The Innocent's Shock Pregnancy

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘The wall on our floor needs to be moved.’

  ‘Lucky we kept the hotel suite, then,’ Ethan said, thinking back to his bachelor days—or rather the night they had spent there.

  ‘There’s no need for us to move out,’ Merida said rather hurriedly, because there was only one bedroom in his suite at the hotel.

  ‘Absolutely there is. There’s no way that I’m staying in the apartment while there’s building going on.’

  God, Ethan thought, she really couldn’t stand the thought of being in the same bed as him.

  ‘I’ll have the couch,’ he mouthed, and smiled the dark smile he had invented for her and used a lot of late. And then spoke one word, laced with bitterness. ‘Darling.’

  Merida breathed deeply and looked out of the window, barely seeing the blazing trees that looked set on fire by autumn—or ‘fall’, as he called it.

  It was a short drive—just two blocks to his father’s—but there was no question of their walking. They were dressed for a photo shoot and Ethan was tense.

  ‘I hate these things,’ he said, running a finger along the neck of his shirt. ‘It shouldn’t take too long. It’s just a magazine piece. But there’ll be some questions.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Merida wasn’t looking forward to the photo shoot either. Yet she understood that Jobe wanted some pictures with his son and his new wife. She just wished it wasn’t all so formal and staged.

  But there wasn’t time to change the world.

  In fact, Jobe didn’t have much time at all. He was going into hospital next week, to start a new treatment, but he was fading before their eyes.

  Jobe hadn’t made it to the annual shareholders’ meeting, and he had stepped down a week prior.

  ‘Thank God for the little one,’ Jobe had said, because the news that Ethan had married, and that there was a baby on the way, had buoyed things up enough that when their founder stepped down, the shareholders’ long-anticipated bloodbath was more of a hiccough.

  ‘I think it’s more to do with the Dubai announcement than the baby,’ Merida had suggested.

  ‘Well, we’re going to have to agree to disagree,’ Jobe had said, and smiled.

  Jobe and Ethan had said the same thing to Merida on the night they had met. The two men were so alike. And yet, apart from about work, father and son barely spoke.

  Time was running out, Merida knew. Not just for Jobe, but for Ethan to build bridges with his father.

  If it were even possible.

  Once at the stunning Fifth Avenue residence, they were informed that Jobe was getting ready and would be down soon. Ethan and Merida walked into the drawing room.

  Abe and Candice were already there. Abe was standing with one elbow on the mantel, nursing a whisky.

  ‘Merida.’

  He gave her a nod. They didn’t bother with the kiss-kiss thing, and Candice barely looked over.

  Ethan and Abe bitched about their good friends Nikkei and Dow Jones as the photographer and interviewer arrived, and as they set up Merida wandered out into the hall and stood looking at family photos of old.

  God, Elizabeth had been beautiful, Merida thought as she examined one of the photos.

  The stunning family sat on a pale sofa with carefully arranged pastel silk cushions. Elizabeth was holding the newborn Ethan. Her long blond hair was brushed so that it fell over her left shoulder and she held Ethan on her right. Jobe sat beside her, with a serious-looking Abe on his knee.

  ‘Merida!’

  She turned and smiled at the sound of her name. At least Jobe seemed pleased to see her.

  He made his way rather slowly down the stairs, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Tell me, Jobe,’ Merida said, and smiled. ‘Do these photos get taken down when you have a new wife in residence?’

  Jobe laughed. ‘Nope—she’s the boys’ mother.’

  ‘Boys?’ Merida raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘They always will be boys to me. You just wait till you have your own.’

  Merida smiled. She thought of her own parents, barely in touch, and doubted there were any family pictures of her own childhood lining their walls.

  ‘You’re a good dad, Jobe.’

  ‘I wanted to be.’

  It was an odd answer, and she heard his pensive tone, but now he was walking ahead of her and into the drawing room.

  Merida was interviewed as the photographer did some test shots.

  ‘Merida, you were working at a gallery when you and Ethan met?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled.

  ‘And did Ethan drop in often?’

  ‘He did.’ She smiled again. ‘There was a gorgeous amulet display, owned by Sheikh Prince Khalid...’

  Merida was faultless in her responses, Ethan thought. And when they did a couple of headshots of her he watched her laugh and smile. She was just so relaxed and at ease with it all.

  Ethan missed the old them.

  And not just the sex.

  While their time together before the news of the baby had been short-lived, he missed the walking through the city, the coffee and the sharing.

  And in that brief time just after their marriage—well, he’d felt as if he might take on the world.

  Now, from where he stood, Merida had got what she wanted. The marriage was consummated, her duty was done and now they awaited the baby, followed by an amicable divorce.

  The photos took for ever, but finally it was over. Abe and Candice were gone before the photographer’s bags were even packed, and it was Ethan who saw then off.

  The interviewer was still gushing. ‘We’d love to come and see your home when the renovations are complete—and of course once the baby arrives...’

  Ethan said nothing. He was going along with it for now, but there was no way he was having them in his home. No way he would subject his child...

