A Forbidden Affair

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Nicole didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t been her secret to divulge and yet Cynthia had put two and two together so simply. If that was the case, why then had her father never reached the same conclusion?

  Cynthia suddenly reached across the table, her slender fingers wrapping around Nicole’s wrist and gripping tight.

  “My dear, you have to get out of there. No one associated with Thomas Jackson can possibly be trusted. Who do you think lied to your father about me, ruining our marriage? Think of the damage that man’s lies have done to our family. You have to realize, there’s a lot of bitterness between those men. If you’re with Thomas’s son there can only be one good reason behind it—he’s trying to get at your father.”

  Her words rang too true, as Nicole knew to her cost. Hearing it from her mother’s lips only made her situation worse. She knew full well what had been on Nate’s mind when he’d taken her back to his home that first night. She had no reason to believe his vendetta against her father had altered in any way. She was still his greatest weapon, even if through her own distress at her father’s treatment of her she’d recently become a more willing one.

  “Nicole, tell me, is Nate Hunter holding something over you? Is he forcing you to be with him?”

  Her mother’s astuteness shocked her and she bit back. “Is it too hard to believe that I might actually want to be with him for no reason other than that he treats me well and appreciates me?” Even as she said the words she was sure her mother would see them for the lie they were.

  Cynthia shook her head gently, a look of pity on her face. “You love him, don’t you?”

  “No!” The single word of protest fell from Nicole’s lips even as she questioned the truth of her rapid denial. Did she love him? How could she? She was his lover, his captive, his colleague. His tool for vengeance against her father. How she felt about him was far too complicated to examine in front of her mother. Instead, she settled for a middle ground, saying, “Our relationship—it’s convenient for us both.”

  “Well, I certainly hope that’s true, because I’m sure, if he’s anything like his father, he has an agenda and that would probably be having some kind of revenge against Charles for when he kicked Thomas to the curb.”

  “Can we change the subject, please? I’d rather not talk about my relationship with Nate, if you don’t mind. Besides, I thought you wanted to get to know me.”

  “You’re so right. I’m sorry.” Cynthia smiled, one that almost reached her eyes this time, and skillfully shifted their conversation onto other matters.

  By the time Nicole walked back to the apartment she was in a quandary. When they hadn’t been talking about Nate, or her father, Cynthia had been excellent company. She’d talked a great deal about her family home—The Masters, a vineyard and accommodation on the outskirts of Adelaide—and Nicole’s cousins who lived there. Cousins! She had an extended family. One she’d never had the chance to know. And Judd had enjoyed the benefit of that, as well, on top of her father’s total attention, her home and the job she’d loved. While she, even now, had absolutely nothing.

  Ten

  Nate knew something was up the instant he let himself into the apartment. Nicole was nursing a frosty glass of white wine in one hand, her gaze fixed on the twinkling lights of the Viaduct Basin below, her body language shrieking a touch-me-not scream. Every part of her was tense, a far cry from the languorous woman he’d left in their bed this morning before heading out to Raoul’s wedding.

  He knew she saw his reflection in the massive window in front of her, yet she didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence. A flare of concern lit deep inside him.

  “What happened? Is it your father?” Surely he would have heard if Charles had passed away. That kind of information would still have filtered through to the guests from Jackson Importers who were at the wedding.

  “No.” she huffed a short sigh. “My mother, actually.”

  “Your mother? I thought she lived in Australia.”

  “Apparently not. Apparently she’s moving back to my old family home. Seems like everyone has a place there—but me.”

  Despite her attempt at nonchalance, he could hear the pain in her voice.

  “Did she contact you?”

  “We did lunch together. Such a normal thing for a mother and daughter to do, don’t you think? Except we’re not a normal mother and daughter, are we?”

  He was shocked when she turned to face him, her eyes awash with tears. Instinctively he reached for her, enveloping her in his arms and ruing the fact that he hadn’t been here for her when she so clearly needed the support. His father had never said as much in words, but Nate had always suspected Cynthia of being behind the lies that had torn apart Thomas and Charles’s friendship. Her poison had tainted the lives of so many people, and now she was here, poisoning Nicole, as well.

  “You know,” Nicole said, her voice muffled against his chest, “as soon as I was old enough to realize that I didn’t have a mother, I wanted answers. Even after I convinced myself I didn’t need her in my life. I still wanted to know why I didn’t have unconditional love from her the same way all my friends had from their mothers. She wants us to get to know each other. Now. After twenty-five years. Can you believe that?”

  Nate remained silent, knowing she wasn’t looking for an answer. At least not from him.

  “And underneath it all, I don’t think I can believe it. I don’t know that I can believe her. And in spite of that, I still want to believe her, because what girl doesn’t want to think that her mother loves her?”

  Nate set her away from him a little, so he could see her face. “I don’t think you should trust her motives, Nicole.”

  Nicole laughed. A sharp brittle sound that was nothing like the usual humor in her he’d come to know. “Funny. She said exactly the same thing about you.”

