Crimson and Clover (19 page)

Maureen nodded. “Yeah. I want to get a good spot.”

“Wait for me, okay? I just want to see Jay for a minute.”

The crush of people thinned as she drew near the door and she was able to hear the voices issuing from the room with no difficulty.

“I mean it, Jay.” The female voice was cajoling, almost desperate. “I’ve never been more serious.”

Katie came to a halt just outside the door.

“I told you to forget it,” came Jay’s voice, thick with suppressed laughter. “And believe me when I tell you I’ve never been more serious.”

The girl’s voice turned pouty. “You’re cruel, you know that?”

“Not at all,” Jay replied. “You’re the one who barged in here on my privacy, telling me you want to have my baby.”

Katie’s mouth dropped open in a mixture of surprise and outrage. Just who the hell did that chick think she was? She took one step toward the door, intending to go in and set the record straight, but stopped as the voices continued.

“Well, then.” The girl changed tactics. “We don’t have to make a baby if you don’t want one. We can just have fun.”

“No, no.” The smile was evident in Jay’s voice. “You’ve already tipped your hand. I can’t trust you not to conveniently ‘forget’ your birth control and then show up pregnant. Besides, I have a girlfriend.”

“I hope you’re nicer to her than you are to me,” the girl huffed.

“Of course I am,” Jay laughed. “And she’s the only one that will have my babies. So you can scurry out now and pass the word along.”

The thundering of Katie’s heart started to drown out the conversation, but that was fine since she didn’t want to hear any more. Whirling away from the door, she darted back down the hall.

Maureen took one look at her face and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Katie, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Katie shook her head. “Let’s go find a good spot before they go on.”

“Wait just a bleedin’ minute.” Maureen’s eyes were filled with concern. “You’re white as a ghost.” She laid a hand against Katie’s cheek. “Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” Katie insisted. “Let’s just go, okay?”

“Katie … ”

Katie cut her eyes at Nicky who stood nearby, oblivious to their conversation. “Later,” she hissed.

Maureen glanced at her husband and back at Katie. “All right,” she relented. “Let’s go out front.”

• • •

Katie had barely gotten inside her flat the next afternoon before Maureen swept through the door, demanding to know what had happened the night before. After Katie had choked out what she’d overheard, Maureen sat stunned.

“God, Katie, I’m sorry.” Maureen rose halfway from her seat on Katie’s sofa, but Katie waved her back.

“Thanks.” As much as she craved comforting, Katie knew one hug from her friend would shatter her tenuous self-control. She could feel the tears dammed up behind her eyes, a water balloon stretched to the point of breaking, and she knew if she let go she might not be able to stop. “I am, too.”

Maureen dropped back onto the sofa, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. “Did you say anything to him?”

“Nope.” Katie’s fingers twisted the stem of the Golden Delicious apple in her hand, the only outward betrayal of her taut nerves. “What am I supposed to say? I know now that he does want children and he wants me to have them.” She took a bite of the apple and chewed without tasting it.

Maureen’s silence was uncharacteristic and added to the tomb-like atmosphere of Katie’s flat. The cheery afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows looked jarring and offensive, like a clown at a funeral.

“After he fell asleep last night,” Katie continued in a monotone, “I just laid there and watched him. I didn’t know whether I wanted to wake him up and beg him to love me the way I am or strangle him in his sleep.” She sighed. “All I could think was how fucking cruel it is that I should finally find a guy … No, that I should find
the
guy, the one who some part deep inside, that essential me of me — ” she patted her chest in illustration, “ — recognized the minute I saw him, that woke up and said, ‘there you are! The other half of me. I thought I’d never find you!’ To find him and then learn I can never give him what he wants. Fucking cruel.”

“Damn it.” Maureen brushed her hair behind her ear. “It’s not right. But Katie, maybe you can change his mind.”

Katie shook her head. “No, Maur; Jay’s twenty-six years old and he knows what he wants. Unfortunately, he can’t get it from me.” A pin-prick in the tear-filled balloon released one tiny drop in her eye and she blinked it away with determination. Afraid her voice might betray the crack in her self-control, she took a huge bite of the apple so she wouldn’t have to speak.

