by Emma Darcy
“Your mum would be proud of you, Charlotte,” he told her. “This is a big step to take for a little kid, and you’re doing great.”
The teat dropped out as she hiccupped.
Was this another protest on the way? “Got some wind?” Jack asked hopefully.
He put the bottle on the table so he could give her back a gentle rub. Two big burps. No sicking up. He grinned at the boys, who had stopped work to watch the outcome. “No worries,” he assured them, almost dizzy with relief as he settled Charlotte onto his other arm.
“See? Your dad can change sides just like your mum. Here comes the good stuff.” He didn’t care if he looked or sounded fatuous. He zoomed the bottle down to her mouth, and she latched on again. He felt a rush of paternal pride. “You’re a champion kid, Charlotte. A real fast learner.”
Spike barked agreement and trotted around the chair to take up watch on the other side. The hump of the current crisis was definitely over.
“Thanks for the teamwork, guys,” Jack said warmly. “It could have been rough without your first-rate assistance.”
Gary grinned. “New experience to chalk up.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, matching his workmate’s grin. “Operation Bottle-feed. That’s a good one, isn’t it, Gary?”
They laughed, happy to have been of help.
Jack smiled at Charlotte. They had all learned something today. It brought a new sense of closeness, a bonding that was different from anything Jack had felt before. This little-bitty human being was precious to him. He wanted her to be happy. With him. With the world. With everything. Whatever it took, he’d manage it somehow.
Spike shuffled forward and laid his head on Jack’s lap, claiming his place in the family, too. Jack ruffled the long, shaggy hair. If only Nina were here with them. A wave of misery flattened any sense of euphoria at having come through the crucible of full, hands-on fatherhood.
Nina must be going through hell. He hoped the medical staff at the hospital were giving her adequate pain-killers as well as antibiotics. He’d raise a ruckus tonight if they weren’t.
He hadn’t seen her for almost three days. Her choice, not his. The suspicion rose that she hadn’t felt well and had hidden it from him, though why she would keep it to herself was beyond his comprehension. Didn’t she realise he would do anything for her?
Something was wrong with Nina’s thinking. She had called for Sally’s help, not his. Tonight he would have to find out why she hadn’t turned to him. She should have done, instinctively, automatically. Did she still not trust him to do right by Charlotte?
Jack shook his head in bewilderment. His gaze fell on the baby. She’d stopped sucking. Her mouth was slack, her eyes closed, and her sweet little face glowed with replete contentment. It gave his heart a real boost, filling it with so many good feelings his underlying anxieties were momentarily forgotten. My kid, he thought. Mine and Nina’s.
At least he could lift one worry off Nina’s mind.
Operation Bottle-feed successful.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“NINA?”
Jack’s voice, soft and strained with concern. Sluggishly she opened her eyes. The curtain was drawn around her bed. She’d been sleeping since the surgeon’s visit. He’d examined her and explained what he was going to do in the morning. The pain tablets were good. If she kept still, the discomfort could be held at a distance. But she needed to see Jack, talk to him. She slowly turned her head.
“Don’t move if it hurts,” he said anxiously, springing up from the chair to lean over her.
“Charlotte?” It came out like a croak. Her throat was dry.
“She’s fine. Sally’s with her while I’m here. She’s taken to the bottle okay, Nina. I’ve fed her two lots of formula. She’s not fretting or playing up. Everything’s going well. When I left she was fast asleep. No problem.”
Nina knew she should feel relieved, pleased that Jack was coping with their baby. It was ridiculous to feel so bereft and useless. Tears welled into her eyes, great globs of self-pity. It wasn’t fair this had happened to her. All the hard months of her pregnancy, fiercely resolving to be everything to her child, and she couldn’t even feed her baby. She shut her eyes to stop the tears from overflowing, but they squeezed through her lashes.
Jack’s hand gently brushed her hair from her forehead. “Is it terribly painful, Nina? Do you want me to fetch a nurse?”
