Best Man To Wed?

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Sally?’ Poppy queried.

  ‘Yes... yes, it’s this baby thing. She’s got it into her head that she wants a baby,’ he blurted out. ‘She knew when we got married that... I’m not like James. Of course I want a family, but not yet... I want to have Sally to myself for a while but she won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry,’ Poppy sympathised. ‘But it’s Sally you should really be talking to about this,’ she advised him gently, ‘not me...’

  It was odd how the boyish look which had once caught so painfully at her heart now just made her feel cousinly—motherly almost.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you are right,’ Chris agreed ruefully, adding warmly, ‘It’s good to see you and James so happy together, Poppy... You’ve always been special to me,’ he added in a muffled voice, leaning forward to give her a fierce hug that took her breath away as well as her balance.

  Neither of them heard the door open or saw James come in until he rasped, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  It was Chris who answered him, apparently oblivious to his fury and Poppy’s anxiety as he responded cheerfully, ‘Sorry, James; I just came round to have a chat with Poppy. I shan’t forget what you said,’ he told her, before glancing at his watch and announcing, ‘I’d better get back; Sally will be wondering where I am.’

  Poppy trembled as she saw the way James watched her as Chris closed the door and left.

  ‘And what exactly was it that you said, that he won’t forget?’ he demanded menacingly. ‘Or can I guess? Were you telling him how much you still love him, Poppy? How much you still want him?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy cried out in shocked protest. ‘No, James, you’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t anything like that... Chris—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Poppy,’ James interrupted her harshly. ‘There isn’t any point. We both know how you feel about Chris. How did you get him to come here? What did you tell him? That you wished he’d been the one you’d married, that he was the one you wanted when you lay in my arms—is that what you told him?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy denied, alarmed by the violence in his voice. ‘No, of course not. James, you’ve—’

  ‘No! What did you tell him? Did you tell him, perhaps, about the way you begged me to make love to you... about the way you pleaded with me to satisfy you?’

  Poppy stared at him in shock. She had never seen him so angry, so out of control.

  ‘My God, you couldn’t wait long enough to make sure I was safely out of the way before you got him here, could you?’ he demanded. ‘How long has it been going on, Poppy? How often has he been coming round when I’m not here...?’

  Suddenly Poppy had had enough, her shock giving way to pain as she retaliated bitterly, ‘Why should you care? You’re never here and—’

  ‘And Chris, of course, is. What did you do to get him here—pretend you needed a cousin’s shoulder to cry on? What exactly are you hoping for, Poppy? You know he doesn’t want you.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she agreed starkly, her eyes registering her anguish as she mentally added, And, much more importantly, neither do you.

  ‘Chris came here to talk to me about Sally,’ she told James quietly, her anger subsiding under the weight of her pain. ‘He’s concerned because she wants to start a family when they’d agreed that they would wait for a while.’

  ‘A family... Is that when you told him that she’s not the only one to want his child...? Is that why he told you that you were very special to him...?’

  Poppy couldn’t conceal her small flush as he repeated the words Chris had said to her.

  ‘Chris just came here for advice...as a cousin,’ she told him shakily.

  ‘A cousin! Is that why you were in his arms?’ James asked sarcastically.

  ‘James, where are you going?’ Poppy protested as he pushed past her and into the hall.

  ‘To get what I came back for,’ he told her grimly.‘Knowing how much you dislike coming home to find me here, I left in too much of a hurry and forgot some papers I need and so I had to come back for them.’

  Poppy heard the door slam as he went into the small room he used as a study. She was still standing in the kitchen when he walked back in.

  ‘James, we need to talk,’ she told him bravely. ‘We can’t go on like this.’

  ‘So what do you suggest we do? Get a divorce?’ he demanded savagely. ‘Get out of my way, Poppy,’ he advised her angrily, ‘before I do something we’ll both regret.’ He paused in the doorway to turn round and tell her brutally, ‘And I warn you now, if you do ever find a way of persuading my brother to fulfil those adolescent fantasies of yours, I promise I’ll make the pair of you sorry you were ever born. You don’t really love him, Poppy; you don’t know what real love is.’

