Bride on the Children's Ward / Marriage Reunited: Baby on the Way (19 page)

‘I’m using it.’ Her voice sounded hoarse with the ache in her throat.

‘I see.’ He looked away and she could see a muscle twitching along his jaw.

‘It’s the only bed made up so use it. I haven’t been home to sleep in it since I changed the sheets yesterday.’ As soon as the words were out she wished she could take them back. His eyes held hers for a long moment. She tensed, waiting for a derisive comment.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

She nodded briefly. On muscles wobbly with relief, she turned towards the door.

‘Liz?’

She looked back at him.

‘Could I borrow your keys, please?’

‘My keys? Haven’t you got yours?’

‘The airline lost my luggage in California. I didn’t want to risk missing my connecting flight home while someone tracked it down.’

He sounded exhausted, almost defeated, and she realised for the first time that there were dark circles under his eyes. Her heart ached with sympathy she didn’t want to feel.

‘Mine are in my locker, but there’s a front-door key in the old pot-belly on the veranda.’ She shrugged slightly at the patent surprise on his face. ‘Pregnancy seems to have scrambled the thought processes that keep track of my keys. After I locked myself out of the house a couple of times, I put a spare set outside.’

He regarded her in silence. ‘Have you…been okay otherwise?’

‘Mostly.’ His question touched her to the core. He sounded like he cared. Foolish, foolish woman to let herself be affected by a few kind words. She forced her lips into a smile. No way was she going to tell him about the weeks of morning sickness when she’d wanted to curl up in a ball and have someone care for her. The days when she’d had to drag herself out of bed to come to work. Or the times she’d desperately needed a hug—his hug. ‘Can you make sure you put the key back, please?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well…I’ll see you later, then.’

Jack pulled into the driveway, a mantle of lethargy settling on his shoulders as he switched off the ignition of the rental car. He sat for a minute or two, noting the overgrown garden, the bush-covered hills of the Victorian high country that formed a familiar backdrop.

A mower droned soporifically in the distance. The sound of a dog barking in the neighbour’s yard snapped him out of a daze. If he didn’t move soon, he’d fall asleep right here.

Coming back had been the right thing.
More right than he’d realised when he’d made the decision.
Living in Dustin was the closest he’d come to having roots. The town was large enough to provide great services, small enough to be a real community. A great place to raise a family.

A lead weight dropped through his gut.

A family.
Oh, God. He wasn’t ready, he’d never be ready. A thin film of perspiration popped out of his pores, chilling his forehead and upper lip. He recognised his body’s fight-or-flight response. Pointless trying to deal with this when he was punchy with jet-lag.

Grabbing his carry-on bag, he forced his tired legs up the veranda steps. He scrupulously returned the key to the old potbelly stove after he’d used it. Inside the house, he tapped the door with his heel, listening to the latch snick behind him as he let the familiar smells soak in. Delicate, delicious scents with tones of lavender and fresh pine cones. And a trace of Liz’s favourite soap.

This house and Liz were home, where he belonged, where he wanted to stay. He rubbed his sternum as he took inventory of the wide central hallway and the living areas off to each side. His heart felt too big for his chest. The months away had given him a poignant appreciation of things he’d taken for granted. The colours, soft, welcoming terracotta and greens, had been Liz’s choice. He’d provided the brawn for the preparation and painting. And they’d both chosen the eclectic collection of new and second-hand furniture. Everything had been picked for comfort and appeal, not because it matched another item.

Liz had joked that she was exorcising the polished, regimented perfection of her childhood. If only all demons could be so easily disposed of. Not that he had a problem with his past. He’d simply used it as a blueprint of what to avoid. Growing up as the son of a drug addict had left him utterly clear about one aspect of his life. No dabbling, no social indulging. No chemical crutches needed to get him through each day. Not for any reason.

Not ever.

He tossed his car keys on the small hall desk and walked slowly through the house, pausing again in the doorway of the main bedroom. A vivid vision of Liz tumbled across the queen-sized mattress beneath his weight had heat scorching to his groin. He blinked the memory away.

Now the luxurious brocade spread hid the fact that the bed it covered was stripped and unused. A façade.

Like their marriage? His heart kicked painfully.

Not if he could help it.

He strode through to the spare room and dumped his carryon bag onto the bed’s pristine quilt cover. His mouth tightened.

Fresh sheets. The small domestic detail epitomised their estrangement. That and the question about where he was staying. Realistically, he hadn’t expected to leap back into bed with her. But since when did they need fresh sheets between them?

Perhaps this was Liz’s way of distancing herself from him even further. Things had been bad when he’d left, but at least they’d shared a bed right up until the final few weeks.

Or had they? Both their jobs meant nights away. He’d volunteered to do more than his fair share at the fire station. With a sinking feeling, he realised that Liz had probably been doing the same thing at the hospital.

