“Why didn’t you?” she asked, knowing full well that she probably would have stayed if he’d done that.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand what is going on with me. When I met Emma she screamed, didn’t want me near her. All I could think about was that you’d have done a much better job than I did. You would have known instinctively what to do.”
Feeling closer to Aidan than she had since all of this began, she held the phone tighter. “Aidan, why did you have an affair?”
She heard his sudden intake of breath and waited to see if he’d answer her.
“I want to tell you the truth, but are you sure you want to hear what I have to say?”
“Yes. I am.” Her knees threatening to give out on her, she sat down on the sofa.
“Okay, but what I have to say is going to sound totally selfish.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sure you weren’t aware of this, but I seldom felt you were hearing me about anything other than trying to get pregnant.”
“That’s not fair! I always listened to you.”
Aidan didn’t say a word for a few minutes. “Do you have any idea how many times I tried to get you to go on vacation? And each time you’d insist that you couldn’t go because you had to be near your gynecologist.”
“What can I say? Yes, I wanted to be pregnant, and I was afraid of being very far from my doctor. Why was a vacation so important?”
“Because I wanted you to focus your attention on me, on us and our marriage.”
“I did. Having a baby was important to both of us.”
“Yes. But many times I felt as if you weren’t even aware of me except as the man who could get you pregnant.”
There was a long pause while hurt rained down on her. “You really felt I ignored you except when we were—no. That’s not true!” she screamed at him. “You wanted a baby, didn’t you? Why are you only now telling me about how you felt?” she demanded, trying to gain control.
“Because I didn’t think you’d listen to me. Every time I tried to talk about something else, something we might do or an idea for my business, you didn’t seem very interested. At first I didn’t mind so much, but as the years went on and things got so intense, so desperate, I felt as if what I wanted or needed really didn’t matter.”
“That’s so unfair,” she yelled at him. “You had your work. You had your life outside this house. I had nothing…nothing but the hope that we would finally conceive.”
“And that’s why I kept my feelings to myself. I didn’t think that you’d be interested in how I felt unless it somehow related to getting pregnant. Do you have any idea how many times I simply wanted to hold you in my arms, to have you fall asleep in my arms, not from the effort of getting pregnant but because we loved each other and needed to hold each other close?”
Feeling the sincerity of his words across the connection, she began to see that maybe… “I was obsessed with getting pregnant. Is that what you’re saying?”
He gave a huge sigh of relief. “Yes. After years of being together, the Grace I fell in love with seemed to have changed, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was lonely, Grace. I needed my wife back.”
“But that doesn’t forgive what you did. You could have talked to me like you’re talking now. We could have worked on getting a little balance in our marriage. You know I would not ignore you that way. You had to see that I needed you to share your feelings with me. Instead, you went to bed with another woman.”
“An act that I am so sorry for. Believe me. You cannot imagine how sorry I am. I’d change it if I could.”
“That’s not possible. We both know that. And now there’s a child,” Grace said, her heart aching from the unfairness of life. “All I ever wanted was a baby.”
“Me, too, Grace. Me, too,” he whispered.
“And now you have one.”
“No. We have one. We have a little girl, Grace.”
“A little girl who came out of an affair you had,” she said, her voice rising again.
“If Emma could have been your baby, I would have loved and cared for her, for you, for the rest of my life.”
A moment of quiet fell between them. “Aidan, I wish I could tell you that with time and effort on your part, I might be able to forgive you. But I’m not sure if I’ll ever be at that point, to feel it in my heart to forgive what you’ve done.”
For a few moments, she feared that he might not answer, and it tore at her with a force she could never have imagined. What if she’d gone too far in what she’d said?
“Grace, I would like to be able to tell you that I will never hurt you again. But that’s not possible. I’ve hurt you already. But I want you to believe that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to make this up to you. I haven’t worked out exactly how to do that, but believe me, I’m going to try. I need you more than I could ever have imagined. Not just because of Emma, but because you’re you. You make my life worthwhile.”
A shudder ran through her at his words. “Oh, Aidan, if only none of this had happened,” she whispered.
“But it did,” he said, desolation tingeing his words.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALTHOUGH SOME OF the things they’d talked about last night were painful, Grace felt a little better this morning. The call had given her hope that they might be able to work things out between them.
Just as she finished tidying the bedroom and placing clothes in the laundry hamper, the phone rang. Aidan. She hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon. “How are you doing? Did you get any rest?” she asked, falling into her old habit of being concerned for him.
“I did a little, not much. I’m too worried about how I’m going to cope with Emma.”
Should she simply say what was on her mind? After last night, it was worth a try. “I thought that maybe if I drove to Spartanburg today, we could talk about all this, maybe work out a plan for Emma.”
“I’d like that so much, darling. I really believe we can solve this if we try. We can get our life back on track. To be honest, I spent part of the night thinking of ways to fix things, and so if you are willing to come here, I’d like to see you as soon as possible.”
