If he’d been in his right mind, he’d have considered before he spoke again. But by the time that thought occurred, it was too late. “You make me very nervous, Jenna. The way you’re talking, and the way you’ve acted lately leads me to think I should take steps to make sure I don’t wind up losing both my children. Hell, I’m already paying astronomical legal fees, so I might as well get two for the price of one, wouldn’t you say?”
The way the blood drained out of her face scared the living daylights out of him. “I didn’t mean that,” he said, reaching for her. “So help me, Jenna, that wasn’t what I meant to say!”
She shrank away from him as if his touch were poison—and who could blame her? “But the thought was there. It had to be.”
“No. You’re my wife.”
“So was Adrienne, once.”
“You’re nothing like her. I…” He spread his hands helplessly, refusing to say aloud the words that had sprung to mind. I care about you more than I ever cared about her! Refusing even to admit them to himself. Men did and said crazy things sometimes. Hell, he was living proof of that! And things were already complicated enough.
But she was wilting as if all the life had been sapped out of her; as if the will to go on, to persevere despite their differences, had run its course. Something vital and lovely was withering inside her—not the baby, but something intangible that he suddenly realized was too precious and rare to be allowed to slip away without a fight. He was losing her as surely as if she were dying and suddenly he was willing to go to any lengths to save her.
“I love you,” he said, the words seeming to tear loose from every artery and ligament in his body. Love hadn’t been part of the plan; he had not seen it coming and he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“If you love me,” she said, “then stop this insane vendetta against Adrienne. Be satisfied with what you’ve got.”
Any length but that! “Don’t,” he begged. “Sweetheart, don’t ask me to trade one thing for another.”
“All right,” she said dully. “I won’t.”
Slowly, she straightened to her full height and smoothed the thin fabric of her maternity dress over her belly. When she turned to leave, he caught a brief glimpse of her in profile and it was like seeing her for the first time—the long, elegant neck, the graceful sweep of her hair, the sweet curve of her breasts, her proud, erect posture.
He had always thought her beautiful but pregnancy had endowed her with a luminescence that lent another dimension to her loveliness. It clutched at his gut, at his heart, and the impact staggered him.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
“To make dinner.”
“Let me. It’s been one hell of a day and you look worn-out.”
She signified agreement with a tilt of her shoulder so slight it was barely there at all.
That night, he tried every way he knew how to show her that she could trust him. She lay in his arms and let him kiss her, caress her, touch her all over with his hands and his mouth and his tongue. When he entered her, she accepted him; even held him as the passion escalated to a fine torture before smashing him to pieces and rendering him weak as a child. Even stroked his hair as he lay, spent, beside her.
The next day when he came home from work, she was gone.
For more than two weeks, she traveled, driving inland, discovering places which previously had been nothing but names on the map, and never staying more than one night in the same spot: north through Lillooet, then over to the old gold rush trail to Hundred Mile House, with a side trip east to Barkerville, where early signs of winter left the mornings sharp with frost. From there, north and west again on the Yellowhead Highway through Vanderhoof and past the Seven Sisters Peaks until she reached Prince Rupert on the cold and rainy north coast.
Finally, toward the end of a stormy day in the middle of October, she ended up back where everything had started, at The Inn on the west coast of Vancouver Island. She checked in, unpacked her bags, and although she wasn’t particularly hungry, went down for dinner because she knew she was doing neither herself nor her baby any favors by missing meals.
Candlelight illuminated the dining room, enhanced by the logs blazing in the hearth. Rain lashed at the night-dark windows. Crystal clinked against crystal, waiters poured wine and obliged guests by taking photographs. And she, again, was alone. More alone than she’d ever been in her life.
“Will there be just one for dinner, madam?” the maître d’inquired, politely ignoring the fact that she was noticeably pregnant.
It was pure bad luck that he showed her to the same table she’d occupied the first time she’d been there, thereby stirring up the most wrenching sense of déjà vu. And equally unfortunate that at Edmund’s old table sat a honeymoon couple so besotted with each other’s company that they couldn’t take their eyes off each other.
She had thought putting some distance between her and Edmund would perhaps give her a different perspective, one that would allow them to find some middle ground from which to rebuild their marriage. But she’d covered hundreds of miles since the morning she’d left him with nothing but a note to explain her decision, and the only conclusion she’d reached was that there was no middle ground. They were unalterably opposed.
No use telling herself that he wasn’t deliberately trying to be evil or destructive. She knew that, as far as Molly was concerned, he honestly believed that what he was doing was right. But even if Jenna could have ignored the dictates of her own conscience which told her he was wrong, she could never forget his threat to take her own baby away from her.
That he’d spoken the words in anger, and tried to atone for them by telling her he loved her—words she’d longed to hear!—and by making love to her with an unguarded passion he’d never shown before, did nothing to alter the fact that he’d planted a fear so deep and powerful that it haunted her dreams and plagued her every waking minute.
