Blind-Date Baby (15 page)

If Noah was incapable of reaching out to her, how would he cope with a child? Would he be as distant with their son or daughter? Her concern turned to anger. It wasn’t fair! Her first child had been robbed of a father who’d been devoted to her, and her second child would have a father who was present in body, but…emotionally? Who could tell?

Things had got worse in recent weeks. She had a feeling that Noah knew something was wrong between them but he was running from it. He’d retreated into his book, his fantasy world, rather than face it. Perhaps that was what he always did. Perhaps that was why he’d become a writer in the first place. You couldn’t get hurt in a world where you were God and you called the shots, holding everyone’s destinies in your hand.

Just once, she’d like to look in his eyes and see the real Noah. She was fed up seeing herself reflected back by the mirror he kept there, the mirror he hid behind.

In the morning Grace rolled over in bed, no Noah to curl up to. She opened her eyes and waited. The urge to be horribly sick was much weaker today. In fact, she was actually very hungry. But working out what she was hungry
for
was another matter.

She scratched the usual suspects—toast, cereal—off her list pretty quick. She wanted something…something salty! Anchovies? No. Not them. Bacon? A shudder ran through her.
Bleuch. And then she decided that salty was so last minute and started thinking of spicy things. Chilli sauce? Curry? Ginger-snaps?

Nothing appealed. The only thing she could think of doing was fridge-surfing—sticking her face inside it and seeing what appealed. She lolloped downstairs and into the kitchen and looked at the closed cupboards, hoping for inspiration. Nope.

Noah had a fridge the size of her old bathroom and she yanked the door open as it always seemed to suck itself closed extra hard when she approached it. There, sitting on the middle shelf, with a note propped up against it, was a waxy carton.

No love, no kisses, just
Noah.
Before she’d even opened the lid, she knew what it was.

Cold roast pork chow mein.

Her stomach gurgled in anticipation.

See? This was how he broke her heart into tinier and tinier pieces each day. Grace slid onto the floor by the open fridge door and began to cry.

Noah couldn’t be doing with all this have-to-be-chauffeur-driven-everywhere-I-go nonsense. He’d taken his car to Manchester, the one admission to his James Bond fixation as a boy. His Aston Martin.

Anyway, motorways were good thinking places. Mile after mile of the same white lines, the same hedgerows and fields, the same crash barriers. The trick was to disengage the creative part of the brain, the right brain, from the driving process and leave it to the left half.

What was he going to do with the troublesome Karl, the spy who refused to love anybody?

Dig deeper. Dig deeper. How do I do that? How do I know if there’s anything more inside? I’ve been digging—mining, even—for weeks and I’ve come up empty. All I’ve got is a big hole.

As he drove, Noah rolled Karl’s character round in his head, looking at him from every conceivable angle. Eventually, and quite unexpectedly, at Junction Four on the M1, his metaphorical shovel hit something solid. Something resembling a flap or a trapdoor.

He hadn’t even begun unpacking when he arrived home. It was mid-afternoon and he found Grace in the garden, staring out across the fields. He walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘How are you doing today?’

He daredn’t ask if she’d missed him, just in case she said no.

‘Fine,’ she said, turning to smile at him, but without using her eyes. ‘How was your thing?’

Awful without you beside me. Miserable. It was unbearable not being able to see you, to touch you.

It suddenly hit him that he didn’t want to use the smokescreen with Grace any more. He wanted to let her see through it. Great in principle, but the stupid thing had been in place for so many years, he didn’t know how to dismantle it.

‘Fine,’ he finally said. It had been fine. Gone like clockwork. He’d been a roaring success.

That misty look stayed in Grace’s eyes all that afternoon, through dinner and into the next week. The only time it faded was when they made love and then she looked as if she was going to cry instead. He wanted to tell her to just let it all out, to drench him with her tears if she wanted, but he didn’t know how to make it sound real.

Grace was pulling away. He was losing her.