  No, I don’t love him, Poppy agreed silently, listening to the engine of his car fire as he started it, the tears pouring down her face. I love you.

  And, as for real love, she knew what it was to feel it but she certainly didn’t know what it was like to receive it. ‘What do you suggest we do?’ James had challenged her. ‘Get a divorce?’ Did that mean that he was regretting their marriage, that he wanted to bring it to an end?

  Unable to endure the loneliness of her own home, Poppy spent the rest of the weekend with her parents, explaining away her pale face and preoccupied manner by admitting wanly that she was missing James, which was, after all, the truth—or at least part of it.

  On Monday morning, although she had a splitting headache, brought on, she suspected, by having spent half the night crying into her pillow, she insisted on going into work despite her mother’s suggestion that she stay at home, but by mid-morning the pain in her head had become so intense that she finally gave in and told Chris that she intended to go home.

  ‘You can’t drive,’ Chris told her after one look at her too pale face. ‘I’ll take you. When is James due home?’

  Poppy turned away, unwilling to admit that she didn’t know. She could have found out easily enough; she assumed, by asking his secretary but her pride wouldn’t allow her to betray how little she knew about her husband’s movements.

  Chris had just pulled out onto the main road when it happened. He had to stop to avoid a cyclist and the driver of the car behind them didn’t realise what had happened in time and ran into the back of them.

  Poppy felt the impact jerk her forward in her seat against the restraint of her seat belt, automatically crying out both against the sharp, searing agony and in fear for her baby, the pain catapulting her into a pit of smothering darkness as she slid into a deep faint.

  The first thing she heard when she came round was the sound of an ambulance, although she didn’t realise then that it was coming for her.

  ‘Don’t move, Poppy,’ Chris urged her anxiously as she tried to struggle against the restraining belt.

  At some point he must have got out of the car, Poppy recognised, because he was now standing beside the open passenger door, whilst another man, a stranger, peered in at her and blustered defensively, ‘It was only a little bit of a knock... Can’t have done that much damage.’

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ she heard Chris hiss angrily back. ‘My God, man, why the hell couldn’t you have watched what you were doing?’

  ‘Damn cyclist.’ The man crumpled. ‘It was all his fault.’

  ‘I doubt that the police will see it that way,’ Chris warned him grimly.

  Poppy wished they would both go away and stop arguing. The sound of their voices was making her head hurt and she dared not even think about what that agonisingly sharp pain she could feel in her body might portend.

  ‘James...James...where are you...?’

  She didn’t even know she had said the words out loud until the driver of the other car asked, ‘Who’s this James?’

  ‘Her husband,’ Chris told him sharply. ‘And I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when he finds out what’s happened.’

  Poppy was shaking with shock by the time the police car and th
e ambulance finally arrived.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ the ambulanceman apologised as he gently helped Poppy from the car, refusing to let her walk, insisting she get on the stretcher instead. ‘It’s these roadworks, see; we couldn’t get through them.’

  ‘What happened exactly?’ Poppy heard him asking Chris, and she could see the way he frowned when the policeman muttered something to him about the car having been pushed along the road for quite some distance.

  However, there was only calm reassurance in his eyes as he turned back to Poppy and told her gently, ‘Best get you where they can take a proper look at you, love.’

  ‘I’ll come with you...’ Chris began, but Poppy shook her head.

  ‘No... There’s no need; I don’t want you,’ she told Chris huskily. ‘I want James...’ Her eyes filled with tears she couldn’t control, her whole body shaking with them.

  Never mind me; what about my baby? she wanted to scream as the ambulanceman asked her if she was in any pain anywhere. The sharp pain she had felt before had subsided but the baby was ominously still and Poppy, who had felt exasperated some nights when she had been kept awake by its kicking, prayed desperately now for it to move.