He smiled grimly as he stripped off his shirt. The crackle of the airline tickets seemed to mock him. A second honeymoon to rekindle their relationship seemed laughably simplistic in the face of Liz’s pregnancy. He threw his clothes on the chair in the corner before padding naked across the hall to the bathroom.

Leaning on the vanity unit, he stared at his reflection critically, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. The hours of travelling had left him tired, dishevelled and desperately in need of a shave.

It was not the face of a father.

But he was going to be one, whether his marriage survived or not. A cold thrill swept over him, part dread, part some other emotion he didn’t recognise.

Poor Liz. They’d been discussing separation, divorce before he’d left. Not parenthood. How had she felt when she discovered she was pregnant? Shocked? Or secretly pleased? She’d been off the Pill, but they’d used protection…though obviously not enough. He grinned wryly.

His smile faded as he remembered the spasm of hurt, quickly hidden, that had flashed across her face when he’d asked if the child was his. The question had risen from some deep, fortressed corner of his soul and emerged before he could think better of it.

‘You really are a prize bastard, Campbell.’ His voice sounded croaky, unnaturally loud in the silent house. He blew out a long breath. Liz didn’t deserve to be measured by the women in his past. She wasn’t the sort to betray him with another man. Cerebrally, he knew that…but how did he turn that into a gut-level, instinctive trust? One thing was for sure—if he couldn’t, he would lose her.

Lose
them
.

He looked down at his hand, curled his fingers over the palm as he remembered the solid push he’d felt from Liz’s stomach…from the baby. His baby.

He was going to be a
father
. His stomach swooped in another quick dive.

Hell, what did he know about family?

S
IX
hours later, rested and showered, Jack stood at the ward desk. On the other side, Liz leaned forward, her hands braced on either side of a stack of patient records.

‘I’m working. I can’t just leave.’ Each word was enunciated with a frigid clarity that should have blistered his ears.

‘Yes, you can.’ For the first time he began to appreciate just how difficult the task he’d set himself was going to be. He took a slow deep breath. ‘I’ve spoken to Tony Costello—’

‘What? You’ve spoken to my boss?’ Her voice was still pitched low in deference to the patients in the ward, but her intensity rammed into him. ‘How dare you?’

‘Easily.’ He’d come too far to back down now. ‘You’re not to darken the hospital doors before tomorrow.’

If she had any idea of the scope of the discussions with Tony she’d be even angrier. He’d cross that bridge when he had to. Leaning on the counter, he willed his body to relax. The smile he forced to his mouth felt stiff with tension.

‘I’ve got things to do.’ Liz wore a hunted look as her eyes slid away from him to a pile of neatly stacked patient notes.

‘Yes, you sure do. You have to come home with me.’

Her gaze, dark and revealing, darted back to his. She was afraid.
Of him?
The notion punched his breath away. His Liz was fearless. Surely, he was mistaken.

‘Do I have to throw you over my shoulder, darlin’?’ He was relieved there was no trace of his turmoil in his voice.

‘In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t bend that way any more,’ she grated out. Any hint of fear was burned away as her eyes glowed gold with anger.

He allowed his gaze to drift down to the mound of her abdomen. His chest tightened in an unexpected rush of possessiveness. His woman. His baby. ‘No, I guess not. Okay, fireman’s lift is out. How about I sweep you up and carry you out in my arms? Should cause quite a stir.’

‘You wouldn’t.’ She scowled, pulling the edges of her white coat over her stomach and folding her arms.

‘Try me.’

He held her gaze for a long moment before she huffed out a breath and looked down at the desk, her lips clamped in a firm line. A pang of sympathy tweaked at his conscience. She was no match for him now that he’d had a solid five hours sleep.

Since he’d been up, he’d returned the rental car to the depot and shopped for groceries. On the back seat of Liz’s car sat half a dozen bags of necessities to stock the woefully depleted refrigerator he’d found at the house, at their home. He straightened, flexing his shoulders. Pregnant women needed to look after themselves. Or be looked after.

‘Very well.’ She straightened a pile of forms. ‘But I need to check on one of the patients before I go. So you’ll just have to wait.’

‘Don’t be long, sweetheart, or I’ll come and find you,’ he said softly as she rounded the desk to move past him.

The look she flashed him should have fried him on the spot. ‘I’ll be as long as I need to be.’

As he watched her moving down the corridor, her steps slower than normal, he knew he was doing the right thing whether she liked it or not. A peculiar mixture of emotions—exasperation, love, and maybe just a touch of anger?—churned in his gut as she disappeared into one of the rooms.

He expelled a long sigh. They’d had so many arguments about starting a family in the six months before he’d gone overseas. He’d finally faced the fact that he didn’t want to be a father. That the remnants of his paternal instinct had died more than a decade ago.