Maybe she knew. Maybe, without all the picking, she knew. The urge to tell her he’d take the pain away, that it’d be okay, was so strong that he had to bite his tongue. Nice words, but they were a lie. He couldn’t tell her that, because he very much feared that everything she was thinking was true.

His brain jumped into action. He had to do something to make her happy.

And he knew just the thing. Her wedding present. A little delayed, to be sure, but she’d understand why when she saw it. It wasn’t going to be truly ready for another month, but now was the time to reveal the surprise.

He started making plans immediately and, all the while, his inner Rottweiler was strangely silent.

Noah was behaving most strangely today, Grace thought as she munched her way through a slice of dry toast covered in mango chutney and chocolate sprinkles. He’d been up even earlier than usual. She’d just opened one eye, grunted at the clock and gone back to sleep. But that wasn’t all, not by a long shot. After days of scowling at bare patches of wall and muttering to himself, his book filling all his consciousness, suddenly he was back in the real world, smiling, joking and talking.

She had the feeling that this was significant, something important. A turning point.

He bounded into the kitchen and surprised her with a long sweet kiss on the lips, completely ignoring the toast crumbs down her front and the fact that she looked like she’d just escaped from a sci-fi B movie.

‘When you’ve finished that, I think you should get dressed.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re getting a bit bossy all of a sudden.’

He tapped his nose. ‘You’ll see. I’ve got a surprise for you.’

And then he rushed out of the kitchen again like a mini tornado. Grace put her toast down and smiled. Something
was different. He seemed…unguarded, almost open. Her heart quivered at the thought. Was it finally happening? Was he finally ready to stop giving her
things
and give her a piece of himself?

Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry any more. Mango chutney and chocolate? Really?

She cleared her breakfast things away and headed upstairs. The morning sickness was definitely fading now she was reaching ten weeks, which was earlier than she’d expected, but a huge relief. And she could get all the way to the top of the staircase at normal speed, without having to lean on the banister for support. Perhaps she was going to start blooming, rather than looking like some weed the dog had dug up.

Jeans and a T-shirt would just have to do, and it was a step up from pyjamas and slobby tracksuits. So much for Noah-the-sexy-author’s glamorous wife. When she’d got dressed and run a brush through her hair, she went in search of Noah. She found him in the study, whispering on the phone. He put it down as soon as she crossed the threshold.

‘Right. Before we go anywhere, I insist you wear this.’ He pulled a woolly scarf out of a drawer and waved it in the air.

‘But it’s July.’

Noah just grinned. ‘Only just. And it’s not going round your neck. You need to put it over your eyes.’

His enthusiasm was infectious and she started to laugh. ‘Kinky! But…okay.’

He looped the scarf round her head and tied it tight at the back. ‘You can save that thought for later, Mrs Frost,’ he whispered in her ear. Then he led her out to the car and sat her down in the passenger seat. Her heart started beating fast, partly with nerves, partly with anticipation.

The car journey was not her finest hour, the blindfold making motion sickness a real possibility. Thankfully, the journey was short and it wasn’t long before the car stopped
and he turned the engine off. Seconds later he opened her door and helped her to stand.

The traffic was loud and she could hear a pedestrian crossing beeping. People were talking and she recognised the sound of shoes on hard ground—on cobbles, if she’d guessed right. They were in the High Street?

‘This way…’ Noah took hold of her arm under her elbow and steered her round the car. ‘There’s a step…and another…’ A bell jangled and he guided her through a door. ‘Just a bit further…There. You can take off your blindfold now.’

Grace blinked as she pulled the scarf down so it hung loosely round her neck. They were in a shop. She looked round, trying to work out where they were. Dark wood shelves lined the walls. The floor had recently had some very old carpet ripped up because pieces of perished green underlay had collected in the corners. It looked familiar, but…

Suddenly Grace gasped, ‘You bought Martin’s book shop? Really?’

Noah grinned even wider and nodded. ‘I outbid the original buyer, saved it from becoming an extension of Java Express.’

She didn’t know what to say. She just left her mouth hanging open and waved her hands around. ‘And Martin?’