Pushing aside the salad she’d ordered, she faced up to what she’d known for days: the marriage was over and the decent thing was to tell him so. In the note she’d left for him, she’d asked that he not try to find her, that he give her time to sort out her feelings, and he’d honored her request. In all fairness, he now had the right to know she was not coming back to him.
She phoned him the minute she got back to her room. He answered on the second ring and the sound of his voice did terrible damage to her resolve; so terrible that she could not at first bring herself to speak to him.
“Jenna?” he said, when the silence had lasted too long. “Sweetheart, is that you?”
“Yes,” she finally croaked past the aching lump in her throat.
“Thank God! Honey, how are you and when are you coming home?”
“I’m not,” she managed through the tears choking her. “That’s why I’m calling, Edmund—to tell you that I won’t be coming back.”
“Not ever?” She heard the incredulity in his tone, could almost see the disbelief on his face. “Honey, you don’t mean that. We can work this out. I’ve—”
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid we can’t. And the reason I’m calling you now is to tell you I intend filing for divorce, because I don’t want you to hear it first from a lawyer.”
“You’re quite sure that’s what you want, are you?”
Sure? No! How could any woman be sure that ending a relationship to the man she loved despite everything was what she really wanted? “I’m resigned to the inevitable,” she said. “We’ve reached an impasse and I see no way for us to get past it. I’m afraid divorce is the only option.”
“Fine. Then you can tell me so to my face. We’re talking about ending a marriage, Jenna, not canceling a magazine subscription. A phone call just won’t cut it.”
She couldn’t see him again, not yet! Not until her heart had mended a little. “I’m afraid it will have to,” she said, and quickly, before she fell victim to his further persuasion, she broke the connection, then contacted the front desk
and asked not to have any calls put through to her room.
It was only a little after seven o’clock, too early to think about going to bed even if she could have slept. As often happened in the evening, the baby was particularly active. Usually, it made her smile but tonight it merely reminded her that this would be yet another child growing up without a father.
Hugging her elbows, she paced to the window. Floodlights at the base of the building showed the trees bending before the onslaught of wind and rain, and great curtains of spray crashing over the rocks below. She was still standing there, mesmerized by the violence of the scene, when one of the hotel employees showed up at her door.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but there’s some concern that we might lose power if this storm keeps going, so I’ve brought you candles and extra wood. I’ll be happy to start a fire, if you like, and suggest that if you’re thinking of ordering anything from room service, you do so now.”
“Perhaps I will,” she said, as a particularly vicious blast of wind shook the walls. “Some tea, perhaps.”
“I’ll have it sent up right away, ma’am. And the fire?”
“Yes,” she said. “A fire would be nice.”
“And a lot more cheerful than sitting in the dark, should that happen. At least you’ll be warm.”
In body, maybe. But neither a roaring fire nor a pot of hot tea could chase away the chill in her heart—nothing except the feel of Edmund’s arms around her and that, sadly, was too risky a venture even to consider. From now on, memories of the way he’d once held her would have to suffice.
The storm finally wore itself out about an hour later and by nine was reduced to occasional gusts and the intermittent spatter of rain on the windows. Although the fire was still burning brightly, the tea she’d ordered had long since gone cold and Jenna was on the point of drawing a hot bath when another knock came at the door.
She opened it expecting to find someone from room service come to remove the tray, and instead came face-to-face with Edmund. Before she could draw breath, let alone speak, he stepped into the room, kicked the door closed behind him, swept her into his arms and kissed her full on the mouth.
When she most needed her wits about her, her mind simply took a leave of absence so that nothing stood between his seduction and her all too susceptible senses. She melted against him, helplessly enmeshed in pent-up longing.
The scent of him filled her, windswept cedar and salty sea air, and the faint residue of soap. The taste of him, coffee and peppermint, intoxicated her. Without let, her hand drifted over him, defining the texture of his heavy duffle jacket, his hair, the faint stubble of new beard on his cold cheek.
“So,” he said, when at last he lifted his mouth from hers and subjected her to a thorough inspection from his too-beautiful, too blue eyes, “you still want that divorce?”
Ignoring the question, she threw back one of her own. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I’ve known where you were every day for the last three weeks,” he said, cupping her chin and studying her face as if he wanted to etch the memory of it in his mind forever. “Credit cards leave a trail of evidence behind them, my darling, and tracing a phone call takes mere seconds.”
“But when I spoke to you earlier tonight, you were at home. How did you manage to get here so quickly?”
“Desperate situations call for desperate measures,” he said, smoothing his hands over her hair. “Did you really think I was going to stand idly by and let you end our marriage without putting up a fight? I chartered a helicopter and I’d have been here a lot sooner if I hadn’t been left cooling my heels while the weather calmed down.”
“You should have saved yourself the trouble,” she said, belated common sense reasserting itself. “Flying in at the last minute doesn’t change a thing.”
He smiled and she wished he’d been born with bad teeth, or better yet, had no teeth at all. A stone image would have found that smile hard to resist. “You look wonderful,” he said, taking a step back the better to view her, and hooking one finger under the string of pearls around her neck. “That color suits you.”