With Kylie’s betrayal.
Kylie.
He hadn’t thought about his teenage crush for years. The girl who’d told him he was going to be a father—only to dump him when she miscarried. And dump him hard, trashing his love and his fervent promises of marriage, support, fidelity. Even stripping him of his right to grieve for the lost baby with her confession that it wasn’t his.

Perhaps his past wasn’t as buried as he believed.

He rubbed a hand over his face and thought back to his last confrontation with Liz, on the day before he’d left. It’d been very cold, very civilised after the preceding months of hot words and hotter, hope-filled reconciliations.

But regardless of the physical passion that flared between them, he hadn’t been able to overcome the obstacle of Liz’s desire to have a family. His argument, that they had something special and didn’t need children to complete their relationship, hadn’t swayed her at all. He’d agreed to give Liz a divorce. He smiled grimly. Looking at it from Liz’s perspective, though, she’d been unable to overcome his entrenched resistance to becoming a father.

Stalemate.

Not that it mattered now. A moment’s careless pleasure and they were going to be parents. Though, in fairness to both of them, they hadn’t been careless, just unlucky. Their usual contraceptive regimen had failed.

Or
had
Liz been deliberately careless? The muscles of his scalp contracted, pulling at his already tense forehead. He shifted, paced a few steps, trying to shake the unwelcome thought away.

It was irrelevant. He preferred to deal with reality, with the present. And the pregnancy, deliberate or accidental, was a fact that had to be faced squarely. Besides, she wouldn’t have gone to such lengths…would she?

Liz ignored the faint tremor in her fingers as she studied Bob Smyth’s chart. His temperature had stabilised during the day. The new antibiotics were obviously doing the job, clearing his lungs, easing his breathing. Microbiology results on the sputum still weren’t back, but there was no sign now of the respiratory distress he’d been admitted with the day before yesterday.

She looked at the patient propped up on the pillows, his face relaxed in sleep, and toyed briefly with the thought of disturbing him. Hard plastic dug into her flesh as she pressed her palms on either side of the chart board. Why couldn’t Bob have been awake? She could have asked him a question, chatted for a few minutes about something, anything. Then she might have felt as though she was here for some purpose.

Instead, she had to admit to herself that she was avoiding the moment when she had to face Jack. Her husband…the father of her baby. Her heart squeezed painfully as she smoothed a hand over her stomach.

The
unwilling
father of her baby.

She hooked the chart on the end of the bed, her fingers fiddling with the clip for a moment longer. She was hiding, trying to delay the inevitable. Stupid because there was nothing she’d like more than to be able to go home and put her feet up, or perhaps wallow in a bath. If it weren’t for Jack being at the house, she’d probably have left the hospital hours ago.

With a small sigh of defeat, she turned to leave the room. Back at the front desk, she wrote up a request for physiotherapy for Bob and slipped it into a wire basket at the end of the desk.

She felt Jack’s gaze follow her as she went through to hang up her white coat and retrieve her bag from the locker.

‘I need to go to the supermarket on the way home,’ she said when she returned.

Jack fell into step with her. ‘What for?’

His hand came to rest in the curve of her back as he guided her down the corridor. The small, almost protective gesture sent her pulse into overdrive, scattering her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘What do you need to go to the supermarket for?’

‘Oh. Um, yes.’ With an effort she pulled her mind back to the conversation. ‘You didn’t let me know you were coming home so I haven’t done any shopping.’

‘Hmm.’

The noncommittal response, coupled with her reaction to his touch, irritated her. ‘I’m assuming you do want to eat?’

‘Yeah, I do. I’ve got it under control.’

A short time later and they were on the road.
Going home…together.
Liz’s heart thumped with an upsurge of poignant emotion.

‘Congratulations, by the way.’ She clasped her palms together in her lap, interlaced fingers pressing hard into her knuckles. With her peripheral vision, she saw Jack give her a quick glance before returning his eyes to the road.

‘For?’ He sounded wary.

‘Being appointed brigade captain.’ She caught her breath in the short, tense silence. ‘Why? Is there something else you haven’t you bothered to tell me?’

‘Liz—’

‘Of course, I’d heard rumours. But nobody thought to
tell
me because they naturally assumed I already knew.’ She stared at his profile, hating the bitterness she could hear in her voice. ‘How do you think that made me feel, Jack?’

He sighed. ‘I thought I’d be home to tell you before the details got out. I should have known better. I’m sorry.’

A muscle jumped along the line of his now clean-shaven jaw. He looked disgustingly fresh and well rested.

And utterly desirable.

While she felt frumpy and unattractive. She wrenched her gaze away, sealing her lips to stop herself from saying anything more.