  His child.

  Their child.

  He closed the door and as he did so the photos lining the walls seemed to taunt him.

  God, he loathed being here, because the creeping of the past tightened like a vine.

  He remembered now the summons to perfection. His nails being cut, the clip-clip-clip and the rake of a comb through his hair.

  ‘Ethan, smile...’ his mother would croon in unfamiliar affectionate tones as they sat perfectly on the pale blue sofa. ‘Come on, darling.’

  And then, as he stood there in the vast hallway, he remembered another day. A morning.

  Meghan, his nanny, was shouting as she carried him through the house. ‘You left him in the car!’

  Ethan remembered being hauled out of a car and stripped off, and the coolness of a shower and water being poured down his throat.

  ‘He was asleep!’ His mother had been shouting too. ‘It seemed mean to wake him.’

  He hadn’t understood why Meghan had been crying. Why Meghan had said sorry to him, over and over, as she cooled him down, when it hadn’t been her fault.

  Ethan was sweating as much as if he’d been running. He pressed the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb and screwed closed his eyes, willing the memory to be gone.

  He wanted to go back to normality. Or the strange version of it he and Merida now made.

  Ethan pushed open the drawing room door and it was clear that he had interrupted a conversation.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Jobe checked, because his son was ghostly white.

  ‘Everything’s fine. What are you two up to?’

  ‘I was just saying to Merida—why on earth would you move into a hotel when you could come here...?’

  ‘I left home nearly twenty years ago,’ Ethan snapped. ‘I’ve no intention—’

  ‘Ethan,’ Jobe interrupted. ‘I’m spending more time at the hospital than here. There’s a full staff. I d
on’t like the thought of the place standing empty, and there’s no need for your pregnant wife to be staying in a hotel. However luxurious, it’s not a home.’

  Had his father not been dying, Ethan would have told him in no uncertain terms what he could do with that idea, but he saved his verdict for after their car ride home.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s a nice idea.’

  ‘Seriously?’ He gaped, and then he looked at her. ‘Whatever, Merida—it makes no difference to me.’

  ‘Meaning...?’

  ‘I’m heading to the Middle East tomorrow.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Four weeks.’ He plucked a figure from his head.

  ‘Your father’s dying, Ethan, and you’re heading off for a month?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ethan said. ‘He’s the one who wants the ball to keep rolling—well, hotels don’t build themselves.’

  Yes, he was running away. But there was no way he was staying in that house. As well as that, he was sick of this farcical marriage, with the stilted dinners and the strained nights out when they smiled, again and again, for the cameras. When they kissed and held hands in the hope that someone was watching, then dropped all contact the moment they were home.

  It was killing him, lying upstairs night after night while she slept in the guest room.

  ‘We couldn’t sleep separately at my father’s...’ Ethan said, and watched her rapid blink.

  ‘Rita knows...’

  ‘Rita was born before sex was invented,’ Ethan quipped. ‘She thinks it’s normal for married couples to sleep apart. My father has a fleet of staff...’

  Ethan actually no longer gave a damn what the staff thought. It was more a matter of his own wounded pride and, though he loathed their sleeping arrangements, the thought of them lying together night after night and not touching was just impossible.

  ‘You’re the one who wanted separate rooms, Merida. Well, I’m going to give you a whole lot more—separate countries. Is that enough space for you?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MERIDA LIKED VISITING JOBE. He was having another round of treatment in the hope of still being around when his grandchild arrived.

  ‘How are you?’ She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘Tired,’ Jobe admitted.

  ‘Ethan’s calling this evening,’ Merida said. ‘He wants to know...’

  ‘I just spoke to him online,’ Jobe said. ‘He told me the ultrasound went well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re having?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, and then looked at Jobe and the grey tinge to his skin. ‘I could ask my OB to come and speak to you, tell you...’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’

  ‘Of course I would.’ Merida smiled, but tears were threatening as they both silently admitted that there might not the time to find out. She set about examining his flowers, rather than let Jobe see the glint of tears.

  ‘These are gorgeous,’ she said, burying her face in a huge bunch of red roses and having a sneaky read of the card.

  ‘Who’s Chantelle?’

  ‘An ex.’

  ‘She doesn’t sound as if she wants to be an ex,’ Merida said. ‘It says here that she’s “desperate to see you”.’

  If it had been one of the boys reading his cards Jobe would have snapped at him, but he liked Merida. And he wanted her for his son. He wanted a Devereux marriage to finally work.

  And so he told Merida, when he’d told no one else, why he’d ended things with Chantelle. ‘I don’t want any spectators.’

  ‘Is that what I am?’ Merida checked.

  ‘Yes, but you’re family.’

  And that made her want to cry too.

  He called her over, and Merida sat on the bed and held his hand.

  ‘I worry about the boys. Less about Ethan, now that he has you.’

  Merida squeezed his hand. At the wedding she’d been certain Jobe knew it was all a farce. He probably did, she decided. But maybe it was easier for him to think that his youngest son had settled down.

  She doubted it was true.

