high-roller lifestyle.

That apartment was no place for a baby, let alone a toddler. There was no outdoor space, and the thought of combining even a moderately enterprising kid with some outdoor furniture and a balcony frankly freaked him out. The sleek Aston Martin Vanquish he’d been stalking for the past few years… It wasn’t as though the designers had put a lot of thought into how to fit a car seat into one of those things. When he got a new vehicle, it was far more likely to be a sedan with a good safety rating. He didn’t think he could go as far as a van—he still had his pride, after all—but a new Audi or BMW would probably hit the mark. And when he moved out of this apartment, he would probably look for a house with a yard, instead of a slick bachelor pad.

He shook his head. Six weeks ago, if someone had told him that he’d relinquish long-held ambitions so easily, with so little regret, he would have laughed in their face.

And yet here he was, mentally scrapping the wharf, the Vanquish, and walking away from a potential date with a hot blonde flight attendant. All because of Charlie and the baby.

A brave new world, indeed. One that he needed to get a grip on ASAP, because it was doing his head in.





CHARLIE SPENT THE WEEKEND not waiting for Rhys to call. On Saturday she went to Paddington Markets on Oxford Street and spent several hours checking out handcrafted jewelry, leatherwork, clothes and artwork. She bought her first purchases for the nursery—a carved wooden monkey with arms and legs that moved, thanks to leather thongs at its shoulder and hips, and an elephant with a bright red trunk.

Afterward she bought a big bowl of chicken and mango salad from a nearby deli and took it to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Sitting on the grass in the warm afternoon sun, she ate her lunch and watched the ferries and pleasure boats steam across the harbor. She didn’t check her phone once, and she left it at home when she went to the movies with Gina and her boyfriend, Spencer, that night.

On Sunday she contemplated tackling the box of her father’s belongings, actually going as far as sliding it out from beside her desk before shoving it back and heading to Bondi to tackle the five-beach trek to Coogee. The winding, twisty path followed the coastline from Bondi Beach past Tamarama and Clovelly to Coogee and took up to four hours return to do properly. Charlie walked for forty minutes before turning back, her face glistening with sweat and her thighs and butt sore. She hoped the baby enjoyed the bumpy ride. It felt good to use her body—and breathe the ocean air—after a week of sitting hunched at her desk.

When her phone rang that evening she was pleased to feel nothing but a mild fillip of pleasure when she saw Rhys’s name on the display. Just as she would if it were Gina or Yvonne or Hannah or one of her other army friends.

She told him about her weekend and he told her about his, then she reminded him that she had her twelve-week ultrasound on Thursday morning and he assured her he’d be there. They were both friendly, but there was a certain constraint evident in how carefully they chose their words, and they wound up the call earlier than usual.

Just as well, Charlie told herself. There was a definite danger in allowing Rhys too close. Arm’s length was much smarter and more manageable.

The early part of the week slipped away thanks to a tight deadline for one of the sites she was working on. She was feeling gritty eyed and sleep deprived when she stepped into the shower on Thursday morning. She’d stayed up late inputting some last-minute client changes, despite the fact that the site had already gone live, and waking at her usual time had been harder than it should have been.

“I blame you,” she said, glancing in the general direction of the baby. Her eyes widened. Overnight, her stomach had popped and suddenly there was a very distinct convex curve to her lower torso. She actually looked pregnant. Very early-days pregnant, but pregnant nonetheless.

She’d been wondering when her body was going to declare its status. So far her pregnancy symptoms had been limited to “evening sickness.” No thickening of the waist, no sore or suddenly huge breasts.

But as of today she had a baby bump. A tiny baby bump, with the promise of bigger things to come.

She ran her hands over the rounded shape, imagining the little kidney bean growing inside her. Today, she was going to see him or her for the first time. She was going to see arms and legs and a heart. She was also going to find out if there was anything wrong with her child.

She’d read through the ultrasound sections in her baby books. She knew that at thirty-two years old she had a higher chance of something being wrong with the baby than if she were twenty-two—not significantly, but there was still a difference—and a little tickle of nervousness made her take a deep breath as she stepped out of the shower.

She and Rhys hadn’t discussed the medical purpose of the scan. It occurred to her that if something was wrong with their child they were not prepared.

There aren’t going to be any problems, The Bean is fine.

She hoped the voice in her head was right, but someone had to draw the short straw.

She dressed in her jeans, deriving an almost perverse delight in the fact that they were suddenly snug. She pulled on a blue sweater and dried her hair before pulling it into a ponytail. By then there was just over an hour until her appointment. She went to the kitchen, dutifully measured a liter of water then systematically drank it over the next twenty minutes. Then she drove to the radiology clinic in Glebe. Her bladder started to complain as she parked. She checked her watch. Another ten minutes until her appointment. For the sake of her bladder, she hoped they weren’t running late.