  The drive to the hospital seemed to take for ever and Poppy saw the concerned looks that the two ambulancemen exchanged when she was sick twice on the way there. The nurse who admitted her was kind as well as efficient, promising to get in touch with Poppy’s parents and assuring her at the same time that babies were tougher than one thought.

  ‘Let’s get you sorted out first,’ she told Poppy, adding, ‘That’s a nasty bump you’ve got on your forehead... does it hurt?’

  Poppy, who hadn’t even realised until then that she had bumped her head, touched her temple and winced as her fingers came away sticky with blood.

  By the time her mother and father arrived she was tucked up in bed.

  ‘Oh, darling...how do you feel?’ her mother asked her anxiously as she hurried to her side.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Poppy assured her. ‘It’s the baby.’

  She saw the look her parents exchanged and her anxiety increased.

  ‘They keep telling me not to worry... that it’s best to rest... but I haven’t felt her kick for ages and I had this awful pain. I want James,’ she told her mother bleakly.

  ‘Chris is doing his best to find him, darling,’ her mother tried to reassure her. ‘He’d left the people he was visiting before Chris could get in touch with him and we can’t get through to him on his mobile phone.’

  ‘He won’t use it in the car,’ Poppy told her fretfully. ‘He says it’s too dangerous.’

  The afternoon passed in a haze of examinations and hushed conversations out of her earshot which left her feeling increasingly anxious. The baby still hadn’t moved and she was growing afraid that something might have happened to it. To her...to James’s child, James’s daughter.

  Fresh tears rolled down her face. Her parents had volunteered to stay with her but she had sent them home. It was James she wanted. Only James.

  She closed her eyes, whispering his name, her hands folded protectively across her belly. If only she had been holding their baby like that earlier, it might not have been hurt, she thought miserably.

  She tensed as the door of her room opened, but it wasn’t James who came in.

  ‘Chris,’ she said weakly in disappointment, subsiding back against the pillows. ‘Where’s James? Have you been able to contact him?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He tried to smile, but Poppy could see how anxious he was. ‘Don’t worry.’

  He tried to comfort her, taking hold of her hand and patting it, but, weak from shock and fear, Poppy snatched it back, telling him crossly, ‘Don’t... don’t; it isn’t you I want, it’s James.’ As she started to cry harder she was distantly aware of Chris ringing the bell for the nurse and of her suddenly appearing and the two of them talking in lowered voices. She strained to hear what they were saying.

  ‘She wants her husband,’ the nurse told Chris. ‘She’s in a very unstable condition, and we’re rather concerned about the foetal heartbeat...’

  ‘We’re doing our best to find him,’ she heard Chris respond. ‘He should have been back by now. God knows where the hell he is,’ he added feelingly.

  Poppy closed her eyes. James had gone; he didn’t care about what happened to her. If anything should happen to their baby, he wouldn’t even know and she would have lost them both. Without them, what was the point in her going on? She could hardly swallow past the huge lump of misery blocking her throat.

  ‘They want me to go now,’ she heard Chris telling her awkwardly as he responded to the nurse’s brief nod and stood up.

  Poppy didn’t care if he stayed or went. Without James she was alone anyway, would always be alone.

  At some point she must have drifted off to sleep. She knew that the nurse had administered some kind of sedative—‘to rest the baby’, she had told Poppy firmly when she had tried to object.

  Now, as she opened her eyes, she realised that the headache and sickness that she had felt earlier had gone but that her body felt stiff and sore and the graze on her temple throbbed painfully.

  The room was in darkness, but as she turned her head she realised that Chris was there, standing just inside the door, and that his arrival was probably the reason why she had woken up.

  ‘Poppy...’ Chris began, but Poppy turned her head away from him.

  ‘Go away, Chris,’ she told him quietly.

  As she heard the door close behind him she let out a small sob.

  ‘James...James, where are you? I love you so much,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I love you both so much,’ she added as she touched the still bump of her stomach. ‘James...’

  ‘Yes, Poppy, I’m here.’