  It had been months since the wedding, and it terrified her to think what Ethan might be getting up to in Dubai. She wondered if that was why he’d gone there...

  Marriage to a Devereux, Merida had long-ago decided, was hard work indeed.

  ‘Do you miss Elizabeth?’ Merida asked, inviting him to talk about his late wife, the mother of his sons.

  ‘Not for a moment,’ Jobe said, and Merida swallowed at this unexpected response.

  ‘You were happy, though...’

  And maybe it was the morphine speaking, or perhaps it was after decades of hurt as he moved to the end of his life, but for once Jobe did not keep everything in.

  ‘Marriage to Elizabeth was the most hellish time of my life,’ Jobe said.

  Merida was stunned. ‘But you’ve got pictures of her everywhere...you speak so nicely of her...’

  ‘Well, you don’t speak ill of the dead, do you?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s easier for the boys—to let them think that she loved them...’

  ‘She didn’t love them?’

  ‘The only person Elizabeth ever loved,’ Jobe said, ‘was herself.’

  And then he told her something else. A truth. One so vital that Ethan and Abe must surely be told.

  But Jobe refused. ‘I’m taking that to the grave.’

  ‘Jobe, no.’

  It was a revelation. And Merida truly didn’t know what it meant, or what to do with it. Or even if she should do anything.

  Ethan was so closed off on the rare times that he called. And to keep up the façade Merida was terminally brittle.

  Yet she ached for him, for more information, and as she let herself into the house after her visit she lay drained on the bed and admitted the truth.

  The Devereux family was the family she had never had.

  Oh, they were messed up, but they’d all been there at her wedding. Jobe checked in on the welfare of their baby all the time, and Ethan, the husband who didn’t love her, still had the ability to melt her heart.

  Even on a computer screen.

  Tonight he was wearing, of all things, a robe and keffiyeh.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘I’ve been calling you.’

  Merida stared at her screen and magnified his impossibly beautiful face. ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Too busy to pick up your phone?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  It was true—she had been too busy crying, and the very last thing she wanted to give him was a glimpse of her tears.

  Playing the part of a cold-hearted gold-digger was far easier than showing him her heart.

  ‘How’s Dubai?’

  ‘Hot,’ he said.

  Hell, he thought.

  His playboy days were over. And as he stared at his bride he thought, Who would ever imagine they slept in separate rooms?

  ‘I’m about to head out for dinner with Khalid, but I wanted to speak to you first.’

  ‘Regarding...?’

  She sounded like his PA, Ethan thought.

  ‘I wanted to know if you’d had any luck finding a nanny.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Merida admitted. ‘Ethan, do you remember I told you my friend was a maternity nanny?’

  He nodded without thinking, because he remembered every minute of every hour of that time when they had been close. And they’d been so close that morning—lying in bed, talking and laughing with what had felt like the world waiting for them.

  ‘Well,’ Merida continued, ‘I was thinking of asking her to be here for the first few weeks.’

  ‘Am I running an English backpackers’ hostel?’

  She never knew if h
e was joking.

  ‘Fine,’ he said when she didn’t smile. ‘If it makes it easier on you.’

  Merida hoped it would.

  ‘But you do need to find a permanent nanny.’

  ‘I’m trying, but they’re all so very formal...’

  He nodded. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Were they awful?’ Merida asked. ‘The nannies you had?’

  ‘Not awful—they were just very strict. Meghan, the one I had when I was young...’ He hesitated. ‘Well, she was nice, from what I can remember. But we all know how that worked out.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Merida said, and stared back at him. ‘All I know is the salacious stuff that I’ve read in the newspapers.’

  ‘That’s all I know too,’ Ethan said. ‘She was nice. Clearly my father thought so too.’ And then he admitted something. ‘I missed Meghan dreadfully when she was gone.’

  Merida stared harder. It was the first honest conversation they had had in months, and his first real revelation about that time.

  And while they were speaking—really speaking—there was something she needed to say.

  ‘Ethan...’ She was hesitant to push. After all, it wasn’t her place—she was a contract wife only. Yet, whether or not he wanted it, she was more than that in her heart. ‘Your father doesn’t look well. I think you need to come home.’

  ‘Someone has to work. I speak to him online every day, and he’s repeatedly said that he wants business as usual.’

  ‘It’s not the same as seeing face to face.’

  No, it wasn’t.

  He could see Merida, and he could hear her. But it wasn’t the same as being there.

  ‘You and your father need to sort things out while you still can.’

  ‘Just leave it, Merida.’

  She’d pushed it too far, Merida knew. And so she clipped on her mask and fixed him with cold green eyes that were iced by unshed tears.

  ‘Fine.’ She gave him a tight smile. ‘Now I really do have to go.’

  ‘Not yet...’

  As strained as they were, speaking with Merida was the highlight of his day. And so he tried to prolong things in a way that usually worked.

  ‘There are some amazing jewellers here. How about—?’

  ‘Ethan!’ Merida snapped. She didn’t want him coming home bearing gifts. She just wanted him home. Only she dared not admit that. ‘I need to go.’