“Don’t be hasty, love.” Maureen leaned forward, trying to catch Katie’s eye. “After all, you haven’t talked to him about it yet. Once he hears what happened to you, he’ll understand.”

Swallowing the bite of apple seemed to subdue the lump in her throat so that she was able to speak. “You didn’t hear him last night. He didn’t say he
wants
me to have his babies; he said I was the only one who
would
have them. He was very clear. And he sounded pleased about it; no, he sounded happy.” She blinked hard to keep the tears at bay. “I should’ve told him before now. I’ve had two weeks, but I just couldn’t do it. I guess I knew this would happen. He wants the one thing I can never give him.”

Maureen leaned back, looking defeated. “So what are you going to do?”

Katie twisted the stem of the apple again, unwilling to meet Maureen’s eyes. “Tell him,” she whispered.

The silence in the room turned crushing before Maureen spoke again. “When?”

“Soon, I guess.” She cleared her throat in an attempt to dislodge the lump that was attempting to set up permanent residence there. “I can’t let him go off to the States without knowing if we … if … ” To her horror the balloon burst, and hot, scalding tears snaked down her cheeks. “Damn it all! I didn’t want to cry.”

Maureen jumped off the couch and crowded into the armchair next to Katie, her blue eyes brighter than usual with her own unshed tears. “You cry all you want, love.”

Giving in to the inevitable, Katie collapsed against Maureen and let the tears flow. Over her anguished sobs she heard the soothing tones of Maureen’s voice.

“Cry all you want. I’ll never tell a soul.”

• • •

Hands clenched together in her lap, Katie sat stiff on the edge of the chair and watched Jay’s car come to a smooth stop at the curb. She’d considered taking the coward’s way out and telling him over the phone when he’d called, but in addition to knowing it was wrong, she wanted to see his face when he learned her secret.

Her heart raced at the sight of him dashing through the rain to the front door of the building, head bent against the deluge. God, she loved him! Just the thought of a life without him in it brought her close to panic. Maybe Maureen was right, though; maybe she was making too big a deal out of this. Maybe Jay had just been trying to get that girl at The Marquee to leave him alone. Some of the tension left her shoulders at that thought only to return in full force as Jay entered the flat.

“Christ, it’s really coming down out there.” He held his dripping mac in front of him tweezed between two fingers. “Where do you want this?”

Katie gestured toward the wall behind him. “I put up some hooks until I can find a coat tree that doesn’t look like something my grandmother would have.” She extended silent congratulations to her voice for sounding so normal. Growing up, she’d often heard people say they were “all cried out;” maybe it really happened. The amount of tears she’d shed the preceding twenty-four hours should have left her dehydrated. “Why didn’t you bring a brolly?”

Jay turned from hanging up his coat and raked his wet hair back with both hands. “Did you just say brolly instead of umbrella? Aw, listen to you using nice, proper British terms.” He grinned and lowered himself to the floor at her feet.

Despite her trepidation, her lips curved up in an answering smile. “Can’t help it. You hang around the zoo long enough, you start acting like the animals.” Her hand twitched, the urge to smooth his hair almost overwhelming. Damn it, she couldn’t do this anymore. It was time to go ahead and get it over with — one way or another.

Agitated, she leaped to her feet and turned to look out the window. “Jay, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Okay.” The floor creaked under him as he rose to his feet again. “You sound serious.”

“I am.” Steeling herself, she took a deep breath and turned to face him. “Before the show at The Marquee I heard you talking to a girl in the dressing room. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but apparently she said she wanted to have your baby.”

“Oh, that.” Jay shook his head, his eyes filled with something like amusement. “I’ve had a lot of birds come on to me before, but that has to be one of the most bizarre lines I’ve ever heard.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “You weren’t bothered by that, were you?”

“By her? No.” Katie shook her head. “It’s just that … You told her I would be the one having your babies, and … ”

“Katie, wait,” he interrupted. He took two steps forward and laid gentle hands on her shoulders. “Baby, I was just trying to get rid of her. I didn’t mean you and I should have a baby right now. You don’t think I’m trying to push you into anything, do you?”