  He stiffened. “She did? Why?”

  “Oh, she had you pegged from the start. Said you were probably just like your father. And she knew your mother apparently. Not well, of course.” Nicole lowered her voice. “We didn’t move in the same circles, you know,” she said, in a parody of her mother’s tone.

  A chill went through him. “I mean it, Nicole. The way she’s come here, after all this time and while your father is so ill—something’s not right. She could have reached out to you any time in the past. I don’t think you should have anything to do with her.”

  Nicole pulled free from his arms. “Well, that’s my judgment call, isn’t it?”

  Nate knew he’d overstepped the mark with his last comment but he couldn’t take it back now. He’d been speaking his mind and he knew he was right. Cynthia Masters-Wilson was not a woman to be trusted. And he didn’t want to see Nicole hurt ever again. But he didn’t want this to turn into a fight.

  “Yes, it is,” he finally agreed with Nicole. “Do you still want to head out to the beach?”

  Nicole shrugged and took a long sip of her wine. “Whatever.”

  “I think we should go, it’ll do us good to get out of the city.”

  “Sure,” she agreed, but without any enthusiasm.

  He watched as she finished her wine and took her glass through to the kitchen. She rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher and then went through to the bedroom they were sharing again. Her actions were wooden, automatic, as if she’d retreated somewhere in her mind. To a place he knew he couldn’t reach. The knowledge chilled him to the bone.

  Being at Raoul’s wedding today had struck something home to him. It had been a happy, relaxed affair, full of people Nate liked and valued—and yet he’d spent the whole time counting down the minutes until he could leave, wanting to come home to Nicole. Being with her had long since stopped being about having his revenge on her father. What was past, was very definitely past. What he wanted now�
��Nicole—was very much in the present—and he wanted her to stay that way.

  Nicole sat quietly in the car, mulling over her meeting with her mother. It certainly hadn’t been the reunion she’d always imagined. Cynthia was a piece of work, all right. Coming back into her life after all this time and then thinking she could tell Nicole what to do. It seemed that all around her everyone was telling her what to do these days. And she was letting them. Everything in her life had become topsy-turvy. Even her period was late and she was never late.

  Cold fingers of fear squeezed around her heart. Could she be pregnant? Oh, please, no, she thought fervently. Please just let it be stress. She wasn’t ready for this on so many levels it wasn’t even funny. She and Nate hardly had the kind of relationship that could sustain a nurturing environment for a child. Not to mention, she had no idea how to be a mother. She’d always been so professionally focused, so determined to excel in her work at Wilson Wines that she’d never given much thought to building a home and family. Even if she wanted such a thing, she didn’t know if she could pull it off. And she couldn’t bear the thought of proving her father’s prophecy about becoming a mother and downsizing her responsibilities in the workplace.

  Suddenly it was all the more important that she know, one way or another. With everything else in her life spiraling out of control, surely fate couldn’t be so cruel as to throw her a curveball like that, as well?

  “Could we stop at the shops in Titirangi on the way?” she asked. “There are a few things I forgot.”

  “Sure,” Nate said.

  When they got to the township he pulled in off the road.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, shutting down the engine.

  “Oh, no. I’ll be fine. I won’t be long,” she said, getting out the car as hastily as she could. “Really, I’ll only be a minute or two.”

  Please don’t come, she chanted in the back of her mind. Please don’t come. Thankfully, he stayed in the car and she walked briskly toward the bank of shops near where he’d parked. Where to go now? she wondered. If she went into the nearby pharmacy he’d probably see her and he’d no doubt ask her what she’d been in there for. He kept a full stock of over-the-counter medicinal products at both his homes so she couldn’t say she’d needed any painkillers or anything like that. And if she said she was after sanitary products, and she didn’t need them, that would just open up a whole new can of worms.

  Think! she exhorted herself. The grocery store. Sure, it was smallish, certainly not on the scale of a full supermarket, but surely they’d carry pregnancy tests, as well. She ducked inside the store and scanned the aisles, praying she’d find what she needed. Finally, there it was. She grabbed a test kit and made her way to the counter. On the way she also pulled some moisturizer and a lip balm off the shelf to add to her purchase. The kit, she’d ferret away in her bag. The other items would be camouflage in case Nate asked what she’d bought.

  She was back at the car in under five minutes.

  “Get everything you needed?” Nate asked her as she buckled her seatbelt.

  “Yes, thanks. I’d just run out of a couple of things.”

  He gave her a studied look, one that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She’d never been an effective liar. Never had to be. She felt as if the test kit in her bag was emitting some kind of beacon. As if any second now, Nate would be giving her the third degree.

  “Right, we’ll be on the way, then.”

  She sagged back into her seat with relief. She was overreacting. He had no reason to suspect her of anything, although he had to realize that she should perhaps have had a period by now. She counted back. It was just over three weeks since she’d met him. Only three weeks and they’d been through so very much. She felt as if she’d lived through a lifetime with him. Even so, it gave her a window of at least another week before he might start to ask questions. Questions to which she hoped to have the answer very soon.