  The shock of hearing his voice made her stiffen and then turn her head so quickly that she winced in sudden pain.

  ‘James!’ she repeated in disbelief, her eyes fastening hungrily on his shadowy outline in the darkness, as though she was afraid to believe that he was actually there. ‘When...? How...?’ she began, trembling as he sat down next to her.

  ‘Chris had left a message for me at home,’ he told her sombrely, then emotion broke through the controlled tautness of his voice as he exploded, ‘My God, Poppy, how—?’

  ‘It wasn’t Chris’s fault,’ she told him quickly. ‘It was an accident; he...’ She had started to shake violently, her finger picking anxiously at the coverlet until James reached out and took hold of her.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he said, but Poppy shook her head, dismissing her own injuries as she told him quickly, ‘James, it’s our baby... I can’t feel her kicking any more. They keep telling me not to worry and that she’s all right... but how can she be all right when she’s so still? Oh, James, I’m so afraid for her,’ she whispered helplessly. ‘She’s so small, so vulnerable and I love her so much.’

  ‘Chris said that you told him to go away, that you only wanted me. Is that true?’ James asked huskily.

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy admitted, and raised her head off the pillow to ask him uncertainly, ‘Where were you?’

  ‘On my way to Italy...to the villa.’

  ‘What...? Why?’

  ‘You are not the only one to indulge in pointless fantasies, you know,’ James told her obliquely. ‘The only difference between us is that I’ve had a hell of a lot more experience at doing it.’

  ‘Fantasies? What fantasies?’ Poppy demanded uncertainly.

  ‘Oh, the usual kind,’ James told her gravely. ‘That the woman I love loves me back, that she wants me, that in the darkness of the night, in the privacy of our shared bed, she turns to me and tells me that she aches for me to touch her, to love her and to go on. loving her for ever.’

  As she listened to him, Poppy’s body started to stiffen in anguished shock.

  ‘Who is she... this woman?’ she asked shakily. James was in love with someone else. Why had she never guessed... realised...? ‘Do
I know her?’

  ‘Yes, you know her,’ James admitted, but he wasn’t looking at her any longer, Poppy recognised. He was looking at her body instead.

  ‘The baby!’ she suddenly gasped in delight. ‘She’s moving... Oh, James, she’s moving, she’s all right, she’s...’ Even now Poppy couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘alive’ and to admit by saying it just what she had been dreading. ‘Oh, James.’ As she clutched his hand, happy tears poured down her face.

  ‘Why did you want me with you and not Chris, Poppy?’ James asked her as he reached out his hand and covered the small bulge.

  ‘You’re... you’re my husband,’ Poppy told him, unable to bring herself to look properly at him. ‘My baby’s—our baby‘s—father and...’

  ‘And?’ James prompted.

  He wasn’t looking at her. He was still looking at her stomach, which was perhaps why she suddenly found the courage to tell him.

  ‘And because I love you,’ Poppy admitted quietly. ‘But I know that isn’t what you want,’ she added hastily. ‘I’m not an adolescent any more, James. I do know now what truly loving someone means. If you want me to... to set you free so that you can go to her... to the woman you love... then I’ll...’ she said bravely, then stopped to bite down hard on her bottom lip as her emotion threatened to overwhelm her.

  ‘Go to her? I’m already with her,’ James told her softly.

  ‘Already with her?’ Poppy’s heart started to thump heavily as she looked indignantly from the closed door to his face. ‘You’ve brought her here... now...?’

  ‘Oh, Poppy.’ Suddenly, unbearably, he was actually laughing at her—laughing as he stood up and then leaned over the bed, gathering her up in his arms to hold her close and touch her tenderly.

  ‘You’re the one I love, the one I’ve always loved. Are you really so blind that you never knew it?’

  ‘You love me...? But you can’t,’ she protested. ‘You’ve always been so angry with me, so I—’

  ‘Because that was the only way I had of defending myself, protecting myself from the pain of knowing that you only had eyes for Chris. I fell in love with you about the same time that you fell in love with him.’