“How is Emma?” she asked.
“She cried when I came near her again last night. She wouldn’t let me put her to bed. Pretty upsetting stuff, but like Lisa said, Emma has just lost her mom. Lisa suggested that I might consider having Emma see a child psychologist. I hadn’t thought of that. For now, I’d like to see if I could gain her trust, have her be willing to spend time with me…with us.”
Grace heard the uncertainty in his words and remembered her promise to herself to keep in mind that Aidan had no family member to confide in or rely upon the way she did. “Aidan, it will take time. She sees you as a stranger, and it will be a big change for her to see you as anything other than that. I’m sure it will eventually work out.”
“If you’re here with me, everything will be fine,” he said, and she knew by his tone he expected her to reassure him that she would be there for him.
She suddenly felt shy and uncertain. She’d never behaved this way around Aidan, this new thing of holding back. She’d always rushed in to support him in whatever he was doing.
“When will you be here?” he asked, and she heard the loneliness in his voice.
His need for her drew her in. The familiarity of that role comforted her, despite their issues. She couldn’t help herself, it seemed. “I’m ready to go now, so about two hours maybe.”
He gave a protracted sigh. “I’ll be waiting right here for you. Truthfully, I spent a miserable night last night without you.”
“Me, too,” she confessed.
“Grace, please drive carefully,” he murmured in her ear.
“I will. I have to pack, then I can get on the road,” she said, as she placed her pajamas in her suitcase.
They needed to sit down with a counselor to talk out their concerns about how Emma had come into their lives and how it had affected their marriage.
She climbed into the car, her mind focused on what lay ahead. She had so many doubts about all this. She wasn’t sure she wanted the child of her husband’s affair. What if she couldn’t accept Emma into her life? She felt guilty for feeling that way, but she couldn’t help it. And a part of her resented that he would simply assume that she would be okay with the child he’d fathered without her.
Given the way he was behaving, she wondered how to talk to him about her concern about raising another’s woman’s child and all that meant for her. How could she get him to see her point of view? If they were to get through this with their marriage intact, she and he both had to be totally honest about how they felt.
Hours later, she pulled into the driveway she’d left so hurriedly yesterday. Aidan met her at the door, his arms outstretched. “Oh, Grace. I’ve missed you so much. So much.”
She walked into his embrace feeling his warmth, breathing in his scent. He held her tight as he rocked her back and forth.
“I missed you, too, Aidan. Last night was the loneliest night of my life,” she whispered into his cotton shirt, soaking in the newly scrubbed scent of his body. “Where did you stay last night?”
Still holding her tight, he led her into the house and along the hall to the kitchen. “I stayed here. Lisa thought it might help if I was around when Emma got up this morning. Lisa has gone shopping and Emma is at kindergarten. We’ve got the house to ourselves. Larry Knowles called to say he’d like to see me to start the process of working out the estate details. I want you to go with me,” he said, drawing her into a kiss that made her knees weak with desire.
He smiled. “I’ve got coffee ready to go, and I went to the local bakery and got your favorite sandwich—Swiss cheese and ham with mayo and mustard.” Without waiting for her reply, he moved to the counter and began making coffee, his back to her as he worked.
“I’m famished. Did you get yourself a sandwich, as well?” she asked, slipping into her old behavior of thinking about him first. Yet it felt so easy, so natural. She shrugged off her concern that he might expect things to go back to the way they were. That couldn’t happen.
He got two plates out of the cupboard and put them on the island. “I did. I ate earlier. The lawyer appointment isn’t until two o’clock, so we have time.”
Grace watched her husband as she organized her thoughts, what she wanted to say. She knew how important Emma was to him, but she needed him to understand how she felt about it all. “Aidan, I think we need to be very clear on what we want to do.”
He looked up from cutting her sandwich in half. “Of course we need to be clear. But I’m not sure if you mean it the way I do.”
“I mean Emma is a little girl who has never lived anywhere but in this house. We live miles away, with a life that we’ve made for the two of us, a life that never included a child, despite our wishes. At the very least, we will have to childproof the house. We’d have to find a pediatrician, a dentist who is good with children—”
“But once she’s over the worst of it, Emma will be fine. Children adapt easily,” Aidan said, as he studied her. “You don’t see it that way, do you?”
“What I see is a child who will need a lot of care and attention in a loving, familiar environment. That environment isn’t our home where nothing is familiar to her. It’s here with her nanny.”
“But what about us? We have been waiting most of our marriage for a child. Now we have one,” Aidan said, a bewildered look on his face.
“It’s not just about having a child in our lives. It’s about doing right for her and for us. That all takes planning and caring, Aidan. And so far we’ve done none of it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, his eyebrows drawn together as he poured the coffee and brought the cups and cream to the counter between them.
