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‘Bring your plate in here, Alex. Do you know how boring it is being confined to bed?’ And then she wondered if that was such a good idea. She didn’t really want to spend more time in Alex’s company than she had to, did she?
‘It’s only for one more day.’
‘Half a day,’ she corrected.
He stood for a moment as if undecided before leaving the room and returning with his plate. He settled himself on his chair.
She should get a nice little tub chair for this room. It was the last thought she was aware of thinking before she returned to her food. She couldn’t believe how ravenous she was, and how much better she was feeling. She scraped up the last of the sauce with a piece of lettuce, chewed in avid appreciation and finally set her tray aside. ‘That was unbelievably delicious. Though you didn’t have to go to any trouble, you know?’
‘No trouble.’
She didn’t believe that for a moment. ‘You could’ve just tossed a TV dinner into the microwave and I’d have been grateful for that.’
He polished off the last of his food too and set his plate on her dressing table. ‘I can’t believe you don’t cook.’
‘It’s boring and messy and takes too long.’
‘It doesn’t have to be any of those things.’
‘I do other things. I can crochet. That’s nice and domestic.’
‘You have a baby on the way. You need to know how to cook.’
Yes, she had a baby on the way. His baby. Only he didn’t want anything to do with it.
An awkward silence opened up between them, turning her tongue to lead.
Alex cleared his throat. ‘Finished?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Would you like some more?’
‘No, thank you.’
Her hands clenched in the quilt when he left with their empty plates. Why was he still here!
He returned a short while later with two mugs of steaming tea. He handed her one and settled himself on the seat at the end of her bed again.
‘So.’ He cleared his throat. He didn’t look any more at ease than she did. ‘This is where you grew up?’
She took a careful sip and then nodded. ‘The house where I grew up is a few blocks closer to the river.’
‘And you have lots of friends here, lots of honorary aunts and uncles?’
Was he trying to reassure himself that she had backup for when he did leave? Was that what all this was about? Him staying here looking after her—was it his attempt to assuage a guilty conscience?
No, no, he was too ruthless for that.
She bit her lip. He’d framed her ultrasound photo.
He’d bought her a relaxation CD.
Maybe he had a seriously guilty conscience?
‘Kit?’
She shook herself, searched and found the thread of their conversation again. ‘This was a great place to grow up. Doreen next door used to be the school secretary at my old primary school and what she doesn’t know about my old classmates isn’t worth knowing.’
He grimaced and she could see how this small-community lifestyle might seem suffocating to him, but she wasn’t going to lie about the kind of life she wanted for herself and her baby. ‘I barely clapped eyes on my neighbours in Sydney.’ Everybody was too busy working long hours, dealing with long commutes into the CBD. ‘I like knowing my neighbours’ names. I like chatting over the back fence. I like knowing that they’re keeping an eye on me and that I can do the same for them.’
She had no regrets about leaving the busy pace of the city behind.
‘Auntie Doreen is a good friend of my grandmother’s. My grandma used to live across the street.’ Which was probably why she’d jumped at the chance to buy this house. The street held good memories for her.
Alex frowned. ‘She doesn’t live there now, though, does she?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘No, Alex, she doesn’t. I’d have sent you to sit on her veranda to wait till she’d returned home from wherever it was she’d been, so it could be her rather than you sitting here talking to me right now.’
‘I didn’t mean … ‘
‘She moved into a retirement village in Forster five years ago when my mother relocated to Brisbane. She delights in all the activity the village offers. She has a very full social life.’ Before he could ask, she added, ‘Forster is across the bridge.’ Forster and Tuncurry were twin townships separated from each other by the channel of water that fed into Wallis Lake.
Did he really mean to abandon his child? As the question speared into her, an ache stretched behind her eyes, pounding in time to her pulse.
‘You look tired again. I should let you get more rest.’
He went to take her mug but she kept hold of it, forcing him to look at her. His fingers felt cool against hers. Unbidden, images of what he’d done with those fingers rose up through her. She snatched her hand away. She didn’t know how he managed to keep hold of the mug or prevent its dregs from spilling over her quilt. All she knew was that she couldn’t think when he touched her.
‘What the—’
Whatever he saw in her face had him biting back the rest of his words. His jaw had clenched so hard she suspected he wouldn’t be able to utter them now anyway.
‘I want to ask you something.’ She was appalled at her uneven breathiness. She’d wanted to sound cool, calm and in control. Unflappable.
Where Alex was concerned, though, she was highly flappable. And flammable!
His choked out, ‘Ask what?’ didn’t help either. She knew precisely how flammable he could be.
He didn’t meet her eyes. The pulse at the base of his jaw jumped and jerked.
She stared down at her hands to find her fingers mechanically pleating the quilt.
Alex reached out and trapped them beneath his hand, stilling them. ‘Kit, just tell me what’s on your mind.’
He sat back down and just like that some of the tension eased out of her. She pulled in one long, hard breath. ‘You said you weren’t leaving Tuncurry until we’d sorted out a few things. I want to know what those things are.’
‘There’ll be time enough for that once you’ve received the all-clear from the doctor tomorrow.’
She could almost see him replay the doctor’s words through his mind. No stress, no worry.
She folded her arms. ‘Look, I’m going to worry about this until we sort it out. Either you let me stew about it all night or we can talk now.’