“No.”
“Then what’s wrong, love?”
The deep caring in his voice twisted her heart. “I’m a failure,” she blurted out.
“No, you’re not,” he strongly asserted. “Sally told me your designs for Belinda Pinkerton’s wedding are brilliant. You’ve got great talent, Nina, and once people start seeing it…”
She moved her head fretfully. “I’m a failure as a mother. I let you get in the way, Jack.”
His hand stilled, then withdrew. She heard the chair being drawn closer, the squeak of its cushion as he sat down. The sense of apartness made her feel worse, as though she was losing everything.
“How, Nina?” he asked quietly.
She had to swallow hard to get rid of the lump in her throat. She opened her eyes and looked at him with aching regret. “I didn’t want you to know I had a problem. I hoped it would get better. I wanted it to go away. If it wasn’t for you and my delaying getting help…” Tears swam again. “I’d still be feeding Charlotte.”
“Why didn’t you want me to know?” He shook his head in hurt confusion. “Love is about sharing. Both the good and the bad.”
“I didn’t want the bad to rebound on Charlotte. You blaming her and resenting her.”
“I don’t!” he cried, standing in agitation, his hands slicing the air in frustration as he pulled himself back from pressing his case with more physical persuasion. “I wouldn’t, Nina!” he pleaded. “She’s not to blame for anything. She’s just an innocent little kid, for God’s sake!”
His vehemence made her head pound. Her mind clutched wearily at the truth he spoke and limply let it go. Reason and logic could be argued until the end of time. It made no difference to the realities seeded by emotions.
“You hated seeing me use the breast pump,” she said flatly.
It silenced him, cut the feet out from under his principled posture. Principles were fine things. The problem was in living up to them. He sank back onto the chair. He expelled a long breath as though trying to lower a dangerous high of pent-up feelings. His face was grim, jawline tight, eyes shuttered as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“That’s true. I did,” he admitted, as though tearing the words from his conscience. “Though not for the reasons you attribute to me, Nina. It was because I felt guilty.”
She frowned, not understanding.
With an anguished look at her, he reached out and stroked his fingers gently over the hand lying close to him. “Please listen to me, Nina. I’m sorry you read different things into my feelings. The last thing I wanted was to give you pain.”
Her fingers lifted instinctively to tangle with his, to link, wanting his warmth, wanting so much more from him. Her eyes clung to his in hope, aching for him to allay the apartness she felt.
“The first night we made love, I had a talk to Charlotte beforehand, telling her it would be good if she slept through,” he confessed. “She did. With the result that you had to use a breast pump, which you obviously found unpleasant. I then told Charlotte she’d better wake up as usual, but she’d got the hang of sleeping through and there was nothing I could do about it. You shouldn’t give a little kid confused messages, on again, off again. It wasn’t her fault.”
Nina stared incredulously at him. He really thought Charlotte took in what he said to her?
“None of this is her fault.” His eyes begged her forgiveness. “It was me. It was me!” His face twisted with guilt. “I was being selfish, wanting us to have the night together like we used to. I’m dreadfully sorry, Nina. I just didn’t realis
e how it would affect you.”
Nina’s stomach clenched. She had misunderstood, misjudged. It was crazy for Jack to have felt guilty, but she could see that he did, given his propensity for fantasy communication with his dog and Charlotte.
“If you’d shared your worries with me, I could have helped,” he went on regretfully. “Told you about cabbage leaves. It might have saved you all this pain.”
“Cabbage leaves?” she repeated dazedly.
“One of my friends told me about them. His wife got sore breasts from feeding their baby, and she used a cabbage leaf compress in her bra to get them better. It worked, too.”
“Why? How?” Nina couldn’t believe it.
Jack shrugged. “There’s no known scientific reason for it, but it does work. You keep the cabbage in the refrigerator so the leaves form a cold compress. When they warm up in the bra you replace them with cold ones again. My friend was joking about how many cabbages he had in his fridge, but he wasn’t joking about it fixing up the problem. We could have tried it, Nina.”
