“You didn’t mention it.”
“You didn’t mention the Travers’ invitation, either. I’ll phone Angela and explain. We don’t have to do everything together, do we?”
He pushed away his empty plate and stood up. “Are you feeling smothered, Jenna?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Except for a Friday-night get-together with your workmates, you spend most of your time with either me or my family. Do we give you enough space?”
“I have all the space I need.” She wondered if he did. Marcus was accustomed to being alone a lot, or at least not having a wife to make emotional demands on him. Maybe that was the reason he was determined to preserve a sort of distance between them. She’d been married to him for six months and yet she sometimes felt she didn’t know him any better than she had before their wedding.
Sunday she would tell him about the baby. When he was relaxed after a weekend sailing and they were alone for the evening, without any distractions or other commitments. If she was right.
She was, the doctor confirmed when she saw him on Friday, and the news made her feel giddy. Afraid to trust her own suspicion, or even the over-the-counter test despite its claims of accuracy, she had been holding in her emotions. Now she was dying to tell the world—but especially Marcus.
In the bathroom at home the atmosphere was slightly steamy, and a sleeve of Marcus’s business shirt hung from the laundry basket, but he’d gone. She knew he’d planned on leaving the office early, and he must have taken a quick shower and changed before Ted and Angela picked him up to go to the marina. He’d left the car with her for the weekend so she and Katie could drive to the fair.
Stupid to be so disappointed. She’d had no intention of blurting out her secret right now. It would have been totally the wrong time. And Sunday was only forty-eight hours away.
At the book fair Jenna found her attention frequently wandering. While her face gave every appearance of absorption in the excellent presentations, her mind persisted in drawing pictures of a child with Marcus’s dark hair and intent gray eyes—a solemn little boy or a winsome girl.
Katie had to nudge her when the panel discussion they’d attended was over. “Lunch,” she said. “What do you fancy?”
“Nothing. Maybe a bread roll.”
Katie eyed her suspiciously. “Have you seen a doctor yet?”
Jenna tried not to look smug. “I can’t say anything until I’ve talked to Marcus.”
Katie gave a squeak of excitement. “Haven’t you told him?”
“I only found out for sure yesterday, and he’s away for the weekend.”
Katie hugged her. “Aren’t you excited?”
Jenna allowed herself a smile. “I’m trying not to show it.” She was saving it for the moment she told Marcus.
“I’m going to be an auntie to my best friend’s baby!” Katie hugged her again. “Oh, this is great!”
She fussed over Jenna for the rest of the day, making sure she ate food that wouldn’t upset a delicate-feeling stomach, and insisting that they arrive early for every event so that Jenna was assured of a comfortable seat.
On Sunday morning when Jenna got into the car and turned the key, nothing happened. After a few frustrating minutes she realized that the interior light was burning, although she didn’t recall switching it on. The battery must have drained overnight.
Katie was waiting to be picked up. Jenna returned inside and phoned her.
“Dean’s here,” Katie informed her. “He can take us. We’ll collect you on the way.”
On their arrival at the venue, Dean looked interestedly at one of the posters outside. “I read that book,” he said, indicating the cover of an account of a woman climber’s expedition in the Himalayas.
“She’s speaking this morning,” Katie informed him. “Why don’t you buy a ticket and come in?”
“With all those women?”
It took a bit more persuasion, but eventually he said, “Well, I don’t have anything better to do, I guess.”
As he was buying a ticket, Jenna said sadly to his sister, “He’s still hurting, isn’t he?”
Katie agreed. “Callie phoned him last week.”
“She did? Why?”
Katie shrugged. “Just to see how he was, she said.”
“She still cares.”
“I guess. But if she’s not coming back it might be better if she didn’t get his hopes up.”
Surprisingly, Dean stayed for the day and after a talk by a psychologist about male-female relationships, he even bought a copy of her book.
Afterward he dropped off his sister first. When they arrived at Jenna’s apartment he took a jumper lead from his car and started the dead battery, accepting Jenna’s offer of coffee when he’d finished. She had the feeling he didn’t want to go home. He’d spent the previous night at Katie’s after dropping in for a nightcap.
They chatted for a while, and watched the first part of the TV news before Dean got up to go. He looked at her keenly, his head cocked. “Are you expecting?”
“Did Katie give me away?”
“She was just sort of watching you and waiting on you. That’s not like her.”
“I still have to tell Marcus.”
Dean grinned. “He’ll be chuffed.” The grin faded and became a little twisted. “I’m jealous.”
“Oh, Dean!” She put her arms about him in a comforting hug. “Things will work out.”
He hugged her back, burying his face against her hair. “She phoned me—Callie,” he said in muffled tones.
“I know,” Jenna said. “Have you thought about going to see her?”
Dean lifted his head. “I think about nothing else. It’s tearing me in two. I want to get on a plane tomorrow—tonight—and grab her and make her marry me. I think she’d do it too. But in another three months, or six months or a year, maybe she’d find she couldn’t hack it after all.”
Jenna supposed that was a point. “You’re sure you couldn’t find a job over there?”
“Not legally, unless we’re married.”