She half expected Rhys to have arrived ahead of her, but there were only strange faces in the waiting room. She settled into her chair and glanced toward the parking lot.

Fifteen minutes later, she was feeling distinctly uncomfortable and Rhys was late. She checked her phone for the tenth time in as many minutes and resisted, again, the urge to call him to check if he was on his way. The most likely explanation was that he was stuck in traffic and she didn’t want to force him to answer his phone when he was driving.

She shifted in her chair. Would it be considered beyond the pale if she undid the snap on her jeans? It was either that, or she would have to use the bathroom. She shifted to the edge of the chair and eyed the door to the ladies’ room wistfully.

“Charlotte Long?”

She glanced toward the white-coated woman standing in front of the reception desk.

“That’s me,” Charlie said, standing. She glanced toward the entrance, willing Rhys to arrive, but the doorway remained resolutely empty.

“This way, please.” The woman led her up the hall.

Charlie shot one last glance over her shoulder before following. There was precious little she could do, after all. She couldn’t stall until Rhys arrived—the waiting room was full of people waiting for their scans. He’d have to make do with the DVD she’d been told she would be given afterward.

Disappointment thunked in her belly as she entered a treatment room dominated by an examination table and a portable computer workstation. It wasn’t until this moment that she realized how quickly and completely she’d bought into the notion that she wouldn’t be doing this on her own.

Better wake up from that little fantasy, Cinderella.

Because Rhys was not her husband. He wasn’t even her boyfriend. They didn’t share a house or their lives, and they would not be sharing every aspect of this journey.

So this was a timely wake-up call, really.

“Shoes off, jeans unsnapped and unzipped,” the woman instructed as Charlie placed her handbag on the chair beside the exam table. “Did you drink your liter of water?”

“Oh, yes,” Charlie said meaningfully, offering the other woman a rueful smile.

The woman remained po-faced as she wrote something on a form. “The technician will be with you in a moment.”

She left, closing the door behind her.

Charlie bent to untie her shoes and was placing them neatly beneath the chair when a small knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” she said.

The door opened to reveal Rhys, a chagrined expression on his handsome face. His gaze zeroed in on her socks, then the examination table.

“Shit. Don’t tell me I’ve missed it? Bloody traffic.”

Charlie grinned, unable to quell her bone-deep pleasure and relief that he was here. They would be sharing this experience after all.

“You’re fine. We’re about to start. That’s if my bladder doesn’t explode first.”

“Right.” A small frown signaled his confusion about her reference to the status of her bladder.

“They make you drink a liter of water to help with the imaging,” she explained.

“A liter? Wow.” He glanced around. “Lucky there’s no running water in here then, huh?”

She laughed, feeling unaccountably buoyant. “Yeah.”

She climbed onto the crinkly paper covering the table and settled against the raised backrest. Her hands went to the snap on her jeans—and suddenly she remembered that the last time she’d undone her pants with this man he’d helped pull them off.

Then he’d tumbled her onto his bed and made her forget her own name with his skilled, intense lovemaking.

A wave of heat washed up her chest and into her face. She forced her fumbling fingers to undo the button, carefully not looking Rhys’s way, then she slid her zip down. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Rhys glancing away, obviously as uncomfortable as she was.

“Don’t worry. I have a no-nudity clause,” she joked.

“I wasn’t worried.”

A knock sounded then the door opened to admit a different woman. Tall, dark haired and very slim, she wore a pair of heavy, dark-rimmed glasses on the end of her thin nose. Charlie guessed she was in her late thirties, maybe early forties.

“Hi. I’m Sally. I’ll be doing your scan today.”

Rhys offered his hand. “Rhys. And this is Charlie.”

“Hi,” Charlie said.

“Nice to meet you both. So, shall we take a peek at this baby of yours?”

It was a rhetorical question, and neither she nor Rhys answered it. Sally busied herself at the computer, typing Charlie’s details before turning to her.

“I’ll get you to fold your jeans back, Charlie, and roll your top up, too, please.”

“Sure.” Charlie did as instructed, exposing her pale belly and the upper edge of her black cotton panties. Her bump sat proudly between her hips, a gentle molehill that would soon become a mountain.

“Look at that. You’re pregnant,” Rhys said. He sounded a little surprised.

“It happened overnight. I woke up and it was there.”

She was aware of Sally shooting a glance between the two of them, obviously trying to work out their relationship now that Charlie had revealed that they didn’t live together. When she spoke, though, she was all business. “Okay, this has been in the warmer but it might still be a little on the cool side. Sorry about that.”

She proceeded to squirt a bluish-colored gel over Charlie’s belly. It was on the cool side, but she’d had worse.

“Okay?” Sally checked.

“All good.”

“Then let’s say hello to this little person.”

