Love Unspoken

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Humphries,’ Julie said. ‘I’ll deal with it. Just stay calm.’ She had to get out of here, she really had to this time.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ The same nurse as yesterday came in just as Julie was finishing dressing.

  In actual fact she felt a little lightheaded; she had never realised how weak having a baby made you feel. But she had to go to Zack, had to talk to him, to make him realise…

  ‘Mrs Reedman—’

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she promised.

  ‘I’m going to get the doctor,’ and the nurse hurried off.

  They were back within minutes, the doctor adding his argument to the nurse’s.

  Julie’s eyes flashed as she waited for him to finish. ‘You can say what you like, Dr Bessell, but I have to leave.’

  ‘You aren’t well enough—’

  ‘I have to see my husband.’

  ‘Call him instead,’ the doctor reasoned.

  ‘I have to see him!’ she insisted heatedly.

  He looked at her with frustrated anger. ‘All right,’ he finally sighed defeat in the face of her stubbornness. ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘Doctor—’

  ‘If I don’t take her,’ the doctor explained to the nurse, ‘Mrs Reedman will leave the hospital anyway. Won’t you?’ he quirked an eyebrow at Julie.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded determinedly. ‘Please take good care of Emily for me,’ She requested huskily of the nurse.

  ‘I gather this urgent request to see your husband has something to do with my conversation with him last night?’ the doctor remarked on the drive.

  ‘Yes.’ Her gaze was intent on the road ahead, wishing the miles away.

  ‘I hope I didn’t say anything out of turn?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘This is just- something I should have discussed with Zack long ago.’

  Mrs Humphries went into a complete panic when Julie entered the house.

  ‘Is my husband still in the study?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Well, yes. But-‘

  ‘Give Dr Bessell some coffee, please,’ she requested the housekeeper. ‘Breakfast too, if he would like it.’

  Her stomach gave a sickening lurch before she determinedly opened the door to the study. Zack was still slumped over the desk, a greyness to his face that she had never seen before.

  She went down on her haunches beside him, shaking him gently. ‘Zack? Zack darling, please wake up.’

  He stirred, his eyes opening momentarily, his shoulder stiffening beneath her hand as he looked down at her, his eyes becoming wide and alert now, the navy blue trousers and light blue shirt creased from where he had slept in them. ‘Julie…?’ he blinked dazedly.

  Her heart contracted. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dear God!’ he rasped, sitting back. ‘Julie?’ he frowned his uncertainty. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he gasped. ‘You should be in hospital, not here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t come to me…’ she trailed off pointedly.

  His face became harsh. ‘You know why,’ he said bitterly.

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘Zack—’

  He stood up forcefully, pain etched into his face, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. ‘How can you even bear to talk to me, Julie? How can you want to? Dear God, it was me all the time! All the time I said those vicious things to you you knew it was really my fault. I killed our baby,’ he groaned, his face buried in his hands.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Yes!’ He looked at her with tears on his cheeks. ‘Don’t deny it, Julie, because I know the truth now. You lost our baby the same night I forced myself on you. Forced!’ he scorned the description bitterly. ‘I raped you. And you lost our baby because of it.’

  It was the truth—the truth, as she knew he must one day discover. But not now, now when it had seemed happiness had been within their grasp!

  The doctor had explained the need for care in the first months of that pregnancy three years ago, and it had been advice she intended taking. The anticipation of telling Zack about the baby had kept her in a state of excitement all day. What a first wedding anniversary present it would be for him!

  And then had come the call from her editor, the unexpected trip to Germany. And Zack’s even more unexpected burst of uncontrollable anger. She had tried to reason with him, had pleaded, and in the end it had been in vain. She hadn’t gone to Germany, instead she had lost the baby, so easily, had suffered little pain, while inside she had been crying all the tears that had refused to be released.

  But they were released now, as she cried for both Zack and herself, for the baby that should have been an older sister for Emily.

  ‘How you must hate me,’ Zack choked, his shoulders shaking as he too cried.

  ‘I love you, Zack,’ she told him with feeling. ‘I always have, and I always will. And there’s a certain young lady at the hospital who loves you too.’

  He swallowed hard. ‘Emily…’

  She rested her head on his chest, her arms about his waist. ‘Yes, Emily. We lost one child, Zack, yes. But—’

  ‘I killed her, Julie!’ he rasped. ‘I killed her.’

  ‘No,’ she’Shook her head. ‘They told me, the doctors, that there was something wrong with the pregnancy anyway.’

  ‘Emily—’

  ‘Is fine,’ she reassured him softly, smoothing the frown from his brow. ‘The other baby—it was just a freak of nature, nothing you or I did. You didn’t kill her, Zack. I lost her that night, yes, but the doctor said I would probably have miscarried later anyway. God just decided she would be better off with him, darling.’

  ‘You really believe that?’ he asked shakily.

  Until this moment she hadn’t really thought about it, but nature had a way of continuing the life cycle as it saw fit. That was something she did believe.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded with certainty, ‘I really believe it.’