As soon as the car stopped in the driveway, she scrambled out and opened the back door of the car.

‘Leave those,’ Jack said from the driver’s side as she reached for one of the grocery bags on the back seat.

‘I’m here so I might as well carry something.’ She leaned in and grasped a calico handle.

Moments later, hands clamped around her hips and she was gently but firmly tugged out of the vehicle. The bag she held was removed. Off balance from his touch, she looked up to find hard blue eyes boring into hers. ‘I said leave them. Just…go inside and put your feet up. Do whatever you like, but let someone else be in charge for a while.’

‘Fine, carry them all yourself, then.’ With Jack’s arms spread, one hand on the car door, the other on the roof, his solidly muscled body effectively corralled her. Her heart ricocheted around in her chest cavity. He’d touched her through layers of clothing, but the imprint of his strong hands still lingered on her flesh. Even worse was her body’s wicked yearning to press against him. She curled her fingers around her handbag to stop any possibility of reaching out.

Her eyes fixed on the navy rib of his neckband, she forced her mind to form a coherent sentence. ‘If you’ll get out of my way, I’ll leave you to it.’

Letting go of the car door, he shifted enough for her to brush past.

Not trusting her voice while he was still so close, she shot a tight smile in his direction. Then, mustering all the dignity she could, she walked towards the house.

‘I put the key back in the pot-belly if you need it.’ His voice followed her up the path.

A few moments later he joined her on the veranda, shopping bags in hand. ‘Dinner will be in an hour or so. I’ll call you.’

‘Fine,’ she mumbled, fumbling through the contents of her bag for her keys. She should have just retrieved the spare from the wretched stove. That way she’d have been inside already and out of his disturbing radius.

He shifted his weight, hefting the bags. Out of the corner of her eye she could see his biceps bulging slightly, filling the short sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘Do you want me to get the spare?’

She started at the sound of his voice as her fingers closed around her keyring.

‘No.’ Picking one, she stabbed it into the lock, relieved when it turned smoothly.

‘After you.’ She pushed the door open and stood back to hold the screen. The tang of his aftershave stayed with her as she stood on the doorstep, staring after him.

The thin cotton knit shirt moulded to his long back. She’d always loved his broad shoulders, loved the strength in them. With snug jeans clinging to narrow hips, he was heart-throb material. A hot spear of lust twisted in her abdomen. Her shoulders slumped and she closed her eyes on a wave of despair. Even after their years together, even after the bitter arguments that had punctuated their relationship before he’d gone away, she wasn’t immune to his masculine appeal. In fact, she wondered if she’d become even more sensitised to him in his absence. For the sake of her sanity she hoped familiarity would breed its contempt—and quickly.

‘Are you all right?’ Jack’s voice jolted her out of her miserable reverie. ‘Do you need a hand?’

‘Yes. No.’ She drew herself up. The last thing she needed right now was for him to touch her again. ‘I’m fine, thank you. It’s…I’ll go and, um, have a bath. Now. In the en suite.’

She fled, feeling his gaze follow her into the house, only releasing her when she turned into the main bedroom.

An hour later, more pampered than she’d felt in a long time, she wandered through to the kitchen.

‘Good timing.’ He looked up from the bench where he was putting the finishing touches on a colourful tossed salad. She fidgeted beneath his scrutiny. ‘You look better. Less exhausted.’

She grimaced wryly. ‘Thanks, I guess.’

‘You always look beautiful, Liz.’ A small smile curled the edges of his lips. She dragged her eyes away to focus on the chunks of tomato dotted over the lettuce.

‘I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.’ But in her heart she wondered if she was telling the entire truth. Some small, stubborn core lapped up the words, wanting more.
Really dumb.
They’d soon be going their separate ways…They had to. The marriage was over. She couldn’t use the pregnancy to hold him. Wanting more of anything from him was pointless.

He shrugged. ‘I’ve set the table on the deck and poured you a drink.’ He nodded at a wineglass filled with golden liquid. ‘Why don’t you take that outside and sit down while I put the salmon on?’

‘I can’t drink alcohol.’

‘I know.’ He opened the sliding door with his elbow while balancing the salad in one hand and plates in the other. ‘It’s apple cider. Non-alcoholic.’

‘Oh. Then…thanks.’ She picked up the chilled glass and stood awkwardly.

‘Coming out?’ He was waiting at the door.

‘Can I do anything?’

‘Yep. Grab the salad.’ He held out the bowl. As soon as she’d taken it, he turned away to the barbecue. ‘Sit. Relax.’

The smell of salmon sizzling on the hot barbecue plate made Liz acutely aware of how hungry she was. She rearranged the table to make room for the things she carried then slid onto the seat. A jaw-cracking yawn caught her by surprise. She hastily smothered the last of it when she realised Jack was watching.