“So…couldn’t you do that?”
He frowned distractedly. “The trouble is, it feels like blackmail to persuade her to marry me so I can work in America.”
“Even though it’s because you love her and want to be with her?”
“See, I already put the heat on to persuade her to come home with me, but she wouldn’t commit herself to marriage. Being engaged was a sort of compromise. I can’t pressure her again.” His voice shook. “But I love her so much.”
The misery in his face wrung her heart, and she put one hand to his cheek. “I hate to see you hurting like this.”
“Some mistakes you just have to live with, because trying to fix them will only make things worse.”
“Could it be worse?” Jenna asked as his hold on her loosened. “Two people who love each other so much should be together! There must be a way…”
“It isn’t that easy. How would you feel,” Dean said, “if I asked you to choose between your family and the man you love?”
Jenna hadn’t had the kind of family that Callie did, but she’d wanted one so badly it didn’t take much imagination. She said, “I think I’d feel as though I’d lost a leg and an arm.” But if the unthinkable happened, of course she would choose Marcus. There was no doubt in her mind.
A movement caught from the corner of her eye made her turn her head, and she was startled to see Marcus standing in the doorway.
Dean was taken by surprise too. He dropped his arms and ran a hand over his hair as though embarrassed. Jenna thought that surreptitiously he was also wiping at a wayward tear.
Understanding that he didn’t want his brother to see him crying, she took a step toward Marcus in an instinctive shielding movement and put a smile on her mouth. “We didn’t hear you come in,” she said. The TV still murmuring in the background must have covered the sound of his entry. “I didn’t expect you so early.”
; “Apparently not.” He looked grim and cold.
“Hi, Marc,” Dean said with false brightness just behind her. “How was the fishing?”
Marcus flicked him a glance. “What are you doing here?”
Quelling a stupidly alarmed flutter in her throat, Jenna explained, “Dean drove me home. The car was dead this morning—a flat battery.”
“There was nothing wrong with the battery when I drove it on Friday.”
“Somehow I left the interior light on. It’s all right now. Dean fixed it and I invited him for coffee.”
Silly. She had never found it necessary to give Marcus chapter and verse when she invited anyone in, and Dean was family, for heaven’s sake!
“I was just on my way.” Dean sounded as nervous as she felt. He made toward the door that Marcus was still blocking, and hesitated in front of his brother.
Marcus seemed to be inspecting him. Then he stood aside, his attention concentrated on Jenna.
“Well…” Dean looked around rather helplessly. “See you. Thanks for the coffee, Jenna.”
“Thank you,” she said, “for the car and everything.” One of them should see him out, but something kept her rooted where she stood, and Marcus certainly wasn’t moving.
There was a tense silence as the outer door closed behind Dean.
“How long has he been here?” Marcus asked.
She blinked at him. “I don’t know…about half an hour, I think, since fixing the car.”
“Not the whole weekend?”
Her eyes widened in astonishment. “No. He came to the book fair today with Katie and me. Last night he was at her flat.”
“And where were you last night?”
“Here, of course!” Incredulously she said, “Marcus—you’re sounding like a suspicious husband!”
The idea was so ludicrous she couldn’t help a small laugh.
“So I am,” he said, and she thought he made a conscious effort to relax, his hands going into his pockets, although his eyes stayed watchful. “Are you telling me I don’t have reason to be?”
Jenna gaped. “I told you, Dean gave Katie and me a lift because the car wouldn’t start. He came to the fair with us.”
“Doesn’t sound like Dean’s sort of thing,” Marcus commented skeptically.
“Ask Katie if you don’t believe me.”
He was looking at her thoughtfully. Softly he said, “Katie would back up her twin in anything he said. You too. The three of you always stuck together.”
“We’re not kids now!”
“No,” Marcus said, still in that soft tone of deadly mockery. “That’s exactly my point.”
Chapter Eleven
Jenna’s head buzzed. “I don’t believe this!” she gasped. The quarrel had blown up so unexpectedly, wrecking her plans for a quiet, loving evening, the revelation of a happy secret. “You’re jealous!”
“Damn right I am,” Marcus agreed calmly, the chill in his eyes, the rigid planes of his face, belying his tone.
“You’ve always been jealous!” she realized. This was about more than finding her exchanging an innocent hug with his brother.
It went right back to their childhood, when she and the twins had been nearly inseparable and Marcus, the big brother, was almost one of “them”—the adults. Outside the tight little circle of three.
Surprisingly, a line of color darkened his cheekbones. His jaw jutted. “I have a right now,” he said.
A right to what? “To accuse me? Just what are you accusing me of, Marcus?” She glared at him, her own cheeks hot, her eyes ablaze.
He looked back at her, and she met his gaze unflinchingly. “What do you think I’ve done?” she challenged him. “Spent the weekend in bed with Dean? Our bed?” She took a shaky breath. “Do you really believe that?”
The hint of color disappeared from his face, leaving it drained and white. “No,” he said, as if the word was forced out between stiff lips. One hand rubbed at his forehead, and he closed his eyes. For an instant she thought he swayed where he stood. “No,” he repeated, dropping his hand.