Right now
. He’d said
right now.
Which could only mean … Before she could think about it any longer, she blurted it out. “Jay, I can’t have children.”

For a moment the look of anxious concern remained on his face, but as he had time to absorb what she’d said, his expression changed. Katie saw confusion and realization flit across his features before they went completely blank.

“What?” His fingers tightened a bit on her shoulders.

“I should have told you before.” Try as she might, she couldn’t raise her voice above a strangled croak. “I know I should have. But I didn’t want to freak you out by just jumping into talking about babies. We haven’t been together that long and I didn’t want you to think … ”

“I understand.” He bent his head to catch her eye. “It’s not exactly something you’d bring up in everyday conversation.”

His gentle smile did wonders in reining in her galloping anxiety, and she let out a long, slow breath. Still, her knees were sending out signals of impending collapse, so she took his hand and led him to the couch.

Once seated, Jay smoothed her hair behind her ear. “Okay, love. You can tell me now.”

In a few halting sentences, Katie told him everything; the miscarriage, the complications that followed, the dire predictions of the doctors and her inability to conceive since then. Throughout her soliloquy she watched Jay’s face for some clue as to how he was taking the news, but his expression betrayed nothing but grave concern. Unnerved by his unswerving stare, she stumbled to a halt, unable to say more.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Jay drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry it happened to you, Katie. I can only imagine how frightened you were. And,” He held up a warning finger as she opened her mouth to speak. “If you say you’re sorry again, I’m liable to shake you a bit. You were, what? Seventeen years old? Of course you didn’t know to go to hospital.” He framed her face with his warm hands. “It wasn’t your fault, so stop thinking it is.”

“But if I’d seen a doctor right after it happened, then they wouldn’t have said my chances of becoming pregnant are next to zero.”

Jay sighed. “Am I going to have to shake you?”

“Go ahead.”

Instead of shaking her, he shook his head. “You’re impossible.” One black eyebrow quirked up. “I suppose this also explains why your monthly courses aren’t always monthly?”

Katie’s mouth dropped open in shock. “You keep up with that?”

A small laugh shook his shoulders. “Well, it does affect me, too, you know. So yes, I’ve noticed.”

For some strange reason, the fact that Jay noticed when she got her period made her squirm with embarrassment. Forget that he knew every square inch of her body even better than she did; her visits from Aunt Flo were another matter. She risked a glance in his direction and found him regarding her with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. A part of her mind noticed that his hair was beginning to curl around his face in a riot, but the ends were still dripping, leaving the shoulders of his shirt damp. She jumped up from the couch, relieved to have a reason to change the subject.

“Let me go get a towel for your hair.” Before he could object, she rushed from the room. Her trip to the bathroom gave her the time she needed to regain some semblance of calm. She was encouraged by the fact that Jay hadn’t run screaming upon hearing her news, and finally revealing her secret left her feeling as if a hippopotamus had rolled off her shoulders.

Plucking a towel from the basket, she returned to the living room. During her absence Jay had gone to stand in front of one of the long windows overlooking Blenheim Crescent. Katie stood behind him and began squeezing the rainwater from his hair with the towel.

“I was thinking,” she began hesitantly, “that if … when we’re ready for kids, we could adopt.”

“Yes,” Jay replied. “We could do that.”

Something off in his voice made Katie take a step back. Now that she wasn’t concentrating on his hair she observed a certain stiffness to his posture, and with a sinking feeling she heard the unspoken “but” at the end of his sentence.

“But you want your own children,” she finished for him. The faint hope that she might be mistaken was crushed when he sighed.

“I don’t know, Katie.” He leaned his forehead against the window, his breath misting the glass. “I just … ” He sighed again, the sound of a man faced with an insurmountable obstacle. “I wasn’t expecting this kind of situation. I know it’s not your fault, and I know the way I feel is selfish and vain and arrogant and … ”

“No, it isn’t,” she interrupted. “It’s normal.” She retreated further into the room, twisting the towel into a rope. The hippopotamus was back, only this time it was holding a couple of ten-ton boulders. “I understand, too. But, Jay, I can’t give you your own children.” She drew in a shaky breath. “So it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to … to … ”