We…It was she who had set them apart, not Jack. She should have given him the benefit of the doubt and put fear aside.
“I know lots of things about problems with babies,” he added anxiously. “My friends have poured them out to me. I guess that’s why I thought they were little monsters. Nobody bothered telling me the best things. Like the funny expressions Charlotte gets on her face and how good it feels when she’s happy.”
Her heart swelled with so many mixed emotions Nina couldn’t find words for them. The realisation thumped into her mind that it was her fault it had come to this, her fault for not opening up to Jack, not trusting him, her fault she could no longer feed her baby. It would have been all right if only she had spoken, shared, as Jack said they should, the bad, as well as the good. How had she got so twisted up?
Her eyes filled with more tears.
“Don’t cry, love,” Jack begged. “Tell me what I can do.” He grabbed some tissues and gently dabbed the wet streams trickling down her cheeks. “If there’s something you want…”
“I’m sorry,” she choked out. He wasn’t to blame at all. She was.
“It’s okay. If it helps to cry, you cry. But don’t think you’re a failure as a mother, Nina,” he said earnestly. “You’re a wonderful mother. The best. Any kid would be lucky to have you as their mum. The breastfeeding bit doesn’t matter. It’s the love that counts, and Charlotte knows she’s loved.”
The warmth in his voice washed over her, soothing the painful torments in her mind. He dabbed her cheeks again as she struggled for control of her tear ducts. Her head ached, her body ached and her heart ached. She was a mess. Nevertheless, she pushed herself to make the effort to speak.
“Thanks for coming to the rescue, Jack. With Charlotte, I mean.”
“I’m her dad,” he said gruffly. “I wish you’d take that on board, Nina. You’re not alone. Unless you really prefer it that way.”
His pained expression needed answering. “I don’t,” she said simply.
His eyes scanned hers, searing them with his doubts as to her underlying wishes and feelings. “It doesn’t add up, Nina,” he said softly. “You say you love me. You say you’re giving me a chance. Yet you turned to Sally, not to me. It was Sally who called me to the rescue. You shut me out. Again.”
It was not a bitter accusation, more a restrained statement of fact, all the more powerful in tearing at the reservations she had held about him.
He took a deep breath, and there was a flicker of compassion in his eyes as he went on. “I appreciate where you’re coming from, Nina, but I have scars, too. We all carry baggage of one description or another. In many ways my parents shut me out of their lives. I wasn’t abused. I was simply and effectively sidelined. Ignored for the most part.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, not begging pity or even sympathy, but the loneliness of a long-distance runner was behind the words.
“I understand why you shut me out of your pregnancy, though your decision took no account of my love for you,” he went on. “It painted me as not worth consideration. Like today. How do you think it makes me feel, Nina, to know you chose not to call on me? To keep it all to yourself?”
She hadn’t seen it that way. She hadn’t wanted to bother him…a different form of consideration. “You were very much on my mind, Jack,” she pleaded.
He shook his head. “Negatively, not positively. I want to be involved, not set aside. And for you to risk this kind of suffering rather than open your door to me, it makes me wonder if I’m doing wrong in thrusting myself into your life again.”
“No. I do want you, Jack,” she cried. “I want you so much, I’m frightened of anything that might drive you away.”
“Only you can drive me away.” His voice throbbed with raw intensity. “I keep knocking on your door. You open it. You shut it. Putting me outside doesn’t make me feel wanted, Nina. I don’t even do that to my dog.”
She cringed at the blunt indictment of the way she had treated him. She had no excuse. She had seen everything from her own prejudicial point of view. Tunnel vision. With growing horror she realised she had done to Jack what her parents had done to her—rejected him, lowered his sense of self-worth, focused on her own feelings without considering the effect on him. Just because he was a man didn’t mean he was immune to the same hurts she had known.