There was a bleak weariness in his eyes. “I apologize, Jenna. Excuse me—I need a shower, and all my clothes smell of fish. I’ve put some snapper fillets in the fridge. Ted’s taken a couple of kahawai home to smoke for us.”
The sudden descent to banality did nothing to dissipate the tension in the air. He had left the room before Jenna got her breath back, and shortly afterward she heard the shower running. It ran for a long time, and then the washing machine began its swishing cycle.
Meantime, on legs that felt rubbery, she got herself into the kitchen. Looking at the fillets that Marcus had brought home, she wondered if she should change the menu and cook them but decided they would keep for tomorrow. Listlessly she put the finishing touches to the celebration dinner she’d planned.
She’d made the chicken and cashew salad yesterday. It would taste better after a day of being permeated by its special dressing, needing only a garnish of asparagus tips and toasted almond slices. Mechanically she shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes and avocado and drizzled them with vinaigrette.
The candles in their crystal holders no longer seemed appropriate, so she left them on the kitchen counter, took the bottle of champagne from the fridge and hid it in the pantry. She’d thought she might be having a token sip or two in celebration, but the bruising encounter just now had killed her mood of joyous anticipation, leaving her sick and scared.
Instead she put a half-used bottle of still white wine by Marcus’s place and set a glass there before pouring some mineral water for herself.
She was putting the salad on the table when Marcus came in, his hair damp and his lean cheeks freshly shaved. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat, and dark trousers. His eyes met hers only fleetingly, seemingly without expression, and then he went to the table. “It looks good.”
An olive branch, perhaps.
Jenna pushed her hair back over one ear as she took her chair. A shower and a change into something soft and pretty had been on her original agenda, but time had run out before Marcus arrived. The cotton shirt and jeans she was wearing would have to do. She’d probably lost the makeup she had put on earlier in the day, but it didn’t seem to matter now.
She picked up the salad servers and transferred a few greens to her plate, followed by a spoonful of chicken.
Marcus helped himself, then glanced at her much smaller meal. “Surely you can eat more than that,” he said.
Jenna didn’t feel like eating anything at all. “I’ll have more if I want it.” She dug her fork into the chicken and had to clench her teeth to make the food go down her throat and stay there. Trying to distract herself, she said, “It’s nice of Ted to smoke your fish for us.”
“He and Angela sent their love.”
Jenna nodded and made herself eat some more. “The fishing must have been good. I could make a raw fish salad tomorrow,” she said. “Or would you prefer it cooked?”
“Whatever suits you.”
They were being stiffly polite, and Jenna could have wept. She finished what was on her plate and waited for him. “Do you want any more?” she asked.
He shoved his plate away, shaking his head, then said perfunctorily, “It was delicious.”
She had the feeling that he hadn’t tasted it any more than she had. “There’s passion fruit mousse. I’ll get it.”
“I don’t want any! Jenna—sit down.”
She sat, waiting for him to speak again. He had half a glass of wine in front of him, his hand restlessly twirling the stem. His gaze was fixed on the glass, and when he raised his eyes they were dark and steady. Almost gently, he said, “Do you have something to tell me?”
He knew? Her breath caught, and she fought an urge to laugh hysterically. Everyone seemed able to guess without being told. Was it that obvious?
She tried to smile. This moment shouldn’t be spoiled by a foolish spat. “Yes, I do,” she said, and watched his hand curl about the
wineglass, so tightly she thought the fragile stem would surely snap. “I’m pregnant.”
She thought the silence would never end; it was as though the whole world stood still. Then Marcus slowly, stiffly, uncurled his fingers. She thought he was going to reach out to her, but instead the hand tightened into a fist on the table, and he stared down at it. “Pregnant,” he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before. And then, “Oh, God!”
He shoved back his chair and got up, taking a few swift strides away from her, then turned to look at her again.
She didn’t understand his reaction at all. “Aren’t you pleased?”
He didn’t look pleased. He looked as though he didn’t know how he felt. Something flared in his eyes and died. “Are you?” he queried abruptly.
“I was.” But everything had gone wrong somehow. “I thought you wanted a family!”
“What I want—” he started in a furious undertone, and cut himself off there. When he spoke again his voice was perfectly even. “The point is, what do you want, Jenna? What do you really want most in all the world?”
A strange question to ask her now. She couldn’t comprehend what had triggered it. “To have this baby,” she said, “and give it a loving home, security, a happy childhood. Everything that parents want for their children.”
“Everything you missed out on.”
The comment caught her unawares. She had never thought of herself as neglected or missing out on a normal family life. Other children had solo mothers too. “It wasn’t easy for my mother after my father died, and no one, until your mother, realized she was suffering from depression and could be helped with proper medical advice. But she loved me and did her best for me.” Even though at times she had seemed faraway, scarcely noticing that she had a daughter at all. “And your family gave me a lot of leftover love.”
“Leftover love?” he queried. “Is that what it felt like?”
She hesitated. “Spilled over, maybe. There was so much of it in your home. Your mother was always there for me, filling in the gaps. And the twins.”
Marrying Marcus Page 13