Rhys drew up the chair beside the table as Sally used the mouse to click something on the screen. She swiveled in her chair, bringing the ultrasound wand close. Then, her gaze on the screen, she began to glide the wand over Charlie’s abdomen.

“Searching, searching… Ah, there we are.”

A small white shape appeared in the blackness of the screen, surrounded by what looked like static. Charlie held her breath as Sally tapped the keyboard some more and the magnification increased.

And there, filling the screen, was The Bean.

“Oh,” Charlie said. An unexpected rush of emotion washed over her as she looked at her baby’s tiny curled body.

“Okay, before we go any further I need to ask if you want to know the baby’s gender. Sometimes we can’t see it at twelve weeks but your baby is perfectly positioned.”

Charlie looked to Rhys. “We haven’t really talked about it, have we?”

“Now seems like a good time,” Rhys said with a faint smile.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“I think I’d like to know.”

“Me, too.”

They both turned to Sally.

“You’re having a little girl,” she said simply.

Charlie swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat. She hadn’t really thought about her baby’s gender. She certainly hadn’t had a preference. But a little girl suddenly felt extraordinarily right.

A little girl she could lavish love on. A little girl she could assure and nurture and guide. A little girl who would always, always know that she mattered.

“Hey,” Rhys said quietly. His hand gripped hers as she sniffed away the tears flooding her eyes.

“Sorry,” Charlie said.

“Nothing to apologize for,” Rhys said, and she saw that his eyes were shiny with unshed tears, too.

“For the record, I’m more than happy for you to call the baby Sally,” Sally said.

They all laughed and the tightness in Charlie’s throat eased. Sally spent the next ten minutes taking them on a tour of their baby, showing them the whirling miracle of her tiny heart, her limbs, her developing organs. They watched, awestruck, as the baby lifted a tiny arm, almost as though she was waving at them.

“Hey, there, baby girl,” Rhys said.

After taking some measurements, Sally informed them that there was a very low risk that their baby suffered from Down syndrome. She went on to check for spinal abnormalities before inspecting the placenta and declaring that everything looked healthy and normal.

Charlie only realized that she was still holding Rhys’s hand when Sally ducked out of the room to organize their films.

“That was freaking amazing,” he said.

She tugged on her fingers and he glanced down as though he, too, had forgotten they were holding hands.

“Sorry,” he said, relaxing his grip.

“Your mum will probably want to look at the scan. I wonder if we’ll be able to copy the DVD?”

It was strange, but she felt oddly shy after the intensity of the past few minutes. As though she needed a few minutes alone to compose herself.

“We can ask when Sally comes back. But you’re right, Mum will go nuts over this.” He pushed his hair back from his forehead, a relieved smile on his face.

“I don’t mind telling you, I was a bit nervous on the way here. I checked out some sites this morning and there’s some scary stuff on the Net about what could be wrong at twelve weeks.”

“I know. But we’re lucky,” she said quietly.

Sally reentered the room, her white coat billowing behind her. “Okay, that’s all sorted. We’ll get you cleaned up, Charlie, and the films and your DVD should be out to you within ten minutes.”

The other woman used special tissues to clean the gel off Charlie’s belly before disposing of the debris and washing her hands. Charlie zipped and buttoned her jeans.

“Here,” Rhys said, offering up her sneakers.

“Thanks.” She tied the laces hurriedly, very aware of the need to use the bathroom now that the excitement had passed.

“Good luck with everything,” Sally said as Charlie stood and reached for her bag.

“Thank you. Will we have you next time we come?” Charlie asked.

“It depends on the roster, but you can always request me,” Sally said with a wink.

Rhys shook hands with her again before they both exited to the corridor.

“We should—”

Charlie held up a finger. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back in a second.”

She resisted the urge to break into a run as she headed for the ladies’. Rhys’s low laughter followed her up the hallway.

Five minutes later, she joined him in the waiting room, taking the seat beside him.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said primly.

He grinned.

“I’m glad you find all the peccadilloes of pregnancy so amusing,” she said.

“So am I.”

His dark brown eyes were dancing and she suddenly realized that her shoulder was flush against his and that the whole left side of her body was being warmed by his. It was always like that with Rhys, though. She was lulled by his charm and the forced intimacy of their situation, then the next thing she knew, she was thinking things she had no business thinking, and feeling things that were plain stupid.

Trying to make the movement seem as natural as possible, she leaned forward to adjust her handbag on the floor, shifting farther to her right so that their bodies were no longer in contact. Rhys glanced at her, a question in his eyes. He seemed on the verge of saying something when the receptionist called Charlie’s name.

She shot to her feet, grateful for the interruption. Just as well they would be going their separate ways in five minutes’ time. Clearly she was hormonal and sentimental and stupid after the scan—not a good state to be in when she was within a three-mile radius of Rhys Walker.