For a moment she thought he was going to refuse, get up and walk away. ‘Can we keep this calm?’ he finally asked instead.
‘We’re adults, aren’t we?’ she countered.
He surveyed her for a long moment. It took a concerted effort not to fidget under those dark inscrutable eyes. ‘Okay, Kit.’ He nodded. ‘Once the child is born I want a paternity test carried out. If the child is mine then I’ll arrange for child support payments.’
She kept her voice perfectly polite. ‘No.’
He leant forward. ‘What do you mean, no? I have every right to demand a paternity test.’
‘Really?’ Even though she’d steeled herself for this, she was still surprised at how much his distrust hurt. ‘Just for argument’s sake, let’s say that we do get the test done and you discover that the baby is yours, and, believe me, Alex, that is what you’ll find out. But once you have incontrovertible proof, what is it going to change? Are you going to want visitation rights? Are you going to be a real father to this baby?’
He turned ashen. ‘No, but I’ll at least make sure that financially you and the baby are taken care of.’
‘You can take your blood money and sod off, Alex!’ She abandoned all pretence at politeness. ‘I can look after this baby on my own—financially and otherwise.’
‘It is my duty to provide financial support. It’s a legal requirement.’
‘It’s your duty to be a proper father, but it’s obvious that moral requirements don’t figure on your radar! So you can take your legal requirements and stuff them up your shirt for all I care.’
She wanted to drop her head to her knees and weep for her unborn child.
‘I can’t believe you’re prepared to turn your back like that on your own child, Alex. And I can’t believe that you could accuse me of lying about this, of—’
‘I’m not accusing you of anything!’
‘Yes, you are!’
He swore, scrubbed both hands down his face. ‘Hell, Kit, this isn’t about you.’
‘Not about me? How can you—’
‘I’ve been lied to once before.’
The world tilted to one side for a moment before righting itself again. Kit moistened her lips. When she could speak again she asked, ‘When? Who … ?’ Who would do such a thing?
‘My ex-wife.’
Her own hurt vanished. Just like that.
His face had gone unreadable, impassive. She suddenly found that she wanted to cry for him too. ‘What happened?’
He dropped his head to his hands. For a long moment Kit didn’t think he’d answer. Finally, he dragged both hands down his face and straightened. ‘Jacqueline and I had been married for fifteen months when she fell pregnant. She told me the baby was mine and I had no reason to doubt her. We’d dated for over a year before we married.’
He’d loved a woman once, enough to marry her? She rubbed at her arms but it couldn’t erase the sting that bloomed across her skin.
His mouth tightened. ‘It never occurred to me that she’d lie. And God help me, but when I found out she was pregnant I couldn’t wait to hold my son. We called him Chad.’
Kit’s spine lost all its strength. Her hands crept up to cover her mouth. Before her eyes, Alex aged. His skin lost its colour. The lines around his mouth and eyes grew more pronounced. Shadows took up residence in his eyes. She dragged her hands back down to her lap, gripped them together. ‘When did you find out the truth?’
‘Not until Chad was two.’
Her mouth went dry. Alex had spent two years, not to mention the nine months of the pregnancy, loving his son—his Chad—and giving his heart to him completely? He didn’t have to say that out loud—the evidence was written in every line of his body, in the grief that twisted his mouth and made his shoulders slump.
‘Oh, Alex! What happened?’
‘She took him away.’
She had to gulp back a sob at the raw pain in his voice.
‘She had paternity tests carried out and they proved that I … ‘
‘But you’d raised him. You loved him!’ The words burst from her. ‘Alex, you must’ve had rights.’
‘She and her lover—Chad’s biological father—left before I’d gathered my wits. They fled to South America.’
Kit stared at him. No! This episode in his life—it couldn’t end like this. Alex had loved that little boy. That little boy would’ve loved Alex.
‘The legal advice I received wasn’t promising. After all, what legal rights did I really have?’ His face twisted. ‘Oh, I had the money to drag the case through the courts for years, but in the end who would I really be hurting?’
Chad. The knowledge sucked the air out of her lungs. He’d done what was best for the little boy he loved, but it hadn’t given him an ounce of comfort. It had left a deep and lasting scar.
‘Don’t cry for me, Kit.’
It wasn’t until he reached across to brush her tears away with the pad of his thumb that she realized she was crying.
‘I’m not worth it.’
Wasn’t he? Suddenly she wasn’t so sure.
‘Because the fact is, no matter what I tell myself, I can’t go through that again.’
A weight settled in the middle of her chest.
‘I once had a son, Kit, and now I don’t. So you see, the paternity test, it isn’t about you, it’s about me. If your child is mine I will do what is legally required, but nothing more.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALEX strode out to the dark of the back garden and tried to draw air into his lungs.
He hadn’t meant to tell Kit about Chad. He didn’t talk about Chad. To anyone.
His gut clenched. He strode down to the back fence to wrap his fingers around the hard bark of the banksia tree until they started to burn and ache. He hadn’t realized how much Kit’s inability to fathom his previous treatment of her had plagued her, tormented her, had her questioning her own judgement and doubting herself. His mouth filled with acid. This was why he should have been more careful in the first place—resisted the temptation she’d presented, the lure of a life that he knew could never be his. But her sunshine had touched his soul, and for a short time he had been lost.
And she’d paid the price.