  He swallowed hard, the pain still in his eyes. ‘Did you—did you just tell me you love me?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m going to tell you again in a minute.’ Once again she rested her head on his chest, hearing the loud tattoo of his heartbeat. ‘We never said it enough, Zack; never dared say it, I think. But things are going to be different from now on.’

  ‘From now on?’ His chest rumbled beneath her ear.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she looked up at him unflinchingly. ‘Emily and I are here to stay, so you might as well get used to the idea.’

  ‘You really want to continue living with me?’

  ‘I not only want it, I’m going to do it. And as soon as the doctor gives me the go-ahead I’m going to show you just how much I love you.’

  ‘But, Julie-‘

  ‘Zack, I love you, I love you, I love you!’ It was as if something had been released within her, a rein no longer put on her love so that she could pull it back if it looked as if she were going to be hurt. If you couldn’t love wholeheartedly, unreservedly, then there was no point in loving at all, she could see that now. And in future she intended holding nothing back, not a single part of her love.

  Zack eyed her nervously, like a child who has chocolate within its reach and is afraid to take it in case he gets his hand smacked. ‘Julie…?’

  ‘I love you, love you, love you,’ she punctuated her words with light kisses over his throat and jaw.

  ‘And God knows I love you!’ his arms tightened about her. ‘I’ve always loved you. But I never thought, didn’t imagine, you could love me as much. You always seemed to hold back.’

  Julie began to tell him, haltingly at first, and then more rapidly as the words spilled out, about her fear of loving anyone as much as she loved him, of her parents’ unhappy marriage, her father’s infidelity, her mother’s despair.

  He was even paler by the time she had finished. ‘And you thought I would do that to you?’ he groaned.

  ‘I was afraid to give you the chance,’ she admitted softy. ‘But that’s over now, Zack. Emily and I need
you so badly, darling.’ She looked up at him adoringly.

  ‘For better or worse, Julie, you’ve got me,’ he groaned into her throat. ‘It’s never been any different. You, always you.’

  ‘And Teresa?’ she teased lightly.

  ‘A beautiful woman, but not you. Even when

  we were apart it was still you.’

  As Mrs Tibbies had said. Dear Mrs Tibbies, how right she was. When you loved as she and Zack loved, as Mrs Tibbies and her Harry loved, then you were together even when you were apart.

  ‘No more partings, Zack,’ she answered him huskily. ‘Never any more.’

  He smoothed her hair from her brow. ‘Do you know the moment I knew it had to be you and no one else?’

  ‘Tell me,’ she encouraged softly.

  ‘It was the hijacking,’ he rasped, remembered pain tightening his mouth. ‘I’d decided that Teresa would make me a suitable wife, that divorcing you was the only answer. And then I found out you were one of the hostages on that plane! God, I went through hell trying to get you off there.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘ You tried to get me off?’

  He nodded. ‘I went to every official I could to try and get an end to the siege. In the end the most, or least, I could do was give them the money they wanted.’

  ‘But that was millions!’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘I would have given them everything I had to get you off that plane. I even offered myself in exchange, but I was told that if they realised they had my wife on board you could be used as leverage.’

  ‘That’s why you were in America!’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘Why I had to content myself with letting Connie and Ben take care of you, when I wanted to do it. We had to go through all the paperwork, the formalities. But when I got back to England I was determined to see you again, so I arranged that dinner party for our anniversary. When you decided not to come with Connie and Ben I decided to come and see you at the house. I had to see you. One look at your face when I walked into the house was enough to tell me you hated the sight of me!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Zack nodded. ‘But I couldn’t stop wanting you. Those threats of divorce never got any further than issuing the papers. I thought maybe if it looked official that you would somehow realise you still loved me too. It didn’t work.’

  ‘And the affair?’

  ‘I was going crazy, Julie,’ he groaned. ‘I needed you so badly. You’d always said that an affair between us would have been less complicated. By that time I was willing to take you any way I could get you.’

  ‘There have never been any affairs, Zack,’ she told him huskily. ‘Not with Alec, and not with Steve, not with anyone else either. Although there is someone I’d like to have an affair with,’ she added lightly. ‘A lifelong love affair.’

  ‘Yes?’ he was tense.

  ‘I love you, Zack,’ she breathed softly, gazing up at him adoringly. ‘I love you so much.’

  His mouth moving druggingly over hers stopped all further conversation, the giving and receiving of unreserved love taking both their breaths away. ‘I love you, Julie,’ he murmured against her earlobe. ‘I’ll always love you, want you, need you. Never doubt that.’

  ‘I won’t. I-‘

  A knock sounded briskly on the door. ‘Mrs Reedman?’ the doctor called out to her. ‘I really must insist that you go back to the hospital now.’

  ‘God, yes,’ Zack groaned, looking down at her concernedly. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Julie smiled up at him.

  ‘Mrs Reedman!’ the doctor called again.

  Zack sighed, giving a rueful grin. ‘We’d better do as he says. After all, we have a lifetime ahead of us.’ He sobered.

  Yes, they had a lifetime, for them a lifetime love affair,