‘Martin is going to run it for me—for the next couple of years, anyway. After that, apparently, Mrs Martin will have my hide. Welcome to Love and Bullets.’

Grace frowned.
‘Bullets?’

‘It’s going to be a specialist crime and thriller book shop. Shops for niche markets are doing well round here nowadays.’

‘And the
love
bit?’

Noah looked a little sheepish. ‘Well, in recent months I realised that not everybody lives on a steady literary diet of blood, espionage and murder, so I made room for a romance section too.’

Grace blinked slowly, thinking that when she opened her eyes again it might all vanish and prove to have been a mirage. ‘I think you’re barking mad. Wonderful, but barking mad.’

‘There’s more.’

Grace suddenly felt like sitting down, but there were no chairs so she just leant against an empty shelf. ‘More?’

‘This way.’ He grabbed her hand and pulled her through an archway that was covered in thick plastic sheeting. Grace stumbled through and, when she saw where she was, she said words that her developing baby really ought not to hear.

She was standing in The Coffee Bean, or what once had been The Coffee Bean and was now a completely updated, buffed and polished café. The fantastic Victorian counter had been waxed. It fairly gleamed. The glass had been cleaned and the missing etched panels replaced with good reproductions. And the floor! The broken tiles had been mended. And in the bay window was a vast display case with glass shelves.

Oh, my! What had he done? What had her stupid husband decided to get her now?

Noah had got her a patisserie, that was what. He’d collected all her dreams together and delivered them to her, wrapped in a pink bow. And she hated him for it.

She turned to face him, her hands on her hips. ‘When did you buy this?’

The smile slid from Noah’s face. ‘A few months ago. Java Express had almost sealed the deal, but I went to Caz with a better offer.’

She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. ‘Caz let you do this? Why?’

‘I…I thought this was what you wanted.’

Grace let out a long sarcastic laugh. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep all of this a secret from me, Noah?’

The bemused expression he was wearing solidified into irritation. ‘It was supposed to be a surprise. Your wedding present. Okay, it’s a little late, but I thought you’d understand.’

Anger contorted her features. ‘Oh, I understand all right. You can’t treat me like one of your characters and plot my life out for me! I’m going to have a baby! How am I going to run a patisserie? Tell me that!’

Noah’s forehead creased. ‘Babies sleep a lot, don’t they?’

Now Grace’s laughter became hysterical. ‘You have no idea, do you? Absolutely no idea.’

‘You don’t like it.’

The hormones were ganging up on her again, filling her eyes with tears. Little monsters. ‘Noah,’ she said in a wavery voice that got quieter and quieter. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s all I ever wanted. But it’s just another
thing
.’

He came and stood close to her, face to face. ‘And that’s wrong?’

Now the tears really fell. ‘No. No, it’s not wrong. It’s just that, when it’s the only thing, when there’s nothing else…’ She gulped in oxygen. ‘I can’t do this any more. I thought I could, but I can’t. I need more.’ Her hands wandered to her slightly rounded belly. ‘We both do.’

She had to tell him, so she took a really deep breath and drew all her courage into her mouth.

‘I…I love you.’ If she’d expected some but-I’ve-always-loved-you-too declaration, like they did in the movies, now was the time. Now was the moment she’d see his face change, his lips move…

He did nothing but take a step backwards and look blankly at her.

‘I’m talking about proper love, Noah. To have and to hold love. Yes, we said those words, we said we’d love and cherish, but we didn’t mean them that way at the time. But I love you like that now. And I know it’s against the rules and not what
we agreed, but I can’t help it and you can’t do anything to change that, even if you want to.’

The pity in his eyes was more than she could handle. ‘Grace, I—’

‘Don’t. Unless you’re going to say you feel the same way, just…don’t.’

He turned away and walked over to the display cabinet in the window and ran his hands through his hair. ‘What do we do now?’

She folded her hands in front of her. ‘I’m not going to stop you seeing the baby. In fact, I’ll actively encourage it, but…but I don’t think I can live with you any more. I don’t think I can stay married to you. Not like this. You understand, don’t you?’