He grimaced. “I probably shouldn’t have brought this up when you’re so ill. Not the time nor the place.”
“Yes, it is, Jack,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “You needed to say it, and I needed to hear it.”
He gave her a crooked half-smile. “As long as you’re reassured that Charlotte is safe with me.”
“I am. Thank you. For many things.”
It wasn’t enough, not the touch or the words. She sensed his inner tension, the restraint he was constructing, sealing off the wounds of mistrust and moving silently but resolutely to that place of self-sufficiency he had learned to exist in long before they had ever met. No doubt he had returned there during the estranged months of her pregnancy. It was Jack’s survival ground, come what may.
“I brought in your toiletries and a set of fresh clothes for when you leave,” he said flatly.
Easier to deal with the superficial mechanics of life than the hidden areas, Nina thought. Jack withdrew his hand and bent to unpack an overnight bag. The physical separation made her even more tensely aware of the effect her reluctance to involve him was having, the loss of true intimacy, the protective shield she had raised, driving Jack to start raising his own.
Having stowed her belongings in the drawers of the bedside cabinet, he resumed his seat, facing her with a bleak and determined expression. It alarmed Nina. He had come here caring about her, and she had blamed him for her own failure. The cost of that mistake was building up.
“Sally told me you’ll be raw and sore for a week or so. I’ve planned for both you and Charlotte to stay with me. If it’s not what you want, Nina…If you’d rather return to your flat and arrange other help—”
“No.” She had to stop his retreat from her. “If it’s not too much trouble for you…” That sounded weak and uncertain. “I mean—”
“Don’t feel obliged to come to me just because I took responsibility for Charlotte while you’re in here,” he added before she could find a more positive reply. “If I’ve assumed too much, bulldozing you into a situation that’s distressing you, it’s better we settle it now. It was never my intention to hurt you. Say the word and I’ll take everything back to your flat.”
“No. I want to come to you,” she said with as much strength as she could muster.
His direct gaze left no room for prevarication. “As a halfway house or a serious commitment, Nina? Please be honest with me.”
Her heart started galloping. How could she promise the level of absolute trust he wanted when she couldn’t trust herself to deliver on it? If it were possible to throw a switch that would
alter or adjust all the negative circuits in her brain, she would. It wasn’t her intention to hurt, either.
“Will you give me another chance, Jack?” she pleaded. “I’ll do my best to sort myself out.”
“It doesn’t have to be done by yourself, Nina. My door is open to you, and I’m always ready to listen.” Frustration threaded his voice. “If you’ll only be honest with me.”
“Yes. I realise that now,” she said earnestly.
His face slowly relaxed into a half-smile of wry appeal. “Charlotte is not just yours, Nina. She’s part of both of us. It’s not two against one. It’s the three of us.”
“Yes,” she agreed, seizing the concept with desperate energy. “Do you love her, Jack?”
He looked blank, as though he’d lost connection with her train of thought.
“Charlotte, our baby. Do you love her?” she repeated anxiously, needing to hear him say it.
The light switched on behind his eyes again. He reached out and took her hand, pressing it with convincing fervour as he answered, “Yes. Yes, I do.” He sounded almost surprised at his own words.
Was it true?
“We’re a family,” he added insistently.
Nina clutched at that concept, too, eager to push aside the single-parent status she had carried for so long. She didn’t have to be a single parent. She didn’t want to be. Jack was giving her a chance to have it all…the three of them.
“A family,” she repeated, fiercely resolving to embrace the idea in every way. No shut doors. The sense of togetherness had to be held and nurtured. Belonging to each other—that was what family should mean. Belonging so deeply that love and trust and support could be taken for granted.
Her inner turmoil eased. It slid into her mind that Jack was right in saying human beings made life more complex than it had to be. Of course, he must love Charlotte. He wouldn’t be asking for honesty if he wasn’t prepared to give it himself. She laced her fingers through his and closed her eyes, concentrating on the warmth and strength of his touch.