And she, fool that she was, blushed at the compliment and rejoiced that she hadn’t changed since dinner. She knew that the dark green maternity dress, with its high empire waist and sweeping skirt, flattered her; that her slender, black pumps gave her added height and made her look less lumpily pregnant.
“Thank you,” she said. “You look…” Tall, dark and devastating. Handsome beyond imagining. Beloved!
She stopped and bit her lip, hard. She needed to have her mouth stapled shut! “Rather chilled,” she said. “You shouldn’t have risked pneumonia by coming here for nothing.”
She might as well have been speaking in foreign tongues for all the attention he paid to what she said. “Our baby has grown,” he remarked, his hand sliding intimately over her breasts to where junior was kicking away as if he knew it was his father’s touch pressing lightly against him. “You’re twice as big as you were the last time I held you.”
She didn’t want to be reminded of that last time. Nor was she about to permit a repeat performance, even though it was obvious that Edmund had decided to switch tactics and try to woo her with charm and seduction.
“You’re wasting your time,” she said, pushing him away. “I’ve made up my mind.”
He strolled to the window and although he had his back to her, she knew he was watching her reflection in the dark glass. “And what would it take to change it, Jenna, my love?”
“Nothing,” she said, sternly resisting the lure of my love, and my darling, and any other blandishment he might see fit to toss her way.
Lazily, he unbuttoned his jacket and removed it. “Don’t you dare take off your clothes!” she said, in breathless panic.
He laughed, and it was as if summer breezed into the room, rich with warmth and sunlight. “The thought never crossed my mind.”
“You’re not staying, you know.”
“I’ll leave the minute you hear me out.”
“Edmund,” she said, a shade desperately, “we have nothing left to say to each other. I thought I made that clear already.”
“I dropped the custody suit, Jenna.”
“Dropped—?” Stunned, she stared at him, wishing he’d turn around so that she could read the expression on his face. “When?”
“Shortly after you left, but not, I hasten to add, because you left. This isn’t a ploy to win you back. I made my decision independently of anything to do with you and me.”
“Then…why?” She was almost afraid to ask. Afraid that he was raising her hopes, only to dash them again and leave her more desolate than ever.
“I drove up to the Okanagan with every intention of bringing Molly back to town with me. When she saw me, she started to cry and begged her mother not to let me take her away. And Adrienne…” He heaved a sigh and slowly turned back to the room. No trace of his recent laughter remained. Instead, there was a soberness to the cast of his mouth, an introspective darkness in his eyes. “Adrienne told her not to be upset, that I was her daddy and would never hurt her, and she should go with me and have fun. But it wasn’t enough. Molly still wouldn’t look at me, let alone come to me. So Adrienne suggested I stick around for a while, have lunch with them, that sort of thing, to give her time to come around. And it shamed me. Because if the situation had been reversed, I’d have capitalized on it.”
He cleared his throat and waited a second before continuing, “I stand just over six-two in my bare feet, Jenna, but at that moment I felt about two feet tall. My own daughter was afraid of me, my wife had left me because she, too, was afraid, and my ex-wife was showing a compassion and generosity I didn’t deserve. What kind of jerk did that make me?”
She couldn’t answer. He was as close to tears as she ever hoped to see him, and it was breaking her heart.
“I finally saw that you were right,” he said, wrenching his emotions under control. “I’d lost s
ight of what mattered. The whole custody issue had taken on a life of its own that had nothing to do with Molly. I was blaming Adrienne and Bud when the person I should have blamed was myself.”
“No!” she whispered, aghast. “Whatever else you did wrong, you weren’t responsible for Molly’s accident, Edmund.”
“Indirectly, I’m afraid I was. I knew Bud was strapped for cash and that the machinery wasn’t being properly maintained. That’s probably why the brakes failed on the tractor, the day of the accident.”
“But you paid child support, didn’t you?” Oh please, she prayed, tell me that you did!
“I guess I deserve that question,” he said. “And yes, I did, every month without fail. But Bud wouldn’t let Adrienne touch a cent of it. Every cheque I sent went straight into a trust account for Molly. Except for the gifts I gave her, everything she’s owned since he married her mother came out of his pocket. He was scrupulous about being the provider. The way he saw it, he’d done more than take a wife, he’d taken on her child, as well. And that ate holes in me. I felt irrelevant. Instead of lending a hand with a few extra dollars when they were needed, I stood back and watched him struggle. That’s why I have to take some responsibility for Molly’s accident.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” she said. “It was no one’s fault.”
“Well, if it makes any difference, I’ve tried to put things right. I might be a real bozo at times, but I do learn, eventually. I’ve convinced Bud to let me help out with the cash flow. Things should be a bit easier for him from now on.”
He steepled his hands and pressed them to his mouth, then gave a shrug. “And that’s about it, Jenna. The next move’s up to you. If you still want a divorce, I won’t oppose it, nor will I use the baby as a bargaining tool. But,” he said, moving with fluid grace to where she sat and falling to his knees at her feet, “if you’ll give me another chance, I’ll do my level best to prove myself worthy of it.”
The Pregnant Bride Page 17