“This is a huge change for both of us. We’ll have to make sacrifices to make sure that Emma is cared for and happy.”
“But that’s the whole point. We now have a child. We are a family,” he said, leaning on the counter.
Grace couldn’t look at her sandwich let alone take a bite. “Aidan, I’m not sure I can accept Emma as my child. I…I… She belongs to you and Deidre.”
Aidan stared across the glossy surface of the counter at her. “She belongs with you and me. Deidre is gone. She is not coming back. She left her child in our care. Deidre wasn’t part of our lives, but we’ve been given the gift. Something good has come out of Deidre’s death. At least, that’s how I see it.”
Grace took a deep breath, preparing herself to offer up what she felt. Crossing her fingers that Aidan would listen, she said, “That’s not how I see it. I need time to accept her into our lives. She is a part of you, and I respect that. But she’s not a part of me. I can’t have a child, and I’m afraid that having Emma with us would be a constant reminder of my inability to have a baby and of your infidelity.”
Aidan blew out an impatient sigh. “Grace, how can I convince you that Deidre was never really part of my life? The only really good thing that came out of that relationship was Emma.”
Her throat choking with tears, Grace tried to find the right words. “Aidan, I need time to sort this out. We need time together, to adjust to having a child in our lives so suddenly. Would it be possible to leave Emma here with Lisa while you and I go home and work this out?”
“Are you saying you don’t want Emma?” he asked, frustration tingeing his words.
“That’s not what I said at all. What I said was I need to be sure that taking Emma into our lives at the moment is the right thing for us. We have so many problems we need to work on. This is all so sudden, and I need to feel that we are doing the right thing. I need us to talk it all out, rather than jump in so fast.”
“The right thing? This isn’t about right or wrong. This is about my daughter, our daughter. Grace, you’re overreacting to all this. Don’t let what happened years ago influence how you feel about Emma. This is our life. We have a child. What we both have wanted all along.”
“But what you did back then is now influencing everything in our life, in my life. You had an affair, which you didn’t tell me about. You find out you have a daughter from that affair and I’m supposed to jump onboard without a moment’s thought or hesitation. I’m your wife. I was your wife before Deidre and before this child. I need you to support me in this, to give me time to adjust.”
“I don’t know what to say. You want me to leave Emma here while we go home and work on you adjusting to having a child in our lives when we’ve waited years for this opportunity. I don’t get it,” he said.
“This child is not ours. She’s yours and Deidre’s. Not mine. I can’t simply ignore what you and Deidre did to my life, to my faith in you. It’s this simple. Either I’m part of this decision or I’m not,” she said, anger rising through her.
“Grace, I can’t abandon Emma. And that’s what it would feel like if I went home with you now. But if you stay here with me, I’m willing to spend time working through this with you, reassuring you in any way I can.”
“I don’t want reassurance. I want to be involved in deciding what is best for her and for us. Don’t you see?” she asked, feeling miserable and alone. “If you’d been willing to adopt a baby, we’d be a family now. Taking Emma into our lives would be different, if we already had a child.”
“Grace, where is this coming from? Are y
ou afraid that I am taking Emma out of some sort of loyalty to Deidre?” he asked, his dark eyes intent on hers.
She shrugged in defeat. “What do you want me to say? We can’t seem to talk about this without you presenting what you want and expecting me to go along with it.”
“That’s not true! I want you to be part of this, but I can’t abandon my daughter.”
She wondered if he’d heard any of the words he’d just spoken or saw their effect on her. Probably not. Aidan wasn’t ready to accept anyone else’s ideas on this. How long that would last, she didn’t know. Perhaps coming here was a mistake. “For the umpteenth time, I’m not asking you to abandon your child.”
“Then what are you saying?” he asked.
“I want you to listen to my side of things. I failed you by not having our baby, and it’s clear that you want your child. I’ve always wanted my own child, my baby. It didn’t happen. We don’t always get what we want, Aidan,” she said, her voice failing her as sobs shook her whole body. Through her tears, she searched for her purse. “This was a mistake, my coming here. A mistake.”
* * *
“DON’T SAY THAT, GRACE,” Aidan pleaded, going to her and holding her while she cried. He’d been so glad to see her when she drove in the driveway. Last night’s conversation had been so open and caring, yet so laden with things that neither could say. He’d been thrilled to have her return to him, and he’d foolishly believed they could agree to have Emma return home with them.
Holding her close, he whispered, “I never meant to hurt you. I am as confused by all of this as you are. Not long ago I was running my business, we were having a little break in Charleston and life was good. And, yes, I didn’t jump on the adoption thing right away because I felt we needed a little time to catch our breath, get our lives on track before we began the search for a child. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to adopt. I wanted us to take our time.”
“And that’s what I’m asking you to do now. What difference will a week make in Emma’s life? Isn’t a delay while we talk this out better than our marriage suffering and Emma being caught in the middle?”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 61