  The rest of the journey to the house seemed to take forever, even though it was only just over twenty minutes. Nate kept her attention occupied by talking about Raoul’s wedding and the people who had been there, often drawing a quiet laugh from her as he mimicked some of Raoul’s older and more eccentric family members. She detected a note in his voice, though, that she identified with.

  Neither of them had grown up with a large family group supporting them. No uncles, aunts, curmudgeonly great-anythings. No cousins to play or fight with. Just a tight unit of parent and child.

  “Some people are lucky, aren’t they?” she said, as Nate’s voice trailed off as they neared the driveway to the house.

  “Lucky?”

  “To have the richness of all those people in their family lives.”

  “I don’t know whether Raoul thought it was particularly lucky when his great-uncle got up to make a toast to absent friends. Fifteen minutes he went on.”

  She laughed again. She should have gone to the wedding rather than have lunch with her mother. By the sounds of it she would have been in a much happier frame of mind right now if she had.

  “Still, it would have been nice, growing up…” Her voice faded on the thought.

  Nate’s hand came across and grasped hers, squeezing tight. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  They were both silent as they went inside the house. Nicole made her way immediately to the bathroom, locking the door behind her and carefully removed the test kit from her bag. Her hand trembled just a little as she opened the box and withdrew the instructions. It seemed straightforward enough. She extracted the test stick and followed the instructions to the letter.

  If she’d thought the trip in the car had taken forever, this felt as if she was aging threefold with every second. She counted silently in her head, refusing to look at the stick until she’d counted over the time the instructions said. She could hear Nate in the bedroom. She needed to get this over with before he decided to check on her.

  Nicole forced herself to look at the stick. Stripe in one window…the other window clear. A negative result! A rush of exhilaration coursed through her. She shoved the test back into its packaging, and scrunched the whole thing up as small as she could make it before shoving it into the waste bin in the bathroom, and throwing some crumpled tissues on top of it. That would have to do until she could empty the waste bin into a trash bag later on.

  She flushed the toilet and then washed her hands at the basin. Her hands were still shaking with the aftermath of the adrenaline surge she’d felt at the confirmation. She was relieved, immensely relieved, but hard on the heels of that sense of relief came a vastly contradictory spear of loss. Would it have been so very bad to have Nate’s child? While they didn’t have a normal relationship, maybe something good could have come from all of this. Something that could have healed the rift that had been driven between Thomas Jackson and her father all those years ago.

  Babies brought with them their own very special brand of implicit trust and love. At least if she had a child, wouldn’t she then have its unreserved love? A love that didn’t come with tags and conditions. A love she could return wholeheartedly.

  Nicole looked at herself in the mirror over the bathroom vanity and shook her head at her fanciful thoughts. She had worked damn hard to establish her career and she wasn’t about to walk away from that now. Not even for some pipe dream of a perfect family life. A dream that would probably go horribly wrong if she ever tried it in reality, just like her long-anticipated meeting with her mother.

  No, things were definitely better this way. She had no time or space in her life for a baby, not when everything was so horribly complicated—not now, maybe not ever.

  Nate had begun to hate Sunday afternoons. In the past it had never been an issue. He loved his time here at the beach house, even more so since he’d been spending it with Nicole. But for so
me reason the coming week filled him with foreboding. Something was off with Nicole, too. She’d been different all weekend. He’d tried to put it down to her dealing with her feelings about the meeting she’d had with her mother, but he sensed there was far more to it than that.

  Even when he’d reached for her in bed last night, he couldn’t help feeling as if she was just going through the motions. He knew she’d climaxed, that wasn’t the problem. No, what worried him was the mental distance she’d maintained from him. With the roller coaster they’d been through in these past few weeks, the only time the veils they’d held between them had fallen away was when they’d been intimate.

  Now, they didn’t even have that.

  It worried him. Something had happened to change her and he had no idea what it was or how he could fix it. Talking to her elicited no more than a polite response and when he tried to probe deeper, she just shut him down by changing the subject. Short of holding her down and refusing to let her up until she admitted the truth about what bothered her, he had no idea of what to do next. What he did know was that he was losing her, and that was unacceptable.

  He went through to the garage to double bag the trash sack to avoid any leakage, and put it in the trunk of his car. It was easier to transfer his waste to the massive trash bin at the apartment building in town than to leave it on the appointed day at the rubbish collection area here. Sometimes being remote from the city had its drawbacks but this was one he could live with.

  Nate was picking up the bag and easing it into the second one when a tear suddenly appeared in the plastic and garbage spilled onto the garage floor. Cursing under his breath he scooped up the offending articles and pushed them back into the bag. As he did so, he noticed a small cardboard box that had been twisted up. The lettering on the box was not completely obscured, though, and he saw enough to pique his interest.